My Psychedelic Roots – Détails, épisodes et analyse

In this inaugural episode of the podcast, we sit down with Victor Distefano Wiltenburg, a Brazilian PhD student studying in the Department of Biology at the University of Ottawa. He currently works with medicinal plants and entheogens, studying the ayahuasca neo-shamanic movement in Brazil and Canada. Victor has a unique story of his psychedelic roots, and his path has woven together science and spirituality in some surprising ways, both within and outside of the psychedelic realm.

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

Katherine Kimbell, (RN, BA) was introduced to the concept of psychedelics by the CBC Radio program "Ideas" in November 2015 at age 78. This was a profoundly life-changing experience that led to her eventual first psychedelic experience a few months later. Her story is wonderfully unique, while also echoing the pains that many people navigate in life—grappling with the loss of faith, confronting shame, and cultivating acceptance and forgiveness for others and for oneself.

Shownotes

McLean's magazine psychedelic issue "My 12 Hours as a Madman" from October 1, 1953 (Trippingly): https://www.trippingly.net/lsd/2018/5/17/my-12-hours-as-a-madman

CBC Ideas 'High Culture' 3-part series, aired October and November 2015: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/ideas-for-october-2015-1.3247404

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

#psychedelics #podcast #tripreport

Sheldomar Elliot has years of experience in food justice, community support and research roles, and is deeply committed to addressing food insecurity and advancing Black food sovereignty across the City of Toronto. As you will hear in this episode, Sheldomar is also passionate about exploring the intersections of psychedelics with access, community, and healing.

Our wide-reaching conversation touches on his experiences of magic and curiosity in childhood, the complexity of navigating identity in both childhood and adulthood, and finding his way to his authentic Self.

Shownotes

• Sheldomar's food justice organization Foodshare 
• And the podcast he hosts there!
• His community work in Black food sovereignty
• The psychedelic healing and justice coalition he works with
• And a guide for anyone who wants to get into the best trading card game ever!

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

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Tahlia Harrison is a therapist, researcher and bioethicist who comes from an ethnically, culturally, spiritually, and racially mixed background. Not surprisingly, she is someone who embraces complexity, and as our conversation reveals, much of her career and research interests in psychology and ethics stem from her own personal experiences navigating complex relationships and traumatic experiences. In our chat, we also get to know her as someone full of joy, self-awareness, humour and gratitude.  

Our talk together touches on the complexity of being exposed to parental substance use in childhood, slowly learning to trust and receive care, and eventually opening up to the healing potential of a well-supported and loving psychedelic experience.

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

#psychedelics #podcast #tripreport

Trigger Warning: discussions of suicide and suicidality

Kellen Saxberg is a self-proclaimed queer history nerd, psychedelic enthusiast, and student researcher on the intersection of queerness, psychedelics and healing. In our conversation together, Kellen and I talk about navigating conservativism and queerness in their youth, their experiences of losing a sense of self, experiencing awe and cultivating trust, and eventually moving towards finding their way back home, both literally and figuratively, in their first psychedelic experience.

A reminder that this episode contains explicit discussion of suicide. This warning is meant to empower you with the knowledge you need to make healthy decisions about how and if you should consume this podcast content. We invite you to practice self-care and do what feels right for you. And if you need support, please connect with someone who can help: family and friends, professionals, or a crisis line. There are both Canadian and international recommendations in the show notes below. You are not alone-- not in your pain, nor in your healing.

Shownotes

Links to

• Kellen’s grandfather, Donald Ross, served as one of Canada’s first openly gay ordained ministers: https://passages.winnipegfreepress.com/article/id-323/Minister,_advocate,_dad,_hero
• The quote “A book is a suicide postponed” is from Emil M. Cioran’s The Trouble With Being Born (1973)  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/117564.The_Trouble_With_Being_Born

Below are some Canadian and international mental health resources to access if you are in distress or need support:

• Crisis Services Canada: https://988.ca/
• Befrienders Worldwide (crisis lines serving 32 countries): https://befrienders.org/ 
• International Directory of Mental Health Helplines: https://www.helpguide.org/find-help.htm
• The Fireside Project (US-only psychedelic-specific support): https://firesideproject.org/ 
• Psychology Today (to find a therapist in North America): https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/therapists

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

#psychedelics #podcast #tripreport

Dr. Pamela Kryskow is a medical doctor, advocate, practitioner and life-loving human. She serves as the medical lead of the non-profit “Roots To Thrive” Psychedelic Assisted Therapy Program in BC, volunteers as a founding board member of the Psychedelic Association of Canada, and serves as the Medical Chair of the Vancouver Island University Post Graduate Certificate in Psychedelic Medicine Assisted Therapy. Prior to studying to become a doctor, she was a City of Coquitlam Firefighter for 8 years and provincial forestry firefighter for 4 seasons. Pam is someone who thrives in complexity, abundance and the ‘and’ of the human experience. Wending our way through her roots, in our conversation we explore her childhood moving all over North America with her professional-hocky-playing father and family, and the resilience and groundedness she cultivated in that unique childhood context. We explore her evolving relationship with religion and spirituality, from her Catholic roots to her deepening relationship with nature. And we dive into what she calls her ‘meandering’ life path, and talk about what she is learning about herself, her truth and the world around her, all while her roots continue to nourish and ground her unfolding.

Shownotes

• Psychedelic Association of Canada: https://www.psychedelicassociation.net/
• Roots To Thrive Psychedelic Assisted Therapy Program: https://rootstothrive.com/
• "Quiet the Sirens" documentary: https://quietthesirens.com/
• Vancouver Island University Post Graduate Certificate in Psychedelic Medicine Assisted Therapy: https://www.viu.ca/programs/health/psychedelic-assisted-therapy
• “Fantastic Fungi” documentary: https://fantasticfungi.com/pages/the-film

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

#psychedelics #podcast #tripreport

Bradford Martins, MD, PhD is a board-certified addiction psychiatrist based at a psychiatric clinic in New Haven, Connecticut where he supports folks navigating substance use disorders, including through implementing community-based models for the prevention and treatment. Dr. Martins is also an Assistant Professor Adjunct at Yale University conducting research in both the Bassir Nia Lab to study the therapeutic potential of dimethyltryptamine (DMT) for alcohol use disorder, and the ENACT Lab to study the therapeutic effect of psilocybin on OCD, while also working towards greater equity and accessibility in the psychedelic space. We hear about the origins of that community and equity focus in Brad’s psychedelics roots, exploring his experience growing up as a self-proclaimed 'feral child' in the woods of Arkansas, later leading him to his first psychedelic experience where he deeply reconnected to the land he grew up on while in community with friends and fellow ‘Children of the Forest’.

Shownotes

• For anyone in the US looking for SUD or Mental Health treatment: Home - FindTreatment.gov
• A link to the DMT study for alcohol use disorder: Study Details | NCT06070649 | The Potential Therapeutic Effects of Psychedelic, N, N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), on Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) | ClinicalTrials.gov
• Brad’s favourite quote from ‘Helplessness Blues’ by Fleet Foxes: https://youtu.be/7HHgedNNQco?si=x8SPUWQZBX8Fco90 -- “If I know only one thing, it’s that everything that I see of the world outside is so inconceivable, often I barely can speak”
• Erowid, a non-profit educational & harm-reduction resource with 60 thousand pages of online information about psychedelics and associated topics: https://www.erowid.org/

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

#psychedelics #podcast #tripreport

Lucia Rios Maia da Silva is a queer Brazilian psychotherapist whose life and research are guided by a deep connection to nature and plant medicines. In our conversation together, we explore their childhood raised by two pastors, and the disconnection that they experienced as they were forced to try to ‘correct’ their queerness, and the new communities and spiritualities they built as they learned to live in their truth. After coming out in Brazil, Lucia moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 2019 seeking a safer social and political context, which moves us into hearing about their first psychedelic experience with psilocybin mushrooms. They also co-facilitate a biweekly hapeh circle open to the Ottawa community members, and during their free time, they can be found practicing yoga, cycling along the river, or drumming on their djembe.

Shownotes

• Lucia's professional website: www.linesofbecoming.com
• Facebook group for the hapeh circle Lucia helps convene: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1104427398535575

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

#psychedelics #podcast #tripreport

Trigger Warning: discussions of suicidality

Pedram Dara is an Iranian-born refugee to Canada and a former MDMA-assisted therapy clinical trial participant who has turned his experiences into founding and directing the Psychedelic Lived Experiences initiative, a patient-led movement advancing lived experience expertise in psychedelic research, treatment, and policy. In our conversation together, we talk about how his current advocacy work is built off of his early experiences as a child growing up in Iran. We explore some of the confusing messaging that surrounded him about drugs as he was growing up, before eventually talking through what led him to having his first therapeutic psychedelic experience to help heal his PTSD in a clinical trial setting.

A reminder that this episode contains mentions of suicidal thoughts. This warning is meant to empower you with the knowledge you need to make healthy decisions about how and if you should consume this podcast content. We invite you to practice self-care and do what feels right for you. And if you need support, please connect with someone who can help: family and friends, professionals, or a crisis line. There are both Canadian and international recommendations in the show notes below. You are not alone-- not in your pain, nor in your healing.

Shownotes

• Psychedelic Lived Experiences initiative that Pedram has built
• The upcoming Psychedelic Lived Experiences Summit, a free online event happening November 2025
• The FDA decision on June 4, 2024 to reject the initial application for MDMA therapy: https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/06/04/nx-s1-4991112/mdma-therapy-ptsd-fda-advisors
• MK Ultra experiments that happened at McGill in the 1950s and 60s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_experiments
• FDA Advisory Committee Meeting on MDMA Approval (U.S.) On June 4, 2024, Pedram spoke at the FDA’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee meeting during its review of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD. As a public hearing speaker, he shared insights from his firsthand experience as a Phase 2 clinical trial participant, highlighting both the benefits and limitations of the treatment.
• Psychedelic Science 2025 Conference (U.S.) On June 19, 2025 Pedram led a self-organized panel at Psychedelic Science 2025, the first ever by MDMA-assisted therapy trial participants. The session brought together diverse voices who found benefit, faced challenges, or experienced harm, offering a rare, unfiltered look into the real-world complexity of psychedelic treatment and patient experience.
• Breaking Convention 2023 Keynote Presentation (Exeter, England) On April 22, 2023, Pedram delivered a keynote at Breaking Convention, Europe’s largest psychedelic conference, held at the University of Exeter. He shared insights from his own MDMA therapy experience, four years after participating in a Phase 2 clinical trial in Canada and discussed how to improve patient outcomes. He also joined a panel with renowned policy advocate Amanda Feilding.

Below are some Canadian and international mental health resources to access if you are in distress or need support:

• • Crisis Services Canada: https://988.ca/
  • Befrienders Worldwide (crisis lines serving 32 countries): https://befrienders.org/
  • International Directory of Mental Health Helplines: https://www.helpguide.org/find-help.htm
  • The Fireside Project (US-only psychedelic-specific support): https://firesideproject.org/
  • Psychology Today (to find a therapist in North America): https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/therapists

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

#psychedelics #podcast #tripreport

Dr. Monnica T. Williams is a board-certified licensed clinical psychologist and Professor at the University of Ottawa in the School of Psychology, where she is the Canada Research Chair in Mental Health Disparities. She is also the Clinical Director of the Behavioral Wellness Clinics in Connecticut and Ottawa, where she provides supervision and training to clinicians for empirically-supported treatments. In our conversation together, we sit down outside of the professional context and talk a bit about her personal journey towards psychedelics for healing, and how her relationship with these substances evolved into what has become an important part of her career unfolding. We talk about what she learned in that first journey in a well-supported clinical environment, and learn more about how her evolving dance with psychedelics has impacted not just her career path, but just as importantly, her relationship to herself. 

Shownotes

• Monnica's professional website: https://www.monnicawilliams.com/
• Monnica's upcoming retreat on Psychedelics and Racial Trauma in Mexico in November: https://www.mentalhealthdisparities.org/retreats.php
• Links to a few of the studies back in 2015 that opened her mind to the potential of psychedelics:
  • The safety and efficacy of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamineassisted psychotherapy in subjects with chronic, treatment-resistant posttraumatic stress disorder: the first randomized controlled pilot study
  • Durability of improvement in post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and absence of harmful effects or drug dependency after 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine-assisted psychotherapy: a prospective long-term follow-up study

Monnica’s Social Media links: 

• X: @DrMonnica
• Instagram: @drmonnica
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/monnicawilliams

Trainings she offers: 

• http://www.racialtraumahealing.com/certification.php
• https://ebtrainingsolutions.com/event/2026-03-19/treating-racial-trauma-anti-racism
• https://bewellct.com/ketamine-retreat.php

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

#psychedelics #podcast #tripreport