Psilocybin, AI as Personalised, Complementary Therapy

You know, I actually want to talk to you a little bit more about that because I find it fascinating.

You know, I've been a social worker working in various industries for over 30 years now and done quite a lot of counseling.

And there's a few things that you mentioned that I just want to unpack a little bit.

Firstly, you mentioned, you know, that moving away from the traditional kind of therapy.

And I can understand why.

I think every therapist has a different approach and not every approach, when it's so based on theory and it's based on specific frameworks, it doesn't necessarily fit every single client.

And I say that knowing that people may get their backs up about it.

But it doesn't, particularly when you're talking about depression, especially if you're already going through suicidal ideation.

There is a lot that goes into that, and there is only so much you can talk.

And sometimes... you wanting to talk when the session is not on so you're wanting to talk outside of those times you may find two o'clock in the morning you wake up and and suddenly something has hit you and you need to unpack it and so i can understand the need to find a thought partner in ai the other thing that you mentioned was the um psychedelics and i want you for our listeners out there i want to say that this is not something that you should just enter into without kind of knowing what you're doing psychedelics are for the most part safe but there is a reason that people have sitters and there is a reason why trained sitters exist because if you're just kind of doing it, it can be counterproductive.

It may unlock emotions that you're not equipped to deal with at the minute when those emotions are unlocked, those memories are unlocked.

So I think that for anybody out there who wants to explore psychedelic therapy, that it be done alongside a sitter or a qualified professional.

Mark is someone who has many, many years of experience with it.

And so some of the psychedelics that you've used, you mentioned ketamine, You've mentioned psilocybin.

There's been so much research done on psilocybin and depression.

So take us through.

You had a counselor that you were working with, a therapist that you were working with.

You recorded the sessions.

You then used AI almost as a thought partner.

Is that right? Yes.

Yeah, I want to jump in on the psychedelics before I get to that, though, because I think it's really important.

Yes, there are a lot of risks involved.

And even in my experience, a lot of so-called qualified sitters or therapists, and this includes some people who are quite prominent in the field, uh have been quite damaging so i i think that it's really really a kind of caveat emptor situation you've got to be really careful And I like to say that my trip record is not a roadmap.

I don't recommend what I've done for others.

And I can extend that to AI to a significant extent as well.