Amanda: I’m really excited about this week’s topic, but I know it will be a controversial one, so let’s talk about it. 

We’re talking about using psychedelics in therapy to help with sexual dysfunction. And I want to make this really clear that I am in no way endorsing this practice. Okay. While it is a legitimate method of therapy, each person must decide for themselves if it is right for them. It is not my job to say if it is right or wrong.

My job is to bring my audience information and ask questions from the person that I’m interviewing and then let my audience decide for themselves what they want to do and if it is in alignment with their integrity. This has been a topic that many clients and listeners have asked for more information about. And so I sought information to give them.

Just for some clarification purposes, when it comes to using what we would technically think of as drugs or illegal substances or something for therapeutic or medicinal purposes, the Church is okay with that. Let me read a portion of the Handbook to you about this.

So, this is from Section 38.7.9, and it’s based on medical marijuana, and it says, “The Church opposes the use of marijuana for non medical purposes. However, marijuana may be used for medicinal purposes when the following conditions are met: 

• The use is determined to be medically necessary by a licensed physician or another legally approved medical provider.
• The person follows the dosage and mode of administration from the physician or other authorized medical provider. The Church does not approve of vaping marijuana unless the medical provider has authorized it based on medical necessity. 

The Church does not approve of smoking marijuana, including for medical purposes.”

Now there isn’t necessarily anything on using psychedelics in therapy, but I would guess that it falls along the same guidelines because it is for medical purposes. It is for important reasons that maybe you can’t get through some of these challenges that you have in other ways. And so I think it can be a really good thing.

I’ve known several people that have used ketamine to work through suicidal ideation, different things like that and it’s been really helpful for them. And so I think it really just comes down to personal authority and what you feel is right for you. Again, I am in no way endorsing this or saying that people should do this.

I’m also not saying that they shouldn’t. I think it’s a personal decision, but I wanted to make sure and bring you information so that you have that information and can make that decision for yourself. 

All right, let’s get to my interview. 

All right. I have a great guest for us today, Jeff Lundgren. He is a therapist here in Salt Lake City. Jeff, welcome to the podcast.  

Jeff: Thank you.  

Amanda: Would you introduce yourself a little bit to my audience?

Jeff: I would love to. So as Amanda indicated, I’m a therapist. I practice in Salt Lake City. My license is a clinical mental health counselor. I also am an ASECT trained certified sex therapist, and I hold a certificate in using psychedelics in a clinical setting, therapeutically. I have a handful of kids, love the outdoors. Utah is a really nice place to live in many ways. My family of origin, you know, comes from the state of Utah and in the region. So it’s a nice place to live and experience both work and family.

Amanda: Awesome. Great. Okay. So we’re going to get into kind of a, probably maybe more taboo topic today, maybe controversial. I don’t know. But it’s something that a lot of my listeners and followers have kind of reached out to me over the years asking questions about, and I just didn’t have a lot of knowledge. And so I was really excited to talk to Jeff today about the use of psychedelics in therapy and how that aligns or doesn’t align with our belief system and culture, and then also how it can be beneficial in our sexual relationships. So that’s kind of what we’re going to be talking about today. 

So you have training and work with psychedelic substances in your therapy. I would guess that this can seem kind of taboo for a lot of your clients maybe. Tell me a little bit more about, you know, how you use these and what the purpose is.

Jeff: Yeah, that’s such a big question. So it may be helpful to start with a little bit of the history around psychedelics. Many of these medicines have been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years, indigenously within populations all around the world. Some of these plant medicines, of course, um, we owe a great deal to the heritage and to the rich, um, understanding that we have about altered state of consciousness.

Um, at the same time, we have this collision of modern Western science not to mention the various aspects of the mid 20th century upheaval and the use of psychedelics recreationally opposed to many other ways and trying to reconcile them has been a historical dilemma for sure. What emerged, um, out of the 20th century was this concept early on that psychedelics, not only from the plant medicines that we’re familiar with, but also some of the manufacturing synthetic, such as LSD or MDMA, there was a lot of early research, but then with the war on drugs and the Nixon era and the subsequent, um, rescheduling of the substances completely shut off the vast majority of the research, not just in the United States, but around the world. And it wasn’t until the last 20 years that we’re now beginning to understand that there’s a very strong therapeutic aspect to these medicines.

And of course, this bumps into all of our religious perspectives, our cultural attitudes towards these things, and, um, and that makes it complicated, but it’s really interesting.

Amanda: Yeah, that is really interesting. I don’t think I realized the history behind it. And I mean, I of course recognize the history of like, you know, the sixties and using psychedelics for recreation and stuff, but I don’t think I realized that it had been used far beyond that, um, in different ways.

So tell me a little bit more about how you use them in your practice. Like, why would someone want to do this in the first place?

Jeff: Yeah. So I think much of the interest came from underground work prior to, I think we could say it’s only in the past few years, literally, where there’s been an awakening of the therapeutic, legal and ethical approach in using these substances we call psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy generally is the term, and there’s a lot of legal constraints.

So here in Utah, as is true with most places in the United States, the only legal psychedelic is ketamine, which is classified as an atypical psychedelic because it’s different than the serotonin invoking psychedelics. Um, for example, LSD, peyote, ayahuasca, mushrooms and stuff like that. So ketamine is a medicine that I currently use, um, with clients. And then because some of these other substances are air quote widely available with some variation as to what widely actually means, and they’re also illegal, I don’t use them in my practice, but I do have clients that seek them out independently, and I will do integration work with those clients, which we could talk more about. 

Amanda: Okay. So you primarily use ketamine. So if you’re using ketamine with a client, what does that look like?

Jeff: So ketamine is an older medication. By old, we’re talking early 20th century. Um, it was originally developed and I forget exactly, um, but became a very commonly used anesthetic. In fact, it was used during the Vietnam War as an anesthetic and still is used in pediatric settings, but in much lower dosages, um, roughly a 10th or a 5th of that amount. It has this capacity to psychedelically alter one’s consciousness. It’s classified as a dissociative. So how that looks today is, we will do between by we, I mean, myself and a partnered medical doctor, to screen and make sure that the client is an eligible candidate for that particular medicine.

Not everybody is right. It’s a very conservative approach, but we’ll make sure everything’s okay. We gather the clients or I got out of the clients intentions, what type of condition or issue or situation that they’re looking to address with ketamine assisted psychotherapy.  And then as part of the, um, the initial medicine experience itself, we tried to lay out all of that formally. 

Then we’ll have a session dedicated, um, for the use of ketamine, which is a therapeutic dose of ketamine. We do that in my office. Sometimes I do that, um, in the office of my provider. If we’re going to use, um, an intravenous or intermuscular, um, method of delivery. In my office, we use oral ketamine in the form of lozenges.

And then roughly 2 to 3 hours later, they leave the office. And then after that period, um, usually within a couple of days, we try to schedule a follow up integration session to process through, um, the meaning from the experience and then dovetail that back in with their therapeutic intentions.

Amanda: Okay. So they’re coming to you. You have a doctor that you work with, make sure it’s all safe and they’re a good candidate for it. They have specific things that they want to work on in the session with you. What kinds of things would that entail?

Jeff: Yeah. So it’s pretty broad, um, probably more generalized than it needs to be. The strongest indicator, um, is depression or what we call treatment resistant depression along with, um, suicidality. Ketamine is notably potent in that way. Um, but there’s a variety of other conditions, um, anxiety, OCD, trauma work, um, oftentimes, just really existential distress that a client might be experiencing. So that could include a variety of things. I also use it and I’m not the only one who does in addressing sexual concerns, which in many ways sexual dysfunction again, air quotes, because sometimes we pathologize those things. Can be very effective or ketamine can be very effective as a psychedelic intervention to help resolve the underlying condition that is maybe creating the sexual dysfunction as it were. So that’s interesting too.

Amanda: Okay. So I want to talk more about that later but I want to stick with the ketamine for just a minute here. So they do this within the safety of your office with a medical provider Like all of that. Do they have someone there with them or is it just you?

Jeff: Yeah. So it’s just me and the client. 

Amanda: Okay, so they don’t typically have another person there.

Jeff: No not with ketamine. MDMA, the maps protocol. We could talk about that a bit, but MDMA is a unique psychedelic medicine. And because the duration of the medicine and the type of effect that it has on the client really requires two clinicians to be present with the client in that state, but ketamine really doesn’t.

Amanda: Okay. So if they’re in this, you know, they’ve had the ketamine, what are they experiencing?

Jeff: Yeah. So ketamine, as I suggested, is classified as a dissociative. So it has this unique ability to separate one’s consciousness from their body or their lived experience. So it creates a gap where the dialogue changes from, Wow, I feel sad, or I feel depressed, or I have this issue.

It’s more like my body has this issue. I’m glad I don’t have that issue. That’s not me, but I can relate to it. Right. That little bit of space between one’s incorporation of a  particular thing has enough gap that they’re able to gain different perspectives. So that’s kind of the experience. During that time, so we’re talking about like, typically like a 90 minute window, the client’s mostly inward, um, much more than what you would see with other psychedelics. They don’t really typically want to talk. Not that they can’t. Um, they just don’t. Um, they’re very much in their own internal world. And as the medicine starts to metabolize and wear off, then they do become more vocal as they become a little bit more grounded.

But for most of the experience, most of my clients remain somewhat dormant.  Ketamine, like most psychedelics, can invoke some emotional intensity, usually in the form of like a grief expression. I’ve seen clients that will cry, not uncontrollably, but with intensity, infrequently. Do I see fear? That can happen. So there can be some, um, regulation moments, um, but for the most part, ketamine, it almost looks as if somebody is asleep.

Amanda: So are you guiding them through this process or they just go in, they take it, they’re doing the internal work in the 90 minutes and then they’re done?

Jeff: Yeah. So sometimes it looks like that, um, where they’re just inside doing their own work. In fact, that’s the general emphasis that is a therapist. We try to empower the clients, what we call the internal healer. Um, there’s so unlike a lot of classic talk therapy environments where the therapist is guiding, reframing, rehearsing, trying to, assist and work with our client in their cognitive processes, or even if it’s somewhat of a heart or somatic approach, there’s a lot of interaction, but not with ketamine.

Ketamine, it’s a very hands off at least with one’s words in situation. Now, there are moments where there is interaction. I mean, this does happen. Um, but it’s very, um, very much observational or what we typically call like a client centered approach. We’re letting the client drive the experience. 

Amanda: Interesting. That’s fascinating. Um, okay. So what would keep someone who has experienced this in your office from going out and seeking it on their own?

Jeff: Well, nothing actually. A lot of these substances, um, like ketamine, for example, you can find them. They exist. However, I think there’s a couple of important things people might want to know.

One is when people source substances independently, we don’t know where they’re coming from. We don’t know, I mean, ketamine is ketamine. With other substances, sometimes they’re cut with other things, which can be problematic and MDMA notably there’s a lot of rates of, you know, that kind of thing. 

Um, so there’s that. Um, but I think more importantly is from a therapeutic perspective,  psychedelics, they respond very strongly to the intentions and the environment, um, of the journeyer.  So without a therapeutic container, we don’t really know what that substance is going to do for them.

Now, these chemicals aren’t really toxic or harmful. Not really. They can be rarely, um, but here’s a classic example. So MDMA, um, also known as ecstasy, right? A name that was derived from the use in the 80s and 90s, where MDMA was used in recreational settings like is written in raves and the capacity for MDMA to centrally enhance or create a lot of pro social qualities in a party setting are very strong, hence its use in raves. Now, that’s a very different experience than, for example, PTSD in a clinical setting where MDMA has been shown to be remarkably empowering in resolving PTSD.

What’s the difference? Well, the difference is the setting. It’s not the medication. It’s the environment under which the medication is taken. So, problematically, in Utah and in other places in the United States, although I think Utah is interesting in that a lot of people here in Utah want to capitalize on new opportunities and more than most places.

So a few years ago, we started to see the upswell of ketamine clinics everywhere. It’s like, oh, there’s another ketamine clinic. Oh, there’s a ketamine clinic, but what’s fascinating is not all these ketamine clinics are incorporating, in fact, most of them do not incorporate a psychotherapeutic component as a part of the treatment, it’s just receiving medicine, which isn’t that different than one just finding ketamine through a friend or a neighbor and then doing it at home, which might have a therapeutic component to it. But most of the time, and what the research shows is that without a therapeutic setting and container, ketamine is just a really good rec drug. 

Amanda: Okay. Is it addictive?

Jeff: No. In fact, ketamine has been shown to reduce addictive behaviors more than create them. Any substance, um, even including psychedelics, can have a habituating part to it, which is usually psychological. It’s like, well, it is just another coping strategy, no different than maybe eating a donut or watching too much television, or perhaps even, um, overdoing your church calling. Right. All these things are coping strategies,  but in terms of like that Pharmacological, addictive, heroin-like methamphetamine, like crystal meth aspect, not even close, not even, not even alcohol. Nothing’s even in terms of psychedelics close to that whatsoever.

Amanda: Okay. So you’ve brought up MDMA a few times, but you’re not using that currently in your practice. 

Jeff: I’m not using that in my practice. No.

Amanda: Okay. And why is that? 

Jeff: Well, foremost, it’s illegal.

Amanda: Okay. So it’s still illegal in Utah and in other places too?

Jeff: In most other places. There are a few jurisdictions, um, in the United States that have decriminalized schedule one substances. Um, but even in those areas, licensed therapists are very cautious to use them in therapeutic settings because the container for their license, um, doesn’t really give a lot of tolerance to using psychedelics in a clinical way, ketamine excluded and integration session really aren’t a part of that too, but using it medicinally with clients tends to be a little bit sketchy still.

Amanda: But you said that there arecstudies showing that it’s really good for PTSD.

Jeff: So in recent years, the Federal Government in the United States has given exceptions to researchers that want to study these medicines. And so in a research setting, the legal implications are not included. So as an example, um, the MAPS organization out of Colorado has been spearheading MDMA for the last  20 years, 25 years. 

And the recent, very recently, in fact within the last couple of months, MAPS released and published a phase three FDA designed blinded study on the use of MDMA for PTSD. Remarkable outcomes. It was extremely positive.

Amanda: Awesome. Okay. So now that we kind of have this background, anything else you think we should know before we transition into talking about the cultural aspect and sex? 

Jeff: Uh, yeah, let’s dive in.

Amanda: Okay. So how do you feel like the practice of using psychedelics in therapy aligns or doesn’t align with the Latter Day Saint belief system?

Jeff: Yeah, I think this is fascinating if anything, just through a cultural lens, there’s a significant footprint of attitude toward substances within the Church. Right? So the Word of Wisdom predominantly outlays with some vagueness, right? Yes, there’s not a lot of specificity, right? But culturally, it’s this is bad. This is bad. Don’t do this. This might be okay. And it’s complicated. So within and through that lens, I think we have historically looked at psychedelics generally. And I personally contribute this to the anti drug movement that emerged conservatively out of what occurred in the United States in the latter half of the 60s, early 70s. And that makes this a little bit complicated. I think cannabis as a shift in American norms has pushed against some of this a bit. But I do think it creates a very fascinating conversation, at least within our cultural world.

Amanda: Yeah. I mean, do you get a lot of pushback from people if it’s talked about or suggested if they affiliate with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?

Jeff: Yeah. So usually when clients approach me, right, because this is a part of my practice, they know that I am aware and I’m doing psychedelic assisted psychotherapy.  When they come to me, it’s usually because they’ve heard about it. Like, Oh, my friend did this, or I have a family member that had this experience. 

And sometimes, for more devout members of the Church, they also include, well, and I thought it would be best to talk to my Bishop about this before, or I have some family members who have told me that this is a thing that you should stay away from. It’s very bad. So sometimes we have to process through what those things are, um, what they mean, and it’s delicate because it’s not my job to promote one intervention over another if there’s a moral or ethical belief that my client holds. And this would be true with anything. Um, but we don’t typically carry the same taboos for example, art therapy versus family planning systems or, you know, but there’s something about psychedelics.  

Amanda: Yeah. Interesting. I mean, I think you’re exactly right because I hear a lot of the same things from clients. Like, well, I’ve, you know, I needed to talk to my Bishop about it before. I’m like, what does your Bishop have to do with this? Like, it really comes down to integrity and alignment and what feels good and right to you. And is that in alignment with what you think God wants for you? Period. Right.  

But getting clients, and I’m sure you come across the same thing to that point is, I mean, we have to kind of address that before we keep and address what’s actually going on because otherwise they don’t even know how to make that decision for themselves.

They’re so used to relegating those decisions outside of themselves to their Bishop or the Church or something.

Jeff: Now, this is an interesting thing you bring up. And I think it might be helpful for your listeners to embrace something here. So psychedelic assisted psychotherapy fundamentally, as we talked about, is about empowering the internal healer. This is not a muscle that most Church members have had a lot of experience in using some, not all. So the tendency to externalize their spirituality or externalize their healthcare or externalize their mental health is instinctive. And when clients show up and they’re like, yeah, but I think I should talk to my Bishop. Well, I think I should talk to whatever, and I’m going to say this, I should even pray about it and get Heavenly Father’s perspective, is a little bit of externalizing ones or out resourcing someone’s mental health. And I value those things, but they become a therapeutic opportunity to turn within and say, well, what does your heart tell you?

Amanda: Yes. 

Jeff: What do you feel is in alignment with your values? What are your values? And so we try to do some work upfront, sometimes, then the therapeutic experience with, in my case, ketamine, that feels very natural because now they’re stretching this muscle of sovereignty and autonomy in a way that allows for the psychedelic medicine to invoke a sense of internal capacity that frankly is highly connected to why people experience so much distress, is because they’re looking elsewhere for solutions, or maybe they’re blaming something externally. So it’s an interesting relationship in terms of that culture perspective and how psychedelics work. 

Amanda: Yes, and I see that all the time in my work.

Okay. So both men and women struggle often with the sexual and we’ll say this in air quotes dysfunction, right? Um, due to like physical health issues, psychological challenges, like trauma or anxiety. How can psychedelics be helpful in the sexual realm? 

Jeff: Great question. So there are a variety of reasons why people experience sexual dysfunction. If we’re talking about, for example, erectile dysfunction or inorgasmia, or, um, an imbalance in libido in a relationship, the trauma that’s experienced due to infidelity, there’s a variety of things that impact the way in which we are able to show up, um, as a sexual person, sexual human. The descriptions of according to the DSM, which is the book that we use, right? Our Bible, quote, in our field, um, is very symptom,  um, correlated. So we define problems based on how those problems show up. And while we have a good indication as to what the potential causes might be, they vary. Sometimes it’s physiological. Sometimes we can say, okay, well, you have diabetes too, ergo, you have circulation issues. This is prohibiting the kind of blood flow that’s necessary to create arousal and function and so forth. Um, so there’s a biophysiological domain. We largely, um include holistically medical providers to help assess for those things. But from the psychological or the so called psychological world, we have anxiety, we have trauma, we have beliefs, we have negative experiences, we have relationship dynamics, we have other comorbidities like substance abuse, which is an interesting thing as we talk about psychedelics. Um, but there’s so many other things that contribute to air quote sexual dysfunction. How do psychedelics affect or how do psychedelics enable a client to resolve the sexual dysfunction? By addressing the underlying concern. 

Can I share an example?

Amanda: Yes, please. We love examples here

Jeff: So I was working with a client, um, who diagnostically met the threshold of premature ejaculation, which we don’t have to go into that other than it was a race to the finish for him and he couldn’t control or maintain an experience that he felt, um, was more in alignment with his sexual goals and the desire for his partner.

And in that conversation, you know, we could go all down the route of how do we fix that? Worked with him in his set. Meaning his intention. Created a container where ketamine allowed for him to turn inward his intention to go inward was to identify the tension, the anxiety, the thinking, where perhaps that came from for him, so that if that were to resolve how thinking is, then how would that show up in PE for him and we did a couple of sessions and it’s typical with ketamine, uh, 2 or 3, or sometimes even 5 sessions for really treatment resistant conditions it’s effective. But after a couple of ketamine sessions, he said, you know, I’m just I found out that I was so worried about whether I was doing it right, whether or not my partner was experiencing something that was exhilarating for them, how I might be judged, how I compare, what is my body like? Is it acceptable? Am I shaped the right way? All these things that ruminate in the minds of both men and women. But for him, he said, I reached a point in my medicine experience with ketamine that I viscerally to my core knew 1) I’m fine and 2) everything is okay and to let go and surrender became his kind of mantra of being in space.

Well, surprise, surprise, you know, within a couple of weeks, he said, Jeff, and actually this issue has completely gone away because in his head. Right. He had so much thought control around, I got to perform, I got to do this right. And once that was relinquished, which we were able to do within a month, which is fast, he was able to leave treatment. And, um, so far as I know, he’s never had that issue again. So it was remarkable and, and we could see other examples of this in similar ways.

Amanda: Okay. Do you have an example you could share of a woman? Beause I think it’s always helpful to do both.

Jeff: Yeah, I think so too. Thank you. Let’s see. I worked with a  woman who, um, and she comes from the Church’s cultural background. I’m unfamiliar regarding her activity, other than, she very much checked all the boxes, had been married for roughly 10 or 15 years, if I remember correctly, and intimacy for her was always difficult. I don’t know that  diagnostically I could label it other than arousal was challenging. Pleasure was evasive.  Intimacy was very obligatory. She was always into, well, this is my job. This is my duty. And I think these are themes that run consistently through many members experiences.  So we did some intention setting to find both her authority, but also to assist with her intention in identifying where in her experience, her life experience did this originate for her? It’s a very big canvas to open. Um, but psychedelics are remarkable in that they deliver to oneself exactly the perspective that’s needed. So she came out of sessions, it was like two or three sessions and she had remembered and recalled, which is not my job to create for clients at all. But she volunteered, um, a subset of experiences while, um, as a young adult or a teen that had instilled this narrative that she had to silence her voice and as a part of that had to completely relinquish any sense of I matter, my needs matter, my body is important. Those things had just been robbed from her. 

So we could call this trauma. I think that’s an accurate term. This is the fascinating thing  in typical, well, not typical, often in traditional trauma work, there’s a sense of that what is prioritized is grief. Can we grieve the loss of, can we recognize the impact of, can we  see the result of, so these are very common and effective tools that are incorporated within therapeutic, um, trauma work.

That wasn’t her experience, although I think some of those things were included. The spearhead was my abuser was wounded too. I can have empathy toward this person because I can understand and have compassion from the experience toward others. And, I would never want to, um, suggest to a client experiencing trauma that they should adopt an empathy or an empathetic approach toward, um, their, their abuser. Like that doesn’t feel comfortable to me, but she created that. And as a result of that, she was able to say, and with that understanding, I can approach my husband, who was a very kind and loving man, not through the gripped narrative that she had experienced from her adolescence, but she was able to show up in a way that said, I matter, I’m okay. My body matters. My husband loves me. We have a healthy relationship and that allowed her to relax. It allowed for her to, um, lean into the sensations of sensuality in a way that created the experience she was looking for. It was remarkable to observe.

Amanda: That’s awesome. I love hearing that.

That’s the result that we all want as, you know, coaches, therapists, like we want clients to have those kinds of experiences. So that’s totally amazing. Awesome. 

Well, I have absolutely loved this conversation. I think it’s been so helpful and I think it’s going to give some great insight for my audience to, you know, different ways that these kinds of things can be helpful for them in ways. To look at things maybe a little bit differently than what they’re used to and open up their minds a little bit to different ideas that might be helpful when it comes to themselves and their sexual relationships. So thank you so much for being here with me today, Jeff. 

Jeff: You’re welcome. Thank you. 

Amanda: Can you direct my audience where they could find you, learn more about you and the work that you do and maybe work with you if they want to?

Jeff: Yeah. Thank you for asking. So I run a private practice in the heart of Salt Lake City, County. So Mill Creek, technically they can find me by Googling Oak Branch Counseling, or you could just type in Jeff Lundgren therapist. And, I’m probably at the top of the list. 

Amanda: Awesome. Thanks so much for being here with me today, Jeff.

Jeff: Thank you. 

Amanda: Okay. I hope you found that interview as interesting as I did. I thought there was so many things that were fascinating about it and such good information and another method that can be helpful in you figuring out your sexuality or your partner’s sexuality and working through some of the issues that we have. If you feel it’s right for you, again, not endorsing, just giving information so that you can make informed decisions for yourself and your spouse. 

Thank you so much for joining me today. Have a great week, everyone. And we’ll see you next week with another interview with Jeff Lundgren talking about something else in the therapeutic community.