How People are Using Psychedelics to Help Their Relationships with Dr. Hillary McBride
September 13, 2023
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Today, we’re continuing our fascinating conversation on psychedelics with Dr. Hillary McBride. Dr. Hillary McBride is a registered psychologist, researcher, podcaster, author, and speaker in the areas of trauma, embodiment, eating disorders, and the intersection of spirituality and mental health. Her research is focused on women’s relationships with their bodies across the lifespan, and her books include Mothers, Daughters, and Body Image; Embodiment and Eating Disorders; and the bestseller, The Wisdom of Your Body.
Glennon Doyle:
If you haven’t yet listened to yesterday’s episode, 240, you’re going to want to go back and start there. Oh my gosh, it was so good. Hillary helped us understand why everyone’s talking about psychedelics by sharing her own step-by-step journey with therapeutic psychedelics, the science behind how psychedelics help break old patterns and create new ones, and how psychedelics can reveal our innate goodness. Today, we’re exploring how psychedelic therapy works for couples and people trying to work through something together. Let’s jump in.
Amanda Doyle:
We’ve been so far talking about an individual in this therapeutic setting. I have heard that people in relationship have engaged with this together. Whether it’s partnered couples or people who are working through stuff together, is it that the same idea that two people could come together bringing their joint questions? If they’re both discovering new things inside their own brain, how does this therapy work in relationship when it’s done together?
Dr. Hillary McBride:
MDMA, in particular, again, it’s not a classic psychedelic, it’s an empathogen. We often lump it into the category of medicines that we’re using that create non-ordinary states of consciousness. MDMA has a really rich history of being used in couples therapy. It started in the ’70s and ’80s. Because as an empathogen, what it does is it decreases activation in fear centers of the brain, increases the activity in the neuro-anatomical structures responsible for compassion, awareness, self-reflexivity, the ability to think differently about your own cues, think differently and more compassionately about a different person and feel, feel in your body a sense of connection to them. So it’s really, really useful for people who are struggling with particular relational problems, like distress or communication, or even for relational enhancement, for strengthening connection and experiencing closeness and intimacy without some of the walls that you put up.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
If you’re using psychedelics in a couples setting, obviously, you want to have a very skilled clinician who knows what they’re doing. I should say that this is not something that’s happening very much in clinical trials. This would be happening very much in the underground at this point, so it’s hard to get connected to someone who would be doing this, and it would still be illegal.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
But what we know is that people who do this are able to experience their partner without their defenses or their reactive parts in the way… You know the dances that we get into in couple relationship where that person pulls away and that all of a sudden I feel scared? Then because I feel scared, I do this thing to try to pull them close, and then they get further away, or whatever the dance is. It seems that we’re able to be able to better access that sense of core self that can see the other person and see ourselves from behind or out from behind those parts that react typically. In that way, as we’ve been talking about already, can begin to build new patterns, new ways of connection.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
Even when the journey is done, you carry with you that sense of being able to see them as they are, not who you’ve made them to be or not your mother or father, as we often do in our relationships. When we get old, we reenact these patterns from our childhood to try to pull people into that dance or to help prevent the wounding that we experienced when we were growing up. So there’s just so much that you can do by going internally or even just doing regular therapy.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
There’s a model of psychedelic psychotherapy that I’ve been trained in, which uses legal psychedelics in Canada, that uses something called a psycholytic model. You have the big dose model where a person would be taking however many grams of mushrooms or LSD, or they’d be having a big dose of something. It would be very solitary. But then you have what’s called a psycholytic model, which is basically, you take some psychedelics and then you do regular therapy. So, you’re up, looking at me, we’re talking about stuff.
Amanda Doyle:
So you’re being honest?
Dr. Hillary McBride:
Uh-huh.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s like when you go to the doctor and you’re like, “How many glasses of wine do you have a week?” You’re like, “What’s the right answer?” It’s like you’re going to therapy, but you’re being honest?
Dr. Hillary McBride:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s crazy.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
Also, maybe better able to elicit some of those places inside of you that are hard to get to, so staying more connected to the feeling.
Amanda Doyle:
Cool.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
One of the models that I’m trained in around the somatic processing in psychedelics specifically for people who don’t feel anything in their body because they have a history of dissociation, it’s like the psychedelic turns up the volume on interoception, on the sense of what’s happening inside your body, and then you can complete an affect wave. You can finish processing a trauma because you can stay with it all the way to the other side.
Amanda Doyle:
Hmm, wow.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
So that’s a really good use for couples work as well. Then there’s group models of psychedelic psychotherapy. One of the things that we do at my clinic, I co-developed a program around group psychedelic work, we always say, whenever we’re talking about the model, we use two medicines. We use relationship and ketamine, and both of those are medicines that we need. There’s something about being able to get access to more connection because of the psychedelic that allows you to practice new ways of being in relationship, new ways of seeing yourself, and realizing all those things that I thought that people were saying about me, “Oh, those aren’t things that people are still saying about me. Those are things that bully in grade three said about me.” Or I can show up in a way that allows my heart to be open to people. Then it becomes easier to be close, and then I’m more satisfied in my life.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
There are so many more models of doing this besides put your eye shades on, put the headphones on, go inside, spend six hours in there, come out and talk about it, and make meaning. There are so many ways that we can use these medicines, specifically, for individuals who’ve had really unsafe experiences in their body. Sometimes what psychedelics do is they blast you off. This would be psychedelics taking you into the transpersonal. All of a sudden, your body dissolves, and you go. You’re with the divine, and you’re part of everything. But what use is that to a person who’s never actually felt safe here? If a person has been disconnected from their body their whole life, then what we need psychedelics to do first, before it takes them somewhere else, is it helps them be here. It helps their body be safe. It’s once their body has been safe, that going other places can feel enjoyable or pleasurable or transformative. We often need experiences that are different than what we’re used to help transform us, not more of the same, not further dissociating us or further taking us away from ourselves.
Abby Wambach:
Is this another word for microdosing, what you’ve just been explaining?
Dr. Hillary McBride:
No.
Abby Wambach:
Oh.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
Think of it in more of three categories. There would be the microdose, which we would consider the sub-perceptual dose, which means you’re not having active hallucinations. You’re not actively experiencing an altered reality, although some people just feel a little bit different, which would be within one hundredths of a large dose. Then a psycholytic model would be, let’s say, a low range but perceptible dose. Then the larger doses would be what we would call the ego dissolution, dissolving of the default mode network, people experiencing transpersonal states, visits from ancestors, going into the future, unified consciousness, things like that.
Glennon Doyle:
I have one question, and then we will let you go, even though I could talk about this all day. For people for whom the ordinary exposure to life, the way the world is, has always felt too not right, like boring, and then this idea of what you’re talking about feels like home. Is there any danger…? I feel like I could get addicted to anything.
Amanda Doyle:
Like it’s too good to be true and you’d want to do it every day?
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
If I try this, am I going to become addicted? Are there people who overdo it and want to live in that place, or is there no danger of addiction here?
Dr. Hillary McBride:
I’m so glad you asked that question because it feels personally relevant.
Glennon Doyle:
No, Hillary.
Amanda Doyle:
Just totally theoretical.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
Just hypothetically here. One, classic psychedelics tend to be non-addictive, so that’s really good to know. In fact, really big experiences, people are often like, “It’s going to be a minute till I want to do that again,” because it’s just so much. It can just be so much to feel connected to everything. There’s also a sense of completeness or satisfaction, like, “Okay, I learned what I need to know.” I think that’s an interesting quality of what they do in us, that they reorganize some things at times. There is abuse potential for certain other things, like MDMA or ketamine, so we want to be thoughtful about that.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
But I think maybe the more nuanced, clinical answer that I’ll give you is a good guide, a skillful therapist would direct you to understand and explore why being here is so hard. Instead of saying, “Let’s go on this magical journey and get away from here and enjoy everything about how escaping your present day reality is so much fun,” I think really good potent work would say, “Let’s be with what boring is like. Let’s stay there until we can understand that this too can be beautiful and okay.”
Glennon Doyle:
It makes me so compassionate towards everyone who’s ever struggled with addiction because there is the part of it where we get so irresponsible and we’re being horrible and ruining everyone’s lives. But the desire for the transcendent, the knowing that there’s more, the knowing in our gut that we don’t have enough access to what is real right now, that what is real is right beyond the way things are right now, and if we could just get ourselves there, if we could just get ourselves there, that is what a lot of people who end up as addicts are going for, that yearning, that longing. Like, “We weren’t wrong. We weren’t wrong that there’s something else. That maybe some kind of substance could give us access to something else that would make all of this make more sense.”
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you so much. I appreciate so deeply your curiosity and your openness and your rooting in liberation for all and not just this as a singular woo-woo experience, but as a connectedness to all people. I just appreciate what you do and how you do it so much. Thank you for spending this time with us. As we sign off, would you tell people, where should they go? Where can they learn more safely? Because I know this isn’t safe to ask questions here everywhere.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
Yeah. Especially for folks in recovery, there is a great community out there called Psychedelics in Recovery, which is all about working the 12 steps and integrating psychedelics into them. So go online. There’s a lot out there to support you with that. Reading research about clinical trials is always, I think, really important, reading it when it’s distilled down into everyday language. So Psychedelics Today can be a good place to go learn about things. There are lots of podcasts out there. A colleague of mine, Dr. Craig Heacock, is a psychiatrist who talks about psychedelics quite a bit. He’s got a podcast called Back from the Abyss. I always recommend Michael Pollan’s work. He’s got the documentary, How to Change Your Mind, and the similar book. I think those places are important to go.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
Then there are different states and different countries where the psychedelics that we’re talking about are legal or illegal. So if you’re interested in doing work, just know, again, that there may be options for you outside of the community that you’re in. Unfortunately, that means often there’s a privileged component to accessing psychedelics unless you’re living in a state or province or country where you have access to them in ceremony.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
But asking questions of people around you, I think, is important. The people who’ve done clinical work around psychedelics, have conversations about their experiences. Who did they talk to? Be curious about the guides that they’re working with and perhaps the integration folks that they see as well. What I often say about integration is it’s kind of like raising the baby after you birth the baby. I had this beautiful transformative birth experience, but actually the most important part comes next. So finding good integration guides, looking for people who do integration work and who know how to do it skillfully, that’s really, really important.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
Consulting with your physician. I think the more that people ask their doctors about, who’s doing this? Can I get a referral? Can we get an exemption? In Canada, you can apply for exemptions to use psilocybin legally if you talk to your physician, and they have access to the right networks and stuff like that. So the more we talk about it with our physicians, the more physicians are going to get better educated. The more that they’re going to have more information to give us, the more resources, the more it’s going to change the system. I think talking to people who’ve had difficult journeys, too, is important to figure out how to prepare yourself. So just keep asking people about things. Keep looking at resources.
Glennon Doyle:
Great.
Abby Wambach:
That was 101. I really want you to come back for 201 and 301.
Glennon Doyle:
Also come back for your new book. All of you go check out Hillary McBride’s other books and her podcast, Other People’s Problems. Thank you. I just love-
Dr. Hillary McBride:
Can I make an announcement-
Glennon Doyle:
Please do.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
… brand new, said here first?
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
I hear people do that. We have just been green lit by CBC to do another podcast season of Other People’s Problems all about psychedelics. So it will be listening to people doing psychedelic therapy integration prep with me in legal ways in Canada. I’m very, very excited to announce that here for the first time.
Abby Wambach:
Oh God, I’m dying.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
We’re going to be recording now probably until the end of the year, and then I’m hoping in early 2024 it’ll be out.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, come back for that and help launch it here-
Abby Wambach:
Awesome.
Glennon Doyle:
… and we’ll talk about it. That’s a fricking brilliant idea.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
Thank you so much.
Glennon Doyle:
I will listen to the shit out of that.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
The more that we democratize mental health by giving people access to what therapy is like, psychedelics are like, I think that’s part of the political endeavor here, to make intervention accessible and help our communities heal.
Glennon Doyle:
Awesome.
Dr. Hillary McBride:
Thank you so much for having me.
Abby Wambach:
So great.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you to the listeners for listening.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, they’re the best.
Abby Wambach:
Oh my gosh.
Amanda Doyle:
They’re the best.
Glennon Doyle:
And Pod Squad, send your questions. Send your questions. We know you’ll have them. We love you. We’ll catch you back here next time. Bye.
Amanda Doyle:
Thank you, Hillary McBride.
Glennon Doyle:
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