The Frontier Psychiatrists is a newsletter written by Owen Scott Muir, M.D. He is a child and adult Psychiatrist, Health Technology nerd, satirist, and advocate for human decency and curiosity. It is worth noting that some of the things I write are intended as satire, and some are very serious. This intro is marking my intentions! Today’s article, as previewed, is another example of “whimsy being used to make a serious point.”
Psychedelics…might be remarkable experiences.
But, for a minute, that is true of things that are not medical care.
Here is a glib meme from Twitter today:
I get it; we aren’t ready for How Exceptional You All Are. However, allow me to make a predictable point, coming from me.
Here are some other exceptional experiences that are not medical treatments. Just kind of picking photos from my phone, casually:
The smoke that made it impossible to breathe… profound. Things might not always be easy. Not, however, a medical treatment.
What else?… Oh, I saved this in my camera roll:
Ok, ambien is a medical treatment. The ambien walrus is not. I’ve gotten more benefits from the cartoon, personally. Next…?
The dinner I had with Reader Nate Lacktman— really good. Medically, it managed low blood sugar at best. Hmmm…
Hanging with my daughter. More profound than most things in life. Upended my cosmology with twin stars (Trent and Quinn). Neither are demonstrating superior outcomes in any medical condition, but they are only seven.
As it relates to the role of demanding all therapists take the mystical journey…I am telling you, stop. It’s offensive to healers who have managed to face suffering and death for hundreds of thousands of years with and without mysterious, mystical experiences. You don't need cocaine to be a surgeon. You don't need to be “beat in” to be a soldier. You don't need to trip to evaluate if a therapy is effective for a medical condition.
This attitude is off-putting to me—and I'm a champion of psychedelic medicine as medicine. If I am telling you it is offensive, other people are just quietly making sure your interventions don't go anywhere.
Stop it; as a friend, I’m saying this. We need boring non-tripping doctors and therapists too. We need those with medical conditions—some that might be contraindicated— who happen to be therapists or doctors. We need a big tent. We need empiricism, focused on healing those suffering, for this to be medicine. We don’t need an insufferable counter-culture nu-Phish concert in an unconvincing Phrma cos-play scene that drags on endlessly till the FDA takes it down for being a Bad Ad.
—Owen Scott Muir, M.D.