In this episode — Dr. Andrew Tatarsky, developer of Integrative Harm Reduction Psychotherapy, returns for a second conversation. They take up the question that divides the field, whether a person who once drank a fifth a day can ever have a drink on a Saturday night. Andrew: some can, some can’t, we don’t yet have the science to tell which, and the therapist’s job is to help each person answer it for themselves. Also: the “submit–rebel bind” abstinence-first treatment sets up, an 89-year-old client who cut her drinking in three sessions, addiction as a continuum that includes junk food and the phone in your hand, and harm reduction as the container for psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Guest: Dr. Andrew Tatarsky — clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, New York; PhD in Clinical Psychology; postdoctoral certificate in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis (NYU); developer of Integrative Harm Reduction Psychotherapy (IHRP); more than 40 years in practice; author of Harm Reduction Psychotherapy: A New Treatment for Drug and Alcohol Problems. andrewtatarsky.com · About · Training · Book

Nothing in this conversation is medical advice.

Chapters

00:00 — Cold open: addiction as a universal human response to suffering

00:54 — Welcome: the case for community

02:20 — Two harm reduction stories: a call from the White House, and a two-page letter at NPR

05:41 — The acting drug czar who changed his mind

08:31 — What harm reduction is: the disease model, the drug war, and the AIDS crisis

11:15 — From public health to psychotherapy: compassionate pragmatism, start where people are

14:29 — Religion and the law: clean or using, no gray

16:27 — Can a person who drank a fifth a day ever have a drink on a Saturday night?

17:25 — Taught the disease model in the eighties, and in the sixties: Jellinek’s chart

19:09 — An alternative paradigm: addiction as a response to suffering

20:36 — Who can moderate and who can’t: we don’t have the science

22:46 — Why this is a courageous position: impulse control disorders

25:18 — Drinking, driving, skiing: the bad-driver analogy

27:13 — The submit–rebel bind

29:16 — An 89-year-old who wanted to cut back her drinking

31:43 — Alcohol at 87: the finest fuel

33:09 — Addiction on a continuum: junk food, phones, relational meaning

36:25 — Gambling, eating, shopping, sex

38:04 — Psychedelics and harm reduction: ketamine, ibogaine, a New York training

41:06 — Close

In this episode — Somatic Salvia guide Christopher Solomon, from Willits in Richard’s own Mendocino County, teaches Salvia divinorum from the ground up: what the plant is (a sage from the Sierra Mazateca of Oaxaca), its legal status (federally unscheduled and legal in California; banned in some states), how it is grown from cuttings, and the three ways it is taken — the Mazatec quid, the dried leaf, and a standardized extract in the five-bowl pipe Christopher invented. He explains how the gas-station “60x” extracts of the late nineties gave salvia its bad rap, why he built his practice around the smallest dose that does anything (“titrating and pendulating”), what the 2020 Johns Hopkins fMRI study he took part in found about the default mode network, a light dose as a door into meditation, and what he calls “the witness of an other.” For Richard’s book on adverse effects, they cover the ugly as well as the good: no addiction, no hangover, no measured rise in blood pressure or heart rate in the Hopkins safety work, and the one real danger at high dose, a dissociated person getting up and running, answered by a mature sitter and working in slowly.

Guest: Christopher Solomon — somatic Salvia guide and teacher; B.A. Psychology (UT Dallas); two-year somatic psychotherapy certification, Hakomi Institute of California; Body-Mind Centering training; inventor of the five-bowl Salvia pipe; founder of the Somatic Salvia Network. Participant in the Johns Hopkins salvinorin A fMRI study (2020). salviahealings.com · About · His Johns Hopkins experience report

Legal status of Salvia divinorum varies by state. Nothing in this conversation is medical advice.

Chapters

00:00 — Cold open: the perfect plant for beginners and seasoned psychonauts

00:46 — Welcome: community is the antidote to isolation

02:05 — A guest from Willits, Mendocino County

02:34 — The magic wand: education and pragmatic advice

04:20 — What is Salvia divinorum? A sage from the Sierra Mazateca

05:35 — Is it legal? Federal law vs. state law

06:50 — How to grow it: clones, shade, and nitrogen

09:07 — Harvest and the quid: how the curanderos use it

10:51 — Gas-station extracts and salvia’s bad rap

13:10 — Three ways in: the quid, the dried leaf, the standardized extract

14:37 — Reverse tolerance and the five-bowl pipe

18:37 — How long it lasts: stair-stepping and pendulating

20:33 — Therapeutic benefits: Johns Hopkins, the claustrum, and the default mode network

23:25 — A light dose: quieting the mind, dropping the story

26:02 — Enhancing the witness: “something else being there with you”

27:49 — The good, the bad, and the ugly: adverse effects

29:34 — Opioid withdrawal and the kappa opioid receptor

30:28 — The main risk: dissociation, and getting up to run

31:37 — A mature sitter

32:40 — No hangover, no fatigue

33:40 — How to reach Christopher: salviahealings.com

34:33 — Blood pressure, heart rate, and medications

37:16 — The break: the open-source archive and Richard’s books

40:10 — Closing: beginners and psychonauts, the Somatic Salvia Network, a sustainable plant

42:47 — Close: “I’m gonna do it myself”

In this episode — Psychedelic psychotherapist Heather A. Lee returns to the program with the message she received on a recent psilocybin journey. She and Richard cover psilocybin for women sixty and over, why she thinks the “hero’s dose” is male language, what a micro dose actually is, Colorado’s grow-gift-share model, and the psychedelic tourism they’ve produced.

Guest: Heather A. Lee, LCSW, LNMCF — one of the nation’s first licensed psychedelic-assisted psychotherapists (Licensed Natural Medicine Clinical Facilitator, Colorado); 30+ years in clinical practice; trained at the Harvard Mind/Body Medical Institute; former Coordinator of Women’s Mind/Body Wellness Education at UVA Medical Center’s Midlife Women’s Health Center; featured in Lisa Ling’s CBS special The Psychedelic Renaissance. Author of The Psilocybin Sessions: Real-Life Stories of Women’s Wisdom Awakening with Psychedelic Medicine (Modern Wisdom Press, 2025). heatheralee.com · Azores retreats

Chapters

00:00 — Cold open: “all the other plants have something to say”

00:55 — Welcome: living in community, and Peaks Island’s 900 people

02:41 — Breakfast, intermittent fasting, and watching your protein

04:28 — Fuel: air, water, and ingestibles

05:48 — The Psilocybin Sessions, and what’s new

06:31 — The mushrooms’ message: listen to the other plants

07:28 — The Azores: a retreat that sold out in two weeks

09:21 — Living on the planet vs. living as part of it

10:23 — Selling Boulder, buying Peaks Island

11:33 — The legend of the Azores: the healers being called back

13:49 — Psilocybin for women 60 and over: cumulative grief, reinvention, resilience

17:02 — Hero’s dose vs. heroine’s dose

19:27 — What a microdose actually is

19:58 — How do you know what’s in the mushroom? Testing and strains

22:19 — Colorado’s two models: unregulated (grow, gift, share) and regulated

24:23 — Psychedelic tourism: flying to Colorado to do it legally

27:31 — Many paths: the jungle, the hospital, or “a psychedelic broad like me”

29:02 — Will psychedelics change the culture?

30:54 — Forest bathing and clinical ecotherapy

31:53 — Adverse effects: screening, and the three who went silent

35:09 — The container: 12 to 15 hours of prep, journey, and integration

36:19 — Who Heather turns away

38:04 — The break, and the open-source archive

40:28 — Imagine the mossy forest: magnifying glasses, black sand, breath work to the surf

44:01 — Close: heatheralee.com