PT 653 - Dr. Michael Alpert and Peter Alberding - ALS, Existential Distress, and Ketamine Therapy
Psychedelics Today
Psychedelics Today, LLC
4.6 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2026
⏱️ 79 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
ALS and ketamine therapy are at the center of this conversation with psychiatrist Dr. Michael Alpert and Peter Alberding, who was diagnosed with ALS in late 2023. Alpert is a Boston-area psychiatrist with experience in MDMA-assisted therapy research for PTSD and a private practice that includes ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Alberding shares what it has been like to face a fatal neurodegenerative illness while working with ketamine in a structured clinical setting.
Alberding explains that he was not looking for a casual psychedelic experience. He wanted help facing fear, grief, loss of function, and the reality of death. Over time, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy became a tool for processing those changes more directly than talk therapy alone had allowed.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everybody and welcome back to Psychedelics today. |
| 0:05.0 | This is Joe Moore, today on the show, Kyle, and welcome back to psychedelics today. |
| 0:22.2 | This is Joe Moore. |
| 0:23.0 | Today on the show, Kyle records with Dr. Michael Alpert and Peter Alberding. |
| 0:30.7 | Dr. Michael Alpert is a psychiatrist in Boston, Massachusetts, |
| 0:35.3 | and he is experienced with MDMA psychotherapy and ketamine-assisted |
| 0:40.8 | psychotherapies. Peter is a patient of his who's been living with ALS, Luke Erick's disease, |
| 0:48.3 | and using ketamine to help him deal with the existential anxiety. And Kyle interviews both of these lovely folks to dig into that story. |
| 1:01.0 | Peter is really kind and gives us a really inside look to what's been going on for him. |
| 1:11.6 | This is a really serious internal illness and |
| 1:16.6 | ketamine-assisted psychotherapy seems to have really helped Peter. |
| 1:19.6 | So the conversation does cover fear, |
| 1:23.6 | mortality, loss of function, and the psychological side of living with a fatal diagnosis. |
| 1:30.6 | So, you know, trigger warning, if that's a little bit much for you. |
| 1:34.9 | They also get into the practical side, including music, touch, safety, and integration. |
| 1:40.2 | And this is a really close look at somebody's journey through healing with ketamine-assisted psychotherapy through a terminal diagnosis. |
| 1:50.9 | So thank you so much to Dr. Michael Alpert and Peter Alberting. |
| 1:55.8 | I really appreciate you both being on the show and sharing this really important conversation with us. Yeah, |
| 2:04.4 | so on with the show after a few advertisements and we will see you on the other side. If you're |
| 2:11.1 | building something in psychedelics or even just thinking about it, you probably know how hard it is |
| 2:15.6 | to execute in this space. ElephantGate is an |
| 2:18.1 | acceleration program that invests $150,000 into early stage startups building the infrastructure |
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