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Psychedelics Today

PT504 – Rethinking Drug Education: From D.A.R.E. Scare Tactics to an Evidence-Based Approach, with Joey Lichter, Ph.D.

Psychedelics Today

Psychedelics Today, LLC

Life Sciences, Science, Medicine, Health & Fitness

4.6598 Ratings

🗓️ 17 April 2024

⏱️ 67 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, Joe interviews Joey Lichter, Ph.D.: professor in the Chemistry & Biochemistry department at Miami's Florida International University, and one of the few professors in the U.S. teaching a course about psychedelics at the collegiate level.

He talks about his path towards the course, the challenge of creating a curriculum that covers everything in a few months, and the importance of teaching young minds about psychedelics the right away; shifting drug education from the "Just say no!" D.A.R.E. model to a more balanced, honest, and evidence-based approach. He aims for his students to think critically, ignore the hype, and see all possible angles with a fairly simple approach: Present the full story.

He discusses:

  • The importance of teaching history, from Stan Grof to MKUltra
  • The work of David Nichols, David Nutt's drug harm scale, and the greatest lesson William Leonard Pickard took from LSD
  • The representation of Spravato as a new drug, and his concerns with the over-medicalization of psychedelics
  • Teaching about the complexities of Timothy Leary: Was he a positive or negative force?
  • Decriminalization, legalization, and how he gets students to think about drug policy

and more!

For links and more, head to the show notes page

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello, everybody and welcome back to Segadalex today.

0:16.0

Today on the show we have Joey Lictor, who's the director of pre-health advising office at Florida International

0:22.8

University, also a chemistry professor and psychedelic educator there. We have a lovely conversation

0:28.3

going all over the map, and I think you're going to like this one. Lots of fun, interesting questions

0:33.7

raised, especially around education, which I think is quite crucial. You all know,

0:40.7

we focus quite closely on education with Vital and navigating psychedelics. So core to our

0:48.0

philosophy here. So, Joey, thank you so much for joining us on the show. And for those who don't

0:53.1

know, Joey was also a big part of

0:54.9

the early kandedlick conferences uh f i u uh hosted i think one of the first two maybe the first two

1:02.4

actually and um we get to help a little bit it was really great so joey thanks again for being on the show

1:08.2

thanks for all the work you're doing in Florida, super crucial.

1:11.5

And hope we get to do it again. Enjoy everybody. See you on the other side.

1:19.6

Hey, this is David Drabkin, Director of Education at Psychedelics today. Are you a clinician or wellness practitioner who wants to learn more about the clinical and real

1:29.2

world practical applications of psychedelics? In that case, take a look at our upcoming

1:35.1

navigating psychedelics live course. This is our nine-week live-taught online course that will

1:40.8

teach you everything you need to know about the safe use and integration

1:45.0

of psychedelics. In small learning groups, we'll cover topics such as the history, science and therapeutic

1:51.7

potential of enthagens and psychoactives. We'll also explore the ethical, legal and regulatory

1:57.1

implications of psychedelic use whilst refining our hands-on harm reduction, space

2:03.3

holding and integration skills. We have an incredible lineup of guest speakers sharing their

2:08.9

knowledge with us each week, including Dr. Edo Cohen, Emma Knighton, Courtney Barnes, Victor Cabral,

2:16.1

Juliana Mulligan, Kyle Buller, and Jasmine Verdi.

...

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