Ep. 85: Curing Mental Illness with Psychedelics feat. Payton Nyquvest of Numinus Wellness
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“Psychedelics saved my life,” says Payton Nyquvest. “Now [I’m] on a mission to pay that forward.” Nyquvest is the CEO of Numinus Wellness, a publicly traded Vancouver start-up that manufactures such illegal psychedelics as MDMA and psilocybin for clinical drug trials. The intent is to determine how effective they are as a therapy for mental illness. And if their potential pans out, Numinus Wellness wants to administer the drugs to patients in guided sessions across the continent. In this episode, the second of a two-part series, host Shaun Francis walks Nyquvest through his fascinating life story, his predictions for the future of psychedelic therapies—and how ayahuasca kickstarted his journey.
LINKS
Check out Numinus Wellness and read Payton Nyquvest’s bio here. Check out Payton on Linkedin, Twitter and Instagram.
Learn more about MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) and John Hopkins Centre for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research, two of the leading entities in psychedelic research.
Read up on some exciting studies on psychedelics and mental health:
MDMA and PTSD trial in Nature Medicine
Trial on psilocybin and depression in New England Journal of Medicine
Psilocybin clinical trial for treatment-resistant depression
Ketamine clinical trial to treat bipolar depression
Psilocybin-based compound clinical trial for MSP-1014 to treat mood disorders
MDMA clinical trial to treat PTSD (phase 3)
Learn about Project MK-Ultra, which experimented on human subjects with LSD.
Check out this study in Nature Medicine to learn more about ayahuasca and its effects. Read this story in The New Yorker to learn more about its cultural history and current popularity.
Learn about how marijuana was legalized in Canada in October 2018. Read the Cannabis Act here.
Read some books that spurred the hype around psychedelics and wellness:
How To Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
A Really Good Day by Ayalet Waldman
Learn more about True Patriot Love and its support of military members, Veterans and their families, founded by Eat Move Think host Shaun C. Francis. Plus here’s a link that provides information on how TPL is supporting innovative therapies to treat PTSD.
INSIGHTS
Nyquvest turned to psychedelics as a last-ditch therapy for chronic pain. He had been trying treatments for years with no results. “When you're in the emergency room,” he says, “and physicians are looking at you sort of compassionately, saying, ‘Sorry… we don't have answers here for you,’ it's a very lonely and isolating place.” Eventually, Nyquvest became desperate for relief. “I was getting hospitalised two to three times a week, and had really run out of options, and turned to psychedelics, really as a last ditch effort to try and save my life.” Nyquvest insists that psychedelics aren’t a panacea or a magical solution, but they were the first thing that worked for him to treat his chronic pain. [02:55]
Rather than making psychedelics available on the open market, Nyquvest believes psychedelic therapies should be administered by experienced professionals in guided sessions. “It's a service-based model, not a product-based model,” says Nyquvest. By way of contrast, cannabis is a product-based model, which sees the substance available for sale for recreational use by civilians. Nyquvest doesn’t want to see the same thing happen to psychedelics. “The integration, the working with therapists, the support system is as much, if not more, important than just the psychedelic experience itself,” he says. [12:58]
“When you have depression, you become labelled as a depressed person. You get put on some kind of an SSRI, and it's this symptom management thing that pharmaceutical companies have been profiting from significantly over the last number of years,” says Nyquvest. Psychedelics, in contrast, are already showing that they have potential not just to treat, but to cure mental illnesses, Nyquvest says. He mentions a MAPS study where “over 66 percent of the people who did MDMA for post traumatic stress disorder no longer met the PTSD criteria after three treatments.” In other words, two-thirds of participants were cured. Today, psychedelics may be administered as a last-ditch effort to cure a certain mental illness. In future, Nyquvest wants psychedelics to be administered on a “preventive mental health model, where people are able to get ahead of some of these things before they become a significant problem… so that they can get back to continuing to do their jobs, and living more happy and full lives.” [23:20]
With the help of psychedelic-assisted therapy, Nyquvest has been able to separate his physical and mental health from the conditions that once plagued him. “I was labelled as someone who was very, very sick… and the recognition that there's actually inherently nothing wrong with me, [but that] there were events that happened in my life that I was struggling with… that was a big thing for me,” he says. Nyquvest uses the metaphor of dentistry to describe the way he sees psychedelics being used preventively. “Most people have great teeth… and still go to the dentist twice a year. I think it's a similar sort of thing in the way we should be treating the brain. I don't know a person who gets out of life unscathed in terms of some kind of event that happens in their life that they could probably use some looking at, and some support. And I think that's a huge opportunity for psychedelics.” [26:03]
Nyquvest says that the old stereotype, of psychedelics users simply looking for an escape from reality, is just plain false. “A lot of the people that I know that have worked with psychedelics are very high-performing, entrepreneurial or otherwise type of people,” he says. “They've been able to clear a lot of the noise and really look at what is motivating [them]. The more deeply you understand some of those motivations, the better you can work with them, and the better you are at some kind of control or understanding of what's driving you.” [27:35]
When Payton Nyquvest co-founded Numinus Wellness, his focus was on healing, curing, and developing new treatments. “The plan was always to just build a company that could make a significant impact, there was no plans of taking the company public, it wasn't even really something we thought was going to be on our radar screen for quite some time,” he says. But the world’s excitement around psychedelics has led to more interest, more research and more funding. “It made sense for us to go public,” he says, because that’s provided the funding to acquire mental health clinics, where Numinus may one day provide guided psychedelic therapies to patients at large. Going public came with challenges, though. “People talk about the overnight success and huge amount of enthusiasm in the psychedelic space, but when we went public, it was actually met with a significant amount of challenge and scrutiny.” Numinus has come a long way since then, holding onto a cash balance of more than $63 million in their latest quarter. [29:38]
Asked to predict the future of Numinus Wellness, and the psychedelic space in general, Nyquvest says that he believes we’re only just starting to learn about what psychedelics can do for mental healthcare. He hopes Numinus will remain at the forefront of the field. “Our goal has always been to be the number one most trusted brand in the psychedelic space… Our licencing out of the lab is an international licence, so we can work with any organisation all over the world… when you think about doing psychedelic therapy, [we hope] you go to a Numinus location in order to do that.” In the short term, Numinus Wellness will continue to collaborate with mental health clinics and MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. [31:20]
EP. 85: PSYCHEDELICS AND WELLNESS WITH NUMINUS CEO PAYTON NYQUVEST
FINAL WEB TRANSCRIPT
Christopher Shulgan 0:09
Welcome to Episode 85 of Eat Move Think. I'm Executive Producer Christopher Shulgan,
Jasmine Rach 0:14
and I'm Associate Producer Jasmine Rach.
Christopher Shulgan 0:16
Welcome to the second part of our series all about psychedelic wellness.
Jasmine Rach 0:20
Last week we got to learn about the science and the history behind these psychedelic therapies. And so in this episode, we're exploring a much more personal story from the CEO of a well funded and publicly traded company that's based in Vancouver. It's called Numinus Wellness.
Christopher Shulgan 0:33
Well funded, what do you mean?
Jasmine Rach 0:35
Well, I'll just say that at the end of their most recent quarter, they had a cash position of $63 million. Chris. So not only has this startup been licensed by Health Canada to manufacture psychedelics like LSD, DMT, MDMA, mescaline, psilocybin, ketamine, to name a few. The CEO has also had some personal experience with these psychedelics and that makes him an advocate for their mental wellness benefits. He actually says that psychedelics saved his life.
Christopher Shulgan 1:00
So let's get right into it. Here's Eat Move Think host Shaun Francis interviewing Payton Nyquvest, the CEO of Vancouver's Numinus Wellness.
Shaun Francis 1:10
I'm Shaun Francis, CEO of Medcan. I'm delighted to have my guest with me here today. He's the founder and CEO of Numinus Wellness, a company that's a real leader in psychedelic research, and he has an ambition of creating a business out of the manufacturing the psychedelic compounds for therapeutic use. Payton, thanks for joining us today.
Payton Nyquvest 1:33
Thanks for having me.
Shaun Francis 1:34
So this is a super hot area, how did you get into it? Because it is it is so new, I mean, I know not so new as a compound that people have been using for generations, but new to the marketplace.
Payton Nyquvest 1:50
Yeah, you know, it's interesting, I really come to this space as a patient first. I was fortunate enough to have my life saved by psychedelic therapy, and a number of years ago got interested in this space really, through coming through that experience just trying to figure out how I could give back to something that had saved my life.
Shaun Francis 2:11
So you're telling me your personal journey. Can you, for our listeners, just share with us what your health issue was and how you arrived at this as a potential therapy?
Payton Nyquvest 2:21
I had suffered with chronic pain really, since birth. And I grew up in a household that struggled with addiction and quite early on was diagnosed with complex PTSD. And when my mom got sober when I was 12, she said 'Sorry about the last 12 years, you might want to start working with somebody' and because my my chronic pain issues were so severe, I was at a place at an early age of desperation and recognition that my mental health was somehow related to the chronic pain issues that I was having. But no matter what I was doing, my chronic pain issues continued to get worse and worse, and got me to a point a couple of years ago, where I was getting hospitalized two to three times a week, and had really run out of options and turned to psychedelics really as a last ditch effort to try and save my life.
Shaun Francis 3:18
When you went to the traditional health care system, did they have a diagnosis for your chronic pain or did they lead you back to, it must be psychosomatic or mental?
Payton Nyquvest 3:28
Yeah, and that was probably the, the most challenging part was I've been sort of misdiagnosed with everything from Crohn's and colitis to you know, just all different things only for me to find out that those weren't true. And you know, in the healthcare system we have when you're in the emergency room and physicians are looking at you sort of compassionately saying, 'Sorry, you know, we don't have answers here for you', it's a very lonely and isolating place to arrive there.
Shaun Francis 4:00
Did you get a diagnosis or did the psychedelic journey help you deal with it long term?
Payton Nyquvest 4:08
Yeah, so I never got a proper physical diagnosis. Again, the the mental health diagnosis was there and and through the psychedelic work that I'd done, and again, something with the sort of associated autoimmune issues that you have with severe chronic pain. It's something that I'd had for my whole life, and I'm always a little hesitant to share fully because I don't want to create the expectation that these are panaceas or magic drugs. They're not, there's a lot of work associated with them, but through one week of psychedelic therapy, I saw relief from my chronic pain issues, which was really the first time in my life.
Shaun Francis 4:47
And who introduced you to it, are you in a health care setting and someone said, Hey, why don't you try this?
Payton Nyquvest 4:55
I wasn't, it was just through a lot of my own research. You know, I explored all sorts of the, again, the traditional health care system, all the way to mindfulness practices, meditation, you know, yoga, those types of things and just continuing on that pathway stumbled along primarily the a lot of the research that MAPS and John Hopkins, obviously have been doing. And then there's been some strong advocates in the space as well. And growing up in Vancouver, where we're not shy on on alternative modalities as well. So through just a lot of my own research.
Shaun Francis 5:30
And what sort of setting were you in when you did this?
Payton Nyquvest 5:33
Yeah, so I went to a retreat in Costa Rica, where there's a little bit more regulation, support, there was four sessions that we did, and then within a more broader holistic retreat setting.
Shaun Francis 5:45
So I guess a couple questions. One, was somebody guiding the experience and are they, would you think of them as a clinician, or somebody who's has a lot of experience in this?
Payton Nyquvest 5:55
Yeah, so it was more of a guide that I was, we were working with ayahuasca, which is more of a traditional psychedelic therapy. I've subsequently been through sort of the gamut of of psychedelic therapies, all all with practitioners, but my first psychedelic foray was, was with ayahuasca.
Christopher Shulgan 6:11
Let's pause for a minute here. Payton says his first psychedelic experience was with ayahuascsa, and that might be the drug we've heard the least about. So what exactly is ayahuasca?
Jasmine Rach 6:21
Ayahuasca is a drug that comes from the Amazon, from plants that live in Central and South America. The first one is the Psychotria viridis plant, we use the leaves of that, combined with the stocks of the banisteriopsis caapi vine, ya got that? The psychedelic effects of ayahuasca come from the compound called dimethyltryptamine, which you probably know as DMT. And people in countries like Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, and Brazil have been using ayahuasca as a healing medicine for religious ceremonies and tribal rituals for thousands and thousands of years.
Christopher Shulgan 6:54
Now, let's get back to the conversation between Shaun and Payton.
Shaun Francis 6:58
And in that first week, you had immediate relief?
Payton Nyquvest 7:02
Not only immediate, but lasting, I no longer struggled with any of the chronic pain symptoms.
Shaun Francis 7:09
Do you think the journey gave you the ability to deal with the chronic pain? Like, is it, is it still there, but you're dealing with it in a different way? Or do you not even feel it now?
Payton Nyquvest 7:21
I don't even feel it now, when I get asked this question, the thing that I go back to, and again, with, you know, over half of my life, working in therapy and things like that, I had so much knowledge, you know, I understood the trauma that I had, I understood what complex PTSD was. There was so much information that I had, but I couldn't get it converted into, really into into my physical system or even feeling a worthiness or connectedness to myself. There was the the understanding that I had, but just couldn't get relief from it. And the sort of psychosomatic process that you go through with psychedelics actually gave me a felt experience to connect to, where all of the learning that I'd done, it was almost like i'd created this deep scaffolding of understanding in regards to mental health. And it was like, the psychedelic experience was like throwing gas on a fire and really activating a lot of that work.
Shaun Francis 8:22
So from this experience in Costa Rica, where you had a lot of immediate relief, you go back to Canada, and you continue with, with treatment of different modalities?
Payton Nyquvest 8:35
Yeah, continuing with different modalities, you know, the psychedelic experiences is sort of just the catalyst for people's healing journeys. The integration, the working with therapists, the support system, is as much if not more important than just the psychedelic experience itself. But it gave me hope and conversion, whereas, you know, you might spend ten years talking with the talk therapist, and it's really hard to, to sort of see the light at the end of the tunnel necessarily, and with psychedelics, it just gave me that, that hope and understanding that, that there is conversion there and it can happen. And then, as I mentioned, then started sort of really continuing to explore the space and having experiences with other psychedelics sort of twofold to continue my own healing journey, but also, I felt it was really, really important for me to also deeply understand these different containers if I was going to become active in the space as well.
Shaun Francis 9:31
What are the different psychedelics and how do they compare to each other?
Payton Nyquvest 9:38
I would say it more broadly, you know, they all sort of have similar underpinnings, that I would say just different different modes of applications. So ketamine, which is sort of our first legally available psychedelic in North America. Ketamine is has been used as an anesthetic. The psychotherapy is more of a two hour therapy you go through, it's usually with with talk therapy, but it's more of an internal process that you're usually in, and has been proven to be very effective in the treatment of depression. MDMA is probably the next of a legally available psychedelic. MAPS has done a huge amount of work with MDMA for post traumatic stress disorder. Numinus, we're very grateful to be the first industry collaboration with MAPS, we're carrying out some of their research in Canada. And they've seen tremendous results with PTSD, with over 80 percent of their participants in the phase three results seeing significant reduction in their PTSD symptoms, and over 66% actually no longer meeting the PTSD criteria after three treatments, so essentially, a cure for PTSD.
Shaun Francis 10:49
And sorry, who's who's running that trial is that that's a clinical trial that's ongoing?
Payton Nyquvest 10:54
It's a phase three clinical trial with MAPS, which is the multidisciplinary Association for psychedelic studies, and really MAPS is the reason why psychedelics are where they are today, they've been heading up and leading research in this, in this field for over 35 years now.
Shaun Francis 11:10
And then MDMA, is that legal yet?
Payton Nyquvest 11:13
Not yet, not legal yet, but they're anticipating to be legally available, probably 2023 is the timeline that they're looking at. And then you've got psilocybin, which is probably getting the most amount of attention at the moment. And psilocybin, is a similar sort of thing, about a four to six hour experience, working with a therapist, but a bit more of an internal process. The regulatory framework around psilocybin is interesting. As I mentioned, there's clinical studies and clinical trials going on but there's also a strong movement for more of a broad access model. Psilocybin, obviously naturally occurring through psilocybin-containing mushrooms, but also, there's a strong movement in the US around decriminalization, you've actually seen Oregon post their intentions to have a legal psilocybin and assisted-psychotherapy framework in the next two years, and they've been rolling out the therapeutic guidelines for psilocybin. So you could potentially see a situation where psilocybin is a more broad access model, and being developed outside of sort of just the clinical trial process. There's a few other psychedelics. LSD, LSD is currently being researched as well, obviously, a lot of stigma in regards to LSD, it's got quite a historical context in North America, but showing some significant benefits as well. LSD is a longer treatment, it's about an eight to ten hour therapy, there's efforts underway to see if they can maybe shorten the half life or make it a bit of a shorter experience for people. And then I would say some of the other psychedelics that are maybe in in a bit earlier stages would be mescaline, as well as DMT and 5-MeO DMT. Also, the thing to recognize and understand around psychedelics is this psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, is it's a service based model, not a product based model like cannabis was.
Shaun Francis 13:11
Got it, right. So it'd be sold in, in tandem versus something potentially off the shelf like we're now used to in Canada.
Payton Nyquvest 13:18
Correct.
Shaun Francis 13:19
You know, if you were personally deciding between these respective therapies, assuming that they're available or legal, how would you even begin to decide which one might be right for you?
Payton Nyquvest 13:34
So, great question. And I think, why the research is important. At the moment, some of the early things that we've seen is there's certain indications that may be better than other indications are, but I think where we see the sort of movement and momentum in mental health is, is also moving towards, when do we start talking about mental wellness, and potentially preventative mental health where psychedelics actually are showing quite a bit of promise as well. But I think, you know, again, referring back to the research right now, things like depression with psilocybin seem very, very effective. There's psilocybin for end of life anxiety, as well. And obviously, with MDMA, looking at the post traumatic stress work that's been done by MAPS has been really significant. But so far, I think, as the research continues to come forward, and as obviously more capital comes into this space, I do think you'll probably get to an environment where there's probably some kind of a pathway where depending on where you're at, and what stage of your sort of mental health journey that you're on, there'll be different psychedelics that might be more appropriate depending on what it is that you're looking at.
Shaun Francis 14:46
Can we just dig into PTSD for a moment cuz I also do a lot of work in Canada with veterans through a charity I founded, the True Patriot Love foundation. And you know, we do fund a lot of mental health programs, you know. What would the MDMA experience be like for a veteran with PTSD?
Payton Nyquvest 15:04
Yeah. So, you know, PTSD, most people who probably know, is a traumatic event that has happened in somebody's life that is creating, you know, ongoing challenges for them. In the case of veterans, obviously a traumatic event that probably happened on the field that is deeply impacting their life going forward. And so what ends up happening in the MDMA therapy is, you work with two therapists, there's usually a strong integration or intention setting process that happens before the therapy where you're working with those two therapists to really try and get close as you can to, to where the root of the trauma might be. And then as you step into the therapy, as I mentioned, it's about a four to six hour therapy. And what ends up happening is, is your default mode network, which is where you hold a lot of your programming in regards to your reactions to different events that have happened in your life, the calming down of the default mode network gives you the opportunity to take a look at these different events that have happened in your life without the sort of emotional charge and the the sort of challenges and associations that you've created with that memory. So you're able to take a look at that memory, with maybe a bit more compassion, or a lot less of sort of the defense mechanisms that you've created around looking at that. And the best analogy that I've heard is, if you if you look at neural pathways in the brain, as sort of you take a toboggan down a snowy hill, and you continue to put grooves in the snow, and psychedelics help groom the snow. So you're not forgetting those experiences, but you're creating new neural pathways and new relationships with those memories. And then, as you come out of that experience, again, the importance of the integration container where you're continuing to deepen those new neural pathways and new relationships with the traumatic events that, that you probably are suffering with.
Shaun Francis 17:12
You use that term container, what do you mean by that?
Payton Nyquvest 17:16
So container, really being the therapeutic container. So the two practitioners and again, the intention setting and sort of the building of the relationship that you'll sort of step into the therapy with.
Shaun Francis 17:29
So why don't we switch gears now and talk about you know, how you go from patient to entrepreneur? You know, how did you conceive that you wanted to turn your therapy into action, into business?
Payton Nyquvest 17:44
I got into the finance industry at quite a young age and, you know, naively thought, at eighteen years old that that was going to be my way to help people was to help them make more money and manage their finances, I quickly realized that I was quite the opposite in terms of being of service to people. But, I was always really interested in new industry, funded a lot of new industry, was fairly involved in the cannabis space. But always, you know, felt like something was missing in terms of I wanted the energy that I was putting out there to have some kind of a positive impact in the world. And the thing that I continue to be most passionate about, even throughout my professional career was mental health and wellness. And my own journey with that, and again, through a lot of the conversations that I was having, at the time with these academic research institutions was seeing, seeing how advanced the clinical trials were, and seeing just a huge lack of infrastructure to be able to actually hold this work when it became readily available. And also, you know, obviously, the challenges around trying to raise capital, especially not for profit capital, and any sort of help that we could do to support some of the financial burden, and getting this into an accessibility model for people as well. So that was for me, where I saw an opportunity to sort of take some of the entrepreneurial experience that I had, and shifted towards a more purpose driven mission.
Shaun Francis 19:13
You know, you go ahead and write a business plan for how this is going to assist people with- because you're not selling product, you're you're selling therapy, right, ultimately assisted with product?
Payton Nyquvest 19:26
Yeah, the model that we've created is is quite unique at Numinus. And, you know, probably the early challenges was because we were one of the first organizations in the space and through the conversations we were having was just, what are the missing pieces and again, the sort of two things we kept hearing was one: of building out of the therapeutic container and the figuring out of how to do this at scale, how to make sure that there's a sustainable business model attached to it. And then there was sort of the advancements on the drug side of things and, how can we work with, with the drugs to make them more affordable for people more accessible for people? Is there opportunities to research these molecules to make them more safe? And that's sort of the other side of Numinus, is we have a Health Canada licensed lab and production facility where we've been licensed to be able to do not only analytical testing, but also production and distribution of pretty much all of the psychedelics, MDMA, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, LSD, ketamine.
Shaun Francis 20:31
You'd be manufacturing those?
Payton Nyquvest 20:34
So, so manufacturing, and actually most recently, Health Canada has amended our license to allow us to cultivate, extract and produce psilocybin from the naturally occurring source of psilocybin, everything from sort of the the compounds that people would know about which, you know, serotonin, baeocystin, melatonin, that occur in those mushrooms, all the way to some new compounds that we've discovered that we believe have therapeutic benefit, also. So we've been developing and standardizing a natural product that can be used in research, and then, you know, hopefully, for a more accessible market in the next couple of years as well.
Shaun Francis 21:12
Do you envision any of these family of psychedelics available, legally, without assisted therapy?
Payton Nyquvest 21:23
You know, there's the conversation around micro dosing, that's a very active conversation right now, there's a limited amount of research that's been done around micro dosing, obviously, there's lots of anecdotal data. But I think I would be really cautious to have things open very, very quickly, only because you don't want to miss the therapeutic benefit that psychedelics do have. Obviously, you know, we think back to the 60s and the large counterculture movement, with psychedelics, and then sort of things blowing up and then becoming scheduled, I think, making sure that the importance of the therapeutic container doesn't get missed, I could see some time, you know, much longer in the future, potentially, microdosing being available as a maybe an over the counter product, but the challenges of that have obviously, you know, ten microdoses being a macro dose, how do you, how do you dispense that? How do you manage it regulatory-wise as well? There's a few challenges there still. So, for the foreseeable future, the focus is much more on the actual assisted therapy.
Shaun Francis 22:30
Isn't it legal in some indigenous communities or on reservations? Is that, do I have that right?
Payton Nyquvest 22:36
Yep. So, so the Native American church in the US primarily uses peyote which is a mescaline-containing cactus in their ceremonies. And I think you pointed at something interesting in the beginning, which is the indigenous use of psychedelics dates back thousands and thousands of years and, and continues to be prevalent today.
Shaun Francis 22:56
So there's a lot of, a body of evidence for, for the use of psychedelics and healing. Where is this going? So ketamine, for example, is the therapy of last resort for PTSD? Do you envision that potentially being therapy of first resort at some point?
Payton Nyquvest 23:16
Yeah, I do. I I think all of these psychedelics, you know, I think the thing that's interesting is the way we've treated mental health traditionally is you know, we manage the symptoms and say you have depression, you become labeled as a depressed person, you get put on some kind of an SSRI, and it's this symptom management thing that the pharmaceutical companies have been, you know, profiting from significantly over the last number of years. I think the thing we see with psychedelics is curative intent. As I mentioned with MDMA, over 66% of the people who did MDMA for post traumatic stress disorder, no longer met the PTSD criteria after three treatments. So we're talking about cures for a lot of these indications and I think, we do probably move into more of a first line of defence versus the last line of defence. People shouldn't end up in emergency rooms and and shouldn't end up at the level of despair that they do before being able to access some of these tools that now again, you know, are showing significant therapeutic benefit. So, I think. I think they move into more of a first line of defence, and then again, more into potentially preventative mental health model as well, where people are able to get ahead of some of these things before they become a significant problem. And I think in relation to trauma, you know, you think about first responders, you think about people where trauma is a part of their job description. There needs to be ways of those people being able to address some of these things in a much more timely manner so that they can get back to, you know, continuing to do their jobs and living more happy and full lives as well.
Shaun Francis 25:00
Do you see a world where you know, you might just do therapy without a condition like depression or PTSD as in some sort of preventive basis, assisted by a psychedelic?
Payton Nyquvest 25:10
Yeah, I think so. And I, and I do think psychedelics really present great promise. The way we go to a dentist, you know. Most people have great teeth health, and still go to the dentist twice a year, I think it's a similar sort of thing in the way we we should be treating the brain which is, I don't know a person who gets out of life unscathed in terms of some kind of, you know, event that happens in their life that they could probably use some looking at, and then some support around. And i think that's a huge opportunity for psychedelics as well.
Shaun Francis 25:42
We know that psychedelics have helped you with your chronic pain, has it changed your personality in any way, in your opinion?
Payton Nyquvest 25:51
I would say so. The big realization I had with my chronic pain as well as sort of the associated mental health issues that I was having was that there was actually nothing wrong with me, you know. I was labeled as someone who was very, very sick, I was labeled as someone who had complex PTSD and the recognition that there's actually inherently nothing wrong with me, but there was events that happened in my life that I was struggling with that, but that me as a person was actually completely fine and healthy. And to be able to separate you know, so much of what we do lately is this label creating that we do for people and we, we bucket them. That was a big thing for me. And I think the amount of empathy and gratitude that I'm able to have now for my life, for the environment that I live in, for my family, those have been big shifts for me. And also, you know, again, the, the starting of Numinus and putting energy towards something that has more of a purpose driven sort of mission to it and, and, and the opportunity to make a significant impact for sure I see some of those big changes for me.
Shaun Francis 27:04
Again, it sounds like a theme as you discover things about yourself, or there's some sort of level of contentment, you could arrive at that you may not. normally, without this sort of assistance.
Payton Nyquvest 27:14
It's funny, you see this, or you hear this a lot of the time where people go through these experiences and their fears are that you know, they're gonna start wearing crystals and ponchos and move into the woods or something like that. And my response to that is, you know, 'Probably only if that's what you were supposed to be, or should have been doing in the first place.' A lot of the people that I know, that have worked with psychedelics are very high performing, entrepreneurial, or otherwise type of people, but they've been able to clear a lot of the noise and really look at, you know, I think more so looking at what is motivating people, and the more deeply you understand some of those motivations, the better you can work with them. There's no shortage of stories of the driven entrepreneur who is very, very successful and when they reach, you know, what we would define as success, realize that they're not happy. And I think the opportunity there is, certainly doesn't extinguish motivation, but more so make sure that it's in alignment with making sure that you are happy at the end of the day, and you feel good about what you've created.
Shaun Francis 28:21
You mentioned some side effects. I know there's some speculation that cannabis, for example, you know, might cause or influence psychosis in younger people, especially young men. Is there any knocks like that also, on some of these psychedelics?
Payton Nyquvest 28:38
Certainly, there's certain mental health indications that would make you not a good candidate for psychedelics. And I think the important thing to really preface with, is psychedelics aren't for everybody. And I think that's one of the challenges with microdosing is, it's become so accessible, and at low doses it feels like you know, anybody could maybe microdose but at high doses, you know, you really do need to be careful and people with things like schizophrenia, you know, really need to be very cautious in approaching psychedelics and even just your mental state when when you do step into psychedelic work as well.
Shaun Francis 29:16
What is the long term vision for Numinus?
Payton Nyquvest 29:21
Yeah, it's a great question. You know, as I mentioned, when we started Numinus, there really wasn't any corporate interest in the space, there was no public companies in the space. And when I left the public markets, I was actually a bit disenfranchised by the public markets and was looking to to make a shift. And so when we started Numinus, the plan was always to just build a company that, that could make a significant impact. There was no plans of taking companies public, we, it wasn't even really something we thought was going to be on our radar screen for quite some time. But the sort of coupling of the huge amount of increased enthusiasm for psychedelics, the advancing of the regulatory framework quite quickly, and then this sort of rush for capital, made sense for us to go public. And one of the things that that I was quite passionate about was, we do grow through acquisition in terms of some of these mental health clinics that we've been acquiring and the opportunity for some of those clinics to get acquired, and have equity in the company where they can actually see the value that they're creating, versus, you know, a private company where, you know, the equity is sort of wallpaper until you actually do something with it. So there was an opportunity there that we saw. And so went public, I think we were the second or third public company in the psychedelic space. And people talk about, you know, the sort of the, the overnight success and huge amount of enthusiasm in the psychedelic space. But when we went public, it was actually met with a significant amount of challenge and scrutiny. And it wasn't until sort of an increased amount of legitimacy was brought into the psychedelic space that we did see, you know, a lot of positive movement into the psychedelic space over the last year or so.
Shaun Francis 31:15
And what does this look like in ten years?
Payton Nyquvest 31:20
Our goal has always been to be the number one most trusted brand in the psychedelic space. Our focus is always to have a global footprint, our licensing out of the lab is an international licensing so we can work with any organization all over the world, and the therapeutic container that we've been developing is something that we've looked at developing from a place where we can scale, that not only across North America, but also into the US, into Europe and other jurisdictions as well. So we really want to be synonymous with, when you think about doing psychedelic therapy, to go to a Numinus location in order to do that.
Shaun Francis 31:56
Thanks for your time today, it's a super super interesting industry and I think it's an exciting one and one that holds a lot of promise for mental health. It certainly has been topical and a major issue for so many people for so long. And you know, if this moves from experimental, last resort to preventive, as you described it, it really has an opportunity to change, to change the industry. So thank you for your time today and congratulations on your leadership and success and moving the industry forward.
Payton Nyquvest 32:31
Thank you. I really appreciate you having me on and for everybody listening.
Christopher Shulgan 32:39
That was Eat Move Think host Shaun Francis in conversation with Numinus Wellness CEO, Payton Nyquvest.
Jasmine Rach 32:46
And this episode ends our two part series all about psychedelics and wellness.
Christopher Shulgan 32:50
Eat Move Think is produced by Ghost Bureau. Senior producer is Russell Gragg. Associate producer is Jasmine Rach. Social media and strategy support is from Chantel Guertin and Andrew Imecs. I'm Executive Producer Christopher Shulgan.
Jasmine Rach 33:02
Remember to rate and subscribe to Eat Move Think on your favorite podcast platform and follow our host Shaun Francis on Twitter and Instagram at @ShaunCFrancis—That's Shaun with a "u"—and Medcan @medcanlivewell. We'll be back soon with a new episode examining the latest in health and wellness.