035 - David O'Connor on MDMA Assisted Therapy

Danny Mulvihill  0:15
Welcome back to another episode of The MindState podcast. First of all, it's been a while. Sorry about that. I'm sure at some point we'll dig into the.. the reasoning and whatnot. But the good news is we're here again today. My guest is my friend, David O'Connor. And we will go into a lot about David. But just real high level, we actually crossed paths at jujitsu, like most of my guests. But that'll probably be not a big topic today, because David has some interesting things going on. One of which is he just started a new podcast, which I definitely recommend you check out. The title is T for trauma, or is that capital T for trauma. 

David O'Connor  0:55  
T is for trauma 

Danny Mulvihill  0:56  
T is for trauma. And by the way, Welcome, David.

David O'Connor  0:59  
Thank you, Danny.

Danny Mulvihill  1:00  
Here I am just blah, blah, blah, blah. So we're going to we're going to dig into David's story and why he started the podcast and a number of things which you'll soon find out. So let's get started. David, how're you doing today, buddy?

David O'Connor  1:16  
Doing pretty well, how you doing?

Danny Mulvihill  1:17  
I am so happy to be sitting down in front of a microphone. It's been too long. And oh, and the other thing I forgot to mention is today is a bit of a doubleheader. Because right after we wrap this episode up, maybe we'll like take his dog Monty outside for a quick bathroom break. And then I am going to be on David's podcast. 

David O'Connor  1:37  
Yeah, it's exciting. 

Danny Mulvihill  1:38  
So we'll probably talk about some, we'll have a little overlap, but I think they'll definitely be two distinct episodes. So it'll be worth checking out both of them. Let's jump right into it. I would say part of what we're going to focus on today is your own sort of experience. And, you know, getting to this point where you're at in life right now, through psychedelic assisted therapy, and even traditional therapy, I'm sure played a role in it. So that's gonna be kind of the, the high level of what we're starting at and zooming in on. But let's get up to this point today. So if you could give us kind of the five minute background story of you know why we're here today and how David ended up here in Austin, and, and then we'll drill down as we go.

David O'Connor  2:25  
Sure. So first of all, it's awesome to be here. And awesome to get you behind a mic again. Yeah. Definitely a huge inspiration for me in starting the podcast. So I appreciate that. And in terms of my story, so you might not be able to tell from my accent, but I grew up in Ireland. So I was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, I lived there until I was 31. And I would say.. my story involves a lot of loneliness, first of all, so I am the youngest of four kids. I grew up in a very traditional, large, Roman Catholic family that was very popular in the 70s and 80s, in Ireland. And I think most of my childhood, I just remember a lot of time just playing alone -- either being in the house, or just being by myself playing in my room playing with Legos, playing video games, reading books, and.. you know, throughout my early adulthood, my teens and my 20s I gravitated to a lot of things that just kept me isolated from people. And, you know, again, books and video games was part of that. But then also, I was a professional poker player for a while -- something that I got really into, right as college was ending was was poker and went deep down a rabbit hole with that, and it ended up becoming my profession, but it allowed me to spend a lot of time alone. And as I started to be out there in the world in my 20s, having spent so much time in that mode, start to create its own challenges. And like you said, a lot of my more recent story, or my adult story involves therapy. And I would say a lot of that story involves either unpacking that loneliness or reversing that kind of drive to isolate. And that kind of started with a very long relationship that I was in that we had kind of been very chaotic and very, very on and off or up and down. And she had insisted on couples therapy as a a kind of.. a deal breaker for her, which I was very resistant to. But it started that journey of like, oh, this is something that I think I should probably dig into in terms of like, how do my emotions work? Or like, why do I feel the way I feel about certain things or like, certain worldviews that I have? Like, where did those come from? And are those well adjusted? Should I re-examine these? And I know I'm being a little bit long winded here. But there was also like, what went with that was a sense of disconnection or a sense of being an outsider. And living in Ireland, I didn't really feel like I fit in, I felt like an outsider. And I wanted to somewhat start a new life for myself. So I was working with Microsoft at the time, about eight years ago, and took a transfer to Washington State for a job there. And again, like that kind of loneliness and sense of being an outsider somewhat persisted for the five years I was there and I didn't really feel like again, that I fit in in Washington and decided, okay, I want to maybe try a new place that I think is going to be more fun and people seem happier. And also the weather is better, because I started to realize seasonal affective disorder is real. So I moved to Austin, Texas to start a new life. And in that, also discovered psychedelic medicine, which is really blown my story wide open in the last two years, especially.

Danny Mulvihill  6:45  
Alright, let's, there's at least two things I want to pick up on there. Let's start with the couples therapy and the girlfriend. So you had been dating in Ireland for a long time? How long were you guys dating for?

David O'Connor  6:59  
By the time we finished it, it was just under five years. 

Danny Mulvihill  7:02  
Okay. 

David O'Connor  7:02  
It was like four years, 10 months, something like that.

Danny Mulvihill  7:05  
Gotcha. But that couples therapy sort of started the process of realizing that maybe there was something to dig into there.

David O'Connor  7:13  
Yeah, I would say so. I was probably, I think 28 when that started. And there's two things to say here. So at the macro level, I would say in Ireland, mental health, it's a little bit better now, but at the time, was still very stigmatized. So going to see a therapist and you know, honestly, this person was not even a therapist -- this person was.. I don't mean this pejoratively, but she was just a counselor. So like, a lower level of qualification. And like somebody who maybe could not take you as far in your journey, but even just signing up to go talk to a counselor was itself like something that I didn't want people knowing. And then also just at a personal level, I thought therapy was very self indulgent. I thought it was like, for rich people who were bored. You know, I was not a believer in it whatsoever. So somebody insisting that we go see a couples therapist, I was incredibly resistant to it, because I was like, I don't need to go work on my problems, because I don't have any problems. And also like, what is this person going to tell me that I don't already know about myself. And as it turned out, I was incredibly wrong.

Danny Mulvihill  8:40  
So you were kind of blinded at the point you didn't realize that there was even anything to unpack?

David O'Connor  8:45  
Yeah, I was so lacking in self awareness. But I was also so shut down. At that point, you know, I was so divorced or disconnected from my emotions that I was like.. Hey, I don't even think about this thing. So how could there be a problem?

Danny Mulvihill  9:04  
Hmm, that is a perfect segue into the next thing that I wanted to pick up, which is poker. 

David O'Connor  9:09  
Yeah. 

Danny Mulvihill  9:10  
So this morning, as I was taking some notes, making sure that I had a few like, clear things that I wanted to touch on. You know, I always start out and I just kind of like write a few words about the person. So the ones I wrote down were jujitsu, Ireland, podcasts, trauma, and poker. And as I started thinking about the poker thing, and like, the quintessential aspect of a good poker player that most people think about, at least from the outside looking in as a non professional poker player, is the poker face. Right? It's.. it's really like the thing that everybody associates with it. And it struck me that, there.. I wonder if trauma is a common background for high level poker players because of this need and experience and willingness to disconnect from one's emotions. And that translates obviously into a powerful poker face. And I just kind of wanted to get your feedback on that or your, your thoughts on.. do you think your background of you know, childhood trauma and whatnot propelled you to be able to play poker professionally? And did you observe in others like looking back now? I think maybe there was a lot of trauma in this industry.

David O'Connor  10:30  
Yeah, great question. And fantastic observation. And it's actually funny, because when you were saying the thing that people associate with poker, I was really hoping you were not going to say bluffing, because that's, that's the thing that a lot of people like, Oh, you got to be good at bluffing. But when you talk about the end, you know, that's not true, really. But when you talk about the poker face, that is true, but I would say as a proxy for something else. So there's kind of two parts to playing poker well. There is the ability to strategize effectively, and really know what is the correct decision to make at any given point in a hand or, you know, a specific street or, you know, a set of hands at a tournament, etc, etc. But then the other part is the personal management or emotional control. So, poker is inherently a game with chance or uncertainty in it, so it is unavoidable that there will be times where you make the right decision, but get the wrong result. And because of that, it requires a lot of -- and this can also happen over extended periods of days, weeks, months, sometimes years, if you're playing certain formats where you can be doing the right thing, but just getting absolutely hammered. And it can be very difficult to stay in the pocket where you have that self confidence of okay, I know that I'm playing well, but I'm losing my shirt every single time I get in there. How certain am I that I'm actually playing well? Or am I fooling myself into believing that? So this thing of being somewhat divorced from both the monetary swings in the game, and also like, the emotion associated with just getting hammered for an extended period of time, or, you know, the inverse is also true of like, you can play like a jackass and get rewarded for it, and not letting that go to your head, like staying objective and going okay, like, I probably shouldn't have done that. Even though I just made a lot of money doing that, that's something that also trips people up. So to kind of tie that all into your question, it's definitely beneficial to a poker players long term success to be able to stay, Zen, or you know, but uh, like in the face of the ups and downs of poker, especially at a professional level. And it is something that I have thought about a lot that.. there's a chicken and egg situation there of was I good at poker, because I was divorced from my emotions? Or was I divorced from my emotions, because I was good at poker? And I think, if I were to, and it's hard for me to put myself in that mindset from so long ago, because it was over 15 years ago, at this point, I think, most likely, it was beneficial to me. Because, you know, I just was not very emotionally connected, and being able to just be somewhat robotic, was definitely a benefit to me. But also, I think.. this is maybe.. it's maybe like kind of a taboo observation, but especially on online poker at the very high levels. And I don't mean this at all as a criticism or a judgement or I'm not making light of it, but there is a lot of people at that high levels of online poker who are fairly high up on the autistic spectrum. And those guys, to their credit, they don't seem to pay as much attention to the monetary swings, they, they like the game for the strategy aspect of it, like the game of it. So the money is not, it doesn't seem to be as tangible to them. So it's just a way of keeping score and figuring out who's best in the game like that. They're not as good motivated by the financial incentives of playing poker. And then also, they seem to be able to regulate their emotions a lot better, where they don't seem to experience their highs aren't as high and their lows aren't as low. So they're able to just stay a lot more even keeled in the face of the extremes that high stakes poker can bring.

Danny Mulvihill  15:43  
That actually.. I think we ought to linger here for a minute, because now I'm so interested. I had never thought about, you know, here I am saying the quintessential feature of poker is the poker face. And yet online poker is a big deal. And it must be a lot easier to conceal in that setting. 

David O'Connor  16:04  
Right

Danny Mulvihill  16:04  
So, for example, one mode of thought here is, I know that you have a background working for a company building an online poker platform. What are some of the like, how does that play into it? The fact that we sort of cut out this humongous aspect, I think -- of poker, and being behind a computer screen, presumably often, like without video or anything, you know, like it's just an avatar, right, that you're looking at? How does that play into online poker?

David O'Connor  16:34  
Yeah, again, great question. And I think this is something that people tend to wait incorrectly and in terms of its importance. So you think of the famous poker scenes and movies, you know, you think of like Casino Royale, where the guy's eye is bleeding or whatever it is, or like Rounders, where John Malkovich is breaking open the Oreos, and there are these very over the top physical tells that the hero was able to spot and then make that decision and win the day. And that is somewhat important, where it is definitely an additional information point. But largely, poker is a game of pattern matching, where you are looking at your opponents actions and trying to derive, okay, in this relatively similar situation, in the past, my opponent did this with this specific type of hand. Now, in this current situation that has many of the same variables, do I think my opponent is taking the same action? Are they do they have the same hand and they're taking a different action to try and deceive me? Or do they have a different hand and they're taking the same action, because that's the right thing to do? So there's, there's all of this context that someone is trying to hold in their mind at the one time to kind of figure out, Okay, where is my opponent at in this hand, and what is my correct action to do to combat that or to produce the optimal outcome for that, and to kind of give you a little bit of historical context here. In, in Wall Street in the 80s, Wall Street used to be a place that was dominated by these kind of.. seat of the pants like swashbuckling traders, where they would trade in quotation marks on their gut. And essentially, the phrase, you know, doing something by your gut is really just your brain trying to pattern match to something. So those guys would say, like, Oh, back when I was trading corn, you know, three years ago, the market was doing this and I did this and it produced a positive outcome. So if I do this thing again, it should produce the same thing. And then what happened was, as computing power started to become more readily available and cheaper, all of Wall Street got completely overrun by quants. And, you know, again, the high level math field also has high occurrence with a lot of people on the spectrum and those guys completely just crushed the gut traders because their methodology was more mathematically sound instead of somebody going off their feeling which you know, has.. has bias in it or, again, the, the person's emotions on that day, etc, etc. So, there's very few of those kind of like, Go instinct traders anymore. And it's all quantitative trading, give or take the exact same thing happened with poker in the mid 2000s, where people started to get more interested in game theory and started doing more of this modeling and stuff like that. So in the early 2000s, especially with televised poker, there was a lot of these characters of like just these gamblers. And again, it was like these seat of your pants, like go by your gut gamblers. And, you know, like, there were these big personalities. And then in the late 2000s, all those guys went bankrupt, because there was more of these guys coming from the online sphere, who were more interested in quantitative methodologies. And really, I say all that to say the thing that is important in poker is just being able to pattern match and knowing the right strategy for a specific set of variables. And all of those guys who were like doing the old school body language and tell stuff, they just got crushed by these guys who had much more solid methodologies for designing entire strategies.

Danny Mulvihill  21:03  
Sure. One interesting observation, almost on myself, as I was thinking so much of the importance, like if I were in a poker game of how I could conceal my hand, and you highlighted, perhaps inadvertently, that I wasn't even thinking so much about being able to read my opponents, I was only in my own head, like, I have to conceal what I have. Right? And just maybe that's sort of some meta info on like, my own, I guess, personality and things that I ultimately need to excavate, you know. And talking about how earlier, so much of what I think is something I need to work through is my concern with the judgment of others, and that type of thing. And this is a perfect example of that, like, I was only thinking about me, concealing, anyways, what were you gonna say?

David O'Connor  21:56  
So there was.. so to kind of make an analogy or a correlation to jiu jitsu. So a lot of what we're talking about is just game theory. And poker and jiu jitsu are both games, incredibly different games, but they're still games. And for any game, there is game theory around what is optimal strategy. So in poker, you have what's called multilevel thinking, where level one would be, I know what I -- what I have. So like, the cards that I have, then level two would be I know what cards my opponent has. And then level three would be, I know what my opponent thinks I have. Level four would be, I know what my opponent thinks I think he has, etc, etc. And as you go more advanced within the game, the levels start going up and up and up. And somebody's ability to gauge correctly, what level their opponent is on is the key to success. But you never want to be more than one level off in your assessment of where your opponent is, because then you have psyched yourself out and you're making the incorrect decision. So the way that that would track to jiu jitsu would be like, Okay, I know, this person has a strong leglock game or a strong passing game, I think they're about to do this move. So I will do this counter so that I am ahead of them. But if you then incorrectly judge where this person is at or you know, like, you're rolling for the first time with somebody that you've never seen before, like a white belt, and that person doesn't air quotes, know the correct move, you end up inadvertently shooting yourself in the foot because you have incorrectly judged what this person is about to do and you're using the wrong strategy for where you think this person is.

Danny Mulvihill  23:57  
I often find that sometimes it's easier -- oftentimes, it's easier to roll with advanced jiu jitsu players, because I can anticipate what they should be doing. Whereas with much newer jiu jitsu players, I'm mostly just thinking about not getting hurt on accident, because they do something insane, or super aggressive or unexpected and whatnot. That's I really liked that multi level thinking approach there have and how important it is to be correct in your assessment. 

David O'Connor  24:31  
Right 

Danny Mulvihill  24:31  
Because I've certainly run into that, you know, where I think this is going to happen, and it doesn't and or, more often than not, luckily nowadays is somebody else thinks I'm going to do a thing. And I can anticipate that and do something different,

David O'Connor  24:46  
Right? Good because they're incorrectly calibrated in

Danny Mulvihill  24:49  
Right 

David O'Connor  24:49  
Terms of what level they think you're on.

Danny Mulvihill  24:51  
Right? Ha fun.

David O'Connor  24:55  
But it's what makes jiu jitsu so intellectually stimulating right is like, this game of 4d Chess that you're playing with your bodies and.. and also trying to figure out at an intellectual level, what strategy is the right one to apply at that given time?

Danny Mulvihill  25:11  
Yeah. And even to further analogize it with poker, sort of staying emotionless and not getting psychologically beat, you know, 

David O'Connor  25:21  
Right 

Danny Mulvihill  25:21  
Oh, they have my back. Oh, no, and just being like, I've been here 500 times in the last year, like, I will get out of this also

David O'Connor  25:30  
Right 

Danny Mulvihill  25:30  
It's okay.

David O'Connor  25:32  
Yeah, it's funny, because that was something that was maybe like an aha moment from John Danaher. He, he makes a lot of Instagram posts about this about how the initial pass attempt or initial submission attempt, at a high level, it never works. Like you have to keep going and going and going. And that was something that used to really demoralize me where I'd be like, okay, like, I tried my pass, and it didn't work. 

Danny Mulvihill  26:02  
I suck. 

David O'Connor  26:03  
Yeah. Or like, I'm just this round is not for me, like, I lost. And it's

Danny Mulvihill  26:09  
Sure

David O'Connor  26:09  
Like, there's, there's still four minutes left to like, you can mount another attack, but I would get so caught up in the win or loss of like, the success of this specific move at this point in the role where it, I think, his point is taking a longer term view of the role of like, okay, you need to just have sustainable, repeated attacks, and one is eventually going to get through like, the first one is not the one.

Danny Mulvihill  26:38  
Yeah, definitely. To take that further. It was one time when John was out of town, and Gary Tonin was teaching class. And like, an aha moment for me was, you know, he'd been showing us a sweep. And he's like, at the end, he's like, now listen, if this doesn't work the first time, you got to find like, more milestones within the move. If you make this and you make them post their hand, that's a win, like you off balance them. So count that as a win. And once I started looking at moves, like breaking it down, instead of just being binary, like, success, or like or failure, I started finding more successes that built up to the overall completion of the move. And then it just made it more fun again, because I was winning more.

David O'Connor  27:23  
Right yeah. 

Danny Mulvihill  27:25  
But alright. Let's see here. Let's go ahead and jump into the meat of this.. two years ago, you -- how did you come across psychedelic assisted therapy? At this point, you had done some therapy? Like, what was your background in therapy before that?

David O'Connor  27:44  
Yeah. So I would say, I have done a lot of therapy, and it started with the couples therapy, then that relationship ended. And I would say, that was the right thing to do -- it, you know, it doesn't make it a bad relationship, or whatever it is. But it was the right thing for that relationship to end. And then I started seeing that couples therapist as just my solo therapist, and she actually hit I think her own talent ceiling.. about eight months in, she said, like, Hey, I think we've kind of gone as far as I can take you because I don't feel qualified to go deeper with you. So I think you would benefit from something more like analysis. So like classical Freudian psychoanalysis, where you kind of like really go deep, and stuff like that. So that was still in Ireland. And then when I moved to Seattle, I started to see a psychoanalyst there, which was incredibly intensive. I went three times a week for a number of years. Wow. Yeah, we went really deep. And, you know, I think I made some progress there. But also, like, I don't, I don't know now how I feel about that process. Like it was a lot of effort for not much progress. But I'm also not sure how much of that was him. And how much of that was me, just because I don't know how much I had to give at that point. And I would say the thing that was very difficult for me to get past was so psychoanalysis is very, it's very visual. So like, you spend a lot of time analyzing your dreams or like analyzing imagery that comes up in your head and the image that I would get constantly would be that I was standing on an ice lake. And there would be this dark water underneath the ice. But the ice was so thick that it could not break through to it. And so with this therapist, and then with subsequent therapists that I saw, I would have this image come to me. And I was very diligent about my therapeutic practice. And, you know, I really wanted to make progress. And I really wanted to kind of feel more emotionally connected and just more happy. And I just could not break through the ice to this dark water underneath like, it was there, I could see it, I was aware of it, but nothing I could do would get me to that point. And so again, with this therapist, and with future therapists, I would just end up ending the relationship because I would go like, Okay, we've talked about some stuff, and we've made some progress. But I know that there's deeper stuff here, I'm not able to physically or mentally get to it. But also, I don't want to waste your time. And I don't want to keep paying money to just sit around and talk about, you know, this person at work, who said something that upset me or something like that, like, I want to be really doing deep work. 

Danny Mulvihill  31:24  
Yeah

David O'Connor  31:24  
So if we're not there, I don't want to be here. So I would just end these relationships. And then I started to.. kind of like, it started to come into my awareness, these famous people like Tim Ferriss talking about psychedelics, and how much it had helped them, and how, like, the phrase that they kept throwing around was, it's like doing 10 years of therapy in one session. And I would say, like, I, I'm very conflicted about that statement, because doing therapy is, it's very difficult, and it's exhausting. And this felt kind of.. it felt like they were cheating, but also like it, it didn't seem like they had 10 years of therapy behind them just from how they were interacting with the world. But it was still of interest to me of like, okay, here's this thing that can potentially provide a breakthrough, or allow me to skip a couple of steps and start to go deeper. And I'm not somebody who had done any recreational drugs at all in my life, like I had smoked weed a couple of times in Washington state, it was legal, but mostly, it was not for me, but also like, again, growing up in Ireland, and the family environment, I grew up in drugs were very stigmatized, and I was very scared of drugs. And especially. And this made sense later, I was very scared of losing control. So.. and even before I started MDMA, my number one concern was like, I was going to take it, and I was going to like hulk out and go on the rampage, and no one was going to be able to stop this very large person. And, you know, I started to read more and more and like, people that I really respected. Were starting to talk more about it. And I started to go, okay, like, Here are these people who I know to be very smart and very reasonable, and they don't promote a lot of quackery. There's probably some legitimate science to this, but also, like, I'm kind of desperate right now. Like, I cannot seem to get to this point that I want to get to, just through talk therapy, like, I need to bring out the big guns. And so that was essentially my intro to it. But then also, again, I don't do any recreational drugs. And I'm not that streetsmart of a dude. So I don't know how to get my hands on it. So I started to read about this stuff like five years ago, but then it took essentially three years to get connected to somebody who, first of all, I trusted to facilitate the session, but then also trusted to provide a medicine that I could trust so that it would not provide this hulk out rampage experience. 

Danny Mulvihill  34:39  
Yeah. 

David O'Connor  34:40  
And you know, also was not potentially like fentanyl or something like 

Danny Mulvihill  34:44  
Sure. 

David O'Connor  34:44  
So there was a very long lead time, but also, just broadly like I like to go deep down the rabbit hole with subjects and there was a lot of research I felt like I needed to do before I stepped off this ledge and did something potentially life changing or drastic?

Danny Mulvihill  35:01  
Yeah. How did you ultimately find that person? Was it just coincidence that you sort of stumbled across the friendship or relationship and knew of a person or?

David O'Connor  35:13  
Yeah, I have to be intentionally vague on

Danny Mulvihill  35:17  
Sure

David O'Connor  35:17  
This because 

Danny Mulvihill  35:18  
Totally. 

David O'Connor  35:19  
As of right now, it's still federally illegal. But essentially, it was by coincidence, I, I had a very good friend who I mentioned in passing, that this was something that I had become interested in and was interested in pursuing. And they knew somebody who knew somebody. And that's how I got connected to this person. But it was really just a massive coincidence. And if I had not had that person, I don't know, even today, two years later, if I would still have had that opportunity to do that.

Danny Mulvihill  35:54  
Right. Yeah, I really am.. I'm becoming more and more optimistic that in the coming years, this can be more available. Because I mean, in many ways, probably the people that could benefit the most from these types of therapeutic modalities are going to be the least likely to be able to find these people to,

David O'Connor  36:17  
Right

Danny Mulvihill  36:17  
To guide them through the experiences.

David O'Connor  36:18  
And I'm optimistic too, I think the thing that makes me optimistic is one of the groups who need it most. And I know you have interviewed some people in this vein on your podcast, but it's veterans, and you know, like, PTSD and complex PTSD are very hard to break through. And I think it's pretty widely accepted right now that the VA is broken. And their way of treating this is mostly just throwing antidepressants, anti anxiety meds at Veterans, and really not treating the problem just putting a bandaid on it. And they are seeing enormous strides in a number of areas of psychedelic research in treating PTSD and veterans, and not just the psychological trauma, but also like some of the physical traumas that they incur in terms of like the traumatic brain injury from being near explosive, like IEDs, or like door breaching charges, etc, etc. So if there's one thing that I have learned about America, it's that they really love the troops. And the thing that makes me optimistic about this being passed at the federal level is how many veterans who are already -- they already had their own platform, but they have been able to come out now and say, like, Hey, I received these treatments, and it has dramatically changed my life in a very healthy way. And that seems like it's going to get it done to get this legalized federally.

Danny Mulvihill  38:01  
Yeah, I think you really hit on a point there, which is that veterans, they really are, you know, America, we do love our veterans, which I'm proud of, really. And they have the capacity to like, create this bipartisan support of it, which is so critical, especially in the current political climate. So.. and, I mean, not just that, but the research really does seem to be incredibly compelling. It's, it's working in cases that it just wasn't nothing was happening before. And so it's going to get to the point, I suspect, and there's been been so much care and how this is being approached lately, that we're unlikely to mess it up again, like, you know, what happened in the 60s and 70s. So, yeah, hopefully we will, we'll get there. Let's go ahead and dig into your story now. So you find this person, you get to the point where you feel comfortable setting up the experience. I'll just kind of hand it back over to you kind of like guide us through the lead up and then the actual therapeutic session and in as much detail as you care to share. 

David O'Connor  39:21  
Yeah, absolutely. So broadly, MDMA therapy. MDMA is an empathogen so it allows you to connect with traumas or difficult memories about adverse events in your past and replay them in a very compassionate or non judgmental way. So when you do it in a therapeutic setting, you are generally either on a bed or a couch, you put on a nice shade and noise cancelling headphones so that as much external stimuli As blocked out as possible, so that you are just able to be present with your thoughts. And you're not, you know, being distracted by something that is going on in the outside world. And what happens during those sessions is these memories about different things come up, and you get to experience the emotions and the feelings that were present at that time. And especially for somebody like myself. This was honestly like the first time that I had felt emotion at the scale. Like I would say, even after doing so much talk therapy, that my emotions were still fairly muted, that the volume was turned down to like a two or three. And the other thing that is very common in the settings is that you are usually recording, like a voice memo on your phone, and you are articulating out loud, the experiences that you are having at the time. So like the memories that are coming up, or like the observations, or the takeaways, or the intentions that come up during these sessions. And they usually last for roughly four hours, most of mine have been three and a half, four hours. I know some people have sessions that are like eight or 10 hours, which 

Danny Mulvihill  41:25  
On MDMA? 

David O'Connor  41:26  
Yeah. Which is mind blowing. Yeah. But might have always been pretty quick turnaround

Danny Mulvihill  41:32  
Okay. 

David O'Connor  41:32  
So mostly, you are just reliving these experiences and processing them in a very empathetic way. MDMA floods your brain with, I believe it's serotonin. 

Danny Mulvihill  41:53  
Yeah, serotonin. 

David O'Connor  41:53  
And yeah. And it allows you to basically, unleash all of your empathy and compassion on these very difficult memories. So in the preparation for the session, it -- there's not much like you are recommended to not drink alcohol for one week before and two weeks after, just because MDMA is an amphetamine, and you don't want to introduce a depressant like alcohol before or after, as it could impact the.. well your mind state or just the quality of the session. And then there are some supplements that you take before and after, like, you generally supplement magnesium in the lead up to it and after, and then you're also supplementing like SaME, and 5HTP afterwards. But essentially, when you go do your session, it is a very neutral or pleasant setting, generally. So like, you know, nothing really chaotic or controversial about it, like, it's supposed to be essentially a blank slate just so you can go into your inner world and have your experience like there might be like some scented candles burning or like sage or incense. Essentially, it's the same vibe as like a meditation studio or like a yoga studio. And the way I do it, which I believe is the way most sessions happen is you take two doses of MDMA. So the first dose is like 125 milligrams. And then for the first hour, you are just trying to essentially meditate, you are controlling your breathing, you're just trying to clear your mind, you're trying to set your intention for the session. And then an hour in, you have the option to take the second dose which is smaller, it's 75 milligrams, so 200 milligrams total. And I believe almost everybody takes the second dose and most people start to feel the effects around an hour in the most recent session I did the effects started 25 minutes in so it was really like just a rocket ship taking off. But you start to you start to feel the effects working and between hours one and for you are essentially just being fed memories of things that have happened to you. And it's very difficult to articulate the experience for people who have not done it. But I would say when you think of memories you think of picturing or replaying them in your mind's eye. And that's somewhat happening. But you're also, and this is where things get a little bit hand wavy or hard to explain. You're also feeling your memories, like, you're not just seeing them, you're also experiencing the emotions that you were feeling at the time. But then also, when it is new information of like, repressed memory, you also get to experience your present emotions at this new information. So, it can be a very disorienting experience, but also a very different experience to just again, like reliving a memory or talking about it in therapy. So I would say like the first.. maybe two hours of my session, and by that I mean hours one to three, 

Danny Mulvihill  43:05  
Okay

David O'Connor  44:29  
Was really just, it was kind of run of the mill stuff, it was, you know, to echo where we started with it, it was processing a lot of the loneliness and abandonment of my childhood and really just starting to kind of connect to that and kind of like, put a lens on that of like, this was a way that you felt a lot in your childhood. And it had made sustaining relationships, both romantic and interpersonal, very difficult for me, just because this was the experience that I was used to, and the experience that I was comfortable in. So being around other people and managing their feelings or their expectations, and, and all of the complexity that comes with relationships was incredibly difficult for me. So all of this was, it was eye opening for me, but it was not necessarily that shocking. But I would say but mostly with MDMA, it's not a hallucinogenic. You don't really see stuff that is not there. Sometimes it uses.. And it's, again, tough to articulate, if you haven't done it, sometimes it uses visual cues, to kind of like, imply something. But you're always aware that like, this is not real, this is just a device that the medicine is using to make a point. And so as I was doing this first session, I would come back to this visual of what looked like, essentially, a very large bullet, like if you can remember the Mario games where you would have like those gigantic torpedoes coming at you it kind of looked like that. 

Danny Mulvihill  48:07  
Okay

David O'Connor  48:07  
And it was flat gray, and there was smoke swirling around it. And the first time I saw it, I was like, Oh, I wonder what that is. And like, tried to focus on it. And then

Danny Mulvihill  48:20  
You have sorry to interrupt you have like an eye shade on. So your this is in your mind's eye.

David O'Connor  48:25  
Correct

Danny Mulvihill  48:25  
Okay. 

David O'Connor  48:25  
Yeah. And I tried to focus on it, and it just disappeared. And I was like, Oh, that was interesting. And, you know, maybe like a half an hour later, the visual comes back and I try to focus on it and the smoke moves a little bit. And I've really started focus on it, and then it just disappears again, I'm like, okay, comes back a little bit later, start to focus on it and the smoke cloud around it completely shifts. And I'm like, Oh, I'm making progress disappears again, and then it comes back. I get all the smoke away. And I'm really focusing on it. And the capsule opens and like it, it kind of splits into parts. And inside of it. It looks like lava is inside of it. And I go oh that -- that's ominous, like that feels dangerous or bad. No, I was like, and then just as quickly, it closed up again. And it disappeared. And I was like, That was interesting. I wonder what that was about. And the session is going on and about the three hour mark. I started to have a memory of being in my grandmother's house, which is where I spent quite a lot of time as a child, and there was you know quite a lot of have different family members in and out of that house. And I have very fond memories of my grandmother and my grandmother's house and about the three hour mark in a start to picture the bedroom that I used to sleep in. And this, this comes like right on the heels of this capsule opening up, I start to have this memory of this bedroom. And then all of a sudden, this very, like booming, clear voice just says something bad happened to you in this room.

Danny Mulvihill  50:37  
Woah

David O'Connor  50:37  
And I go, What? No, it didn't. And then like, immediately, it clicks me, oh, I know exactly what happened. And what I realized was, at six years old, I had completely blocked this memory yeah, but at six years old, I woke up in the middle of the night and a family member was molesting me. And I could remember like the smell of cigarettes and the smell of booze like so close to my face. And I could remember the sensation of being terrified and being confused and being completely disoriented. And this was like a revelation, that just completely floored me because I had this experience at 38 years old. And this memory was from when I was six years old, and I had lived that entire timespan with zero recollection of this event. 

Danny Mulvihill  51:38  
Wow

David O'Connor  51:38  
And you know, in the probably 45 minutes after this memory came up in the session, it devoted a lot of time to that person and the circumstances that had kind of led to them doing that. And, again, this is like something that's very difficult to wrap your head around or just it's very difficult for people to get comfortable with but like, again, because you're flooded with this compassion and empathy. It's trying to frame these traumatic events for you in a way that explains that person's motives and their experience, but then also is trying to do the same for your own experience. So it explains like what this person's background and experience in.. in doing this, because almost always with sexual abuse, it's cyclical, where that person had had their own experiences, and that they're acting this trauma out to as a way of essentially re traumatizing themselves. And it provided me all this context for why this person had done that. But then also, all of the ways that this had affected my life in terms of not trusting people not feeling safe. The shame that you internalize, because when something happens to you at that age, you think, Okay, this happened to me, because I'm a bad person, you think that adults are, especially those who are in charge of you that they have everything figured out, and you know, they would never do something bad. So, obviously, I'm the bad person, because they did that to me. And so in the, the final stages of that session, and then in the weeks and months after that, there was I mean, essentially, this was like a table flip moment for me, where it completely changed my life and how I looked at my life, but then also it.. it explained a lot. Like I got this memory back and I was like, Oh yeah, so much of this just makes sense. And like, all of the pieces fit around why my life has been the way it is. And you know, like even just trying to make peace with that and also like just trying to it integrate that of like, okay, I didn't have this memory for so much my life. And this is like one incident. How can I be sure like this is this experimental treatment? How can I be sure that I believe this? Do I -- do I just want to believe this because this is a convenient story that I can kind of pin my problems on. And you know, like that kind of goes back to that thing I was talking about earlier in terms of like therapy feeling very indulgent. And you know, that being my own issue that I had with this and like, now kind of going like, okay, am I just gravitating towards this convenient story so that I have this easy out for all of my problems in my life? And you know that that was probably one of the biggest hurdles to get past after first starting this progress process?

Danny Mulvihill  55:31  
I bet. Did you aside from dealing with that, that, you know, legitimate question of did I make this up to justify what I feel and what I've gone through and why my life is played out the way that it has? If you could set that aside for a second, despite, like the traumatic aspect of this realization, was there some, like hidden sense of relief in it? Of like, knowing?

David O'Connor  56:03  
Absolutely

Danny Mulvihill  56:04  
Yeah. 

David O'Connor  56:04  
Yeah. I mean, I think the.. the thing that, thing that was really surprising, and this goes a little bit into the story of starting the podcast, but immediately following that, because this was such a life changing moment. I was like, Okay, I want to know everything about trauma. And something that was it's like a cruel joke, in a way, like I had had this amateur fascination with trauma for, like, 20 years, where I was like, Okay, I'm interested in all of these high performers like Michael Jordan, or Mike Tyson, where they get to this extreme level of success, but there also seems to be this extreme level of trauma in their childhood. And I'm like, Oh, it's so interesting that these adverse events in this person's early life can be channeled into this world changing fame or success or drive, but then also how early childhood trauma can also, you know, drive somebody to suicide, or to be living on the street, or like, hooked on heroin, or end up in the sex industry, something like that. I was like, that's so fascinating how it can drive people in these extreme directions, but also, there is a full spectrum of experiences there. And it never, I was so close to the problem that it never occurred to me like, hey, there's a reason why you have such an interest in trauma. And then also pretty much uniformly, all of my romantic relationships, and most of my interpersonal relationships, those people had significant childhood trauma. And I was like, oh, there's nothing unusual there that like all of these people that I'm gravitating towards, have these extreme childhood traumas. I couldn't possibly have trauma. And something that my therapist has reminded me, my current therapist has reminded me a lot of was when we first started working together, you know, cuz she's good at her job. She's like, Hey, tell me about your childhood. And I was like, oh, you know, I don't really remember much about my childhood. And to me, and probably to a lot of people, that would be a perfectly normal answer, but a therapist hears that and they go, Oh, that's a red flag for a significant childhood trauma. And, you know, in addition to all of these emotional challenges that I'm facing.. it, it tells a pretty direct story that, that leads to something very bad happening in childhood. And I came to realize that this is a major red flag of like, that I don't have these memories is a pretty solid indicator that there was something really bad happened. And in the wake of this first session, I started to think about it and I had essentially no memories before at the age of 12 years old. And that had never occurred to me before. And you know, like, now when I think of what is a repressed memory, I think people think of it as you're not able to remember something. But I think how it feels, to me is like, I just wasn't able to think about it, like it had split off and was just blocked off in some unknown area of my brain outside of my awareness. And something that was really interesting, right after that first session, and this has continued on for a lot of two years, my memories have started to come back and not memories of abuse, like my regular memories of like, shows I used to watch or like snacks I used to eat or, you know, kids I was friends with or like places I would go -- just my regular memories that were in there, but I just did not have access to and my therapist had recommended that I start to make note of these memories. And I filled up like four notebooks of memories at this point. And you know, like, it's, it's all from before the ages of 12. And there was just so much in there that I was not privy to. And that just blows my mind.

Yeah, that.. this idea of repressed memories has always been sort of fascinating to me, like, do you? Do you really not know? And then one day you realize, and in your case, it sounds like that was very much the case. And with somebody else that I had interviewed, I remember him saying that, you know, like, I knew all this shit happened, but I just didn't think about it. 

Right

Danny Mulvihill  1:01:18  
So it's like, there's this spectrum that can happen where it really can be so isolated that you don't know. And then somewhere along the way, there can also just be like a, you could kind of maybe know, but not. If you never think about a thing, like in a sense, you don't know it. 

Right

Right? What would you say is? Did it really, really feel like you had no idea?

David O'Connor  1:02:11  
Yeah, I mean, there's kind of a couple of ways to slice this. So the first is like, as I went down this trauma rabbit hole, I started to learn more about repressed memory. And it seems like we do not understand this very well at all. And there are quite a number of legal cases where repressed memory was not admissible in court, and the legal system seems to take like a somewhat ambivalent stance on it. So it's very, it's very tricky to talk about it. And I can also understand why some people would be skeptical, and I've had, I've had friends, like, very good friends say to me, and you know, like, I don't take this in a bad way. I think it's just people's natural skepticism. Like, I've had a couple friends say to me, like, Hey, are you sure this really happened? And like, it's a fair question. Like, I don't I don't judge that question in any way. But I'll say, as of today, I have done seven MDMA sessions. So they, they recommend that you do it, no more frequently than quarterly. So in two years, I've done it seven times. So that -- that was essentially quarterly for a significant period of time. And then I took a six month gap, just because two sessions ago was really traumatic, and I needed some time off to just kind of be able to put myself in a headspace of just being able to get back in there and potentially be shown something that is really jarring. But essentially, in all seven sessions, I have been shown some incident of sexual abuse in my childhood and there was honestly like a, a shocking pattern of sexual abuse in my childhood to the point where I hesitate to use the word abusers because some of these the experiences exist on a spectrum where like, sometimes it is unwanted touching. Sometimes it is full on sexual assault, but there were like the number of people who I had unwanted sexual experiences with is in double digits. And 

Danny Mulvihill  1:04:51  
Wow

David O'Connor  1:04:52  
Yeah, and you know, like it, it is it kind of mind blowing to think about like, how could I have no memory of any of that in the first 12 years of my life, but I just did not have those memories? And, you know, like the the way to kind of counterbalance that is, say, like, Okay, what is the likelihood that even if this were some hallucination or fantasy, what is the chances that over seven sessions, every single one would focus on just some sort of traumatic sexual abuse experience? So? And, you know, like, I'll say, and, again, I have to be somewhat intentionally vague on this, I'll say like, the way things have played out in real life in terms of confronting this stuff has confirmed that this was not some imaginary thing, like this really did happen. And you know, like it, it is just, it's unbelievable to think there was so much in there that my brain just did not have access to but again, to kind of like draw a grim comparison to your poker question. My, my kind of like sense for it is just that my brain got so good at dissociating that every subsequent one was just, it was just another experience where my brain just essentially shut off. And, you know, the second session that I did, I would say, like, I went in, with some concerns about what I'd seen in the first session of like, Oh, can I believe this? Like, am I accusing this person of something that didn't happen? And it showed me several other incidents with this same person that were a lot more extreme and a lot more traumatic. And, you know, on one hand, it.. it confirmed that this was not just an imagination, but also like, again, in a very comforting, non judgmental way. It showed me like, hey, some of the experiences in here are what broke you for a long time. And essentially, like,

it showed me that that was where the, the reflex for dissociating came from was like, this one specific, very trauma, traumatizing assault. And so, a lot of the stuff after that, in that spectrum of experiences, my brain was able to just say, okay, like, I'm just going to shut off until this is done. And then when everything is okay, we're going to turn the power back on.

Danny Mulvihill  1:08:04  
Yeah. It's, you know, in some sense, like this really beautiful defense mechanism that our mind has. But, you know, it's, it's imperfect. And that sense of shame, I suspect can still like seep through, and permeate and challenge life, even without the, you know, coherent clear memory of what led to it.

David O'Connor  1:08:30  
Yeah. And, you know, like you again, to kind of go back to veterans, you see this a lot with them, like, especially where, you know, they're involved in like a car bomb attack, or like, a buddy dies in front of them, or like they're blown up in front of them, etc, etc. And the brain just shuts off. Like, it's this genetic defense mechanism that like, it just says, Okay, what is being processed by your eyes is so shocking right now that we're just going to turn the brain off to protect your Saturday. And we're going to splinter off that memory into this protected place. And we'll turn the power back on when this thing is over and it's safe to come out and it starts to come out in one way or another like it your body is always trying to normalize it and get you back to a place of healthiness so but you know, does not always have the proper tools to do that. So like, one way it might do that could be like you might drink or use drugs to numb out so that you don't have to feel those emotions. But then also like you have something like these nightmares where your brain swings into low gear and it goes okay, maybe now is a time that is safe to start to process this incredibly shocking thing. And you replay this memory over and over again, until it's out. But to actually live through that experience of like, having those nightmares is incredibly challenging and incredibly, emotionally taxing for that person because it's dripping out in this very slow way. Because that is your body's best tool that it has at that time to start to process that trauma.

Danny Mulvihill  1:10:33  
Yeah, wow. I'm wondering, like, where to go next? Because I don't know, for some sense, I just don't want to like linger and delve and delve and delve into this. What.. can you identify some ways, like you had said that after that first experience, you had this feeling of things making sense? Like it explained a lot in your life. Can you identify a few things that like looking back on your life after having that realization that you're like, Oh, that makes so much sense now, like, what were some of the challenges in adult life? That made sense because of this experience?

David O'Connor  1:11:24  
Yeah, great question. And, you know, I would say I'm someone who's done a lot of self reflection, and I thought I had a pretty good sense of myself before this process. And you know, with the, the therapy practice or like that journey, I used to get very frustrated, because I would feel like, I was working twice as hard as the people around me, but I was still three steps behind them. And I could not figure that out. And I felt a lot of shame, like, deep, deep sense of shame. And, you know, a lot of people would say, like, that is just very quintessentially Irish. And again, it's like that, that Roman Catholic thing of just shame being beaten into you from a very young age. And I had this very deep sense of shame, and also this sense of disconnection. And again, like the sense of being an outsider, a sense of loneliness, and just as a sense of feeling unsafe, like, it felt very difficult for me to just be around people. And also like, especially professionally, it was very difficult for me to ask for a mentor, just because like, I didn't trust people in authority, but then also, the thing, like, when I can think about the times where like, I've gotten really bent out of shape at work, or like, I've had, let's call them an incident at work, even though like, I'm not a very confrontational person, the trend there is people who were in power, who I felt like they were trying to take advantage of me. And again, like, when I look at my romantic relationships, they were very chaotic. And you know, back then I would say, like, oh, it was the other person was chaotic, and I was just there. And you know, objectively, well, the first part was true, but also that is overly critical to them, like they were just where they were, but also, I was very chaotic. Like I, I was just very up and down. And like, I was acting out a lot. Because I had all of this unresolved stuff inside of myself. So I would get myself in all of these situations. With dating, where I was like, Oh, this is incredibly chaotic, and like, my friends were all very entertained because it would make for all of these funny stories, but it was also like, just very emotionally jarring to constantly be going through these experiences that with these women that I was inviting into my life because I did not have my shit together.

Danny Mulvihill  1:14:58  
Can you.. does an experience, like a specific story, come to mind that was maybe entertaining to your friends but that highlights this chaotic aspect of where maybe back then you were blaming them and not realizing how much of a role you were playing in the chaos?

David O'Connor  1:15:24  
I'm probably going to skip out on telling the entertaining stories because I think like to do that would probably be unfair to them and like a, I don't have any ill will towards any of them like I did tell them would be to feel like I'm throwing them under the bus. But I'll say like, something that I only really started to get a grasp on in probably the last year is one way that trauma really affects people is acting out. And what acting out looks like for a lot of people is addiction. And people are familiar with the common substance addictions. So drugs and alcohol, but then also the ones that people are much less familiar with and are also much more socially acceptable or process addictions. So people are familiar with like sex addiction, gambling addiction, workaholism, but then there's also like, love addiction, there is internet addiction, porn addiction, shopping addiction, working out addiction, etc, etc. And when you don't have when you have unresolved trauma, essentially, for a lot of people, it becomes whack a mole for these different addictions. So, like, you might have awareness of something, and then you go like, Okay, I'm doing too much of that. But if you don't address the underlying trauma, that addiction just jumps to something else. So in my case, I had a lot of addictions and like, internet addiction, video game addiction, like gambling addiction, even though I was successful at poker, like looking back at it now I was still addicted to and, you know, in the addiction space, they differentiate between addicted to the substance itself, and addicted to just numbing out. And for people with process addictions, it's not the thing that they're addicted -- they're addicted to dissociating and numbing out and not feeling their internal emotions. So like, I had a lot of different process addictions, and like workaholism, porn addiction, you know, working out addiction, etc, etc. And it would just jump as I'd be like, oh, like, I'm doing too much of that, but I wasn't addressing the underlying thing. And something that I became aware of was like, almost all of the women that I was connected to, were also addicts in that same way, like, a lot of times, I would have relationships with very driven women. And like a lot of times that their addiction was workaholism, but then also, like, very frequently, shopping addiction, food addiction, internet addiction, working out addiction. And so like, that was something where I was like, Oh, this comes with its own chaos, that I'm not aware of, like, I just think of like, oh, this person works too much, etc. Or, like, they're always going to like spin class or something like that. And, you know, I would have my own addictions, that would also introduce chaos into the relationship. And, you know, a lot of times they would say that, and they'd be like, Hey, you're like shopping too much? Or like, you're working too much. I'd be like, no, no like that. Like, this is just who I am. And, you know, there was this kind of like, complimentary addiction cycle that was going on, that was playing out between the two of us that I had no awareness of, but you know, was introducing all of this chaos into the relationship. And so like, a lot of the funnier dating stories. They're actually kind of sad to look back on now, because there was a lot of underlying addiction in some form or another that I was gravitating towards, and they were also gravitating towards me in that same way.

Danny Mulvihill  1:19:43  
Yeah, let's go back to the MDMA assisted therapy, because you have experience here. I'm personally interested in it and I think a lot of other people are. One question that I was thinking as you were describing, just the very first time is.. so you take the substance, you have an eye shade on, you have noise cancelling headphones. So at the risk of, you know, criticizing the therapist, what are they actually doing aside for making sure you don't hurt yourself or something?

David O'Connor  1:20:17  
I mean, it's essentially that. So the person there is not a therapist. It, it can be. And I think like, they're still figuring out this process

Danny Mulvihill  1:20:31  
Sure

David O'Connor  1:20:31  
Like the big nonprofit in this space is called maps. So multidisciplinary assistance, assistance for psychedelic or association for psychedelic studies. 

Danny Mulvihill  1:20:44  
Yeah. 

David O'Connor  1:20:44  
And they're really the front runner for all of the research, like, figuring out the processes for how this should work, like what the frequencies, dosages, all of that stuff should be and they're trying to make. I mean, they do a lot of work on the legalization front and the lobbying front. But really, they're right now trying to train more traditionally qualified psychotherapists to facilitate these sessions. But

Danny Mulvihill  1:21:18  
so in that case, maybe part of why in your particular experience, the person was, didn't feel qualified to like, maybe talk you through these things, it was more just like I'm going to, I've seen this medicine work, I'm going to hold the space for you to do it. And maps is working towards, I guess, evolving the process to where maybe there would actually be some discussion happening through it or,

David O'Connor  1:21:43  
Right, so they're essentially trying to make a more formal clinical practice, I think. Whereas going into my first session, I knew that this person was not a therapist. And you know, the, the title that gets bestowed onto this person most frequently is either facilitator or guide. But it's kind of difficult to judge where the process will end up. Because mostly, at least the goal as it has been spelled out to me right now is, when the person is doing these sessions, they're trying to do deep inner work. And what that means is, almost everything is happening internally. And so to go back to your question, what is this person doing? Essentially, they're trying to take care of all of your external needs, so that you can just focus, right, so they're not trying to talk to you or like, ask you questions or like, ask you how you're feeling as the session is going on? You're supposed to just be monitoring that or regulating that yourself. And essentially, they're just trying to make sure like.. are you warm enough? Like, is the temperature in the room okay? Like, do you need a blanket? Do you need help making it to the bathroom? Like, are you going to vomit? Like, all of the external stuff, but mostly, they're just there to make sure that you are okay. And that, like, the process is not re traumatizing you. But

Danny Mulvihill  1:23:23  
Yeah

David O'Connor  1:23:23  
But, but mostly, like, even in sessions, where, like, my second session I mentioned had been very extreme and very intense and almost traumatic. And in that session, the facilitator just trusted that I knew what I was doing. And that like, I already had this strong therapeutic base, and just trusted to stay hands off and not tried to intervene in the process at all. And it actually ended up being incredibly productive for me, but like, essentially, they're not trying to be part of your experience at all. They're just trying to make sure that everything is okay for you in the outside world. So that if they're taking care of all that you can take care of everything on the inside world.

Danny Mulvihill  1:24:14  
Yeah, that's, that's helpful to understand that. With that awareness now, then, what would you say for somebody who, you know, has listened this far? And it's like, okay, I'm, I need to do this myself. What are some of the other details that you think would be important for them to get a handle on, aside from identifying and finding the person who can guide or facilitate? What are the other important parts of this? I guess, process?

David O'Connor  1:24:45  
I'm really glad you asked that because I.. my mind went to the segue anyway, but it I think this is really important for people to know in psychedelic medicine. So I had mentioned earlier on in this interview about feeling very conflicted about these very public figures making the claim about psychedelic therapy that it's like doing 10 years of therapy in one setting. And that leads people to think of psychedelics as like a magic pill or panacea. And that's not true at all, that the important thing is not the medicine itself, the most important thing is what's what's called integration. So, integration is doing therapy, meditation, journaling, all of the traditional integrating -- integrative practices following the session, because a lot of stuff comes up in these sessions, like, essentially, you're turning on the firehose for information. And it's really not possible to get to everything just because so much comes up. But usually, with every session, you will get a lot of big ticket items. And you know, like, especially in my case, but in many people's case, some of this information is really shocking, and really upsetting and really challenging. And if you just tried to see that stuff, and then go about your day to day without really like processing it, nothing is going to change for you internally. Like you still need to have some sort of integration practice so that you can really start to work through the takeaways that you get in the sessions. So, something that was really focused on before I did my first session, and also in the subsequent sessions was the facilitator made sure that I had a relationship with a talk therapist beforehand. And if you are thinking of doing this, I would recommend that you already have a relationship with a mental health professional before starting your psychedelic journey. And I would also say, in my case, even though I felt that block of not being able to go past a certain point with talk therapy, it also stuck to me, when I started psychedelics that I was able to make, what I would say is very quick progress, because I had already laid that groundwork with talk therapy, but trying to do psychedelics, with no integration practice, to me is entirely futile, because you will really hinder your progress, if you are not trying to integrate that with a, and you know, honestly, a lot of time make sense of that with a mental health professional. They are used to holding space for people and they're used to talking through these challenging adverse experiences. And with psychedelics, you open the door for that information, but it's not the same as processing it. It's, it's really just the first step, which is awareness and understanding, but to actually process it and make peace with that and heal from it. You need to have your integration practice.

Danny Mulvihill  1:28:26  
Yeah, I, I'm glad that we highlighted that. How much preparation do you think somebody should do? What if somebody hasn't had a talk therapist? And they come across this information? They're like, Okay, I want to do that. Just from your personal recommendation, they should have a pre-existing relationship with a mental health professional, how long.. you know, like, what would you say is maybe kind of the minimum that they should be working with that person before they actually go into the medicine?

David O'Connor  1:28:58  
Right? Yeah, I think it's very subjective. And I would also say, I think, the question before that would be, What is your motivation for doing psychedelics? Like, if you're, if you're really just trying to hack the process and get the breakthrough, I think you're probably not setting yourself up for success. So I think the way that I would look at it, and, you know, this also applied to me, I would say, like, what is the.. what's the rush? Or like, what is the impetus for doing it? Like, do you need to do this right now? Or can you spend more time front loading it with a therapist and like, are you maybe able to make some strides in traditional talk therapy before going down this road because it's a big step like you are really cranking up the volume on your inner work? And I don't think that decision should be taken lightly by a lot of people. And my personal feeling on it is that -- that is the way that a lot of people are interpreting it right now. But I would say like, for me, the minimum would be one month of talk therapy at like a weekly frequency. But even then, that is like, the bare, bare minimum that and I mean especially if you have done no talk therapy before, I think like you would be pretty ill equipped going into a therapy session or a medicine session. But also, I would be somewhat skeptical as to what you could really unlock in your first session, if you had not done that inner work. But then also, I think, if you have done a significant amount of therapy before, and you don't have a therapeutic practice, going in probably a month is fine. But I would say, for someone who doesn't, ideally, at least three months, and even better, like six months before going on this. And I would also say like, unfortunately, this is not true across the field, but make sure that the therapist that you're working with is also cool with you doing Psychedelics because I know of some people where the therapist was.. they had moral or ethical issues with it and then did not sign off on the person doing it. It complicated the relationship. And, you know, again, I don't have an issue with that. I think it's just something that the person should be clear with a therapist before embarking both on a relationship with them and also on this journey of psychedelic healing.

Danny Mulvihill
Yeah, that's helpful, even for my own personal thing because I tend to be more on the let's just jump in and get in there and 

David O'Connor 
Right

Danny Mulvihill   
Do a kind of like, we spoke about kind of before we started recording, the more I'm afraid of a thing to a certain point, the more I'm gonna like turn into it.

David O'Connor 
Yup

Danny Mulvihill   
And so it's good to kind of tamper that or balance that with knowing that there's probably some prep work that should be done. And even in really the only psychedelic assisted therapeutic.. I guess, experience I've had -- which was very informal. I definitely didn't do enough preparation, and it had almost no post work. And obviously, I got less out of that than I had hoped for. I think I had kind of been hoping for that magic pill that we all look for like oh, just do this and it'll solve everything. And we'll probably dig into this more as we turn the tables. 

David O'Connor   
Right

Danny Mulvihill   
Highlight with or interview me but one thing and I'll just say it now so that maybe you remember to bring it up that I find is I've only had like in my adult life, one experience of a therapist, and it was through like one of those online platforms. 

David O'Connor   
Right

Danny Mulvihill   
And the problem I had is my natural tendency to want to make people like me. That number one, I focused on getting along with him. And it also led to where I kind of found myself holding back and not wanting to be judged, which is so stupid of me. Like the one setting where the whole reason you're paying for this is to like bring these things up. I noticed myself not doing it. 

David O'Connor   
I think that's very common for people and

Danny Mulvihill   
Really? 

David O'Connor   
Yeah, I mean, definitely true of me. And you know, like, again, I wanted to do that work and like I was very interested in and you know the statement is kind of ridiculous to me now but like being good at therapy. And but you know, at the same time, like I didn't know how to do that. And like all I had was the tools that I went in with which you know, like yourself I was like, very hesitant to show up as my whole self like I was very ashamed of like certain parts of myself. So like, I was like, Okay, well, I just won't mention them during therapy because then we'd have something to talk about. And like it's, it's completely wacky to look back at it now. But like, I wasn't really aware of that at the time like it just -- like it felt very natural for me to just not talk about this stuff and like just to focus on more surface level stuff because that was the area of safety that I was used to operating and just like turning the volume way down and just not rocking the boat because this was like the defense mechanism that I had to just kind of like get me through my day to day

Danny Mulvihill   
Given your personal experience with both talk therapy and psychedelic assisted therapy, and what we just highlighted this tendency to hold back a little bit. Can you make any just personal recommendations on how somebody could maybe one, select the right therapist for themselves and two, ensure that they're minimizing that tendency to hold back?

David O'Connor  
Yeah, it's, it's kind of funny because I think probably from the way I've talked about it, it.. it seems like I'm a big fan of talk therapy, but at the same time, I actually have a lot of issues with the field and I think it gets maybe it gets a lot of things wrong as maybe not the right way to put it but like essentially I do not think I would be able to get to the place I am now with traditional talk therapy or would take have taken like four or five decades maybe. And you know, like I think people look at the TV interpretation of therapy and it's like somebody explains a problem and then their therapist gives them advice on the right thing, thing to do and then they execute that thing and all the problems are solved and show's over for the week. And I think that's that's the wrong expectation for people going into therapy. Like the therapist is really not there to give you advice. They're just there to hold up a mirror and hold space and that is a very difficult path for a lot of people to navigate because they really just want the answer and someone holding up the mirror to them is not necessarily intuitive for them as to what the right move is. 

Danny Mulvihill   
Yeah.

David O'Connor   
And like even in talking about like my own experiences pre psychedelics like there were a lot of times where I would explain a situation to the therapist and you know, like they're, again, just holding space in a non judgmental way. And, like I was completely wrong, and my actions are like, completely out of pocket and they're not like hey, like you're the asshole in this situation. They're just like, you know, okay, like, tell me more about that, etc, etc. And I would not know that like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. Just because like, it wasn't explicitly spelled out for me, but then also like, at the same time, looking at it compassionately, no one had given me those tools like Where was I supposed to pick up what the right thing to do was? So, I think like therapy itself is also very imperfect. But I think I think both are very necessary and like, I don't think psychedelics are going to replace talk therapy and the question of, you know, how do I set myself up for success with therapy is one that a number of friends have asked me and I think.. something that people, I think, maybe have trouble getting their head around is like, there are bad therapists like the same way as there are bad.. anything. Bad dentists, bad contractors, bad anything and like, going to the first therapist that you find, it's like marrying the first person you date. Like you have to essentially interview a lot of different therapists to find the one who first of all, you work well with whose worldview is somewhat similar to yours, but you know, you also don't want like a yes man. 

Danny Mulvihill   
Sure

David O'Connor   
You do want the person who you're able to have a reasonable conversation with but who's also going to challenge you and but it's also going to bring what needs to be brought out of you. So I would say definitely, interview a lot of therapists and the more, the better. Like a lot of them do an intro session or a screening call where they'll do like 30 or 45 minutes, and I would take advantage of that if you can and also like I understand that cost is an issue for a lot of people. It's not a.. an insignificant consideration. But I think if this is something that you are interested in best in investing in, I would say definitely see as many therapists for the first time as you can before making your decision, but then also, and this is a somewhat broader conversation that I'm maybe not qualified to weigh in on but the modality of therapy that you do is also important. So, you know, people I would say like, broadly. The one that would benefit most people is probably CBT-- cognitive behavioral therapy. For more trauma related stuff, something like EMDR is good. For like deeper seated issue, psychoanalysis is good -- and that is very complex. And I'm not the person to explain which therapy style is right for you. And I think where a lot of people kind of get shafted is they go to the wrong modality for what they are dealing with. Like a part of the complication there is also that a lot of people are not aware of what it is exactly that they're dealing with. They just know that something feels off internally. So that is also one of my issues with the field is like it is very difficult for people to know which modality they should pursue and then you know, they also have to have the good fortune of having a good practice practitioner for that modality in their area that's also affordable to them. So what I would say is on top of and maybe before interviewing all these therapy -- therapists, you need to know what the different modalities are when it comes to therapy and try to discern even if it's imperfectly which modality seems best suited for you.

Danny Mulvihill   
Yeah, a really good answer. I mean, not the I'll do this, this, this, step A, step B. But probably the most accurate way that we can approach that it almost highlighted in my mind the opportunity for this whole new industry or field to blossom of like therapy brokers, like 

David O'Connor 
Yeah

Danny Mulvihill   
An introduction like so I could just go talk to you and, and know that like, you're not ultimately going to be my therapist, so I can ask the questions that maybe I'm a little embarrassed like I could just be like how do I know if this is the right fucking guy for me? Like.. what like -- and learn about the different modalities and they can be like, what's wrong with you? What's fucked up? and they don't have to like shine a mirror on you. They can say like, that's bullshit, right? You need like, and can 

David O'Connor   
Like a matchmaking session

Danny Mulvihill 
So a little bit different experience, you know, where you can maybe have like, even a couple of months of sessions with somebody to learn about what therapy is and all that. And then start to, you know, link you up with people.

David O'Connor   
Yeah, I mean, this is the thing that I hear a lot from people as I interview them on my podcast and then also in just talking to people it's one of my biggest issues with the field is that it first of all, it's very intimidating for me. 

Danny Mulvihill   
Yeah. 

David O'Connor   
And I totally get that but also, even if you do want to start down that road, it is very difficult to know, what is the right thing for you and then also, where do you start like how do you find the right person, etc, etc. And the answers to those questions are incredibly complex, compared to a lot of other endeavors where like you said, you could just do the like, eight step wikiHow. Or like, and for me, that is one of the ways where they have not really served the public well or like they're doing a disservice to the general public where people either want help with their mental health or they don't realize yet that they do have an issue and I don't think the dots are connected. Enough for people in terms of like, okay, here is when you should see a therapist and also, here's the right type of therapist for you and like, in that modality, here's the type of therapist that will work best for you.

Danny Mulvihill  
Yeah, I think your other analogy or metaphor is really good to. You know, just going into one therapist and then committing for a decade is kind of like marrying the first person you date. It's unlikely to result in success. Man, you know we're gonna record another episode so let's wrap this one up. I almost forgot to ask this question, which would have been tragic because I'm super interested in your answer. Before I ask it, though, is there anything else that you'd hoped we would talk about, that we didn't touch on? That you don't think we'll talk about in the episode right after this?

David O'Connor   
Well, you did start off by saying that you didn't think we would talk about jiu jitsu much. I think there is a whole conversation there. And you know, I'll probably say that from my podcast, but I'm interested in the answer like there is this entire notion of jiu jitsu as therapy, and I really 

Danny Mulvihill   
I'm glad you brought that up. 

David O'Connor   
Yeah, I'm really curious as to your thoughts on it. But my, my thoughts were changed about nine months ago by a psychedelic session and I now think completely differently about that.

Danny Mulvihill  
I'm glad you asked that question. So I'll start by saying that. I think that's bullshit. But I think it comes from just a massive misunderstanding of what therapy is and I think broadly, generally, usually, when people think of therapy, they think the goal is therapy makes you feel better. And then that very basic, perhaps inaccurate description of therapy, then jiu jitsu is therapy. It tends to make you feel better. But there are a couple of different reasons why, I think the most meaningful and realistic reason that jiu jitsu makes you feel better, aside from like, doing something physical, which a lot of people don't, you know, so many of us have sedentary jobs and careers and whatnot and you know, our just -- our modern society is very good at taking physical labor out of the equation. And so there's that aspect which is good for people, but it's actually that, especially the first few years when you're learning, you cannot help but be present, especially in sparring. You have to pay attention, and most of us like meditation, awareness is hard. And jujitsu is like a shortcut. You will go to class and for 60 minutes, you're going to think about what you're doing in the moment that you're doing it and I think that is a really positive therapeutic experience for people. Then there's also the part where eventually you get good at it. And like something I've noticed really the past let's say six months like could have been longer could have been less time is I have noticed in open mats live sparring that.. that hasn't been as natural to me to be in a moment. I have like enough natural experience and talent that I can go through a role and I don't have to be focused. I can just like survive or even attack and thrive and when, for lack of a better word, without having to be actively thinking about it. I've even had roles with people where like, I'll have their back or something. I'll be like, Who is this? Like, whoa, that's fucking weird, right? You know, like, maybe I was a little stone to that day or something. But like, how did I forget the person that I'm trying to choke? 

David O'Connor   
Maybe you could just whisper in their ear, like, hey tell me something about yourself.

Danny Mulvihill  
Hey, what's your aim? So and in that sense, and even what I've noticed, like the past few months since I started working again, and has been intellectually taxed and mentally taxing having to learn so much new stuff, is that jiu jitsu can be just like a TV show. And it's an escape. I can go there. Because I'm not going to think about all the stuff I have to do, you know, like, or maybe things at home are chaotic. You know, the house is a mess. The kids are going bananas like I can go somewhere else and be completely disconnected from that. You know, like, my phone is in my bag, I'm not gonna get a text even like I cannot be interrupted. So it can be an escape. To answer your question. This idea of jiu jitsu is therapy. I mean, jiu jitsu is probably good for you, for the most part, like, we can all find a way to do something wrong. But.. but no, it's not -- like it.. maybe it's a part of the equation for you. And obviously, I have a bias and I would say, do jiu jitsu but this phrase jiu jitsu therapy, I think is just bullshit. Personally, in my experience, what do you think about it? And what happened in that psychedelic experience for that whole of it all shifted?

David O'Connor   
So I would say I took the same stance as you and you know, to zoom out like one of my own issues is, I have or had this, like, baked in perception and like, people are doing therapy wrong. Like I'm, I'm doing therapy right. Like all these millennials talking about, like, posting memes about what the therapist told him. It's like they're not doing therapy right. Like they're just going through the motions. And you know, when you look at a lot of like, these jiu jitsu meme pages and stuff like that, like they one that I used to see a lot was like, you know, what most people think of when they think about going to therapy, and it's like, you know, guy lying down, cardigan, writing notes. And then it's like, what I think of when I go to -- going to therapy, and it's like a guy in a GI or like, you know

Danny Mulvihill   
Yeah

David O'Connor  
He's choking somebody, whatever it is, and I feel like that is so stupid like that is not therapy. Like you are just avoiding your problems and you are thinking you're going to therapy, but you're not going to therapy, you're not working through shit. Like I'm doing the real work. You are not. I had this psychedelic experience in December of last year, and it was a much more gentle experience compared to my other sessions. And you know, that was, I think, a very intentional reset. There's this phrase you know, that's a little bit woowoo in the space that was like, the medicine will take care of you like it won't give you anything you can't handle and a lot of my previous sessions had been really extreme and this is a much more gentle experience and it started up with remembering this guy who I used to train with in Washington, and you know, I hadn't thought about this guy in years and like he was not even like a significant part of my life. Like I wasn't even good friends with this guy, but he was a pro fighter. And he used to have me be one of his jiu jitsu training partners because he was like a bigger guy. And I was, you know, one of the larger people in this gym so I was able to give them a different look and after we would roll you know, I was a fucking PM at Microsoft, like I'm not gonna set the fighting world on fire and he would be very gracious with his time afterwards where like, he was a lot better grappler than me and he would give me this like, feedback about like, Hey, you should do this better. And then you know, like, when you did this, that was the right thing to do, etc, etc. And I was like, transitions like, Oh, that was really cool that like, even though this was not something that I was seriously pursuing, but he still was generous with his time and like gave me this good advice and allowed me to get better. And then that shifted to thinking about fighting gyms in general, and probably in the same way as you like, I've been around fighting gyms for a very long time, like 15 years, give or take, and there's a lot of I'll just say like, there's a lot of weird people in fighting gyms. And the session, or like, the kind of sentiment started off with like, you know, Jujitsu or like fighting is not therapy, like people are just trying to avoid the problems. And there are people in fight gyms where like, they're there to hurt people. And then there's people who are there to be hurt. And there are people who are there who are trying to reclaim their, their strength or like their confidence after something bad has happened to them. And there's also people who are trying to cling to that, you know, when they used to be dangerous, and now their physicality is fading, and there's this entire spectrum of experiences and then that's shifted to like, oh, yeah, okay. This is a form of therapy because they're trying to do something active to work through these problems compared to and you know, like.. I don't really have a big issue with this, but like, compared to somebody in a bar where like, they're just drinking through their problems and there's no real processing or turnaround like, these people are actively trying to move their healing forward. And I was like, okay, like, in that like, I can see a case to be made for jiu jitsu a therapy, but then also like, there was this realization that people in fight gyms are my tribe, like, even though you know, I wouldn't say I'm necessarily very good at jiu jitsu, and like I've definitely dipped in and out of it. The people who gravitate towards jiu jitsu are oftentimes people with very similar backgrounds to me like a lot of people who were bullied or just like grew up in very adverse environments. And you know, there's that shared experience or that trauma bonding there of like, just the type of people who show up in five gyms, like I, identify a lot with them. And you know, it was what brought me back to jiu jitsu was like, oh, I should. I made a lot of very good friends in Washington and and in Ireland through jiu jitsu, and I was like, Okay, I should restart jiu jitsu and start to find more of those people. And you know, now you and I are sitting. So yeah, like it -- and you know, exactly like you said, you know, it is doing something active. And I was watching a podcast with Peter Thiel recently and he was talking about like, the biggest indicator of longevity and the biggest indicator of happiness are physical activities and our promoter of happiness and physical activity. So, you know, you have all of these psychological benefits, but then also you have these chemical and physical benefits to doing jiu jitsu too. So I think the summary there is that I have taken a lot more pleasant or positive view of jiu jitsu as therapy and I now sign off on people doing it. If they're not going to go see a full talk therapist or take a bunch of drugs, then definitely jiu jitsu can be a form of therapy, or at least therapeutic for people. 

Danny Mulvihill   
Yeah, in light of your more nuanced and thoughtful response. I rescind my comment. That's a bullshit statement. It's like anything, you know, you can.. you can get therapeutic aspects from it. And certainly, you know, if you compare it to other methods of coping or escape, it's probably going to be higher up on the list in terms of benefit, you know, side effects that are positive for life for sure. Glad you brought that up. Good one. All right. Let's wrap this up. So if you could push a button or snap your fingers and everybody tomorrow on this entire planet would wake up with a new belief instilled in their mind, in their being, what would it be and why?

David O'Connor   
I think something that I have started to make peace with is that it's a little bit zen maybe, but like, I think good things and bad things have to exist and like, even though a lot of my experience is traumatic or tragic, I still have a sense that these things somewhat needed to happen because of the factors that existed, and those people that caused that. And, you know, that was the only way it was going to come out but also because of these adverse experiences that I have been able to get this direction to go in a healthier way. And so I think, old me would have wanted to believe that there being no bad in the world, but instead, what I would like people to know or to believe, is that pretty much no matter your situation, doing the work works. And if you are looking for healing, just know that it is possible to rebound from any situation and I have talked to a number of people on my podcast who were at the very brink of some really bad stuff. And if you are interested in healing and you go looking for it and you are committed to doing the work, you can change your life for the better and it is possible to get yourself to a better place if you put the work in.

Danny Mulvihill 
I love it, man. That's well said. Thank you for you know, sitting here today talking to me about this, sharing your background and your story, which was probably tough and I commend you for the courage to not only come into my podcast and talk about it, but start your very own. And you know what it, I don't like this phrase but like almost let it be a part of your identity and not be ashamed of it and probably help a lot of other people know that.. it's okay, you know, it's, it's just life and you know, in the way you ended it to say that if you're committed and and you look for the solution and you put in the work then you can overcome damn near anything.

David O'Connor  
Yeah. And I also wanted to say thank you for not just having me today but also, again, being an inspiration for starting my own podcast and also pushing me to choose a launch date but also, thank you for getting back behind the mic and providing this opportunity for me to tell my story and I do hope it helps people

Danny Mulvihill  
Absolutely. I think it will. Thank you everybody for listening. Pretty sure we'll see you next week. Peace.