Cosmos

Welcome back to the show, my fellow Astoria Americans. Today’s guest is Sherry Rais. Sherry is the CEO and Co-founder of Enthea and has helped dozens of startups, nonprofit organizations, academic research institutions, and small businesses raise funds, operate according to their mission and values, and implement processes that enhance their overall efficiency.

Sherry believes in living and working in alignment with purpose and is currently focused on expanding access to psychedelic-assisted therapy to alleviate human suffering. Anthea is a licensed third-party administrator of health plan benefits with the mission to provide as many people as possible safe and affordable access to psychedelic therapy. 

Before this, Sherry consulted with the United Nations and World Bank for over ten years. Implementing poverty reduction programs at the national level in over 35 countries, she holds a master’s degree in public policy and administration from the London School of Economics and a bachelor’s degree in psychology and international development from McGill University. She also completed the certificate in Psychedelic therapies and research from CIIS in 2021. 

In addition to being NTH CEO, she’s the executive director of the Boston Psychedelic Research Group and a strategic advisor for the California Institute of Integral Studies. 

Sherry is extraordinary, and I’m glad and honored to have her on the show. Sherry, are you there?

Sherry

I’m here. Thanks for having me, Cosmos, and thanks for that lovely introduction.

Cosmos

Thank you so much, Shay, for taking the time to do this podcast with me. So, Sherry, could you tell me in the audience a little bit more about yourself, your background, and how you got started?

Sherry

Sure.

I grew up in Toronto, Canada, the daughter of immigrants. My dad is from Pakistan, and my mom is from Tanzania. Being the daughter of immigrants in a place like Canada had a huge effect on me. I think about my Ethos and my mission in life. 

From a very early age, I became aware of how lucky I was to have grown up in Canada because I thought about what it would have been like growing up where my parents were from. And that led me to want to dedicate my time to being of service and helping others. 

So, I pursued a career in International Development, as you read in my bio. I consulted with the UN and the World Bank for ten years, and in that work, I was focused on poverty reduction. So, I worked with countries To design programs to help them reduce poverty. For those ten years, I was very nomadic so that most people would do that work based out of New York or DC, and perhaps they would go on a mission for a few weeks a year. I decided to be fully abroad. I would come home for maybe ten days a year. 

For about 355 days a year, I would be worldwide and mostly in resource-constrained environments. So, it is mostly Africa and parts of South America. Yeah. And at that time, I’m Sherry, and I’ll tell you a long story. If my goal was to reduce poverty, I saw that you can’t fully address poverty without addressing it.

Cosmos

No, we’re all for it. Go ahead.

Sherry

With the health, like the 2GO, hand in hand. So, I began to look for solutions to address the mental health crisis because I was witnessing it, and I saw that most of the ways we’re treating mental health don’t work. 

And throughout this show, if it makes sense, I can go through what I mean, but just a broken system where we’re masking symptoms and not addressing the root cause of heart trauma. I then stumbled upon the data around psychedelic therapy, which, again, I’m happy to share more about. Still, I was blown away to see the opposite effect compared to traditional methods of treating mental health. 

These medicines are psychedelic. It seems extremely effective with very few side effects, and the more I read about it, the more I’m very data-driven, so the more data I see, the more I know. Intrigued I was and ultimately. After seeing for sure how transformative these medicines are, I decided to leave my very fulfilling, high-paying, rewarding career in International Development and become an entrepreneur and start a psychedelic company. So that’s. In a nutshell, my story.

Cosmos

Well, Sherry, so just to elaborate on this, right, what was your strategic vision from the time you were in the UN working on these poverty reduction programs to the point where you decided that this is what you wanted to do and, like, how did the connection between quality and mental health, health help bring that about? Because for the sake of the audience? Like it’s a. It’s an interesting connection to how mental health is affected. 

So, what was your strategic vision that led to the moment you found your company, Anthea?

Sherry

I’m not sure I would say there was. I might regret saying that I said this later, but I’m not sure if there was so much strategic vision as there was. I was always following a combination of, like, you know, intuition and purpose. So, I’m very intentional with everything that I do. I may not be strategic or always have the most long-term vision, but With everything I do, I try to live spiritually with my purpose: to know God, and in life, I would serve others. At the micro level, every action comes with those kinds of intentions. 

And so, in my work on poverty reduction, it wasn’t like a long strategic vision. It was more so. I knew that I wanted to. Help others in countries. That has, you know, less privilege, less resources available. So, I pursued a career at the UN and the World Bank. When I was doing that work, I knew I wanted to be. I intentionally wanted to be in some of the most difficult countries. I intentionally said, like, I don’t need to be home. Like the fun years, I don’t need to be with friends and family, even during my 20s. I want to be of service, which was very intentional. Then, when I started seeing the overlap, like the projects that I was working on, 

We should have, in theory, gotten people out of poverty because we were giving people money every month, sort of like welfare or universal basic income. And sometimes, that money we gave them wasn’t a loan. 

So sometimes, it was never a loan. Nobody had to pay it back, and sometimes, it was combined with education, basic healthcare benefits, and access to some infrastructure to help get a job—these kinds of things. 

And in theory, if you’re giving people money every month and you’re maybe also giving them some food supplements and some education and access to healthcare, After two years, they shouldn’t be in poverty just by definition, right? And you could see, depending on the country, something like 50% of people, 60% of people, 40 to 60% of people still in poverty. And although I didn’t do a rigorous clinical trial, it didn’t take long to make the connection well. You know, 40 to 60% of people in these countries are suffering from a severe mental health issue, and we’re not doing anything to address that. 

And you’ll see the same, you know, again, I’m talking a lot, but like, if you in America, look at our homeless population, right, the. The prevalence of mental health conditions amongst people experiencing homelessness is way higher than amongst other populations. Seeing that connection again, going back to, like, I’m not sure what strategic vision, I’m just like, OK, I need to solve this problem. I’m trying to reduce poverty. These people are not getting help with money. They have mental health issues. We’re not addressing them. How do we address them? It’s, you know, just this kind of iterative problem-solving process.

Well, you read studies on antidepressants. They work well for 15% of the people that take them. 58% of the people who take them have moderate to severe side effects. Most people drop their antidepressants, and half of them drop them within two months. Because of that side. Effects. You look at something like talk therapy. 

First of all, it is very hard to implement in a resource-constrained environment. Imagine the kinds of countries I’m working in, which are very hard to implement regularly. Talk therapy. Even in America, we have access issues, but it works well for 50% of people who do it. After 15 to 20 sessions, that’s also not like a scalable solution. Most people won’t be able to afford or have the patience for 20 therapy sessions, right? 

And so, I just kept looking, like I just kept thinking there. It has to be some sort of answer. Some sort of answer is to look at all of the other ways we’ve advanced, and it is in science and technology, the fact that we’re on this zoom, right? Now.

I just stumbled upon all of this evidence that has been there for decades. And also, millennia because, you know, in many civilizations, people have been using psychedelics spiritually for healing for thousands of years. But in science, we’ve been studying it since the 60s or 50s. 

And I stumbled upon all of this, and it was like, OK, here is a solution. Why aren’t we offering this? And then again, I go down the rabbit hole of, “Well, this is what happened. Drugs get regulated, and they become scheduled substances. There is a war on drugs. OK, now the policies are a little bit lifting. The FDA has given some of these substances. Breakthrough status, which means they’re prioritizing their approval. OK, what can we do to get more people access to this?

 Because all of the science tells us it’s effective. Now we have the problem of access. I don’t know if that. That helps. I’m walking through you through the process. It’s intentional every step of the way, but it’s not so strategic. It’s just like I’m always thinking about how to help as many people as possible, be of service, and reduce suffering. 

So even, you know, a year from now, not to say that I would abandon my company.

And it’s very much like my baby, but a couple of years from now, if I can’t even imagine it right now, but if something else? You know, it comes to me where there’s an opportunity to help even more people. I may pursue that road because that’s my compass.

Cosmos

Sherry, would you just like to share with us? It’s fascinating because you worked at the UN and the World Bank and helped with these poverty-reducing programs. And then you came across you stumbled across this saying that even though you can give a lot of people universal basic income or buy free money, they’re still going to be in poverty because it’s connected to mindset and mental health. 

But what is interesting, Sherry is that you found out that psychedelics can be a potential medicine to, like, help combat. Mental trauma, which I find fascinating because I also had been looking into it. But here’s the issue, right? The problem with psychedelics is the negative connotations because it is associated with them. Nixon, 19, in the 1970s, basically put it under the classification of drugs. 

So whenever people hear that, they’re like, oh, is that a drug? And then when they think of that, they’re putting it into the same level as meth or cocaine or something. So, for the sake of the audience, can you elaborate on the differences between psychedelics as a form of mental therapy? The other drugs that people think about when they hear the word drug.

Sherry

Yes, again, and just for the record, I still believe in Universal basic income, which is a great tool. I believe in it and think every country should adopt it. If it was possible, but. Giving money to people does help. It just won’t help everyone. OK, now, to answer your question about the context of drugs, drugs, and psychedelics and this sort of stigma, you’re right. During the Nixon era, there was the whole war on drugs, and psychedelics became reclassified. They became scheduled substances just like cocaine and. That and there are very big differences.

 For one, from a toxicity scale, psychedelics are non-toxic, meaning you can’t overdose from traditional psychedelics, so you don’t hear about you hear about someone having, you know, a very long trip on a psychedelic that you won’t hear about someone overdosing from mushrooms, for example. 

So, they’re not talking. They are sick, and they’re also nonhabitat farming. So we don’t get chemically addicted to traditional psychedelics. And these two things, the fact that they’re non-toxic and non-habit forming, make them in a league of their own compared to things like sugar or caffeine, cocaine, nicotine, and all of those things are very habit forming, very addictive substances. The other thing about traditional psychedelics is the receptors that they work on in the brain. They work on the 5H2A, like a serotonin receptor in the brain. Not to get too sciency, The way antidepressants work is they increase the serotonin in our brain. 

The way psychedelics work is they work on that serotonin receptor so that our brain produces more serotonin because that makes sense, which is, you know, this thing in our brain that’s responsible for feeling happy. And then, you know, coming from a less scientific and more linguistic perspective, words like italics mean mind manifesting. 

So, it’s a very different experience to other drugs where you are. In this altered state, that allows you to, you know, reflect, dissociate. Have a very spiritual experience. Reduce activity in your default mode network in the brain.

So, we’ve now seen what’s going back to science. We’ve now seen with science that psychedelics are special because there’s this area in our brain that, especially with people with a lot of anxiety and depression, is way too active. It’s called the. Well, it’s super active all the time. We all have it. And it’s active in all of us. 

For example, my default mode network is active when I’m going for a walk and reflecting. That’s good. I should be reflecting. But if you have too much anxiety and depression, it’s too active all the time, and you tend to ruminate and tend to focus on negative thought patterns and psychedelics. You’re really beautiful because, unlike other drugs. They allow for that activity to go down, and they allow for neuroplasticity so you can have more connections in the brain. You can have a reset and form new positive thought patterns that, if done correctly, will lead to lasting change. 

So yes. There’s a whole lot of stigma. Uh, where, you know, there is this commercial where the egg was in the frying pan, and it’s like, this is your brain on drugs. It’s like it’s you. Because we got the case when it comes to, like, that’s if anything, it’s the opposite, because for most people, even people without a mental health issue, there’s evidence to show that it leads to creativity and. You know, optimization and closer connection to loved ones and nature. So, it is this beautiful setting up your brain rather than frying an egg.

Cosmos

Main Sherry, there have been so many studies conducted, right? People go to these Ahoskie ceremonies or peyote ceremonies, right, where they are like shamans. And then they go through the ceremony, and they drink this liquid psychedelic, right? And they go through these altered states of consciousness. 

And they have something away from which what I’ve heard. It is called ego death, where they lose their identity and feel this oneness and connection with everything. A lot of people have reported that it has transformed their lives completely. They have a spiritual purpose and were very selfish and materialistic before, but now they have become kinder and more compassionate due to those life-altering experiences. But I don’t know. What’s your perspective on these things, and how do they influence you in the long term?

Sherry

Yeah, so it’s really interesting. I forget the exact statistic, but it’s a greater than 50% number of people who participated in psychedelic trials and did psychedelic therapy even decades ago. They end up reading it in their top three life experiences. And this is like, again, for getting the statistic. But it’s greater than 50%. They put it up there with getting married and having a kid, so it’s.

Cosmos

Wow, that is incredible.

Sherry

Is this big? It’s this huge, transformative experience. In fact, because of the studies that were done on psychedelics and, and they’re still being done, they had to come up with a whole new survey for mystical experiences. 

So, when we do, you know, when in academia, when people do studies, they have, like, maybe a scale for depression or a scale for anxiety to measure, as you know, how much depression does someone have? How much anxiety does someone have? But they had to devise something to measure a mystical experience that had never been needed before. 

But it’s because These psychedelics lead to these beautiful, hard-to-explain mystical experiences, and you are correct. People walk away feeling transformed, feeling this ego dead, feeling connected to nature. Often, people will say. 

Even though this wasn’t their intention, it’s not like they were. Suffering from it does help with addiction, but even sometimes, when this is not their intention, people will walk away from a psychedelic experience. They’ll never drink alcohol again, or they’ll never have junk food again. Or that’s not even the problem they were trying to treat. It’s an outcome of how they feel, you know, reset. There is one study that showed this was for treating addiction for smoking cessation. 

That showed 80% of people That They participated in the psilocybin trial, which is the magic mushrooms. You know the ingredient in magic. Mushrooms and these people were, you know, avid smokers. A year later, 80% of them were no longer smoking. I mean, that’s more effective. Anything else that we have for smoking cessation takes many lives and leads to so many health problems. 

So yeah, it’s hard to explain if you haven’t experienced transformative, beautiful experiences, and even some smaller studies show. People conflict. I know right now they’re trying to do a study in Israel with Israeli and Palestinian people to see if it’ll like help bridge, you know, divide. That study hasn’t been done yet, but it’s underway. But there have been other studies in similar situations of people with conflict, like police, police officers, and. Like the people that perhaps committed a crime to sort of bring people together in this way.

Cosmos

Wow. I mean, it’s fascinating, right? It’s a really big subject. But, like the next question I wanted to ask, Sherry is about its connection to mental health. So, you know, in America, a lot of people suffer from mental health, depression, anxiety. Right. 

And the number one thing they used to combat that is using antidepressant drugs. But we also know that. Psychedelic therapy is a very powerful way and a natural way also to heal as well. So, from your perspective, how does psychedelic treatment compare with? The pharmacy industry gives off antidepressant drugs.

Sherry

Oh, so psychedelics are four times more effective than antidepressants. At least, you know, we can look at it depends. You know, there are different things about it. 

So, let’s just speak there. We have traditional psychedelics, which are known, like I said, to work on the 5H2A receptors, so that. Includes UM. Still sipping, so magic mushrooms, MDMA, also commonly known as Molly or ecstasy, and LSD, commonly known as acid. So those are like traditional psychedelics. There are many other psychedelics, POD and mescaline, and ayahuasca, you know.

Cosmos

DMT.

Sherry

Exactly. And then there’s ketamine. There are different opinions on whether it counts as a psychedelic or not. I would say if the definition of a psychedelic is mind-manifesting, then ketamine is psychedelic. I mean, in that case, like, even you know breathwork can be psychedelic because of the mind-manifesting effect, right? However, ketamine works on a different receptor in the brain called the NMDA receptor. 

So, it’s a little bit different mechanism of action. Like a similar effect and how it compares, you said, going back to your original question and comparing it to antidepressants well. One, it only requires a few administrations, so antidepressants. People are often on for years if not decades. Some people I know are on it. Yes, for decades since their teenage years, and people play with dosages and brands, but they’re, you know, on this antidepressant and that antidepressant. And then. As I said, 58% of people have moderate to severe side effects from antidepressants, so often you’ll take your antidepressant, and then you have to take something else to help you sleep because it made you give you insomnia, or you know, it does something to your appetite or you. 

So, you have to take other pills. Psychedelics are not like these few administrations; depending on the psychedelic and your situation, it would be one to six sessions, actually one to four with most psychedelics, and ketamine one to six sessions on average. 

So, it’s not something you keep taking for the rest of your life. It’s not something you take daily; it’s something you do a few times. And it leads to lasting change. I think 33% of people have a greater than 50% reduction in symptoms. With antidepressants, that number is like 70%, with ketamine-assisted therapy. 

So, there’s a huge difference there. 89% of people improve their mental health from pet immune-assisted therapy. And what’s interesting about psychedelic therapy is the one-year follow-up. Depends on the psychedelic—the number. I’m going to say that more than 50% will no longer show signs of whatever their original diagnosis was, whether it’s PTSD or, depression or anxiety. They’ll no longer have that anymore one year later; over 50% of people do psychedelic therapy. So, it’s a game. Danger, and, to me, it is on a whole other level than antidepressants.

Cosmos

Yeah, I mean. Early on, when I mentioned the ceremonies it has done, it was much more effective than many of these antidepressants. Unfortunately, in today’s world, everything is run by money, and the pharmaceutical industry wants to make huge profits. 

Expanding such a thing would be against the interests, but in today’s world, it all comes down to profits.

Sherry

Unfortunately, that is the case, and we see that even with ketamine, so just, you know, for people who don’t know all of these psychedelics. The traditional ones, they’re not FDA-approved yet. So LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, they all have breakthrough status from the FDA, which means that they’ve shown great outcomes and they’re being fast-tracked for approval. The review of NDMA is happening in June, and there’s supposed to be an announcement about its approval in August of this year, so we’re very close. Fingers crossed to yes, but ketamine is available. It’s an FDA-approved medicine as an anesthetic, and to your point about Big Pharma, generic ketamine, which is highly effective, it’s very cheap. It’s about $5 a dose. And so, of course, Big Pharma came and made a brand—a version of ketamine, which costs 6 to $900 a dose.

Which you have to keep doing every week on top of your antidepressants versus the generic ketamine. The protocol is to go off of your antidepressants, do ketamine therapy, and do it one to six times, and most people will no longer be on antidepressants later. But there’s a branded version of ketamine called S Ketamine or sparato.

No, you stay on your antidepressants. You’re now just adding another medicine to take, and you do it every.

Cosmos

So, Sherry, one question I have to ask, right? So, in connection to this, you’ve been in these poverty reduction programs, but then at some point, you found out that mental health has a connection to that. Could you elaborate more on how you discovered that mental health is important to economic prosperity?

Sherry

Yeah, you know, I’m going to elaborate on that, and also, there’s another jump, which I think I didn’t share with the audience. It was like I was doing poverty reduction, and now I have a company that sells employee benefit plans in America, which is, you know, even for me, a big jump and has been a humbling part of my journey. I was very focused on what I needed to be. I even told my story like I was the daughter of immigrants. I felt very privileged growing up in Canada. Like I need to, you know, go to the world and help all these other people worldwide. And I neglected how much. Like mental health is affecting people back home. Back here in North America, it doesn’t discriminate. And it was.

It is very wrong of me to think that this is just a third-world problem, to put it in very explicit terms, and not a first-world problem. I wouldn’t say I like using those terms, but. It’s. You are trying to, like, exaggerate my points.

And So what happened in that jump is I started pitching to these different international organizations that we should be looking at psychedelic therapy in places of conflict, places post-war, in refugee camps. Like, there’s so much. Trauma. We should be looking at psychedelic therapy here. And one of my mentors said, Sherry, like, these are great ideas that you have, but you don’t have one place in the world where people are getting psychedelic therapy at scale. You only have great clinical trials from top-tier universities like Johns Hopkins, right? I don’t have anywhere where people are doing this at scale. 

So how can you possibly propose that we do this in, you know, a refugee camp if we don’t have any model to go off of? And so that is, you know, what led me to be like, oh, I need to solve for this first going back to, like, the lack of long-term strategic vision, there was a hurdle. And I was like, OK, how do I solve that problem? Is anybody offering psychedelic therapy to people at scale? How do you do that?  You have to do it through insurance or benefits Plans. Is anyone doing that? No.

That’s what led me to start my own company. And then, going down that rabbit hole to answer your question, you know some of the links between economic prosperity and how this affects the workplace. Mental health is the number one reason that Gen Yers and millennials leave their jobs untreated. Mental health costs US employers $3.7 trillion a year.

Cosmos

That is a lot.

Sherry

2.7 trillion a year, 60% of our missed work days are due to mental health reasons, like when we call in sick or when we know. We said I’m not coming in today. And then there’s also the problem of not being present when I go to work. I’m not being productive because, you know, my mental health is suffering. 

So I’m, or I’m worried about, a loved one who has a mental health issue. I’m just not focused at work. And so it’s sort of like there’s all of this data I could talk to you all day and give you statistics and numbers all day, but if you think about it from a human level, numbers aside. How would you be able to go out every day? Some people might be able to do it, but when most people think about it, how can you go out every day? Go on a living, succeed at your job, and excel in your career. Grow and take care of your family. Do all of these responsibilities. If you are drowning in a sea of depression, you know, like if you’re not able to function because your depression is so strong or you’re questioning whether or not you have a lot of suicidal thoughts. 

So you’re questioning whether you have the will to live. Going to work every day would make it pretty difficult, right? Unfortunately, this is the reality for millions of people.

Cosmos

Yeah, it is depression is a very real thing, and a lot of people suffer from it in silence. They never really air it out, and they just hold it within. And there has to be a long-term sustainable solution. I do think, while comparing it with antidepressants, that psychedelic therapy is a more effective thing. 

So, about Sherry, what was the greatest revelation and insight you had during your entire career, from the World Bank to starting your company and understanding how mental health and poverty are connected?

Sherry

One thing you said, I’ll answer your question, but one thing you said that I just wanted to know for the audience. Like you said, people are suffering in silence. I talk about this often. The silence sufferers, something we don’t even talk about enough. And you know, I think it needs to be addressed. UM. Up to 60% of people with mental health conditions are treatment resistant, so those people up to 60% actually like no amount of antidepressants or talk therapy is going to work on them. Maybe it will have mild effects, but it won’t cure them. 

And so think about that. Like to me, that’s like that. It hurts so much to think about how they must suffer in silence because they’ve tried these other methods that don’t work. So, they probably feel so broken. Right. And so anyways, for anyone who’s listening right now, who that resonates with and, you know. If that strikes a chord, I just want to say, please. No, you’re not alone. You don’t need to suffer in silence. This is where things like ketamine therapy and psychedelic therapy can be healthy because it’s something that works on treatment-resistant populations. 

So yeah, I wanted to just point that out and then answer your question. Quite truthfully, I don’t. I don’t think there was one huge, specific moment or insight. It was a culmination of everything I had seen. I have worked in dozens of countries in Africa, Asia, and South America. 

There is so much poverty firsthand. I’ve worked with formally incarcerated and homeless people and victims of human trafficking just like a. A life of service. I’ve witnessed a lot, and it was the culmination of this. I have always been trying to find solutions. People stop suffering, and it’s like incomplete. It’s just something you see. It’s incomplete without addressing mental health. And it’s so hard to address mental health because all of the options we have don’t work well. 

I wish I had an AHA moment. I could tell you, but there isn’t. There wasn’t a specific one where I could be like, oh yeah, that’s when I saw it. It’s just everything I saw combined.

Cosmos

So, for those who are suffering from mental health issues and it’s also affecting their job and productivity performance, what is the biggest challenge in your perspective that prevents them from actually getting the right help or like the right tree?

Sherry

Oh, OK. There’s not one big challenge. There are a few ones. There’s still so much stigma. Psychedelics aside, depending on your circle, and maybe in certain circles, like Silicon Valley. It’s like now, OK, to talk about mental health. But in most circles, it’s very much stigmatized. Forgets like that. So, one huge challenge is Stigma. It’s hard to talk about, hard to talk about with our friends, hard to talk about their family members, and hard to talk about with their coworkers. So that’s 1-2 access. 

Most behavioral health therapists, for example, don’t take insurance, so you have to pay out of pocket sometimes, even when you. Do you have insurance, or do you have a therapist that’s covered by insurance? There’s a long wait list, or there isn’t one in your area, so you must drive a long distance. So, access is like another huge barrier. Financially and geographically, the third is efficacy, right?

 So, I feel like I keep hammering on this point, but let’s say you get over this stigma part, and you can get over the taboos around this. And then you get over the access part because you have great insurance and a therapist nearby. Or you have enough money to pay out of pocket. 

So you find this, and then it doesn’t even work like you go to therapy or you get antidepressants, and it doesn’t work. So, we have these challenges of stigma, access, and efficacy. It’s really like a recipe for disaster, right? So, for those listening, I’m so sorry if you’re in that situation. Do know that there are resources to get access to things like deterministic therapy and psychedelic-assisted therapy. If you’ve tried other things that haven’t worked, these treatments are out there.

Cosmos

They’re like, anybody listening to this should never elect. First of all, they should never suffer in silence and be able to get the right resources. So, if somebody who’s listening to this is suffering from depression and silence or won’t want to get help, what resources can they look up or see to take the next steps to solve their issue?

Sherry

There isn’t an A1-size-fits-all approach, but I can share a few resources. Also, if offline people want to find me, they can find me on LinkedIn and message or e-mail me with more questions.

Cosmos

I will ask you that towards the end.

Sherry

But you know, I’m always happy to answer your questions. One, if you’re interested in learning more about psychedelic therapy, I highly recommend the book / Netflix series How to Change Your Mind. If you like reading, it’s a great book by Michael Pollen. If you don’t like reading, they’ve turned it into a four-part Netflix docu-series so you can watch it. 

That’s a great introduction to psychedelic therapy. 2. You can probably find there are ketamine-assisted therapists available all over the country. You can probably find one in your area 1 trick, I would say, is don’t just search ketamine therapy because then you might find a center that just gives you a ketamine infusion, like in an IV. Yep, and then it sends you home, and all of the data tells us that doing it in conjunction with therapy is far more effective. So, Google Ketamine-assisted therapy is available in your city. One great nationwide provider is Skylight Psychedelics. They. Yeah, they’re nationwide, and there’s no other psychedelics that you can legally do in the US aside from ketamine, except for in Oregon, you can do psilocybin.

So, there’s you could look up psilocybin facilities in Oregon, but if you do want to try another psychedelic and it’s you don’t live in Oregon. One great place is Beckley Retreats in Jamaica. They work with psilocybin. The Beyond Ibogaine clinic they’re in Mexico. There are clinics everywhere, so I can’t list them all. But those two are great. There’s a website called retreatguru.com, which finds all of these sorts of retreat centers all over the world. And put them in a comprehensive place. And then, finally, there’s a website called journeyom.com, which helps you find the right psychedelic facilitator, be it in the US or abroad. So that’s a lot of information, but I didn’t even mention my company I just mentioned.

Cosmos

I’m going to ask I’ll. I’ll ask you that in a little bit. Don’t worry, but. But, Sherry, I wanted to ask you something: American identity is about pursuing happiness. So, from your perspective, how should Americans find happiness? What should be their strategy targets? Right now, they’re looking to the outside, to the material world. But you and I both know that there’s a higher state of consciousness out there, which leads to more. Peace. But your perspective on that.

Sherry

So, my perspective is: First, what makes me happy will be very different from what makes the other person happy. So again, it is not an A1-size-fits-all approach. However, my broad advice is: Reflect and think about it. What intrinsically makes you happy?

So, try Again; one makes me happy. It might be different than what makes you happy, right? But at least think about the internal sources of happiness beyond distractions. Because I think in America, you talk about the pursuit of happiness; America is like the land of distractions. You can go your whole life without thinking about what makes you happy. You’re just pursuing distraction—one distraction to the other, to the other, to the other distraction. The other distraction.

Cosmos

I thought you said destruction. Oh. Do you mean distraction?

Sherry

There are so many distractions everywhere. And so yeah, my advice is to turn off the noise and all those distractions. If you like nice and material things, that’s fine, but think about it. Is that really what makes you happy? If that’s great, fine, pursue those things. But.

Cosmos

Many people think that it makes them happy, but it doesn’t. It’s just temporary, right? 

Sherry

True, but it’s like for some few people that might make them happy, which is fine, but it’s like, take the time to reflect on, like, if I turn off all the noise, if I turn away, all the distractions like what is like, intrinsically. You know, motivating me, and that may change. It might be something today and something different next month or next year but try to pay attention to that voice and then pursue that right, like, intentionally pursue that.

Cosmos

Yeah, I mean, intrinsic happiness is always better than extrinsic happiness. And when intrinsic means something internal that’s not based on attachment to something external, many people need other people’s validation and approval to be happier. They are attached to material things. They think they will get a new iPhone or a new car. They’ll be happy, but you can’t go outside of yourself.

 You should find something internal, and then you know it will be longer-lasting. I agree with you on that.

Sherry

Yes.

Cosmos

So, Sherry, can you tell your audience more about your company’s premise, how it started, and what it’s about?

Sherry

Yeah, I’m happy to, really, from everything I shared of like, you know, poverty reduction to then trying to sell for mental health and then seeing the benefits of psychedelic therapy and wanting to get more people access and then. And then even I mentioned, like, you know, seeing. That. No one else is offering these treatments at scale. We have big clinical trials, and we have these retreat centers, which I mentioned are also great, but that’s only available for people who can afford to fly to Jamaica and go to a retreat center, right? 

So, the company’s premise is to solve this problem of safe and affordable access to mental health treatments that work. And you know, bearing in mind that most Americans can’t even afford a $500 unexpected expense. And yet, Warning to Americans will experience a mental health serious mental health issue in their lifetime. We have this problem like we can’t afford an out-of-pocket expense, but one in two of us is going to experience a mental health issue, and we don’t have great ways to treat it. The great ways to treat it are very expensive. 

So, my company tries to solve all of this by channeling. Employer funding to mental health treatments that work through employee benefit plans, so the same way that you get dental and vision. And medical benefits from your employer. You should be able to get benefits that work on your mental health, and in the end, not that you know it’s all about this. But since it’s America and is like a capitalist society, this also helps the employer because it improves productivity, absenteeism, and retention issues. And all of that. 

It’s a win for everyone. That’s kind of what my company does. And to make it clear, we create these plans so people can access ketamine therapy as a. OK.

Cosmos

That is amazing. Sherry and I would recommend that anybody looking into the song and looking at this from the audience check this out. And Sherry, are there any projects you’re doing now other than this that you’d want the audience to glimpse into?

Sherry

There are lots of projects, but this is my main. This is my baby, so most of my focus and attention is on this. I consulted a university called the California Institute for Integral Studies that changed Therapists have many programs, but I work on the part that trains therapists to become psychedelic therapists. 

So, if someone is interested in or is a therapist listening and wants to learn how to do this work, they could check that out. But honestly, most of my time is spent growing Anthea and getting more people access to these treatments.

Cosmos

That is amazing, Sherry and Sherry. How can the audience connect with you and learn more about you, your work, and everything you do?

Sherry

They can find me on LinkedIn, Sherry Race. I think there’s only one of me on LinkedIn. They can also e-mail me at Sherry@india.com. Yeah, those are the two ways to reach me.

Cosmos

I appreciate that you took the time to come to this podcast and share your wisdom about mental health, psychotherapy, and its application to reducing poverty and work and improving workforce productivity. All of this is ultimately interconnected on a deep level, you know, and I do hope that you will return to the show later.

Sherry

Thank you so much. This was so much fun.

Cosmos

It’s just fun as well, and I want to conclude this episode by letting my fellow extraordinary Americans know that, hey, look, there’s an extraordinary with each of us. We must awaken it and unleash it until next time. Bye for now.