80: Psychedelics and Sacred Medicine in Nursing-Dr. Stephanie Van Hope DNP, RN, NC-BC

80: Psychedelics and Sacred Medicine in Nursing- Dr. Stephanie Van Hope DNP, RN, NC-BC Transcript

Nicole Vienneau  00:00

Welcome to the Integrative Nurse Coaches in ACTION! podcast. My name is Nicole Vienneau. I am your host, and I’m also a Board Certified Integrative Nurse Coach. And today we have another amazing guest, another inspiring Nurse, who is taking Nurse coaching and moving it forward in her own unique way. 

So we’re going to welcome Dr Stephanie Van Hope. She is from upstate New York, in the Catskills, and she is calling herself a Holistic Psychedelic Nurse Educator. And she is taking Nurse coaching and combining it with psychedelic and the holistic Nursing aspects. 

And I know this is a really up and coming topic for Nurses, for Nurse coaches, for humans in general. And so I’m really looking forward to having Stephanie on the podcast. So, let’s welcome her. 

Stephanie Van Hope  00:56

Thank you, Nicole, happy to be here. 

Nicole Vienneau  00:58

Yay. I’m happy you’re here too. I was just thinking back to, probably, maybe, about, I don’t know, seven years ago or so, when we were at the Integrative Health symposium, I think, in New York City, and I interviewed you way back then. It was just like a flashback to that. 

And a lot has changed since then. So we’re looking forward to having you share a little bit about that, and before we even get to some of the exciting things you’re doing with psychedelic Nursing, we’d love to take a trip down history lane and learn a little bit about why you even became a Nurse. 

Stephanie Van Hope  01:34

Okay, so I became a Nurse about 13 years ago. I had studied psychology in college. I had a bachelor’s in psychology. I knew I wanted to be in the healing, helping professions. That was always clear to me from a young age. My parents are both therapists. My mom is actually Psych NP. 

I never really was that drawn to Nursing, though, but through her example, I did kind of catch on that there’s, like, there’s a lot of things that you can do within Nursing. I think that’s kind of what… one of the reasons I ultimately came to it. But I was kind of doing some soul searching. What do I want to do? 

Do I want to get an advanced degree in psychology? Do I want to study medicine, become a doctor? Do I want to be an acupuncturist or a yoga teacher or what, like, what in this world is right for me? And eventually I settled on Nursing, because I think there was something about like, the hands on, getting down into the nitty gritty with people that I knew was calling to me in some way. 

And I think in retrospect, it was maybe calling to me because that was something I needed to learn from, like a part of myself that I needed to strengthen— that really practical aspect. But also because I knew that you can take Nursing in many different directions. And so I felt like it was a good pathway to just open doors into different possibilities. 

So I went back to school. I got a second bachelor’s in Nursing. And  I’ve always known that I probably wouldn’t take a traditional path. I thought maybe I would go into Psych. It didn’t end up going in that direction. But I’ve definitely like, yeah, I’ve definitely kind of zigged and zagged. 

I started off in acute oncology, and that was a great learning experience, very challenging, and I knew pretty quickly that wasn’t the right environment for me. I loved working with people in intense situations. I loved working with families. 

I didn’t mind working with people who were really sick or dying, but I did mind that it was inside of a approach to care where we didn’t really acknowledge that aspect of it, and didn’t have room as much for the psychosocial and family aspect. 

And so that was hard for me. So I went from there to hospice. I was in hospice for about five years, and that was awesome. I loved hospice. I loved how the center of priorities shifts as a Nurse in hospice. There are medical aspects. 

There’s a lot of medications and a lot of pain medications and different symptom relieving medications, and you have to have good assessment skills, but it’s also equally as important to have meaningful conversations with patients and families and make sure they’re getting the right food that they wanted, and if they want to have a drink before bed, you know, to make sure they have that and get them outside. 

And you know, all of those more human centric things that really should be incorporated into all areas of Nursing, but unfortunately, tend to be more prominent in certain areas, like hospice. So that was a great fit for me. Then I discovered health coaching and took the INCA course, which was an awesome opportunity. 

I was with Barbara Dossey and Susan Luck, so I had the good fortune of studying with them, and that was lovely, along with some other great colleagues and mentors. And I didn’t become a practicing coach right away, but a few years later, I went back to school for a Doctor of Nursing Practice in Integrative Health and Healing, which is a really unique specialty offered by the University of Minnesota, and really aligns with all of my values and passions. 

So I was doing that program, and around that time, I had the opportunity to work as a health coach for an insurance company telephonically. So I did that for five years, which was great. I loved that experience too. That was really an opportunity to meet people where they’re at, so to speak. 

Because sometimes I would be reaching people who, like, wouldn’t otherwise talk to a therapist or even make much time out of their day for themselves, but I would be kind of getting in there and just having, like, quick— some people long sessions and some quick, like, laser coaching sessions. I really enjoyed the populations I got to work with through that. So that was wonderful. 

Then after I graduated, I moved into a position here in my local community as a Nursing development practitioner, Nursing professional development practitioner at our local hospital. So I do Nursing education and professional development. So that’s kind of like my general Nursing trajectory, but at the same time, I’ve been interested in psychedelic healing and psychedelic medicine and sacred medicine. 

When I first started Nursing, I had the really good luck to get introduced to some folks at NYU Medical Center who were doing research in psilocybin, which is like the synthetic version of mushrooms, magic mushrooms, and using that at end of life or end of life anxiety, or people with a cancer diagnosis that had existential anxiety. 

So I had the opportunity to be a guide for that study, which was really wonderful as a brand new Nurse, and that was just an awesome experience. And I’ve continued to kind of follow that path at the same time I was part of a spiritual community for like, 13 years or so, where we studied sacred traditions from many different cultures, but really especially North and South American cultures, and so I kind of immersed myself in more that ritual and community approach to healing. 

And I’ve been kind of following psychedelic research and development, and have done some writing and speaking on it and teaching, and that’s kind of where I am today. And I have developed a course for Nurses called Return to Roots, a self development course for psychedelic inspired Nurses, with my colleague, Angela Ward. And I’m sure we can talk more about that, but that’s kind of my little history.

Nicole Vienneau  07:57

It’s an amazing history. I love…I’m always so fascinated by the stories of our Nurses, because they have, like you say, some zigs and zags, zigs and zags in their history. You know, for you, starting off in Psych and then recognizing I’m going to go into Nursing— second degree. 

And, you know, watching your mom as a Nurse practitioner in Psych, and then realizing, oh, hands on is where I want to be. Just all of your experience with oncology, and then moving into hospice, and then recognizing the real connection of holistic pathways, and that was likely there all along. 

You know, it’s not like you just recognize it one day, but maybe more connected to it, right? And then always having this, you know, you mentioned the sacred medicine, and I love that term, and I’m hoping you can touch on that a little bit more. I’m just defining that a little bit for our listeners, but just moving into that and realizing that you really have a passion for rituals and sacredness and psychedelic Nursing. 

And then creating a course now, and like using all of these tools that you developed all the way through your life to get to where you are today.

Stephanie Van Hope  09:16

I feel like my… when I started off, sometimes Nursing and my other interests kind of felt far apart. And it’s been a journey for me to like, build that bridge. And now I do feel like it’s more integrated which is a nice feeling.

Nicole Vienneau  09:32

Yes, oh, it is a nice feeling. It’s like you finally like, connect them, like you say, building the bridge and connecting the pieces so that they… you become more aligned with who you are and how you want to show up in the world, and using all of the experiences and the pathways that you’ve created through your life. 

Okay, so that’s exciting, to create a course. I do want to go back to Nurse coaching, though, because you mentioned getting to do your training with Susan Luck and with Dr Barbara Dossey, the creators of Nurse coaching. So I just want to ask just a question of what stands out for you as being one of the most impactful things that happen for you because of this training in Nurse coaching.

Stephanie Van Hope  10:23

Well, I did love working with them. I feel like they just were such a great embodiment of presence, and had such a vitality to them and such a care for everybody who was in the program, and an interest in us, which it was really good role modeling for how we can be there for our clients. 

I think for me, Nurse coaching was giving me a foundation and permission to do a lot of the things that I already knew how to do, in a sense, or had, yeah, had some inclination and skill towards. Basically, was really getting curious about people and really wanting to offer my caring presence for them, witness their stories and see where their story is going and how I can support them. 

I mean, that felt like such a natural longing for me, and Nurse coaching just gave me, like, the toolbox, and the permission to do it in a more organized and an effective way, and to feel confident in that. So it’s like, on the other end, I feel like I have a skill set, rather than just like this longing for a certain way of being with people.

Nicole Vienneau  11:39

Yes, yeah, these are skills and tools that we have, and we have an inclination towards, as you mentioned, but we just didn’t know how to put it all together and have it make sense. And integrative Nurse coaching allows us to do that. Integrate Nursing theory with it, different theories with skills of coaching and make it make sense, and confidence too. 

That’s the other thing you mentioned, yeah, the confidence to do the work. Yes. And then, so I’m curious also about the telephonic work. So maybe, just maybe one story that kind of stands out for you, of maybe, of course, a client who you can’t mention their name, but, you know, just kind of a story that affected you positively?

Stephanie Van Hope  12:22

Oh, gosh, yeah. Like I mentioned, with that work, you know, there was… it was a kind of a unique way of coaching people. It’s not like somebody’s coming to you because they found you on the internet or wherever, and they resonate with you and they’re going to pay a certain amount of money and invest their time and energy into working with you, it’s more like you’re cold calling people, getting clients, offering them a free service. 

And so some people weren’t as invested, and the impact wasn’t as large, and that was true for a lot of the clients, and that was the harder part of the work. But then some people you reach, and they’re like, this type of coaching is exactly what they needed at exactly the right moment. 

And you can really change their life or help, you know, help support that change in their life. And there’s one in particular, there’s probably, you know, there’s a dozen or so clients that became really special to me and that, you know, I’ll carry with me. 

There’s one in particular that she was a young woman, I think she was just in her late teens when I started working with her, and she had been hospitalized for depression, she had had a suicide attempt. And so I started coaching her, and for the first, gosh, I feel like at least a year, we’d have maybe monthly calls, and it was… there was almost no responsiveness. 

Like I really didn’t know what was going through her mind on the other side. I was glad that she was getting on the phone with me, but like, there was just very little engagement. And it was kind of almost felt like talking at a wall sometimes. And I was always trying to just engage her more and get a little bit more from her about what she’s going through, what’s important to her. 

So we were doing that work little by little over time, and something shifted, and she started to open up and like, it was literally like, this doesn’t always happen, but it was literally like, just like a flower blossoming, and she started to be really interested, more engaged. 

She started to be really interested in health, losing weight, eating healthy. And then, like, we kind of went more into emotional issues. And it was like, I know a lot of it was because she was doing work on her own, but I also know that this was towards the end of our journey together. 

She said like that, me working with her was really a turning point. And she was like, all those things you said to me in the beginning, like it was like I didn’t hear them, but I did, and then over time, I would start to hear them in my head. And then over time, things started to shift slowly. 

And now she’s like, an Instagram influencer, you know, she puts out videos on healthy eating and like, among other things, among style tips and things like this. And like, just totally, totally blossomed into somebody who was really invested in her health, in her wellness, her well being, into her spiritual life, and then even to the point of wanting to share it with others. 

So that was like, you know, one of those really satisfying clients. And I did find in the work that, like, I really enjoy working with young people, like people at that …just kind of that transition into adulthood. Worked with a few clients where I feel like that’s a good niche for me.

Nicole Vienneau  15:46

Great story, and the impact of coaching over time, right? Over time. I think of the stages too. You know, that here you are just calling, like you say, cold calling these people. And they’re like, who? What is this? What is coaching? And then moving, moving them through the stages of decision making and supporting themselves. 

So that sounds like a… sounds like a fun, fun job being a Nurse, and that being a Nurse coach specifically. So okay, so now your interests have aligned more towards the sacred medicine, psychedelic Nursing and creating a course. So tell us a little bit about maybe… I would love for you to define sacred medicine for  us and our listeners.

Stephanie Van Hope  16:40

There’s different terms that people use for these types of medicines, and the three of the ones that I kind of use somewhat interchangeably are psychedelics, entheogens and sacred medicine. So psychedelics, I use that term mostly because it’s what most people are familiar with. 

They know what that means. It’s like, there’s a public understanding basically, I mean psychedelics means mind manifesting, but it’s something that creates a shift in consciousness or shift in lived experience. So that’s one term that we do use in the title of our course. 

But entheogens is a little bit closer to my heart, because it means to create God within and or to experience God within. And I really do resonate with that sacred aspect. And it’s amazing to me that these plants and fungi and molecules can engender an experience for a lot of people of the Divine or of deep meaning, or of something very profound, profound insight. 

And so then sacred medicine is just a more plain English way of saying entheogens, and also kind of resonates a little bit more with my understanding and background of indigenous traditions. So I like the term sacred medicines probably the most, but people don’t always know what that means.

Nicole Vienneau  18:04

Yeah, I wasn’t familiar with it, but I’m, you know, honestly not familiar with this world that you’re in. So that’s why we have you here, so we can learn from you and absorb some of your learnings, and, you know, have insights into possibilities for each of us as we’re exploring our own interests as well. Yeah, yeah, okay. 

And so sacred medicine in your course, you’re calling it, you called it Return to Roots: a self development course for psychedelic inspired Nurses. So can you tell us a little bit about the course, or maybe go backwards a little bit and tell us, like, how this even originated.

Stephanie Van Hope  18:50

Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of years ago, I wrote a paper for the American… co-authored a paper for the American Journal of Nursing, with Billy Rosa, Carolyn Dorsen and Andrew Penn, who are all great leaders in psychedelic Nursing. And it’s actually the first article on psychedelics in AJN since the 60s. And we actually kind of referenced that 1960s article in our article, which is cool.

Nicole Vienneau  19:21

Before you keep going, I want to just say, can we… can you send us a link and I can put this in the show notes so that people can read this article? Thank you. Yes.

Stephanie Van Hope  19:30

And so in that article, we had kind of recommendations for how Nurses can get more involved, and one of the recommendations was to pursue continuing education in psychedelics. And I realized there’s nothing out there for Nurses. 

There’s… there are programs for professionals, like some of them are more cross disciplinary, or some of them are specifically for psychologists or therapists, maybe, or doctors. But there’s nothing out there for Nurses. So I created a very small course called Nursing and Sacred Medicine, and it’s just a three week introductory course where we cover sacred medicine traditions, current clinical research and holistic Nursing as a foundation. 

And that was a great experience. The first time I created an educational course. And I did that with my… co founded it with my friend Naku Kiwa. So that was really lovely experience for us. And we got to engage with Nurses and see how much of a hunger there was for this information. And that course is still available as a self paced learning.

Nicole Vienneau  20:41

Oh, good. Hopefully you’ll send us that link. We’ll put that into the show notes too. Yeah.

Stephanie Van Hope  20:47

But my… I kind of realized, you know, let’s keep going with this. And my thought, actually was, maybe it’s time to create a psychedelic Nursing certification program, which is a big… that’s a big leap. I actually teach for a program called Synthesis Institute, which is a psychedelic practitioner training program for both licensed professionals and unlicensed. 

It’s very cross disciplinary, wide ranging. It’s a great program. But I’ve been thinking that I would love to develop something Nursing specific, because Nurses are coming to this work with a very specific lens and background and education and experience. 

And I think, just to kind of sidetrack a little bit, I think Nurses are so well suited for psychedelics, and we bring so many skill sets that other disciplines don’t, and I don’t think any one discipline has it all, but I think we bring a really important piece of the puzzle. And if you think about it, Nurses are with patients in non ordinary states of consciousness, sometimes every day. 

If you’re a hospice Nurse or working in labor and delivery, if you’re in Psych, if you’re working with patients, you know, coming in and out of anesthesia, patients with delirium. So many reasons why somebody could be an altered state or even just shock trauma. You know, emergency Nursing. 

And Nurses often are with patients for prolonged periods of time. You know, offering their caring, healing presence. And another aspect that really came to me as we were developing this newer course is the emphasis on the healing environment, because in psychedelic care, that’s conceptualized— 

the set and setting, especially the setting aspect, how the mindset that you’re going into, and then also the environment that you’re surrounded with, in a psychedelic experience, the physical environment, the environment of the practitioners with you, of their presence. And then beyond that, the energetic environment can really have an impact on the experience. 

And Nursing is a profession that studies and practices with the healing environment. And so that was another important element that I think we bring to the table. And so my thought was to create a practitioner training program. And I also noticed that there’s a little bit more available for NPs who have like, especially psych NPs, who can practice therapy, psychotherapy, but less out there for RNs. 

And as an RN, I served on the psilocybin cancer anxiety project as a guide, was quite capable of doing that. And I mean, I did it, I had a partner with me that I worked with, who was a psychiatrist, but I certainly had an important role. And I really firmly believe that RNs have an important role, and that you don’t need to have an advanced degree to be in this field. 

And so I sought out a collaborator to work with, who is Angela Ward. She is a really experienced psychedelic Nurse coach. She’s a Nurse coach as well, and uses the Nurse coaching model to work with clients who are using ketamine therapy. 

So she partners with a prescriber, but she does kind of all of the intake and educational process and preparation, the dosing sessions and the integration sessions with the client, using that Nurse coaching model, which I think is very pioneering of her. And so we came together to see what we could create. 

And we thought, okay, our ultimate goal might be to make a practitioner training program, which we would like to ground as also a Nurse coaching program, but let’s make something intermediary. So we are offering this course, which is called Return to Roots: A Self Development Course for Psychedelic Inspired Nurses. 

We just finished our first cohort. We had 13 Nurses. It was such a wonderful experience. We had Nurses from all different backgrounds, RNs, NPs, one new grad, some retired Nurses, all different, you know, all different experiences. Like psych, OR, oncology, everything, people coming with… 

some holistic Nurses and some Nurse coaches, and people coming with just so much rich experience to offer. And it was so moving for Angela and I, but it was also really moving for the participants. They all expressed, like, really, every single one of them expressed having received a lot out of it. 

So that was really gratifying for us, and we’re really excited to continue with our next cohort. Enrollment, well, it begins on October 2nd, and enrollment ends on September 25th, as an FYI. But a little bit more about the course itself. Basically, it is a course that is grounded in holistic psychedelic Nursing, which is basically a discipline that we’re creating as we go, that we’re developing. 

I feel like Nursing in general, has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to psychedelic Nursing and creating that framework, that theoretical groundwork for that discipline. Other disciplines like psychology or medicine are much further ahead. 

And in particular, we feel that holistic Nursing is the right, or is a right specialty to lead the way in this because, I mean, I think psych also, psych Nursing is really relevant. But holistic Nursing really takes into account caring, healing presence, and also self-reflection and self-care and holistic approach, like approaching… 

I mean, most of these experiences— psychedelic, sacred medicine experiences for people— experientially, they occur on so many different dimensions. They can occur on the spiritual dimension and the relational dimension. And holistic Nursing actually provides some framework and some language to be able to work with people in those dimensions. 

And so we think it’s a perfect match. Our course is basically… it’s 10 weeks. We have four in-person, two hours online, live online meetings, and the rest is asynchronous. And there’s a lot of community interaction within the course, like commenting on each other’s posts. 

There’s a self development piece, which is a commitment to doing 10, at least 10 minutes a day, of self-care practice, five days a week throughout the course, and being accountable for that. And there’s a lot of self reflection, which is my favorite part of the course. Prompts to help you think about your own path, your own history, what you’re bringing to this work and how it might apply. 

So we go into a lot of different elements. We talk about psychedelic Nursing, we talk about the history of sacred medicines and sacred medicine traditions from an indigenous perspective, which I think is so important to lead with, because these practices didn’t originate in the 1960s, they’ve been held for centuries and millennia by medicine carriers and traditions. 

So we honor those traditions and provide some education about that, and really look into some of the threads of those traditions that we can learn from. We talk about…  we encourage people to look at their own traditions and their own ancestral roots, and that’s part of the reason it’s called Return to Roots— looking at some of the healing traditions that you might have in your background. 

And we together look at, if you even go into modern Western medicine, and you dig back and back, we have a more holistic, shared healing tradition that, you know, if you look into medieval medicine, we look particularly at Hildegard von Bingen as an example of medicine that incorporates the four elements, that incorporates mind, body and spirit, that honors plants. 

So we go into that. We do talk about the four elements as kind of a foundation for a nature connected and spirit connected practice. And then we talk about creating self development, yourself as a healing vessel, as a touch point for people in the self work that’s required for that. 

We talk about the healing environment as a really foundational element, like I mentioned already, then putting it all together into a healing encounter. And then we talk about… we talked about ethics throughout, but then we focus on ethics and reciprocity and accountability in community. 

So those are kind of the modules. And this course— one thing I’d like to just touch on is like, who is this course for? So we saw in our first cohort that it really can work on multiple levels. It can be for people who are already in practice, working with psychedelics, working with ketamine, working on clinical trials, or what have you. 

And we had some of those Nurses in our course, and they, you know, they were longing to have more of that Nurse oriented experience and that Nursing community. Could be for somebody who’s looking into becoming a practitioner, and this is like a good step along the way of self development. 

Could be somebody who knows they want to participate in the field, but maybe not as a practitioner, but maybe as a advocate, as an educator, as an ally of some sort. And so this course is like also inviting that not everyone has to be a psychedelic practitioner, but there’s lots of work to be done that we can participate in. 

And then lastly, it could just be for somebody, a Nurse, who has had their own psychedelic healing experience, people who have maybe gone to a retreat center in another country where it’s legal, or participated in a clinical trial, or worked with ketamine, and had a life changing experience, maybe a soul and spirit expanding experience that really puts them in connection with with a lot of different possibilities of healing and of connection with people. 

And then they go back into their work as a Nurse, and they might feel like a real disconnect from those two worlds, and it can be quite difficult to go back into a modern paradigm of healthcare that sometimes doesn’t allow as much space for the whole person. 

And now you’ve had these expanded states, and what do you do with that as a Nurse? So it’s really to help people see how they can apply it in their own Nursing role, wherever they are, apply the lessons that they’ve learned, or maybe they need to shift into a different role. 

But it’s allowing space to explore that. So it’s really for all of those types of Nurses. And it’s… like I said, the first experience was really magical. It was a magical coming together. And we’re really excited to keep it going with further cohorts, see who out there this work is for.

Nicole Vienneau  31:52

This is the topic that is not new, as you mentioned, this going back generations and generations and generations using plant medicine, sacred medicine rituals. And yet, in today’s society, some people think that this is not medicine, you know, and just it being illegal in some areas. 

And, you know, there’s a “shhh”, keep that quiet. So tell us your thoughts on that and how you’ve decided to just, I’m going to stand up, I’m going to be a voice for this.

Stephanie Van Hope  32:31

Yeah, absolutely. Well, there definitely is a stigma, for sure, for a lot of people, and especially within healthcare, where you know you have to be really careful about your license and making sure that everything that you do is legal and ethical. These medicines were criminalized for LSD and psilocybin in the 60s or 1970 with the Controlled Substances Act and with MDMA in the 80s. 

And there was a lot of promising research at that time around, especially psilocybin, LSD, and the research that is happening now is really just building on that research, maybe with somewhat stronger research paradigms. But a lot of the clinical practices and approaches were developed then, but because underground use caused a lot of shifting of cultural norms… 

and there’s there’s a number of factors that went into them being criminalized or becoming scheduled medicines, and they never went away. People have been using them underground for a long time, and I think that’s really important to recognize, actually. 

Caroline Dorsen has done some really wonderful work. She’s a Nurse researcher of kind of along a harm reduction framework of talking to people who participate in, let’s say, sacred medicine underground ceremonies with Ayahuasca, and getting their stories and how they conceptualize that work. 

Like, for example, that they don’t look at it as a drug, that some of them are using it in order to get off or stay off drugs that you know, other drugs, other substances that have been harmful to them, where they find that this substance is helpful to them and healing to them. 

So in the last 20 years or so, there’s been… the door has reopened to research, and there’s been a lot of research on psilocybin, mostly psilocybin and MDMA. So both have have been fast tracked by the FDA as promising treatments, psilocybin for depression and treatment for resistant depression and MDMA for post traumatic stress disorder. 

And these are two huge mental health diagnoses that you know has touched somebody that every one of us knows and don’t always have a lot of great treatments or treatment outcomes, at least not for everybody. MDMA for PTSD just what Lykos— is just a pharmaceutical company associated with MAPS— 

Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, just went through the application process for MDMA to be rescheduled or to be for them to be able to move forward with MDMA legally through the FDA, get FDA approval, and it was denied, which was… this was just in August. 

This was a huge surprise in a lot of ways, and a big blow to the movement. It doesn’t mean that it’s over. The FDA made recommendations for them to conduct another phase three trial and then reapply. You know, there’s a lot of researchers out there, medical researchers, that are taking this very seriously and putting it through all the same procedures that any other medicine or drug has to go through. 

And there have been really good outcomes for PTSD, for PTSD remission, and really good outcomes for remission of treatment resistant depression for both of these. But maybe it’s… we’re still, you know, building that really robust evidence base and moving into those, continuing to move into those phase three trials to show that it’s replicable and scalable and appropriate for a larger population. 

And there are a lot of safety considerations, absolutely, a lot of ethical considerations, like one, for example, is when Lykos brought this application to the FDA, it was not just as a drug, it was as a drug conjoined with therapy, and they have a certain therapeutic model that it’s recommended to be paired with, or that it would have to be paired with. 

It’s a very liberal model where lots of different types of practitioners could fit into it, but there is a manualized treatment model, and that’s really new for the FDA. That’s one of the reasons that it wasn’t approved, because they’re not used to approving drug and therapy together, because these medicines are so powerful, so life changing, that it’s not recommended for someone to just be prescribed to take it home by themselves. It’s not recommended. 

These are sometimes people call them ordeal medicines. It’s something that, you know, you go through and experience with this, especially psilocybin or LSD or Ibogaine or something like that, and it’s recommended have preparation, to have somebody accompanying you on the experience, and to have somebody help you to integrate the experience. 

There’s also a lot of ethical concerns regarding the practitioners. There’s a lot of heightened possibility for transference and countertransference. There’s a heightened possibility of therapists having their own ego inflation or taking advantage of clients. There’s, unfortunately, a history of that happening. 

You know, sexual abuse happening both underground and unfortunately in clinical trials, and that’s a very real thing we have to look at. And not that that doesn’t happen in ordinary therapeutic settings as well, but I think the risk is higher with these medicines. So I’m definitely a proponent of looking at the risks and benefits, of taking the risks seriously. 

But the only way we can really do that is if we keep moving it forward, if we bring these medicines above ground, and we agree together as a society that we’re willing to try to work together to manage those risks. 

We do risky things in medicine all the time, you know, and it doesn’t mean that we don’t do them. There’s informed consent, and there’s people who will be willing to take those risks and people who it won’t be appropriate for.

Nicole Vienneau  38:42

Yes, we definitely do a lot of risky things in medicine, and we combine it with the informed consent. So yes, we’re not just doing things willy nilly.

Stephanie Van Hope  38:57

Yeah. I mean, I think there’s, for me, there’s kind of, I have, like these two ways of looking about it. One is the Nurse, scientist, researcher, evidence based kind of mindset of it is good that we’re going through the proper ways of proving these therapies are safe and effective, just like we would any other medicine, any other medication, any other treatment. 

And then the other part of me is kind of more on the ritualistic spiritual side, which says that these medicines have been used for 1000s of years already, some of them, like psilocybin, for example, or ayahuasca, Iboga, peyote. And part of me definitely… well, actually not part of me. 

I wholeheartedly favor a decriminalization approach. I think that it’s good for the medical community and the psychotherapy community and the Nursing community to be looking at how these work in that model, but also not to limit it completely to that model, because that kind of becomes a social justice issue. 

I mean, these medicines have belonged to people who have used them ritualistically and spiritually, and I don’t think we should just limit it to medicine. Also that kind of limits just the multi dimensional nature of these medicines, and kind of puts them into this box of this cures that, which is so much of what the problem in our approach in modern medicine has been anyway. 

And maybe we can use these to kind of move into a different, more holistic, more transcendental paradigm when it comes to mental health. I mean, even that term mental health, to me, seems so one dimensional, you know, makes you think about something with your brain when it’s really so like, you know, something like depression touches and is touched by every aspect of somebody’s life. 

And a lot of our society’s ills, in my opinion, are social ills, are coming from loneliness, are coming from lack of connection, are coming from disparities in health and access to clean air and clean water and clean food and things like this. 

And so I’m hoping that these medicines won’t just be another pill, you know, won’t just be another treatment, but will help us to… I mean, they tend to be mind expanding, consciousness expanding. They do create neurogenesis in the brain. They do kind of create new neural pathways, and I’m hoping that they can allow us to create new paradigms as well in healthcare that are a little bit more expansive, connected and holistic. 

Nicole Vienneau  41:43

Yeah, that sounds amazing. Because of what they do, it should also reflect how they’re going to be used and utilized within the whole expansiveness of our world. So… wow. 

Stephanie Van Hope  42:00

For example, one practical way that we could do this is just look at more community based models, and seeing that when people have these experiences supported in a group context, which isn’t appropriate for everybody, some people benefit more from one on one, but a lot of people, the group context is incredibly beneficial. 

With that community support, that connection, that having reflections of other people, learning from their experiences, being seen, being witnessed. So that kind of honors some of the more traditional ways of working with these medicines in a community context, and it allows them to potentially be more economical models of care, which then can allow greater access and equity, which is really important. 

Nicole Vienneau  42:51

Absolutely, yes, I love group coaching, and the group coaching and group community programs, all of those things because of those amazing attributes. We do have another podcast guest who spoke about psilocybin and the work she’s been doing. 

So I’m just going to put a plug in here for episode 69. It’s called Combining Psilocybin Education and Nurse Coaching, and that was with Chandra Campanelli. CeeCee Campanelli. I’m going to put her podcast into the show notes too, so people can listen to another perspective on using psilocybin as a guide, as a guide with psilocybin in the journeys that people take. 

So it was interesting. Also fascinating. And like I said, this is a newer world for me, and I know for a lot of our listeners, it’s a newer world. And so we’re so grateful for how much information, and, you know, just having us think differently about something that has been criminalized, you know. 

And it is a taboo subject, and we’re trying to elevate it so that we are not fearful. And you know, this isn’t a fearful… it’s plants, things that are and have been used for 1000s of years, like you mentioned.

Stephanie Van Hope  44:11

Well, we are afraid of plants. I mean…

Nicole Vienneau  44:15

But they’re everywhere!

Stephanie Van Hope  44:18

It’s our birthright to know how to work with the medicines that grow in our backyard. So many of us are really disconnected with that, and we are fearful of plants in modern medicine because they’re not as controllable, they’re not as marketable, for many different reasons. 

And that’s part of the course. Part of the course is specifically exploring your relationship with plants and plant medicine, not just conscious, not just this grand consciousness altering medicine, but also common plants that you might… 

that might be weeds growing in the sidewalk, that might still be able to help alter your consciousness in a more subtle way or just provide different nutritional benefits, or so many things that we can do when we connect with plants. 

Nicole Vienneau  45:08

Yeah, I love this. Maybe I’m signing up for your course, Stephanie, yes. So we have a few moments left. I’d love to ask one question that every guest who has been on our podcast has answered, and the question is, what is on your heart that you would like to share with our listeners?

Stephanie Van Hope  45:32

I think that… I mean, the work that Angela and I are doing is focused on psychedelics, but at the root, it’s not really even about that. It’s about Nurses connecting with their hearts and connecting, you know, creating a heart centered practice, and that’s what we’re really wanting to emphasize. 

And so many people come into this work because they have a lot of empathy. They love people. They like using their hands to help. They have an attitude of service, and sometimes in our modern paradigms, that’s not nurtured enough. 

And also with all the constraints that we have and kind of the financially driven motives that are, unfortunately, a reality, like a lot of that just gets kind of ground down, or there’s not enough space for it to be nurtured and developed. And so that’s what we’re trying to do here, is helping Nurses connect with their own hearts, their own passions, their own integrity, their own sense of even right and wrong in their own practice. 

So I don’t know. I think we kind of look at the balance of both what Nurses have to bring to psychedelics, psychedelic therapy, psychedelic care, and also what psychedelic care can bring to Nurses, and how it can help us reconnect with the heart of our practice.

Nicole Vienneau  46:57

Thank you. So how can people find you when they’re looking for you to ask some questions about your course, or your course?

Stephanie Van Hope  47:07

Sure, so our course page is holisticpsychedelicnurse.com/returntoroots. And our Instagram is @hp_nurse_collective. Holistic Psychedelic Nurse Collective. I’ll certainly give you a couple of resources in the show notes for articles, and there’s a couple… there’s a short film that I was in about psilocybin and end of life, and some of the resources for people to explore.

Nicole Vienneau  47:38

So you’re a movie star too?

Stephanie Van Hope  47:42

I don’t know. I’m not that camera shy.

Nicole Vienneau  47:46

I love it. Yes, we’ll definitely get all of these links, put them in the show notes, so people can go there and see what you’re up to, connect with you on socials. And you know if this course is calling to them, to find out a little bit more.

Stephanie Van Hope  48:00

And yeah, or to reach out to us, ask us questions, and we’re happy to talk with you more, or just share with a colleague that you think might be interested. Our next cohort, like I mentioned, starts October 2nd. The deadline is, for sign up, is September 25th, and then our following cohort will be in February. 

Nicole Vienneau  48:18

Okay, yes, all right. Well, thank you so much, Stephanie, for sharing your wisdom. So many pearls of goodness came out of that, our interview and time together today.

Stephanie Van Hope  48:32

Thank you for elevating these conversations with Nurse coaches. I love it.