Crossing 𖣂 Bridges

A farewell reflection on healing, heartbreak, and wholeness at Asheville Integrative Psychiatry

The Vision That Started It All

It’s been just over 4 years since we closed on the property at 70 Canter Field Lane, with all of the hopes and dreams of a naive but passionate entrepreneur, and visions of a holistic retreat that would some day be called, albeit grandiose and self-proclaimed, the “Esalen of the South.” The vision was of a holistic center where clients could access modes of healing such as eco-therapy, integrative psychiatry, massage, neurofeedback, equine assisted therapy and psychedelic therapies, while also having access to a high level of information about the evidence for and efficacy of each of these modalities through guest speakers, workshops and selected articles in our newsletter and on our website. The vision was grand, the mission was heart-centered and the energy and support were strong. The bridge, however, was not.

Symbolism, Storms, and Building Again

After our first ketamine assisted therapy session in August 2021, we lost our bridge to Tropical

Storm Fred. The symbolism was not lost on me and an archetype based tarot deck helped explain that “Bridges are built to connect two worlds. They create flow, allowing us to travel between realms, ideologies, personalities. When we cross a bridge to an unknown land, we are led magically into a new reality. We open up to otherness. Healing and communication are

made possible. We enter a state of curiosity, wonder, and learning. The Shaman, for example, creates the Bridge between the everyday world and the sacred. Remember that a bridge can’t be forced. It must be made with love, or its structure will not withstand the inevitable weather of life.”

I took this guidance to understand that we needed a stronger bridge to support the level of healing we were offering, especially since we were using medicines to access non-ordinary states of consciousness, tapping into aspects of the unseen universe that are seldom entered in our daily lives. It made perfect sense to me and seemed like an important step in the process of building a strong foundation to provide the deep and profound healing work we were trained to do. So we rebuilt with the help of friends and neighbors in under a week’s time and kept moving forward with our eyes on the goal.

Balancing Medicine, Business, and Mission

As many of you know, entrepreneurship is not an easy path. The challenges are endless and often unexpected, but having chosen this path, one must face all of these with confidence,

grace and the ability to communicate clearly and succinctly a solution to your team in order to stay steady on this chosen path. As a medical doctor who had spent the entirety of my career as an independent contractor, my understanding of the many facets of business was limited, to say the least. I read books, sought expert guidance, watched youtube videos, listened to Brene Brown to and from work, learned Excel, was quick to admit the limits of my knowledge or when I was wrong, but, some days, it didn’t feel like enough.

I was also heavily involved in the foundation of the Pearl Psychedelic Institute Expanded Access

program for MDMA assisted therapy. With MAPS as our sponsor, there was a never ending list of hoops to jump through to make our site a reality and it took patience, persistence, and a healthy dose of stubborn determination to push the project forward each week. I was deeply committed to this project because the promise of MDMA assisted therapy for treating PTSD in adolescents is what pulled me into psychedelic work in the first place. I had primarily been a child/adolescent psychiatrist up to this point in my career and felt like my toolbox was just not full enough when it came to treating childhood trauma. Reading about outcomes where up to 70% of participants in the study (who were previously determined to be treatment resistant) no longer met criteria for PTSD after 2-3 MDMA assisted therapy sessions, was incredible and

gave me hope that I could help to prevent a lifetime of suffering through mastering this treatment.

The Heartbreak That Shaped Us

All of this to say that I threw myself wholeheartedly into the work while trying to balance family life and attend to my own health and well-being. It was just as hard as you might expect and ended up being an all-consuming effort with many ups and downs over the 3 1⁄2 years of practice.

Just one year into practice, we unexpectedly and tragically lost a friend and therapist whom I had worked closely with over the past 10 years and who was my co-therapist in the MDMA work. Rob’s loss shook my foundation and steadfastness to this work and had me questioning the safety and longevity of psychedelic therapies in general. Just one month after this loss, one of our employees tragically and unexpectedly lost her nephew. We, as a team, came together in grief and sadness but it was incredibly hard to recover from these two blows in such a short sequence. My heart still hurts and I continue to feel the pain of the loved ones left behind by these two beautiful souls.

Rob was a dedicated believer in UFO’s and extra-terrestrial life forms, and I decided that anytime I caught a glimpse of one of these symbols, that was Rob reaching out to connect. Over the following 18 months or so, I had so many uncanny encounters with these signs, it almost felt like he was still around, trying to communicate something to me. Due to the circumstances of his death, I recommitted to providing the highest level of safety and ethics in the emerging psychedelic therapy space and made it a goal of AIP to establish a standard of care for the use of these medicines in the state of North Carolina. Out of this intention we created the Watershed Healing Collective to safely support therapists in NC to provide ketamine assisted therapy to clients without direct medical supervision. This program seemed to fill a need both for our community and for me, ensuring that the psychedelic movement, at least in our state, would stay on the proverbial tracks regarding safety and ethical standards.

A Continued Commitment to Safe Psychedelic Care

During this time, my MDMA work had taken some twists and turns, as had MAPS and MAPS PBC (now Lykos Therapeutics). I also made the difficult decision to leave Pearl Psychedelic Institute and to connect with Sunstone Therapies in Rockville, Maryland to complete my MDMA training through their Expanded Access study. After 5 years, I completed my MDMA assisted therapy training (on August 14, 2024), just two days after the FDA made the unexpected decision to deny approval of MDMA assisted therapy as a treatment for PTSD. The fall-out from this singular decision was far-reaching, impacting primarily those suffering with PTSD and limiting available and effective treatments, but also limiting the ability of skilled therapists to provide what on many accounts was a safe and effective treatment.

At AIP, we doubled down on providing the highest standard of nature-based ketamine assisted therapy for our clients, especially those with treatment resistant PTSD and an inability to access MDMA assisted therapies in the foreseeable future. Despite the FDA decision, I felt a renewed enthusiasm for our work and a determination to continue moving forward with our eyes on the long game. We celebrated our 3 year anniversary on September 22, 2024 to a “sold out” crowd with forest bathing, sound healing, and my mentors, Michael and Annie Mithoefer (lead MDMA researchers) as guest speakers. It felt like we were right where we were supposed to be.

Hope and Momentum ~ Then Another Storm

On September 27, 2024 Hurricane Helene hit Asheville with a ferocity and intensity that no one expected. The devastation of life and land was unprecedented in this region and we continue to support each other in healing from this catastrophe. I feel incredibly fortunate that our home was undamaged and my loved ones are all safe. We did however lose the bridge to AIP, the second time in just three years. I consider myself a resilient, if not incredibly stubborn person, and I certainly do not like to quit anything that I have set out to do. But I will have to say that this final catastrophe felt like the straw that broke the camel’s back. I just couldn’t see a way forward. And yet, taking inspiration from fellow small business owners (WNC/Asheville Strong!) I dug in deeper than ever before. “We can pivot, go to telehealth, share office space, move fully

to Watershed Healing Collective services. We can do this!” The effort and complexity was

exhausting.

On top of this, our neighbors had to move out of their home due to damages, and it made sense

for us to be in Candler dealing with damages and recovery from the hurricane. So, we moved to

Candler at the end of 2024, and our neighbors were able to move into our house to keep an eye

on reconstruction efforts on their end.

Coming Home to Nature and to Myself

If you’ve ever been out to the AIP campus, you know how enchanting and beautiful it is. It is the

ideal place for connecting to nature for healing and restoration. I recognized that this is where I

needed to be to heal my own nervous system and to reconnect to my own purpose and life

force. I have spent many days just sitting on the steps, looking out towards Mount Pisgah, watching the frogs and fish in the pond, being mesmerized by the fireflies in the fields, and taking slow deep breaths of this nourishing mountain air to fill my lungs with life and energy that had slowly drained from me through the hardships of the last three years. It feels like I am finally getting a taste of my own medicine in a way I didn’t know I needed!

Looking Ahead

We have been in Candler for almost six months now and I feel like I have a new perspective on work/life balance that I just couldn’t get while in the everyday grind of running a business. I still enjoy my patient encounters, get such pleasure from supporting ketamine therapy sessions in our peaceful retreat setting, and am constantly amazed by the shifts and healing that occur for clients when combining nature therapy with non-ordinary states of consciousness. The work is every bit as meaningful but I feel it is time for a change. I am so grateful to the countless friends, family, colleagues, clients and staff who have believed in and supported this venture over the last 4 years. I am honored and humbled by the trust you have all placed in me, in the healing powers of nature, and the ever evolving and emerging field of psychedelic assisted therapies. I will be closing Asheville Integrative Psychiatry in mid-August at our 4 year anniversary.

Closing with Gratitude The bridge has been rebuilt, the foundation is strong and the future is unknown, but I suspect it

will involve deep connective time with Mother Nature, wondering at her beauty and the immensity of our role as stewards of this land. For how can we heal as people if we do not simultaneously heal the deep scars in our planet left by human impact? After all, we are all connected and the health of our environment has a direct impact on us, as we do on it. I look forward to reconnecting with many of you in the future. Be Well! ❤ ᨒ ↟.