Shownotes

Lesley Logan sits down with Sam Mandel, co-founder of Ketamine Clinics Los Angeles, to discuss the transformative potential of ketamine therapy for mental health. They debunk common misconceptions, explore its impact on PTSD, anxiety, and depression, and highlight how it empowers individuals to reshape their personal narratives.

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In this episode you will learn about:

• What ketamine therapy is and how it differs from traditional treatments.
• How ketamine enhances neuroplasticity and helps reframe trauma
• The science behind ketamine’s impact on depression, anxiety, and PTSD.
• The difference between medical ketamine use and recreational misuse.
• What to expect during a ketamine therapy session.
• How ketamine therapy can help individuals reconnect with themselves and regain motivation.

Episode References/Links:

• Ketamine Clinics LA Website – https://Ketamineclinics.com
• Ketamine Clinics LA Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/ketamineclinicsla
• Ketamine Clinics LA Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/KetamineClinicsLA
• Sam Mandel Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/thesammandel

Transcript

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INTRODUCTION

Lesley Logan
Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I’m Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I’ve trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it’s the antidote to fear. Each week, my guests will bring Bold, Executable, Intrinsic and Targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It’s a practice, not a perfect. Let’s get started.

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Lesley Logan 0:59
Okay, Be It babe. This is going to be a different kind of episode, but in the best way. I have Sam Mandel, who is a founder of Ketamine Clinics in LA and I was really intrigued by what I know about ketamine from my friends’ holistic doctors. And when he came up as someone I could interview, I was like, oh, we need to do this, because there is a lot of misinformation about ketamine and what ketamine can be used for, and I’m on a mission to help you be it till you see it. And I really want you to understand all the different ways that you can have support in feeling more like yourself and not letting things get in your way. And so that is why we’re going to talk about ketamine today. And if you think you know what it is, I strongly encourage you to just stay and listen, because I thought I knew and I learned so much. And then on top of all of that, I really enjoy Sam’s story of how he started these clinics and what he and his dad did. And so there’s just a lot of beautiful information in this episode, and I can’t wait for you to hear it. So here is Sam Mandel.

Lesley Logan 2:00
All right, Be It babe. I am really excited. I can tell you for a fact, we’ve never talked about this on the Be It Pod. And only is it quite timely, I think it’s actually extremely imperative that we have this discussion so we have Sam Mandel here on the show. We’re gonna talk about ketamine and all things about it, ketamine therapy. Sam, can you tell everyone who you are and probably why you rock at ketamine therapy?

Sam Mandel 2:25
Yes, yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Lesley. So, I am Sam Mandel. I’m the co-founder and CEO of Ketamine Clinics Los Angeles. We’re one of the first ketamine clinics in the country, established in 2014 and we specialize in IV infusions of ketamine for mental health, but we also offer several other innovative therapeutics for mental health.

Lesley Logan 2:45
I love that mental health is something more people are talking about, and there’s like more awareness around it, but also that there can be clinics that are working on different ways of helping, supporting mental health, including these infusions. For people who have heard about ketamine, and maybe not the positive ways, can we kind of, can we just dive in and ease their nerves about what we’re talking about here?

Sam Mandel 3:07
Let’s do it. Some of your listeners are definitely like, ketamine what? And there’s five different people saying that it’s five different things, and all of them are correct. So that’s one of the interesting things about ketamine. It is, first and foremost, an FDA-approved anesthetic for humans. It was FDA-approved in 1970. This is an old medicine. It’s also commonly used in veterinary medicine. So a lot of people know of it as a horse tranquilizer or a cat tranquilizer. In some circles, it’s more commonly known as that than as a drug for humans. But there’s a lot of medications that we use for humans, that we also use in veterinary medicine. And it’s also a drug of abuse, or something that people use recreationally or self-medicate with, depending on how you want to look at it, known as Special K. Same drug. It’s used as an analgesic, as a pain reliever, in emergency room departments and crisis situations, trauma situations, when someone’s in a terrible accident, they’re in pain, they need sedation, or someone goes in and they need their shoulder reset, they commonly will use ketamine for conscious sedation. So it is a ubiquitous drug. It has a lot of different uses and applications, and one of its most recent, or probably its most recent, addition to that list of its identities, if you will, is as a mental health treatment. And in the last 25 years, there’s been a growing body of clinical research proving ketamine to really be among the fastest, if not the fastest-acting, safest, most effective depression treatments available today.

Lesley Logan 4:36
I mean, it’s kind of amazing that it can be all these different things, also not, right? Like there’s so many things, I feel like there’s a lot of untapped medicines out there that we’re already using, and we don’t realize it could be done for other things. Can we talk about how it helps? Because I’ll say my family’s understanding of mental health treatment is when you sit on a couch and you talk to a therapist and you go weekly if you’re depressed, you can take a pill that will kind of help with some hormonal imbalances. But that’s not what this is.

Sam Mandel 5:01
Yes, that is not what this is. And by the way, talk therapy is great. I go to therapy every week, you know, even when I’m in a good place and I don’t necessarily feel like I have a lot to talk about, it’s like going to the gym. I just go. I show up every week no matter what. And I think that’s really good and healthy, especially if you have a therapist who you think cares about you and is invested in you, and you can just talk about, you know, life. And I’ll tell you, sometimes when I go and I don’t have anything bothering me or an agenda is when I do the most important work in those sessions, sometimes, so you just never know. But talk therapy is great, but it can only go so far. The conscious mind really gets in the way. Finding someone who cares is difficult the right credentialed person is expensive. A lot of the best people typically don’t take insurance. It’s not true for all of them. There’s wonderful people out there who do, but a lot of the really good ones don’t, and so it’s a tough thing, but it has its limitations, like with anything. Ketamine and other psychedelic medicines, because ketamine, for all intended purposes, really is a psychedelic, and it’s really the only legally available psychedelic in the United States, has the ability to really dissolve these barriers that get in our way. It helps people to get out of their own way and with exponential growth in ways that really are not possible and haven’t been seen in any other treatment or modality. And the way it does that is really two primary mechanisms of action. The first is the neuro chemical effects and what’s going on in the brain and how ketamine is impacting the brain and our neurochemistry in ways that really nothing else does. And the other is the experiential component, psychologically, what is going on during the experience or the trip that people have when they’re receiving this medicine. And both of those are profound and really create lasting impact. On the neuro-chemical level, there’s a neurotransmitter called glutamate. It’s the most abundant neurotransmitter in the brain. It’s present in 85% of the brain. All the other neurotransmitters combined comprise only 15% but for some reason, we’ve been disproportionately focused on them with mental health treatment. Those are the common ones you know of. Serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, you know, the most common class of antidepressant medications are SSRIs. Those are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and those are targeting serotonin. They’re a tool. They help some people. They really don’t help a lot of people, too, and the people they do help, they really cause a lot of negative side effects and weight gain, sexual dysfunction, dried mouth, blurred vision, even increased suicidality, and the list goes on and on, really terrible side effects that are really debilitating for a lot of people. Even when those side effects are not as debilitating, the quality of relief is typically not very good. So people will say, oh, well, I definitely am not as depressed, but I don’t feel happy either. I’m just kind of existing. They have the spectrum of life and of the human experience narrowed, so the lows are not as low, but they’re not really thriving either. Not a nice place to be. Is it better than being in bed all day? Absolutely. But that’s not the goal. That’s not my goal for my life. That’s not my goal for other people’s lives and for the patients who come to our clinic. We want people to really thrive. Ketamine has the ability to help people to truly thrive. It restores compassion for self and others. It is enhanced energy and motivation for most people. It’s a genuine reconnection of self. One of the things that happens with this, with the glutamatergic system and other processes that are occurring in the brain with IV infusions of ketamine, is it causes and promotes neurogenesis, enhanced neuroplasticity, actual new pathways, new connections forming in the brain. This helps people to form new habits, new patterns, new ways of thinking and being that can be very, very positive by disrupting a lot of the automatic responses and reactions we have in our day to day life that get so deeply enmeshed in us that they become a part of our personality, and ketamine can kind of push the reset button on that so that we have the opportunity to consciously choose who we want to be and how we want to be, and helps us call into question the things that we’ve accepted as just that’s the way that I am, or that’s the way that it is, and that’s not the case most of the time. You look at trauma, for example, ketamine is extremely helpful for depression and anxiety, but also for PTSD, and a lot of people have some trauma that is at the root of one of those issues, and ketamine helps people to recraft the story around that trauma. So what happened is fixed and can never change. The past is the past, but our stories about it can change at any given moment, who we are and who we were and the other people and our role in it, and their role in it, and what happened and what didn’t happen, and ketamine provides this kind of objective clarity on that that can be extremely healing and transformational for people.

Lesley Logan 9:50
Yeah, this is fascinating. What I’ve known about ketamine, and I have friends who, I have a holistic doctor friend who offers it as a treatment, and I’ve heard of these amazing effects that can happen, but I never understood on the brain level, like what’s going on and why it’s different than the antidepressants that people are on, and how it could, so if someone comes in, first of all, what are some of the reasons why they’re coming in for treatment, and then what is the, what are the expectations? Are they coming in one time for an IV infusion? Is this a weekly thing? And how long can the effects last? Can it be forever? Do they have to keep coming back? Can I get the lowdown on that?

Sam Mandel 10:25
Yeah, you’re asking all the right questions. So what treatment looks like is typically a series of six infusions over two to three weeks after that process I just explained where people are cleared for treatment. They come in, we have them fill out some paperwork, do a brief physical exam, and they come back to a private room. We help them to become comfortable in a recliner with noise canceling headphones, a sleep mask, unlimited selection of relaxing music, pillows, blankets, and we start an IV, and then we infuse the ketamine for 50 to 55 minutes. And it’s a slow, gradual, steady state of infusion. People are conscious and awake the entire time. There’s a level of dissociation where we don’t want them to go so far that they don’t know what’s happening, but we want them to go into it far enough that they can kind of have a little bit of that quieting of the noise and chatter in their minds, and get a little bit of that clarity that I was describing earlier, and this separation really from themselves in a healthy way to take a look at things that can be really therapeutic, and doing that inner work. We monitor them the whole time. We use hospital-grade monitoring equipment. So that’s like pulse, oxygen, EKG, blood pressure, continuous monitoring. I mean, it’s a very safe medicine when it’s used responsibly in a clinical setting like Ketamine Clinics Los Angeles. We still do all the proper monitoring just to make sure that people are comfortable and safe. And yeah, it’s, that’s pretty much the, you know, summary of the experience.

Lesley Logan 11:53
Yeah, no. Thank you for sharing that, because I think, I don’t think anyone’s ever explained that, and I’m trying to think about people listening. It’s like, well, what does it look like, you know, because let’s just talk about what, we have heard about ketamine in the news lately, and it will continue to be in the news as people are going on trial, like when we hear Matthew Perry pass away from not the best use of ketamine, I think people are like, well, then how do you, what does it look like? Am I doing this myself? And I love that you have a wonderful protocol that allows people to be safe and use it in the best way that gets them the best results. But can we talk about the dark sides of ketamine, and what are some signs that people might not be in the safest situations using ketamine?

Sam Mandel 12:30
Yeah, well, I’ll definitely answer that with your reference to Matthew Perry, which is obviously a really sad situation. He was taken advantage of by people he trusted. He was a addict. He had a really, he’s really struggled with addiction. He was very public about that, and not with ketamine specifically, but with really any substance that he could get his hands on. And was in a lot of pain, obviously, and it’s a terrible situation. I think it’s really important that people understand, though, that that has nothing to do with ketamine therapy. And the media created a lot of confusion for people saying that he had had ketamine therapy a few weeks ago and but that wasn’t really a part, a factor in his death. But by the way, he had that and, you know, saying that he died from the acute effects of ketamine, that’s just it was really, really distorted. He took more than 10 times the dose of ketamine that we give in the clinic by himself, in combination with buprenorphine, which is essentially an opioid, and Lorazepam, a benzodiazepine, which is another sedative. So he’s combined three powerful sedatives, one of them in really absurd doses, by himself in a hot tub. And of course, what happens? He becomes incapacitated and he drowns. This is not, this is such a departure from what we do when we use ketamine in a therapeutic context. There’s no correlation, but the way that it’s been reported on, and what the average person hears is, oh, ketamine is a bad, dangerous drug, and that’s it. That’s the takeaway, and that’s really a sad thing for people to to get from it. What they should get is that addiction is a serious illness. What they should get is taking lots of sedatives in combination is dangerous. Taking drugs unsupervised, alone in a hot tub is dangerous. These are the takeaways. There was even medical doctors involved in supplying it to him, but they were part of an illicit, underground, illegal drug ring. You know, this is not like mental health care, you know?

Lesley Logan 14:25
I know. It’s so sad because, well, first of all, the whole situation is sad. It’s sad that someone was taken advantage of. It’s sad that someone died from combining too many things, but also because they had doctors doing it, like all of that is sad, and, but, really, what I find, and one of the reasons I wanted to talk with you is, so this podcast is called Be It Till You See It, and one of the things that I am always on a search for is like, what can keep us from being it until we see it, what’s holding us back in our life, or what can help us more? And the facts of what ketamine therapy that you do that is supervised, and you have pre-screened people to make sure that this is the right therapy for them, the benefits can actually change people’s lives, like you said at the beginning, to choose what they want, and that allows them to step into the person that they want to be, like to me, this can be an amazing option for people who they know what they want, but they are just stuck, and they’ve got other things going on that with their mental health that the talk therapy hasn’t helped with, or antidepressants haven’t helped with. And so I really wanted to, like, clear the air and go, this can be an option for the right person.

Sam Mandel 15:30
Absolutely and I’m really grateful for the opportunity to speak with you and for you creating a platform to have conversations like this, because people deserve to know the truth. And you know, you talk about talk therapy. I mean, a number of patients have literally said that was like 20 years of therapy in an hour. I mean, it really is that exponentially transformational. And it’s not instead of therapy, but in addition to, right? When you can do a treatment like this and then work through the material and the learnings that come up for you with someone who understands mental health, who you trust, that’s where a lot of even more growth can happen, and you can implement those learnings into your day to day life in the weeks to come. That process is usually referred to as integration, and it can look a lot of different ways, but then you have your experience. How do you integrate it into your life and actually make lasting change? Ketamine really does produce transformation for most people. In the almost 11 years that we’ve been doing this, we have done over 30,000 infusions. We have an 83% success rate, and we’re typically not seeing people who are just wanting to have growth because they’re stuck. We’re seeing people who have treatment resistant depression, complex PTSD, severe anxiety, suicidality. I mean, there are definitely more moderate cases, but we see a lot of people have really just they’ve tried a lot, and some of them tried everything, and they haven’t benefited. And this really works for them, because it works on under a completely different mechanism of action than the conventional treatments like antidepressant pills or even ECT or talk therapy, or really anything else out there.

Lesley Logan 17:04
Yeah, when I think about PTSD, we obviously a lot of things about vets. People have been in the military, but there are people with PTSD who have had other traumas. It doesn’t have to be that you’ve been to war. You could have been in a bad car accident, you could have been assaulted. Can you kind of explain and maybe it’s redundant, but just how does ketamine help with PTSD, and then what does someone’s life look like? What with one, do you have a case that a person who you can talk about, like, who had PTSD and like, what their life was like after the ketamine treatment?

Sam Mandel 17:29
I’m glad you bring that up, because while a lot of us do think of military and war, there’s actually many more cases of PTSD among the civilian population in the examples that you mentioned with violence, assault, accidents, etc. So it’s super common, unfortunately. I believe there’s around 16 million Americans suffering from PTSD who are at least diagnosed. There’s many more, I’m sure, who are undiagnosed. And ketamine really does help with the neurochemistry in the brain and helping to rewire the brain, and it also really helps with the perception that we have of ourselves, of the event. People who have trauma are able to go back and revisit the trauma without being as emotionally triggered by it. And so sometimes, when I’ve talked about this with you know, friends, they say, yeah, you can revisit your trauma and work through it, and it’s so great. And they’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Why would I want to revisit my trauma? What are you talking about? I’m going to go and spend time and money to go there? No, thank you. I spent time and money avoiding my trauma, not going to visit it. But it isn’t like that. You know? There’s this ability to work through it without having the kind of pain of going there that is so often keeping people from addressing it head on in talk therapy and in life. We avoid, naturally, what’s painful, but it isn’t painful for most people in this context, they’re able to have this detachment that is healthy in this way, to revisit it and to understand who we are, who we were, what our role was, what It was and etc, and to get clarity on that. And it can be really healing. It can really provide closure for a lot of people. And just with the whole cascade of different chemicals going on in the brain, it gives people generally a better mood and more positive outlook and demeanor, and enhanced feelings of compassion towards oneself and towards others and energy and motivation and just all around wellness, it’s an elevator in that way which can just be really motivating for people to be able to do the things that most of us know we need to do and just struggle with in terms of our lifestyle, like fitness and eating healthy and sleeping well and talk therapy and having healthy relationships with people, getting outdoors and getting some sun and some fresh air, doing things we enjoy, all that stuff is absolutely critical for longevity, and for someone who’s really severely depressed or anxious or dealing with real trauma, they can also feel like it’s almost impossible to do a lot of those things.

Lesley Logan 20:00
Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s really interesting. If you’re not someone who has PTSD, or you haven’t had, like, severe depression, it can be hard to understand that it becomes all encompassing, you know? But if you think about it, like, when you’ve had an injury, you’ve been sick for a few days and you can’t leave the bed, that’s the the domino effect of what happens to your strength, and then what happens to your ability to, like, feel like you can reach out and that you can connect with people because you’ve been sick for a week. It’s an easy way to see like, oh, if that’s my life all the time, you know, it’s not easy to go outside, and it doesn’t feel easy to connect with people. And so it becomes part of their whole life. And so it’s really cool to hear that with ketamine treatments over a couple of weeks that they could have a new lease on life and enjoy it. And I love that you brought up longevity, because I think we forget that how we treat our bodies now is what dictates how long will you get to have them? Hopefully, there won’t be anything that stops us from living the life that we’re supposed to but if you don’t see like a lease on life there, what longevity do you have, you know, so it must be really amazing to get to do what you do every day. You really help so many people.

Sam Mandel 21:01
I love it. It’s the most gratifying thing ever, you know. When I tell people a lot of my job, the reality of what I do on a day to day basis, I have to do a lot of things I don’t like to do, I don’t want to do. I’m the CEO of my company. I get the worst, toughest problems that no one else can deal with. I get the fires to put out, the problems, the issues that got escalated to me, and all the weight and pressure and responsibility of it, and there’s a lot of stuff, this is not fun, frankly, but I do it because of the, for the patients and for my team, and the work that we’re doing, the impact that we’re having. It’s hugely motivating and gratifying. And when I see patient who I pass in the hallway in the clinic, and they just, can I just give you a hug, or I just want to say thank you so much, or we get a new Yelp review, and someone goes through and lists, you know, half my team by name and how amazing each one of them is, and how life-changing this has been for them. That’s what gets me up in the morning, and that’s what helps me to keep going every day. I just love it. The transformations are very abundant. And, you know, like I said, 83% it’s not magic. It doesn’t work for every person every time. It’s not perfect, but it is a really incredible treatment.

Lesley Logan 22:04
Yeah, yeah, I do understand that. I mean, my husband and I run our own businesses, and sometimes you can forget what you do while you’re doing it, because you’re doing all the fires, yeah? But then you do get stopped by someone who’s been helped by it, or their life has changed, and you’re like, oh, that’s why I do this. Obviously, you know, it’s been a journey to get to do this. Can you take us back how you figured out how to create a space where people could have ketamine therapy? You know, you are the first in the country. So, like, there wasn’t really a model to go off of. So I feel like there’s a be it till you see it story in there.

Sam Mandel 22:36
Oh yeah. Started with me building the website with GoDaddy website builder, drag and drop modules, not knowing a lick of code, never built a website or anything of the sort, not even the most tech savvy guy, and literally just dragging and dropping and, you know, doing research on articles and clinical research, and conferring with my father, who I co-founded the practice with. He’s a physician, and I’m talking about, what do you think about this? I’m just trying to make sense of it all in a way that I could understand it well enough to then be able to put it into layman’s terms and explain it to other people. What is this? How does it work? And just putting it together, and then going to Radio Shack and getting a motor

Lesley Logan 23:17
That’s how long ago this is because I don’t even think they’re around anymore.

Sam Mandel 23:20
They’re not, They went bankrupt.

Lesley Logan 23:22
Was it the Radio Shack on Santa Monica Boulevard underneath the yoga place? Because that was my favorite.

Sam Mandel 23:27
It was the Radio Shack in Marina Del Rey by the CVS and little strip mall off of Max Stella or something. Anyways, I got a Motorola flip phone prepaid, and I said to my father, you ready to launch the site? We’re going to make it live. And made it live, and started taking calls on this cell phone. We were renting space in another doctor’s office that was literally this closet. No kidding, they used it as a utility closet before we rented it, and once we moved out and got our own space. They went back to just keeping boxes in there. That’s how tiny this room was, no kidding, and it was just really a trip. We had a operating room, recovery area, recovery room for an OR right outside of that little closet that we were in, which, by the way, we were sitting at literally just two folding chairs, a folding table with two laptops, and that was it, no kidding. And we use this recovery area to see patients. And we saw our first few patients, and their transformations were so incredible. We went, this is just too special. We have to do whatever it takes to do more of this. And my father was working as an anesthesiologist. He also has a master’s degree in psychology. He was chief of anesthesia in this plastic surgery suite where we were. And so it started out with, well, he’s already there, doing anesthesia for the surgery. Maybe we see a couple patients here or there, see how it goes. And next thing we knew, we just started getting busier and busier. The word got out. This was such a radical thing that a lot of people were very incredulous, very suspicious. A lot of people were very critical, but we were like, it doesn’t matter. I mean, this is just too special. And it got to the point where my father had to choose between doing our cases or doing ketamine infusions for patients. And I, I remember that quite vividly, where I said, it’s really gotta pick. We can’t continue to do both. And it was a big risk, you know, it was a really big risk. So I have a lot of respect, you know, for him, for that and that we both just said, let’s be all in on this. And, you know, we bootstrapped it. We put everything on credit cards. We had no investors, no financing, no loans, nothing. It’s just a little bit of cash, credit cards. And really, just brick by brick, built it up, and now we have 15 employees, 5000 square feet, a really beautiful purpose-built office. I still have, well after the falling table, I had a custom desk built because of maximizing every inch of that space. So I had, there was a little nook between two pillars in that room, under a window, where they made this skinny little desk that was probably literally eight inches wide by three and a half feet long or something. Just stick it in this little nook so I could sit at a proper desk, and I still have that here in our suite now, and so that’s kind of fun, but, yeah, it’s just truly been an incredible journey.

Lesley Logan 26:12
I thank you for taking this back, because we do have a lot of people who are entrepreneurs, and I think that they need to hear that like even a ketamine clinic, the first of its kind, starts in a utility closet. You know, people don’t realize, because if you, one, you have to know if people want the thing. You knew it was great. You knew it could be amazing. But you have to get people to buy in, and especially on something that long ago, where people might not know all the amazing things that it can do. And even today, now, even with a beautiful space that can attract people in and make them feel super safe, doing something that changes lives, but also going up against where misconceptions, misinterpretations, and also the people who are misusing it can affect the majority getting the help that they need. I love hearing the stories of how things come to be. And also that is pretty amazing that your dad was like, yeah, I’m gonna quit my safe job. There’s always gonna be surgeries, you know. So that’s so, so, so cool, and it’s really amazing. Is there anything about ketamine therapy that I haven’t asked you, that you want to make sure people know? Is there anything else that we can help people understand why this would be something they might need to use, or might use so that they can have the life they want to have?

Sam Mandel 27:19
Yeah, I do want to mention, you know, I was talking about how, you know, Matthew Perry was misusing it, and how different that situation is from what we do. And ketamine is still something that people do use recreationally or abuse or misuse. It’s not as common, I think, as sometimes it’s portrayed, but it definitely can happen, but it’s also not in the same category as most other substances, because ketamine is not addictive in the way that most others are. And what I mean by that is you don’t develop a physical dependence on it if, for example, like nicotine or opioids or alcohol or benzodiazepines, all you can get to the point where you actually need it to not feel sick. I mean, you have physical symptoms of feeling like nausea, headaches, wanting to throw up. Even with benzos, you can actually, if you abruptly stop taking high doses, you can literally have seizures and die. And you know, you can have symptoms from abrupt cessation of alcohol if you’re a heavy alcoholic. That doesn’t happen with ketamine. So some people can use it in the way that they’re using it as a means to escape, but that’s not really that different as far as the psychological dependence in the way that someone can use ice cream or chocolate or, you know, sour candies or sex or any of these other video games as a means of escape or avoiding or to self-soothe. So I think it’s important that people understand that. It also has a very, very high therapeutic index. There’s actually no known lethal dose of ketamine, so you can obviously be in a bad, unsafe environment, where, if you take a bunch and get into a car, that’s not a not such a great outcome for you, or in a jacuzzi, but the medicine itself is unlikely to hurt you on its own. Most of the issues are people in bad situations, or they’re combining it with other drugs. Virtually, almost all of the fatalities that are related to ketamine were one of those two, either in combination with other drugs and or in a situation like behind the wheel of a car. So I just want people to know that it’s not to say that there aren’t people who have an issue with misusing ketamine, because there are, but it really is distinct from most other substances that people are misusing or abusing.

Lesley Logan 29:20
Thank you for saying that, because I do think, as a child of the night, you know, I grew up in the 80s, so it’s, like, always just say no to drugs.

Sam Mandel 29:25
The cocaine epidemic.

Lesley Logan 29:28
Yeah, so I know they really that didn’t really help them, did it? But, like, they thought it would. But I, like, grew up, so it’s really funny when I have friends who, like, talk about doing some sort, some psychedelics, or do I have this innate like, I don’t, I don’t know, I don’t know if I could do that. I’m afraid to try. I’m like, I’ll be addicted on the first dose.

Sam Mandel 29:45
Right, right, right.

Lesley Logan 29:47
This is my fear, which is why I drink, right? That’s what people do. And so they said no to drugs, but then they drink. But I really appreciate because it’s nice to know that if I were to do a ketamine therapy, I’m not going to be dependent on coming to ketamine therapy every single week or I’ll be using it at home, like, it’s nice to know that it’s a non-addictive thing that people can use to get the benefits. And I think that can make a lot of people feel more comfortable, you know.

Sam Mandel 30:08
Yeah, because people are afraid of that, they think, God, well, if I go and do this, even if it’s in a therapeutic way, am I going to become a ketamine addict? You know? I’m going to go and then be looking to score some on the street the next day. It’s really a sad perception that some people might have due to the media or for whatever reason or they know somebody who misuse ketamine or the DARE program, like you said, or the 80s. A lot of baloney.

Lesley Logan 30:28
Oh, and by the way, the DARE program was a lot of baloney. I just heard a whole podcast about it, and I was like, ah. So, but it, but it does put in people’s minds, and also good for good reason. Like, I don’t want people going out there doing other drugs we do know our addictive and like, hoping that they are fine out there the first time, but I am on this mission of helping people figure out how to get out of their own way and live their best life, and sometimes our own way are things that are really outside of our control, the PTSD, the depressions, the mental health, the suicide like I think it’s important that people have access to forms of therapy out there that they may not know about or they may have misconceptions. Because we do know that the media does like to click bait things into headlines that get people to look at them, but don’t actually give all the information. So I’m just so grateful that you were here to just really explain all this and the benefits of it.

Sam Mandel 31:22
Absolutely, yeah, no, I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, there are drugs that you can do once or twice and develop a real serious problem with pretty fast, methamphetamine, probably not one that you need to ever try. You know, if you’re curious about trying drugs, I’d say take that one off the list. Heroin, probably not a good idea. Pretty easy to die, pretty easy to get addicted to that one, right? Opioids, crack, cocaine. These are some that maybe you don’t need to, you don’t need to check out, but maybe there’s some others that if you really want to with the right mindset in the right context, if you’re going to be safe or responsible, maybe you’d be okay with. And by the way, I’m not advocating for you to go do illicit drugs illegally either. But there are some that you can have, even in a controlled environment, such as ours, where you don’t need to be afraid of them. I’ll tell you what are the most dangerous, though, is the prescription legitimate drugs. As a matter of fact, prescriptions are more commonly abused than any of the other illicit drugs. You look at your stimulants like Adderall, your benzodiazepines, like Xanax, opioids, I mean, these are drugs that are a lot of people are really hooked on and that are killing a lot of people, especially the opioids, but because they’re from big pharma, they’re not all that bad. I mean, people are finally starting to scrutinize the opioids, but the others are still kind of under the radar, and they’re really widely abused, but the focus is on the big, bad, illegal ones.

Lesley Logan 32:39
I know of a client who’s a social worker, and she used to work in a hospital, and we’re talking about pain meds, and she’s like Lesley, I watched a 14 year old kid come in super healthy, just had a broken arm. They had to have surgery, but within the three days they were there, they were extra tapping the pain meds. And she’s like, we create addicts with these pharmaceutical drugs quickly, but we don’t think of it like that, because they had a prescription written. And so it’s important for us to educate ourselves, to be informed and to be able to advocate for ourselves or advocate for others when we have this information we can. So, thank you so much. I’m not gonna let you go. We actually are gonna take a brief break, and then we’re gonna find out Be It Action Items from you.

Lesley Logan 33:19
All right, Sam, where can people find you, follow you, connect with you. If they want to know more about ketamine therapies, if they want to come to your clinics, how can they connect with you best?

Sam Mandel 33:28
Yeah, so ketamineclinics.com. That’s K-E-T-A-M-I-N-E-C-L-I-N-I-C-S dot com. Lots of great information on there. People are more than welcome to call us, 310-270-0625. Consultations are free. We’re always happy to chat see how we can help you. We do offer other treatments we really didn’t talk about today, TMS, General Psychiatry, medication management, we take 12 of the biggest insurance networks in California, including Medicare, so there’s a lot more that we can cover with you. Whether or not ketamine is the right fit if you are dealing with a mental health condition, I would encourage you to call and see if there’s anything we can do to help. And we’re on social it’s ketamineclinicsLA on all socials and my personal is theSamMandel on all socials. And just really happy to connect with people and hear their stories, answer questions and help in any way that we can.

Lesley Logan 34:23
I love it. Thank you. And that’s also so cool, because we mentioned, like, it can be really hard to find a therapist these days because they don’t always take insurance. So to hear that you do. It’s really nice. Okay, we always ask people bold, executable, intrinsic or targeted steps they can take to be it till they see it. What do you have for us?

Sam Mandel 34:41
Oh, I wasn’t ready for that one. I would say action. Take action. Just do it. Take Nike slogan. I mean, honestly, planning and strategizing is important, and thinking things through and figuring out who you are. What you want, what you like, what you don’t like, putting together a plan matters. But I think most of us, or almost all of us, spend too much time on that, and there’s just too many unknowns and too many things that you really can’t solve for until you’re in it and doing it, and it’s too easy to let perfectionism keep us from taking the steps that we need to take to get done what we want, become, who we want to be, and who what our potential is. And I personally struggle with this too. So I say that from, you know, my own experience, and I really strive, and I want to encourage other people to really strive, to just get out there and do it, and you’re going to make mistakes, and that’s okay, but it’s really the only way to succeed in life. You have to be on the fields, on the court, in it, and behind the scenes, thinking, planning, strategizing is only going to get you so far.

Lesley Logan 35:58
Yeah, yeah. Oh, thank you for that. And also, I can tell you, practice what you just preached, because it’s true. You started with a utility closet and some folding chairs and a Motorola phone, I mean. But also, you’re correct. People do spend too much time in the planning, or they’re waiting for it to be perfect, or they’re waiting for the perfect decoration, and then they have the perfect branding and all the things. And if you guys had done that, you wouldn’t have been able to help the thousands of people that you have today. So thank you so much, Sam for being here, for educating us, for informing us.

Lesley Logan 36:29
And, you guys, how are you gonna use these tips in your life? Please share this episode with a friend as you hear conversations come up about the misuse of ketamine, and now you know you could share this with them to educate them, and also, if you have friends and family or yourself who needs this, please contact Sam and his team, because there’s help out there for you. Until next time, Be It Till You See It.

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Lesley Logan
That’s all I’ve got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate this show and leave a review. And, follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over on IG at the @be_it_pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others BE IT TILL YOU SEE IT. Have an awesome day!

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Lesley Logan
‘Be It Till You See It’ is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @be_it_pod.

Brad Crowell
It’s written, filmed and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan and me, Brad Crowell.

Lesley Logan
It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co.

Brad Crowell
Our theme music is by Ali at APEX Production Music and our branding by designer and artist Gianfranco Cioffi.

Lesley Logan
Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals.

Brad Crowell
Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.