LOU LUKAS, MD
Lou
Lukas
Physician Scholar Edgewalker
Edge walking is the practice of living with your feet in two worlds. Turtles are master edge walkers, obligated to both the land and the sea, not wholly complete in either.
Edge Walking
After taking care of people who are facing mortality for over 20 years, I've practiced edge walking, too. Moving back and forth between living and dying, science and spirit, hope and doubt, I've become familiar with teasing apart complexity, living with tension, and translating challenging concepts in ways many people can understand.
Psychedelic Assisted Healing
Just over a decade ago, Johns Hopkins announced the opening of their landmark trial of psilocybin for cancer related distress. Though I was familiar with, and fascinated by, the research on psychedelics in the 1960's, I had no idea that there was current work being done in the field. I was leading a large hospice in Maryland, so had the opportunity to meet the researchers, Roland Griffiths and Matt Johnson. Before long, I became a volunteer in a study of psychedelics and spirituality and engaged in two high dose psilocybin session with none other than Bill Richards as my guide. That's when I learned the amazing power of psilocybin and psychedelic assisted treatment to explore consciousness address deep emotional and spiritual pain.
For most of human history, cultures across the globe maintained rituals and ceremonies that used techniques of shifting consciousness as a means of healing for both individuals and communities. Many used psychedelic plant medicines, while others used dance, fasting, meditation, or breathwork. These practices were widespread in Europe. The Greek mystery cults practices for centuries and may have influenced early Christianity, human hair found in burial sites in Spain dating back almost 3000 years contained hallucinogenic substances. They flourished in Mesoamerica. European colonialists recorded the use of sacred mushrooms upon their arrival in North America and archaeological evidence of peyote use dates back to over 5000 years. The Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution relegated these cultures to smaller and smaller areas, little more than embers banked waiting until Modern humans rediscovered their medicinal and ceremonial value.
After being banked for several centuries, and then several decades of judicious, and not so judicious, exploration, the embers are being rekindled and psychedelic assisted healing using substances such as psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, LSD and more seem ready to move toward the mainstream. I've spent the last 10 years learning the science and history of these substances and how to use them safely, ethically, and legally. I'm committed to sharing that knowledge with others to create
Palliadelic Care
relieving suffering by revealing the mind
After returning home to Omaha, Nebraska to join the VA and University of Nebraska, I developed a research study to help people with pancreas cancer deal with the distress of such a frightening disease. While thinking about what made this work so different from standard palliative care, I coined the term "Palliadelic," a combination of palliative (to relieve suffering) and psychedelic (to manifest or reveal the mind). While palliative practitioners have a number of tools to relieve pain and are generally better at communicating the complex emotions of serious illness than conventional medical specialists, the tools to deal with suffering are sparse.
Suffering, different from pain, is that unique human tendency to become kidnapped by the negative circumstance. People lose their sense of themselves, "Who am I if this is happening to me?" They lose the thread of their story, their lives can stop making sense to them, and, in this morass, they languish, unable to fully participate in the life they do have. By pulling back the curtain on our inner operating systems and the pain that lurks beneath our daily awareness, psychedelic assisted treatment has the potential to heal the sources of suffering.
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Palliadelic Care is a specific set of practices and techniques that I integrated to use in combination with psychedelic substances to help people experience healing and restoration of a meaningful personal narrative, even in the face of serious illness.
Palliadelic Care was conceived with terminal illness in mind, but suffering is not limited to the end of life. In fact, suffering abounds. Look around, in big ways and small, people everywhere are suffering. It may manifest as depression, anxiety, addictions, PTSD, eating disorders, auto immune conditions, or simply the ennui of living in our challenging times without being able to find purpose or meaning.
