Feb 17, 2021
This week’s episode of the Plant
Medicine Podcast features a conversation with Rebecca Kronman, LCSW
on the intersection of psychedelics and parenting. Rebecca is a
licensed therapist with a private practice in Brooklyn, New York,
where she helps clients integrate and prepare for psychedelic
experience, in addition to providing therapeutic care for clients
struggling with mental illnesses such as anxiety or depression.
Rebecca is also the founder of Plant Parenthood, which is an online
and in-person community of parents who use psychedelics, plant
medicine and cannabis looking to de-stigmatize the conversation
around psychedelics and parenting.
In this wide-ranging discussion,
Rebecca explores both practical and theoretical issues in the
intersection of psychedelics and parenthood. The most controversial
of these being, of course, minors using psychedelics themselves.
Rebecca discusses the traditional cultural frameworks in societies
which use psychedelics and how they handle this matter, contrasting
this with the Western medical model where psychedelic use is highly
stigmatized yet prescribing amphetamines to children is rather
uncontroversial. Rebecca emphasizes that this is a topic which
deserves more careful consideration, as ketamine treatments are
already available and effective for treatment-resistant depression
in teens.
She also discusses how
psychedelics can help us reparent ourselves and heal generational
trauma, both of which can aid in improving parents’ relationship to
not only their children, but to their own parents as well.
In addition, Rebecca discusses
some practical concerns, such as how parents ought to discuss
psychedelic use with children. Here she draws a distinction between
proactive and reactive conversations, the former being initiated by
the parent, the latter by the child. Choosing to pursue a degree of
proactive discussion with children around psychedelic use can have
a positive impact, both in strengthening trust and openness between
parent and child as well as preparing older children for
encountering these things in their own lives as accessibility and
awareness continue to increase. Rebecca closes this discussion
talking about the high levels of scrutiny parents face socially,
emphasizing the importance of parents having the opportunity to
come together around this topic to determine the best solutions for
their own families.
In this episode:
Quotes:
“It’s something that needs to be
on our minds: how do we approach this topic without stigmatizing it
so that when our children inevitably find out about it, we can have
an open dialogue.” [11:39]
“A lot of the work of
psychedelics, is the work of reparenting yourself. It’s the work of
healing intergenerational trauma.” [16:49]
“For some parents it’s not a
problem for their children to be around during their psychedelic
experience itself, and for some parents they feel like ‘you know
what, I want this time for myself–this is my time to go inward, to
journey into my psyche, and I don’t want to be a parent during that
moment.’” [24:25]
“We can start talking about
plant medicine or substance use or addiction from the very earliest
time our kids can understand.” [29:28]
“As kids get older it does
become more important to be a bit more proactive because the
reality is they will be exposed to this, especially as access
increases.” [32:43]
“There is a level of scrutiny
that parents face that is different than what other people face and
it makes people more reticent to be honest and to approach these
topics in a way that feels healing and that feels complete.”
[41:29]
“[Psychedelics] make us be able to inhabit that open, neuroplastic state that children naturally inhabit. So in a sense, it makes us be able to understand them better. It makes us be able to get into their experience in a deeper way.” [46:42]
Links: