PRONOUNS, DEADNAMING AND INSIGHT FROM TRANSGENDER MD

March 2, 2022

S01 - E03

Dr. Sheila Newsom MD discusses her transition in her 60s as well as topical issues in the transgender community and her boutique ketamine service.

GUEST(S):

Dr. Sheila Newsom MD

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Sheila Newsom

About January, the bloom had worn off. I got a letter from my mother. And she said, “I just saw this in the paper.” There was a big story in the Daily Herald, an announcement about applications for West Point. “I don't know, I just thought you might want to think about this.”

Well, by that time, like I said, the bloom had worn off. I was looking for more challenges and so started the application process and went to Fort Sam, took the test. And by May, I had received my letter of acceptance to West Point.

I flew to West Point on Braniff Airline the last day of June in 1969. A friend of mine who had been a suitemate at A&M and his girlfriend drove me up to West Point. I'll never forget them. We stopped and had ice cream at a little stand. I remember saying to him, “I want to have ice cream here until I'm driving out after I've graduated.” And he smiled.

Robert Hansen

A little gift here or something.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Yeah. The thing was Robert, getting on that plane, I remember thinking, “This is what destiny looks like. This is what destiny feels like.” And I didn't even know what that meant. But I just felt I was opening to something larger.

As soon as I walked through those gates, I felt at home. It was the first calling that I think that I had answered to, and I knew what the response meant. I began on the first of July of 1969 at West Point. Those were four years of being extremely challenged, extremely happy. There was so much to do, and every hour was occupied.

The other part of it is, besides the friendships, there was an underlying ethos. There was an underlying spirit there that I felt that first day, and I really didn't know what that was until much later. But the goddess Athena is everywhere. Her helmet is on the rings, it's on the books, it's on the side of the walls. So my retrospective sees that Athena is everywhere.

I didn't really understand what that swearing-in ceremony was. I was really being sworn into not only the Combat Arms and the constitution and all of those things, but it was at a deeper level. I was being sworn in, I think, as a consort to something much larger. And I always had that same idea that there was something greater here going on than what I thought, than what I could have experienced. But I did well.

Robert Hansen

You became a paratrooper?

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Yeah. But at West Point, you got to understand that every class is graded every day. So it was so nice to have an idea of where I was at a point in time with especially the ego formation and the pomp and circumstance. It helped me define who and what I was. That part of life, I think, was developing a certain persona. And that was a great place to do it.

Robert Hansen

I bet. That challenge drives you to be a better person in every aspect of your life, not just the one that they're testing you on.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

It was, and the data on your country thing was a reality. It wasn't just something that you said. We did not lie, steal, or cheat. And everybody took that seriously. By the time I was a senior, I was second-in-command of the corps and captain of the baseball team.

I left West Point after graduation on the third of June. But as I was driving out from the gates that day, I'll never forget thinking somehow something was missing. And I didn't know what that was. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I just felt like I had missed something. I did stop at the ice cream stand.

Robert Hansen

I remember walking into this small room about like this that had bookshelves and the guy that was asking the questions, the physician, was asking and I remember walking in and saying, “God, just show me. Give me a sign if this isn't where I'm supposed to be.”

Robert Hansen

Your mom shows up with a gift certificate.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Robert Hansen

Well, let's start there. When did you become an alcoholic?

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Well, I was born one. Let me just say that. It wasn't until a Christmas party when I was 35 years old in my first job as a nephrologist partner in Midland, Texas. The way that we had set it up is that you were on call for a whole month at a time, and it was brutal. That was before cell phones. There was nothing easy.

You had to stop to find a payphone if you're going between Midland-Odessa, blah, blah, blah. But I'll never forget, it was a Christmas party. And my partner, who was the senior partner, handed me a Chivas and 7UP. I'd never drunk Chivas.

I said, “Hey, I'm on call.” He said, “Don't worry about it.” Anyway, I'll never forget drinking the Chivas. And something clicked. It was-

Robert Hansen

It tasted that good?

I went to treatment. There's a story though that I want to tell you. Because again, it shows this force behind me, this daemon, this angel or whatever. But my mother died in December of 1992. She had come up for her normal examination once a year.

By that time, she and my father had inherited some money that did well. So they were traveling the world and really having a good time. She was 63. She had had a little nodule on her lung that the internist, who I knew very well, was worried about. But it hadn't grown in size.

I remember what he said, “Hey, Marilyn. Listen, why don't we just do a CAT scan just to make sure that there's nothing untoward here?” I'll never forget, they had a floor for VIPs in Methodist Hospital during those days. That's just the way you practice medicine. It was concierge medicine.

I remember my parents were up in a room, and I went back down to one of the radiologists who I had known since the second grade. I said, “Hey, Scott. Let's look at Marilyn’s X-ray. I've got to go get them out of here and make sure that it's as clean as we think it is.”

Anyway, when he pulled it up, there was a big metastasis in the brain. I remember walking into the room, and my mother was sitting on the bed. And I said, “Mom, you've got a tumor.”

Both of them were just stunned, my mother and father. And we were close. We were a close family. I'll never forget, she turned to my father and said, “Well, let's go home.” That was August. And so by December, she came in back to the hospital there and was in a room for three weeks, mainly palliative care.

The primary was in her lung, but it metastasized to her brain and to her bone and all. It was a bad death. But I missed her death. I was drunk the night before, the hangover was light. When I walked into the room, they were cleaning her up. So that was the first time I really had seen my mother for what she was, she was a human. I'd always projected mother on her and really had never seen the great beauty of her.

She had a marvelous voice. And she should have gone to Juilliard for training. She was world-class, and I’m saying all over West Texas. She was my wife's mentor in Boise. But I just never saw her for who she was. It wasn't until much later that I realized how difficult it is when we project things on our parents. It's unconscious, but it's done. And we all do it, but I just didn't realize it until that day.

A month after that, we went to the Super Bowl. That was the Cowboys and Bills 1993. And it was at the Rose Bowl. A good friend of ours had a condo. My father actually had rented a condo for a long period of time in Point Loma. So we flew out there, and we flew on the private plane up to the Rose Bowl.

I remember my brother and I, who was always around for the party and who is not an alcoholic. But we'd been up all night in strip clubs. So I'll never forget having those sunglasses on and my father sitting about where you are. And it hit me how embarrassed I was. There was something disgusting about the way that I was living my life.

Robert Hansen

Was it the way he was looking at you or you just internalized how embarrassing you felt?

Dr. Sheila Newsom

That's right. It was me seeing me in his faith. We flew to the Rose Bowl and saw the game. The Cowboys won big. Michael Jackson did have time. It was a big day. But on the way back, I drank a beer about 10:00 that night. That's the last drink that I had. So the first February of 1993 is my dry date.

On the way back, though, this is where the mystery really gets steeper. The plane was supposed to be full, it was a King Air, and there's room for about 12-15 of us. But there were two of us. This guy had played quarterback at UT and had actually gotten bounced, I think, because of cocaine or something.

About halfway through the flight, I'm sitting there thinking about what I'm going to do after our land, go to the bar, blah, blah, blah. And he turns to me and says, “I want you to know I'm an alcoholic and how I got sober in Lubbock, Texas.”

Robert Hansen

Out of the blue, he just starts talking?

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Out of the wild blue, Robert. Again, there was another one of those nudges. So if he had not said anything, I would have gotten off the plane and gone and done what I normally did.

We were all childish and emotionally sensitive and grandiose and had a lot of the same character defects. So it was a really good way for me to be mirrored, “This is who I am.” The fifth step with Alcoholics Anonymous out of the 12 steps is where you share with somebody the things that really are deep, dark secrets. The secrets, that still is the core.

There are two secrets. One is the compulsion to use gets taken away. That's the main promise. Magically, it's a gift. You call it whatever you want. The higher powers though takes that away. And for me, that happened very quickly. So I didn't really ever struggle with a compulsion to drink.

I had suitemates. One drank on the way home after nine months. One shot himself two weeks after he got home. I saw the manifestations of something, and I was just scared to death about going back and not getting this. So I was really desperate.

Nominate a pastor. Why did you pick him? Why did you think he would? Most people are not that kind where they're just going to hand you a big bag of cash.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

I guess, Robert, it goes back though to that relationship that I had with my patients by that time. I saw these folks three times a week. I knew their family. I knew their backstory. I saw them in the hospital when they were hospitalized, so there was a familiarity. Not only a physical but a spiritual sort. I thought I could trust Jack. The worst that he could say was no.

I didn't have any other place to go. All he could have said was, “Okay, I can't do that.” And then I would have had to figure out something else. But no, he said, “I can help.” So that got us over a really rough patch. And then again, we still could not get the paperwork that we needed to open the center and do all of this. One thing after another.

One night, it came to me that there was a practice that we had competed against in Lubbock. The guy that was a competitor was a really bright nephrologist. But those guys were on another team, within a different company. And there were only two companies in the US that were doing that sort of work. So I called down and said, “Hey, who's head of acquisitions?”

I call that number. In two days, those guys were down there. All of a sudden, there is a bidding war between the two companies. This was right at the verge of West Texas and a big market. So they got into a crazy bidding war. By the time that it was over, which was about two weeks, within a two-week period, my life changed dramatically. All of a sudden, we had millions and millions of dollars.

I remember calling my wife and saying, “Sweetie, we sold the dialysis center.” I had been working to do that for eight years, driven back and forth 221 times round trip going here in Midland. And those were not happy times. Every time I left the house, I cried to Lando, without exception.

That was a long time to be in that crucible. So whenever we got the check, I told my partner, “Hey, I'm out of here.” We did some negotiation, etc. And then I retired in 2011.

Robert Hansen

Sort of retired.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Sort of retired. Well, by that time, I had a bucket list. A mentor friend of mine, MD, had always encouraged me to go to Mount Kailash. He was a spiritual mentor as well. He said, “There's something magical about Mount Kailash.” It's in Tibet, and it's the mountain of Shiva in the Hindu tradition. It's also holy in the Buddhist tradition, and there's a local religion called the Bon religion as well. So it's a holy pilgrimage, which is about 35 miles around.

I signed up for a tour to go on that. While I was going to do that, my wife said, “Well, I'm going to go to the Caribbean.” We had made plans to buy a couple of condos on Saint Kitts and lease to the medical students that were going to medical school down there. So she flies to Saint Kitts, I fly to China.

I'll never forget looking on chinamobile.com and there's a picture of this beautiful villa. Beverly says, “I've found what I really love. I've never said this, but this is where I'd love to wind up.” So we bought that.

Pretty shortly thereafter, I went to Uganda. We had donated some money, and I’d been going back and forth between Uganda for a couple of years doing mission work with a group from Odessa. And I got to know one of the physicians in Uganda really well. So my youngest and I went to Uganda. We had helped build a wing of the hospital there.

Robert Hansen

As all retired people do.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

We had donated the money and really had become a part of that community. It was about that time that his wife showed me a protein supplement that she had come up with made from local grains. And she was the daughter of the department of defense head before Idi Amin. So she was well born and smart and articulate.

I said, “Well, why don't we make a business of this?” So for the next year, I went back and forth between Uganda and the States thinking that I was going to be a rich, Caucasian entrepreneur and live in Uganda part time. We had contracts with USAID and with the Ugandan government. We’d gotten a handshake with a company out of South Korea.

Our board was full of people. There was a chancellor at the University of Kampala, there was an Air Force general, blah, blah, blah. So it looked like we were really headed in the right direction. Plus, I had agreed to fund it with my own money and I would get paid back by 10% whenever we got the loan from South Korea.

Anyway, the money was slow in coming. We were going to finish the hospital. We were going to build a hydroelectric plant in a waterfall that my partner and his wife owned the land to. And then they discovered gold in Karamoja, which is the West Texas outback of Uganda. So we were going to do gold mining. It was just crazy as I look back about it.

I was over there and back 9-10 times. I had a driver. We were driving all over Uganda. One, I loved the people. I loved the Ugandan people. They were just so down to earth, so elegant in a really informal way. They just had a real genuineness to them.

I remember we were in Kampala driving back from Gulu, north on the border of Sudan, where we were going to actually make the supplement. I remember driving in and looking at the skyline, and there was always a lot of haze and fog and smog. But it was just lovely. It was full of life. I remember thinking, “There's just something not right here.”

I could hear the voice. It was saying, “Gary, don't count on this. You can't keep going this way.” That voice was there. The Romans always said that they had a person behind them that would always say, “Tempus fugit.” time passes fast. But I didn't hear that.

I'm in Nevis in our retirement home in April of 2013. I’d just come back from Uganda. I haven't heard from my partner for about two weeks and was worried about that. Then in the middle of the night, I get a call from him. And he says, “Listen, the local prime minister, our representative to parliament has died suddenly. And they're having an election. I'm going to run for his spot. I've taken all of our money, and I’m using that to run.”

In a blink of an eye, a whole year of work there. We created an international company, and I'd put in hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just willy nilly, and that was gone. So I didn't take that well. It was a blow to my ego. I'd seen myself in a certain way, that persona, rich, entrepreneurial white guy in Africa. So it was pejorative. It was full of arrogance and hubris.

The next day, I'm sitting on the porch. 20 yards there, it is the Caribbean. This is a beautiful, idyllic place. This is the retirement home that we’d chosen or that had chosen us. I'm sitting there drinking coffee. And I hear a voice, “Sheila, you're a woman and always have been. There's work to do.”

Did I hear that voice, Robert? I don't know. There was something resonant that was that clear. April the 13th, 2013. I heard it. I remember going back to the bedroom, and my wife’s laying there reading a book or something. And I said, “Sweetie, I think I'm a woman.” She laughs and says, “Well, sometimes I think I'm a guy. What the fuck?”

Your mate for 40 years comes in and one day says, “Hey, I think I'm a woman.” So we played with that. We made light of it for a while. But there was a shift in consciousness. That daemon, that voice, that angel, whatever it was, it was represented and was coming out. It did not go away. It did not dissipate.

Robert Hansen

So this is around when we started having our conversation?

Dr. Sheila Newsom

That’s right. Yeah.

Robert Hansen

Quick aside, because this is how I dovetail into this conversation. When I met you at a coffee shop here in Austin, we were already friends by that point. But you said, “I need to meet with you. I got something to talk about.” which I always take very seriously, especially when someone doesn't want to have a conversation on the phone. It's usually a pretty interesting conversation whenever I show up.

I remember distinctly you said, “I'm going to be changing into a woman.” I don't think I even blinked. If I did, it surprised me because I think I was just like, “Okay, that's great.” But that was a very serious conversation. That was not a light-hearted, joyful conversation because you are one of those people who has decided to take it upon yourself to be public about it.

It's not just, “My friends and family know. Or my coworkers know.” You've taken a different path and become much more social. And that's certainly opening yourself up to a lot of naysayers on the internet, naysayers around town who maybe don't know you but know of you, a lot of people who might have a reason to come after you for whatever contrived, internal conflict that they've got, usually, with people that they don't understand.

That conversation was largely around how you protect yourself. Before we go any further, I think it's worth spending a little bit of time because this is just the backstory, from my perspective. This just gets us to where it gets really interesting. I think that it is very important for us to be as nice to one another as we possibly can during this, which means if I fail to use the right word, you're going to stop me and tell me.

I will do my best to use the words I think are best. Obviously, we're both in this together in this conversation. But I think every conversation should be, “We're in it together. I'm not on my side, you're not on your side. We're trying to work things out.” So I'm going to be as careful with the language as possible. But also, there's a lot of really interesting, deep issues facing society around transgender.

I think, starting it off, why do you think it was so late in life? One of the reasons I think you're so interesting is you are not some 20-year-old or 18-year-old who just decided on a whim that you're going to go do this with zero life experience. I hope for the audience's sake, that was a long leading but I think is an important one.

You are not somebody who just showed up one day and decided to do this. This was not you just looking at something online then saying, “I'm going to do that.” or whatever. You had countless years of a very interesting backstory, a real life lived, done a lot of things, been all over the world, had a wife, had successful business practices, was the captain of the football team. All of the things that would normally carve people out, jumped out of airplanes.

You really were the kind of person who should have every bit of distance from this issue as one could possibly hope to have. And yet, you still went through with it and very late in life. So I want to talk about that before we get into the rest. Why do you think it took you that long to make this decision?

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Well, let me just say, the last two years ending in August of this year, that's when I went back to do a graduate degree in depth psychology. And I wanted to figure out from a psychological perspective, what the fuck? What was this movement?

Well, I went back down then to Nevis in 2015 and was planning on committing suicide. And so, that's when I knew that I linked the dysphoria to that. But I have a plan. I mean, I know how this is going to happen but that night before I'm going to die the next morning, I'm out underneath the moon, full moon. And I was just out there and I just said, "Hey, this is it for me, and I just want to say thank you for all of this, but I just can't do this anymore."

And that same voice that I had heard on the porch says to me, "You do what you want. This is all about free will, and you're living it, but if you kill yourself, there will be people that you could have helped that will not have that help." I remember feeling and hearing that very clearly. "Go ahead, do what you need to do. But if you do that, it's an ultimately selfish act. There will be people that will not be helped, that you could help."

Robert Hansen

This is sort of the Doctor's Credo in future tenses. You're doing harm by not being there for them.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

And I think suicide is a soul perspective. I think that, that's when I really began to understand what soul was. It was much deeper than the physician from the outside looking in making some pejorative decision about this works. And that I don't think the sociologist, I don't think the politician, I don't think anybody really understands unless you're able to get down into the level of looking at this whole movement.

Especially, with this transgender thing in my life, is a movement of soul. Anyway I hear that, and by the next morning I wake up and I realize, "Hey, I can't do this. I mean, can't commit suicide. I've got too much that I need to do. And so, I go back. And again, it's a difficult period in that I'm living at home.

I remember I drive down to the office over in San Antonio and change clothes, put on makeup, work all day there with Rena Edge, or New Republic. And then I'd take, I'd reverse that and go home. Take off my clothes, take off my makeup, drive back home. So, it was a really a crazy way to live. And it tore me the pieces.

My wife and I, we were just not on the same page, and she was trying that the best that she could. I mean, it was just a really difficult period. 2017 in August, she goes to Nevis for vacation, or whatever. I stay home and I just make the decision, "I've got a break from here, or I'm going to die in place here." And I realized I was just dying in place.

And so, I leased a place downtown and moved out in 2017. And my wife, when she came back I mean, she was hurt, devastated. I don't think I handled it extremely well. I remember writing her an email that I was going to do this.

Robert Hansen

There you go. Email. Perfect way to break up with somebody. That's okay. I won't give you too much shit over.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

But I mean, I remember having the conversation on the bench down there in front of Royal Blue right across from Mellow Johnny's on a September afternoon. And remember my wife, I mean, my best friend, my mate sitting there screaming at me, "Please take your wig off. Take that makeup off. I need my husband." So, I'm betwixt and between. I'm caught between knowing that I've got to do something and feeling the guilt of doing it. And as opposed to a relationship that had just disintegrated.

That's when I knew Sheila was an entity. December, I did breast augmentation. And about that time, Robert, what you speak to, I mean, I didn't have any clothes. So, somehow I found MM Flore, which is a wonderful professional women's clothing line. And so, got to know their CEO.

So, January of 2017, 2018, now I write to 10, 12 people who I've been very close with, ranging from a former governor to CEO of Proctor and Gamble, West Point classmates, physicians. And say, "Hey, listen, I figured out I'm transgender. I'm transitioning. And just want you to know."

Robert, that naivete that I had initially, that, "Oh, well, I've figured this out. Everybody's going to be really happy about that." And what I realized, about half of those, nobody said anything untoward, but I haven't heard from maybe five of those people ever after that. So, it was an eye-opener. The thing that really helped me though is that I was on the developmental board of the Association of Graduates at West Point.

Beverly and I had given money there after retirement and had money. And so, I stayed on that development board. And actually, it was in 2014 in May, when I was at a meeting up there for the development board that I was talking with somebody that worked at West Point in the Association of Graduates, who I was a good friend with. And she said, "Oh, did you know that there was a marine here by the name of Kristen Beck, who is transgender? Was here a couple of weeks ago, had transitioned and now has a documentary out. You might want to see that."

I went back at lunch and watched that and broke down in tears. That's when I knew exactly what this was. And that was then 2014. So, it wasn't until I saw Lady of Valor. Lady of Valor, Is the name of that. But it was about his transition, and I realized that's what this was. But fast forward, once I got back here and had the facial surgery, then the breast augmentation, the following May, I went and they cut off the bottom part of my vocal chords. And then, I couldn't talk for three weeks.

Robert Hansen

Is that a blessing or a curse?

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Well, I can't scream now.

Robert Hansen

Oh, interesting.

So, there is a lot of controversy around the concept of dead naming. So, I don't think I've slipped up once. Although when I first met you, you were Gary. And I was actually a little worried about this because sometimes it's in my head, you're Gary just because that's how I first met you.

First of all, what do you think about your old name? But I think the more important question is, is that really something that the rest of the population should be upset about? If someone does that, if they're doing it accidentally, how can you tell someone's motives? This is a really kind of a deep, unfortunately, probably a stupidly deep question because it is. I misname people all the time. Hey Bob, and you're actually Joe or whatever.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Well, I think it shows where we are culturally. I mean, here's the place that I know. I love college football. I've always been an Aggie and so I follow football recruiting. And there are a couple of sites that I watch and keep up with and I read the comments.

And so, the typical extroverted sensate thinking, judgmental alpha male is what reels our culture. Its typology is something that Yung developed early on. And it's continued to be used in order to try to characterize certain ego syntonic and dystonic functions. There are four functions that we use in consciousness. And that's feeling sensation, intuition and thinking. Thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition, all those four.

And each of those has an extroverted pattern and an introverted pattern. We all have those eight. How they're arranged is different with the 16 different personality types. And we usually use the first two very adeptly, but especially with sensate thinkers, everything extroverted, it's all out here. And anything that goes past the skin just doesn't exist. It might, and it might be, but typically it's in religious terms, not spiritual.

So, the thing is that judgment along those lines, that's the way that culturally we've been raised for a long time. So, to answer your questions, most of those guys go, "Well, what the fuck? They've got a dick. They're male. I mean, if they, they call themselves a female, that's just crazy." So, that's that pejorative view of the way that things are. But then, there are a whole another half that are introverted and have intuition and feeling functions.

And those are the ones that look, that are able to sense some of the things that we're talking about, especially around soul. Yung's model has four functions that are ego conscious, and then four that are unconscious. And the guardian between conscious and unconscious realm is something called anima or animus. So, those are gendered energetics, but we all of us have them.

And the first scene in Dune is the sardaukar warrior and says, "Dreams are messages from the deep." That's the way dune starts. And so, again, it's out there now. That there's something more than just this little ego. And the other thing is that I know from my AA background is that, the ego thinks that it's separate from self-goddess, but there's always an attachment.

Robert Hansen

Internet trolls will find you somehow, but just don't feed them.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Amen.

Robert Hansen

So, let's talk about pronouns. This is another very similar issue to dead naming, but I think that it's a bigger problem because if I say my pronoun is attack helicopter, and you need to refer to me as attack helicopter who wins that fight?

And this is a very serious issue because we're getting into issues where we have to have more boxes that you have to fill out, where more things like Mrs, Mr other but also there's bills in other countries, Canada being one of them, where it's actually illegal to use the wrong pronouns. I don't know exactly how that's even enforceable, just pulling someone off the street just because they don't know. And also the other problem is they can change from moment to moment.

There's really no reason why one pronoun has to be the one pronoun. I can decide I'm this one minute, other than the other. And there's no finite list of them. They can be hundreds or thousands of these. There is no known number anyway that anyone can agree upon other than a lot of people seem to want to make it a very small number because that makes it manageable.

The one pronoun that I think is most strange from just English speaking perspective is They, because like they went to the store. Oh, yeah. Who went to the store? You end up having to ask the question. No, the person referred to. You know what I mean? It adds a lot of complexity to that conversation. I don't personally have problem calling people by whatever pronouns they have. I actually have no problem with that whatsoever.

But I can see why there's a lot of consternation amongst people who just want to be able to have a conversation with somebody. Like it be any more complicated than just, he said, she said. And more particularly, if I don't know what you are and I accidentally mispronoun you, because not everyone's wearing that on their name tag, what crime have I committed exactly? Do I have to ask your pronouns before I begin talking to every single person? How do you see that whole thing?

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Well, let's put it in the same basket as race. I think that we have become more sensitive over a period of time with approaching race in a certain way. Gender, for those of us who have gone through the early battles and see gender as a contesting point, some of us feel that we've made a declaration about who we are.

Now, being called the pronouns to my way of thinking, just become a control issue. It becomes a battleground in which if you're not going to acknowledge that, then that's a completely different subset.

Robert Hansen

A lot of people do feed the trolls.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

And they do.

Robert Hansen

So someone starts mispronouncing you.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

I mean, to get dragged into that battle, it's an ego issue. And my battling these samskaras, these issues between us and trying to inflate that over the pronouns just is a no win for anybody. And so, the pronouns I think are a way to honor what somebody feels about their own journey. And either you're going to do that or you're not.

But again, that line about how far to honor or how compassionate to be around those issues is a personal decision, and either you are or you aren't. And there's not much I'm going to be able to do to change your mind necessitating that you call me this and that, it's just a no win.

But again, I think those are items that have become politicized. And that's what happens, it galvanizes those unconscious factors that we're talking about in that deep ocean, and that little ego is right on top of that. But this is a collective unconscious.

So I think that those complex issues that have a complex like that have valence, and are able to galvanize different responses from one to the other, you're never going to win, one versus the other. So all I can do is hope that, hey, if you know that these are my pronouns, and respect me enough to ask what those pronouns are…

Robert Hansen

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Robert, I grew up and my father owned a grocery store, a couple of them.

Robert Hansen

Imagine having to retrofit your bathroom.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

That would have been a big deal. Again, I think it points to common sense. You make regulations that if you're a certain age in your business, you faze those in over a period of time or whatever. But how invasive is government in most everybody's lives these days?

Robert Hansen

I don't think you're going to win any favors for saying that.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

The things that I had to do late in my career in medicine were just atrocious and took time and care away from patients. So anyway, don't get me started on that. The legitimate point I think that you make is that there's a common sense way to approach this, but it does require a certain openness on both sides.

Both sides around race and gender are very much entrenched right now. I'm hopeful that we don't have this divisiveness exploited even more in the next four to eight years.

Robert Hansen

It seems like if transgender community really wanted this problem solved, they would sponsor bills to have the government pay small businesses to retrofit their bathrooms according to some code.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

But Robert, I think that's the thing that we're seeing now is that, this is an easy football for a patriarchal culture to pick and say “See, these people want something…”

Robert Hansen

Nicer bathrooms? Not just transgendered, you could also make it nice.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

But the thing is that the transgender issue gets to be a political football and it galvanizes votes. So the harm that I see is that, okay, transgender is one thing, then it gets bigger than that, it gets to be color of skin, religion, et cetera. So I don't think that's the bifurcation.

I don't think those are the modifiers that we want to have as an advanced culture, to pick on to say this is not your right. I think it's everybody's right to make those decisions. Now, how to honor that it becomes something involved with law and in law has involved everything in our lives now. So it gets to be more and more…

Robert Hansen

Libertarian, I hear them screaming right now. How about Trans and sports. So there's a lot of controversy around this where men who have transitioned into women are now in women's sports, and dominating them often, not always, obviously, but often.

I can tell you from a personal perspective that, especially from male to female, the effects of testosterone diminish pretty quickly. So now there is a certain residual amount of testosterone, it's reduced, even with suppression unless their bilateral orchiectomy is and the balls are taken out.

But the thing is that now, I don't think that the male to female is as bigger issue as female to male and which testosterone is part of the therapy, and the regiment.

Robert Hansen

I think most people's problems are the other way around. So it's kind of curious that…

Dr. Sheila Newsom

The Trans military is a really interesting documentary, and it shows exactly what we're talking about here. There are female to male and you would never…

Robert Hansen

They’re very strong looking individuals, they are just entirely built of muscle. It's amazing. I think one thing that this starts talking about children, but I think before we get into the children part, I know that there is a certain group of people who feel like they have a lot of regret post op usually.

I think that the 40% suicidality especially speaks to the resistance that people have. Especially growing up, especially in certain families, certain cultures in which this is just not approved, it's seen as something pathologic.

So that's where the education I think, has to start early in a broad way, in order to inform those kids from a very early point that there is no harm in trying to explore gender differences. I've got a good friend who went to lunch with the other day.

She said, “My seven year old is now wearing, who's biologically male, who is cisgendered has the external genitalia of a male declared at birth, and is cisgendered but wearing a dress to school. We talked with the counselor about it, we talked with the teacher about it, we talked with the class about it, we talked with his brother about it.

So it's an educational system. So the child is now going to school at seven years old wearing a dress. All that he tells his mother is, “I just feel better when I do this.” Now is that my way of thinking is a forward thinking way to approach this. Kids are exploring gender, and it's much more fluid now, Robert, than when I went through, I'm 72. So I mean, in the 60s that was just not something that was even negotiable, now that it is. So I think education…

Robert Hansen

Same was true with a lot of social issues. Interracial marriage was barely a thing. Gay marriage was definitely not on the table.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Well, in both of those and gender…

Robert Hansen

The times are changing.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

They are and being gay was a pathology. So I think that's changed. And I think that the way that the media portrays, I think the images that we show around those things are important, because I think they carry a valence that changes us at deeper levels.

But I think that the generations that I'm seeing, and the ones that I saw at Kind Clinic are much more comfortable with being able to move into that row. The problem, though, is that they come from cultural backgrounds, which have a lot of difficult things, race and religion being two of those.

That if they get crossways with either of those, especially with families that are not supportive, those are the kids that really become at risk for harm. The other thing is if you don't have access to hormone replacement therapy, if there's no way in order to accommodate that, I would have committed suicide late in the game based on that.

And nobody would have ever known any of that. But again, I think that the therapy that can be offered now that's what I'm talking about it right now should be able to help others realize that if you do have something that you even think might be dysphoria you even if it's late in the game, inside and outside don't match up, then there are professionals that can talk about your proof.

Robert Hansen

So one of the things I do think is very controversial is HRT and children. Because if you start giving HRT to a child, it will rapidly change their ability to have children later in life and a bunch of other things that a lot of people feel like they're just not long enough in there.

The average person's brain doesn't fully develop until around 25 years old, based on a bunch of different statistics. But how can someone who's three years old, five years old or something do that.

But on the flip side, is there an estrogenic effect associated with not giving them HRT if in fact, they will eventually want this done. Because by doing it early enough in life, you have a better chance of them having more successful outcome.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Robert again, I think it's an individual case by case. Now, as a physician, I can tell you at Kind Clinic, one, we wouldn't start anybody that… I think the youngest that I started with somebody was 16. But with the parent there that fully understood everything that we were talking about.

Younger than that in the suppression, the only thing that I would say is that if we're talking about a dysphoria, that creates this ambivalence that might lead to suicidality, then that's the time in which intervention should be entertained.

But again, that's why the having a team, which would involve a therapist, a psychiatrist, and an endocrinologist, is so important to have is that if I had a 10 year old, that was certain that they were a transgender woman, and we had to face what to do about the pubertal hormones, that would be a decision that I'd look to professionals to help us walk through.

If that child, though, from the age of three, had said, from early point, “I'm a girl” and it would have to follow a natural history and those are well documented, and so it's not hard to find. But if there's any question, then that's why I think that period between 13 and 17, is so critical.

But again, that's why individuals need to have help in walking through that, is that, from a professional standpoint, give them all the information that they need in order to make that decision. And the parents too, as well. But I think that there are some that it’s clear that they were born in with a certain disconnect.

There are others that it's a little more ambivalent, and they may or may not move through that, but those are the ones that from my perspective, I just didn't have enough experience with the blockers to start those on 14 and 15 year old. So I just never went there.

Robert Hansen

So I did some security work once upon a time for a company that did Asperger's research and they had a very interesting problem. Most people I had done that type of research from work with, they were worried about people stealing data, they weren't worried about people stealing data. They were worried about people modifying data.

So their concern was, there's two sets of bad actors who want to modify their data. One set of them are people who believe that if this turns out to be some injection. Let's say it's some polio vaccine or something gave their children or their grandchildren some autism.

They'd be worried that approximately some crazy number like well, over a percent of China, for instance, has some form of autism. So if that turns out to be the United States, and it's one of our vaccines that have been used, then that could easily trigger a war kind of situation.

Alternatively, if it turns out that it's something related to a gene, something that's passed down, let's say, or some defect that's notable within the early stages of in utero, you could theoretically abort the child ahead of time. And the problem with that is there's a whole bunch of people who are Asperger's who were like, “Wait, I am totally functional, good human being, you would get rid of me?”

So I think we kind of have a similar bad set of choices when it comes to whether transgender is a social thing, or whether it's a biological thing. If it's a social thing, then you can't make the claim that you were born like this or whatever, because you're saying it's a social thing, it had something to do with your upbringing.

If it's a genetic thing, or polygenic thing, where many genes might be related to the one thing, the problem is we have good evidence that mendelian type disorders like Down Syndrome, for instance. They pulled somewhere in Europe and they had something crazy like a 98% of the population said they would abort.

So you have a very similar problem with Asperger's, what you would abort me? I think you have you run into similar problem where there would be a certain percentage of people who would say, “Oh, my child is going to be transgender? Abort.”

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Robert, I don't think there is any way now you can determine if there are problems with sexual genitalia. So if there's ambivalent or intersex that are born, which have ambivalent genitalia, you might be able to determine that in the womb. Otherwise, there's no way that you can say that trans…

Robert Hansen

But just for…

Dr. Sheila Newsom

But you can't, and that I don't want to get off on that. Okay, because it's multifactorial. It's not genetic. It's not poly genetic. It's not epigenetic. It's a combination of culture, and hormonal effects, as well as perhaps genetic.

But I'm not I'm not looking for it, at 72 geez.

Robert Hansen

Don’t say that, there's plenty of time. you’ve got a lot of miles, there's a lot more left, I can tell you. I've just been informed that we are approaching a three hour mark. So I should probably jump to the stuff that you're doing these days.

So you started a new bespoke clinic, is I think is the right way to phrase it. Is it a clinic or?

They began to see that it was the psychedelic experience that really was the thing they could point to that helped with depression, PTSD, and suicidality. So that's when in the 1990s, it remained the only psychedelic that was not placed in the class one level that prevented anybody from using it for anything. ketamine was not.

I think that big pharma, I won't name the company, but I think that there was somebody had the ability to pass out a lot of money in different places, it allowed them to develop an intranasal form of ketamine. But it got a bad reputation in the 90s as a rave drug. So in low doses, it does cause disassociation.

It can, when used repeatedly, cause problems. The doses, though, they began to use it in 2000, especially at MIU and some studies that Steven Levine was doing, for significant depression, and for PTSD, and later for suicidality.

I think that's another point I'd like to make sure that people understand is that dysphoria is not something that is treated and goes away. It ebbs and flows. So I became dysphoric again in 2021, early.

I had an excellent therapist, psychiatrist who said, “Listen, I'm using ketamine now, and we might opt to try that.” And that was because the suicidal ideation had become an aspect of dysphoria again. So I said, “Okay.”

Robert Hansen

So this is a drug resistance form of suicide. Some can be treated with MIYs or?

Dr. Sheila Newsom

I've been on SSRIs for 20 years. Suicide has many different pathways. It's not just one thing, and so it's not treatable with any of the SSRIs, just of itself, I don't think although some people have market response.

But the thing is, is that was one dose of ketamine, which was completely a different experience from what I had had with Ibogaine, and with Ayahuasca, which I had used over the last several years, that it was a completely different experience. But what I can tell you is that it took suicidality off the table after one dose.

So I dived into it with psychiatrists, I said, “You got to show me what the data is, show me the books, what the literature says, et cetera.” So I became really interested in what it might offer.

Robert Hansen

As a retired person, of course, decided to start another company,

Dr. Sheila Newsom

The dreams were pretty clear. I had a dream that said, “Sheila, it's time to get out and not finish this PhD. But get your Masters and get out and get back into the world.” So beginning in September, I knew that something wanted to evolve around ketamine.

I'd had a lot of background by that time in mythology, which is part of the depth psychology curriculum. So I had a stance that metis, which is one of the primary goddesses in the Greek tradition, that had something to do with wisdom. And there was a consciousness of the medication that could be affected, if it was used in a certain way.

Robert Hansen

This is an array, this is a controlled environment where you manage the variables,

Dr. Sheila Newsom

The thing is that what we do know is that in any relationship, especially a healing relationship between shaman or healer, and patient, there's transference, countertransference, and something in between. Quantum mechanics tells us that we're probability fields and something goes on between us.

That's what we call the force or whatever. But it's a reality. So what I began to understand is that if I can help somebody to tether this experience by educating them about what we're dealing with, and that we know that the medication has some capacity to change you with an injection, then we amplify that.

Once we ritualize, it's used. So I make sure that we screen people well from history, physical.

Robert Hansen

Drug seeking behavior.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Drug seeking. all of that becomes pretty clear after 30 years of working one on one with people, I can pretty well to tell them. then I do an astrology chart, just to get another picture of where they might be in a weather pattern of their psyche.

Then I had them do a personality test, like the Myers Briggs, except it has eight functions instead of four. I can tell with a complex thing that I've learned, and I'm now doing research around whether or not I need more or less of the medication, depending upon personality type.

But the thing is, then I go to you. So we sit there, we do an intentional prayer, I do an injection intramuscular, not IV, and the absorption rate with the IV is about the same, it is intermuscular, 98% 93%. And then you put on headphones, go to sleep, or had this experience with metis.

And that's what I say, this is between you and the medication, the wisdom of the medication, and it's a reality.

Robert Hansen

What do they describe when they go through that process? How does that transform them?

Dr. Sheila Newsom

I've had people that woke up and said, “I feel at some way I've been changed or healed.” I've had that happen several times now. Lots of people will just wake up and say, “I feel lighter.” What we do know is that ketamine does offer a disassociative experience with the ego, and the valence or the charge of that ego is diminished by the psychedelic experience itself.

So when ego is able to see this ability, this tag with self, it's always been attached to that, it recognizes that. And that's what I'm hearing more and more of, is “I just feel lighter, I feel like I'm part of something greater.”

The other thing that it does is this ego self-axis seems to be wrapped with trauma, with early life issues. The ketamine themes with repeated doses to clean off that line that is obscured over a period of time. So it makes the distance between the ego and self, whatever that is more linear. The ego recognizes that it's part of something larger. That's what the medication does.

Robert Hansen

How is it functionally different than Ayahuasca or DMT? What's the mechanism? Why is it more effective?

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Well, again, it's multiple pathways. Each of these sacred plants, let's call those sacred plant, works, not only I believe, in the brain, all of those are anti inflammatories in their own way.

But they also have a consciousness to them, that works in the psyche, which is your conscious and unconscious, it works in ways that we just don't understand. And that's the whole thing. We don't understand any of the ways. We don't understand how they work.

Robert Hansen

Why isn't there more research on that? Because most of these things are scheduled one?

Dr. Sheila Newsom

No, they're doing those, but the thing that I'm seeing more and more, even with some of the studies that are being done here at UTA that are medical. That they're treating mushrooms and MDMA, as if it was Prozac in the 90s.

So they're very specific about who comes in. because one, that's what they get paid to do. They get government funding from the NIH to do that. But the other thing is that it gets to be exactly what we saw in the 90s with Prozac. It's a Prozac Nation.

I'm talking about dealing with people that have suicidal ideation, who have deep depression, that can't wait another eight years in order to have the possible effects. The thing that I do know is, especially with ketamine, and after using this now for almost a year, I probably have as much experience with intermuscular ketamine as most anybody in the state.

Just by the fortune of being involved with this. I know that the one thing that I am finding is that you have to tether the experience of the psychedelics consciously I think in order to amplify what it does in the psyche. Now you can get plugged in and get an IV and it helps from an anti-inflammatory standpoint, and recast neural networks.

That goes on regardless of whether or not you believe it or not, or whether or not we have some sort of means to honor that, or they form a new consciousness. But it's amplified if it's used in a way in which the consciousness is made an awareness between you and me.

Robert Hansen

I've never gone through an Ayahuasca ceremony, but I feel like when I hear people talking about there's a spiritual aspect of it even well before you arrive. You got to get in this mental state, and then you're there, and there's a diet and then the drug itself is actually several compounds.

It's not just DMT, it's also an MAOI at the same time combined together, otherwise it wouldn't digest period, it would do nothing. But all of those things, have grown for eons, however long it's been since those ceremonies were first created. And there's a reason for it, those things didn't just pop up.

People tried a lot of things before they landed on that. So, I do agree that while the drug itself is probably extremely potent, it also seems like if you don't have the spiritual aspect of, if you don't have this group with you two are kind of experiencing it and helping you guide you process.

The chances of you getting a bad trip or having something bad happen to you go up substantially if you're out in the middle of a jungle, let's say and you're just on something crazy, and you're just going to get eaten by a tiger. I like to have the epistemological view of every single thing that we take for granted here in modern society.

That seems like it has a long I don't know exactly, you can phrase it this way. But an evolutionary aspect to it, there's so much to that ceremony, there's so much to all of this, that there's got to be something to almost every component of it.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Especially mushrooms, I know that there's a lot of play or around that. I will say this, that each of those, in my own experience, seems to have a different teacher. And the Ibogaine was extremely hard from a physical standpoint.

Especially with cardiac arrhythmias, I had to have an echocardiogram and a stress test before I was allowed to take that. And then the Ayahuasca is a rigorous series the way that it's typically used. But again, if there is a shaman, or someone that constellates that vessel between you and them, then it seems to tether that. As opposed to just floating off with a, say, a bad acid trip, for instance.

Now, I will say this about ketamine, Ketamine is a completely different natured teacher. I say that if you get out there, and you know that, somehow, you're so far into some space, and that is the psychedelic component that we're talking about, that's healing, if you get out there, you can always think of love.

It is. The second part of that is that I also try to work with those people to see what sort of images they bring back. Because I'm trying to help them tie the image with some sort of emotion, which then seems to have some psychic effect.

The other thing is, with the knowledge that I've got about in-depth psychology, I can tell really, how far down into the unconscious that they have gone.

Robert Hansen

How long would you say that ceremony is from beginning to end? Is it like three hours after it's all said and done?

Dr. Sheila Newsom

Two hours. We do everything and make sure that I don't have people dwell or repeat back to me anything unless they want to talk about something specific.

Robert Hansen

You go to them because that's their most comfortable place.

Dr. Sheila Newsom

That’s right. Wherever they are, the most powerful. Now I've had people come from Dallas, and other places and so they get an Airbnb but it's someplace in which they feel comfortable. And by that time we've spent several hours online and getting to know each other in very specific ways. So it's not like they don't know me.

Comments

Share Your ThoughtsBe the first to write a comment.

THE RSNAKE

STORE

Show your support by getting yourself a new t-shirt, hoodie or any of our products available in the store!

VISIT OUR STORE