
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.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Robert Hansen
Today I have with me Dr. Sheila Newsom, MD. We spend time discussing her backstory in the military, her nephrology business, and the point at which in her ‘60s, she transitioned from Gary to Sheila. From there, we dive into many polemical transgender issues. Finally, we discuss Sheila's ketamine concierge service, FindingMetis. Without further ado, I hope you enjoy getting to know Dr. Sheila Newsom.
Hello, and welcome to The RSnake Show. Today we have with us Dr. Sheila Newsom, MD. Thank you for joining us.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Thanks, Robert. I’m glad to be here.
Robert Hansen
I know this has been an interesting challenge getting us together in the same room at the same time.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Yeah, it’s taken a while.
Robert Hansen
I'm actually very excited about today's show for multiple reasons, which I'm sure the audience will pick up on as we go. But before we go down the path of talking about what we're going to be talking about, I want to know a little bit about your backstory.
It is actually something I don't generally do with guests and I don't really enjoy watching it, which is why I don't do it. I’m just like, “Let's get to the thing we're going to talk about.” But your background, I think, is actually compelling especially as it relates to how your future turned out. So why don't you talk us through what your high school and college life was like?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Okay. I was born in West Texas in Big Spring. My father owned a grocery store, and my mother was a professional singer. My grandparents lived several blocks away. I was the only grandchild for a long time. It was a wonderful upbringing. A lot of support, a lot of love. Nobody was hesitant to say, “I love you.” So I always felt loved and supported.
By the time I got to high school, a coach, Spike Dykes, actually, who was at Texas and then Tech, was my senior coach in high school. Spike gave me confidence when I didn't know that I had it. So that was the first time that I really had a mentor show up.
It seems that at different points in my life, those people have shown up. So it was just a really remarkably gifted childhood and going into the teenage years. I was popular. I think I was Mr. BSH in 1968, one of the captains of the football team.
Robert Hansen
That's no small accomplishment.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Well, in those days in West Texas, you played football. Friday Night Lights Permian was in our district. That was a clear definition of exactly what that rite of passage, that ritual was like for young men during those days. So I was really fortunate to have gone through that from the seventh grade on. I think it really helped and gave me a matrix to work from.
My father was an Aggie, and there wasn't even any question about where I was going to go. I graduated from high school, went to A&M for a year. While there, I played Fish baseball and lettered my freshman year. Then I think I was class vice president. So I did okay.
Robert Hansen
Popular and athletic.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I was popular.
Robert Hansen
You were accursed.
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
Was it as sweet as you hoped it would be?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
It was even better.
Robert Hansen
Oh, great.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Anyway, I did that. I went to infantry officer basics at Fort Benning then Ranger School. We'd already been to Airborne School during our cow or junior year. Because of the place I was, the chain of command, I got to select where I was going to go. My roommate, who was the first captain, and I both chose an airborne unit in Italy. So I spent four years as a paratrooper in northern Italy.
In fact, they signed the Vietnam Accord the January of my graduation year. A member of The New York Times came up to sit with us and watch and ask questions about the cadets, how I perceived the signing of that accord and what that meant for me. Typically naive and typically rustic and typically warrior, I said, “That ends the reason that I came here, to begin with. I came to be a warrior.” And I didn't know what that meant.
The good thing is that I went to the unit in Italy and all of the NCOs had spent six years in Vietnam. So they were well-trained. The army's run by the NCOs, noncommissioned officers. If you open to that, then they will work with you. They'll train you how to be a leader. That's where the leadership really developed, and that's where I really felt gifted with the people that I had that I was supposed to be guiding.
Actually, the sergeants took me under their wing and then said, “This is the way it happens. This is the way you do it.” The tactics and all those things, the jumps and all, and there were 69 jobs, are all the drama in between. But how an army practices going to war was really interesting phenomena.
Robert Hansen
How would you describe it, after it was all said and done, if you're looking back on those six years?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
It was five years. And I spent a year up here at Fort Hood. They didn't know what to do with a captain, I'd already made the decision to get out. So they sent me to Defense Information School. I loved that.
I ran a newspaper at Fort Hood last year in the army, which was really a lot of fun in a lot of ways. But when I look back at that, what I do know is that all of the hubris that I had going in and would have had going into battle would have been over in about 15 seconds.
Robert Hansen
You're saying you would have just run straight into the line of fire?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
My life expectancy would have been really short. You've got to remember that that was the time where if you could see it, you could kill it. On the battlefield.
Robert Hansen
Not like today where it's 100 miles away.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
No. It's a different set, it's a different matrix. So now the concepts are completely different. I really admire the people that have helped develop the tactics that go with this. Dave Petraeus was actually a class behind me but was in my unit in Italy.
I got to know Dave and his wife, who turned out to be the tactical genius of our generation. But the main thing is that I felt lucky, in retrospect, to have been taught what it meant to be a soldier by people that were soldiers and who took it seriously. And the move into medicine was really along the same line.
Robert Hansen
Yeah, how did you make that job?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Well, again, it was my mother. It’s this mother complex.
Robert Hansen
She came with a gift certificate to the medical school?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
No, but we were having this conversation. I survived a year of living in Austin. Between when I got out of the army and going to medical school, I didn't know what I was going to do. I remember having this conversation with her.
I said, “I just feel really lost.” And she goes, “Sweetie, I trained as a nurse. Do you ever think about medicine?” Well, the thing is, I hooked onto that and realized I could party for a year and keep everybody off my back. I did that, and then it sounded good. It was altruistic. I thought, “Oh, well, helping people. That sounds like what I'd like to do.” It was hard and-
Robert Hansen
Worthy of your discipline?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Yeah, it was there. I remember the fIrst day of medical school. We were sitting in this amphitheater. I went to the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. We were sitting there in a group, and there were two professors behind us that were about to talk. But they were talking to each other, and I could hear them.
One of them was laughing. It was a sarcastic laugh. I'll never forget he said, “They all look so innocent.” And right after that, one of them gets up and says, “I just want you to know that one out of seven of you will be alcoholic. One out of 10 of you will commit suicide. And if you want to go ahead and go through that, I just want you to know what the odds are for you of surviving this through the end of your day.”
Robert Hansen
That's pretty sobering. No pun intended.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
It was. But, again, think of that age. 28, invincible.
Robert Hansen
Hard drinking, hard partying.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
No. By the time I got back from Italy, I had drunk wine and all. But I'd never drunk hard liquor, except maybe a couple of times. I was not a hard partier. I had tried marijuana then though during that year and realized that that put me on a different space.
As soon as I got to medical school, I shut things down again. So I was very disciplined. Fortunately, by that time, I had met my best friend and future wife. So every weekend that I didn't have a test in Galveston, I drove the 311 miles to TCU to be with her. Well, it was a nice way to navigate that whole period of time.
Robert Hansen
This is before the days of podcasts, AM radio.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
AM radio, and I've always been a big Ranger fan from the baseball days. At times I could listen to the Rangers. But it was a special time. My grandfather helped pay my way, and my parents paid for the rest. So there wasn't a lot of problems with the financing part of it. So mostly, it was just the rigors of getting through that whole process.
It was like a play began, and I was always fighting the bridle of that. Originally when I went to medical school, I thought I was going to be a surgeon. But I'll never forget, I was in my third year of medical school, and we had oral exams in surgery.
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
Yeah. Nearly the bookshelf collapses, literally, during the time that we're doing this. It just falls down. So I took it as a sign from God, from the goddess, “Hey, you're not supposed to go into surgery.”
I actually loved psychiatry. I loved the mind, loved the mindset. The other thing that didn't hit me until much later, when I looked back, was Galveston was really forward-thinking, and they had a transgender program in the late ‘70s which assisted in gender transition or male to female transitions.
Robert Hansen
That's pretty early, especially for West Texas.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Yeah, it was very early. DSM-III was out then, and so it was a pathology. Homosexuality was a pathology. Actually, they were looking to treat underlying depression in any other pathology that they could find. But at the same time, they were giving these women the opportunity to move into this space, the psychic space before they committed to bottom surgery.
It was interesting to be with those people. I never forget what that felt like. But I really wrestled with going into psychiatry. In fact, I had decided that I would go into psychiatry and had a residency planned at the University of Arizona. And at the last minute, I just got cold feet and thought it wasn't practical enough or it was not macho enough. So I went out to Lubbock and did family practice out there.
That lasted about two months. I realized, after about two months of being in the program, that I just wasn't going to have enough specific knowledge about something to allow me to be an expert. And that really appealed to me. So again, as fate would have it, one of the premier nephrologists in the world shows up in Lubbock, Texas at the Texas Tech University Health Science Center and becomes head of the department of medicine.
That was Neil Kurtzman and his wife Sandra Sabatini, world class nephrologist. They were the editors of world-renowned journals, and they had entrée to that world. I agreed to become his first fellow. So I switched over to internal medicine and did three years of internal medicine and then two years of fellowship as a nephrology fellow and then went out into practice as a nephrologist and critical care doctor.
Those were the days before hospitalist entered the scene. It wasn't until much later in my career that the hospital doctors took over the row. But I took care of folks from beginning to end, to be present for people especially with chronic illness like this with the kidney disease. Those guys’ average life expectancy was about five years. So I really was ill-equipped to handle the grief, the trauma that goes with death and dying.
Robert Hansen
Because all your patients eventually die in this case? What was the average, five years?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Five years.
Robert Hansen
You have really just got to know these people intimately. You're just becoming friends with their family and all the things that happen with family doctors. And you definitely do have a bedside manner about you, so I'm sure you actually did go out of your way to meet these people.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I did, but I was an asshole. The thing is, what alcoholics have a hard drive; childishness, emotional sensitivity, and grandiosity.
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?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
No, it just made me feel the way I knew that I was supposed to feel.
Robert Hansen
Which was numb?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Which was numb. The first time I had really drunk, my parents were out of town. I stole some liquor out of their cabinet. Hid it. With a babysitter there, I got drunk. So the first time I drank, I got drunk. And that’s what I intended.
Alcohol and I had a relationship for a long time before it finally manifested. But as soon as I got off call, when I was 35, two weeks later, I drove to Pinkie’s and got a bottle of Chivas. And I was off and running. My wife was just amazed by the change. It was not abrupt. But in retrospect, it was. There was a psychic change that went on.
Robert Hansen
What did she say about that? How did she react to that?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
It was fun. I got out of my shell. For the first couple of years, it was fun. We’d go out and drink wine and eat and all. But gradually, I couldn't tell you when I started to drink that I would stop. So that's when I knew I was an alcoholic.
It began to dawn on me after about five years. I'll never forget sitting in a parking lot hearing on the store a story on NPR about somebody that had gone to treatment. And I remember thinking, “That's where I'm going, that's where I'm headed.” Well, that was a year beforehand.
Robert Hansen
Let's interleave these stories a little bit. So you were an entrepreneur around that time as well, right?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Not yet.
Robert Hansen
Not yet. That was after getting clean?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Yeah. I had bought into a lab with the partners that I was with. So it was a matter of just doing my work but actually being part of a larger venue. It wasn't though until later that I moved to Midland-Odessa the second time. I'd moved back after a year and a half to Lubbock. I moved back to Lubbock in ‘92. So when I went to treatment then, I was in Lubbock.
Robert Hansen
So you went into AA?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
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.
This was about seven years into my deep drinking. I was 42, started at 35. And it really crescendoed the last couple of years. But I remember getting off the plane and thinking, “Well, I've got to go home.” So I drove home, sat down with my wife and said, “Babe, I'm an alcoholic. And I need to go to treatment.”
Robert Hansen
How’d she take that?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
She said, “Well, I'm glad.” We both sat there and cried. She goes, “I had already made plans to leave you in a week.” She had already coordinated with my brother and said, “Hey, I can't do this anymore.” So if that hadn't have happened, then everything else would have been raveled.
I went to my partner, who I had actually fired when I was high accusing him of being high. He had been to Atlanta, and Atlanta was where recalcitrant physicians were sent because they wouldn't take you anyplace else. So I went to Atlanta for six months.
The first day, I’ll never forget, a big nurse, Carol Bowers screams at us. She goes, “You guys are a bunch of arrogant fucks, and you're all angry. And I just want you to know.” So that's where we started.
Robert Hansen
Was she wrong?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
No, she wasn't. The good thing was, I was there with a bunch of fentanyl addicts. Most of the anesthesiologists that were there, their drug of choice was fentanyl. Opioids were just about hitting the market, but it was not a huge deal. Alcoholism and fentanyl were the big things. But after a month-
Robert Hansen
It's been here because now it's a big thing on the streets.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
It is. It's just amazing that people can survive using those chemicals.
Robert Hansen
It seems like you do it for a month, and it's Russian Roulette every single time.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I had a friend that told me that he would shoot up in the stall in the surgical suite and time it so that as he fell back on the commode, the syringe would pull out. It was just disgustingly amazing things.
Robert Hansen
It's like a House MD episode right there.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Yeah. Nurses, physicians in separate quarters. We call the women's area Thunderdome. That was the time of Mad Max and all. But they taught us how to live in a community. None of us knew how to clean up. Not many of us knew how to cook a meal, how to be in community with anybody or anything.
Robert Hansen
Well, that's not completely true. You had a ton of life skill by that point.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Well, I did, Robert. But during those seven, eight years, longer than that I'd left the army, I just got arrogant. I lost those skills or thought that was below me. They'd give us coupons, and we'd have to go to Kroger's and buy groceries. We could go to the mall once a week, simple stuff. We went to meetings. But after two months, then you had to find a place to do work.
I was sent down to the mission in downtown Atlanta. I'd go down there every day. These were all guys that had gotten out of prison and had 30 days sober and were living there in this halfway house. I mopped the floors and helped cook the meals and did class with these guys. So what I was able to see very quickly, and they were able to see with me, is that it was the same disease.
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.
I remember the nurse that had told us what we really were the first day the last day she goes, “Listen, there's a secret here. You say the third step prayer every day, and you won't come back here. You won't drink.” There's a step prayer, “I offer myself to you to be with me and do with me as you will. Relieve me of the bondage of self.” So it's a way to start.
Every day since, I've done my prayer, my meditation, third step prayer. I read the big book still, perhaps not as much as I'd like, go to meetings on Zoom. So I was devoted to the AA program. But the main thing is, it was a gift of some higher entity, some higher power that took away that compulsion.
Robert Hansen
Let's fast forward a little bit. Now, you’ve kicked the habit. You have made a bunch of money. You're sitting with your wife in some beautiful tropical paradise, and you start having some epiphanies. I wouldn't say all of them are great. I think you were on a downward spiral leading up to there as well.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Well, yeah, you're right. So, fast forward to 2010-2011. Actually, a little bit before that, 2010. There's another story of somebody showing up. I moved to Midland in 2004. After 15 years of building a practice in Lubbock, I moved to Midland to be with a partner. And our plan was to build a dialysis center.
One of us had to be a free agent, not attached to one of the major dialysis groups, so that we could sell that to that group. One of us had to be a free agent, not part of that group. I moved down there, and the practice was spread out between Monahans, Midland-Odessa, Big Spring. So constantly on the road. It was really a difficult practice.
Robert Hansen
But successful.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
But successful. The guy that I partnered with was really a bright guy. He had built this practice up over a long period of time. We borrowed the money together in order to build the dialysis center, the biggest dialysis center in that part of the world. But the company that we had worked for that promised to buy the entity, the dialysis center, as soon as we got through, lowballed us.
We were left there holding the bag. All of that was personal debt, and I didn't realize that till much later. I have a lien placed on everything we own. My wife and child had moved down here in 2006 because I was never at home in Midland. This was where we wanted to retire. So they started a new life down here.
I remember we owed the IRS a lot of money, and they put a lien on the house. I really did not have any place to turn. One of my patients was an old man who I knew pretty well, but I knocked on his door about 8:00 one night. He opened the door and said, “Dr. Newsom, what are you doing here?” I said, “Jack, I need to talk to you.” So I sat down.
I said, “Jack, I need to borrow a lot of money.” He asked me how much, and I told him. He said, “Can you wait till Tuesday?” That was Friday night.
Robert Hansen
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?
Obviously, it involves something deeper than just something physical or even emotional. It was a change in consciousness. So those two years I spent in a deep dive there, and those turned out to be really the most-
Robert Hansen
So was that before the DSM changed or after?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
This is just ending last summer.
Robert Hansen
Okay. So it already changed.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
It has changed by 2014. Let's start there at 2014. I tell my wife, “Look, this.” And then, I go back home and it just won't stop. I have this compulsion to...
Robert Hansen
Did you want it to stop?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I didn't know what to do with it. Fortunately, I had a therapist. A woman who still therapist at 87, for me, who I was able to tell all of this to. So there wasn't any secret going on here. And both of us were perplexed about what this really meant. But this was about the time that Caitlyn Jenner began to transition very publicly. So, a lot of her backstory I took really to heart and read a lot about what she offered, et cetera.
Robert Hansen
She didn't jump out of airplanes, but she had a very storied career.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
She did.
Robert Hansen
A lot of Olympic gold medals.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Yap. And the thing is that I could see, I mean, that persona that I had constructed, that Caitlyn had constructed over a long period of time was really in an effort, I think to suppress this urge to be something more and more feminine. And I don't think we really understand how deep gender goes.
I don't think it's something that's particularly only biologic or cultural, or genetic. I think it's all of those things. But that interface, though, is such an important determinant about where we are in culture. Alpha male, this is a patriarchal culture and has been for hundreds of years.
So, depict that as a bifurcation point around gender then and not even about sexual preference, which is a completely separate issue. But depict that it's so dark. It's so much in shadow in our culture that it triggers in everybody. Some question about, well, if they did this.
Robert Hansen
I mean, everyone has some level of femininity and masculinity to some degree. It's a gradient. I mean, everyone has done one thing that could be considered slightly effeminate one day, and that doesn't mean that they're a woman, but also there's people on all parts of that gradient.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
And this was a completely different thing, Robert.
Robert Hansen
So, this wasn't just a passing thing for you?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
No.
Robert Hansen
Felt like it was a moment to.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I thought it was, I mean, and I hoped that it was superficial. I'd hoped that I could just be a transvestite. That I could dress in women's clothing.
Robert Hansen
Did you try that first?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Yeah, I did. And so, I got clothing and learned about... I didn't know any of this. So, I remember going to Houston, there was a place down there where you could go and have makeup applied, pick a dress, go out. And I remember doing that and loving the way I felt. I hated to take the makeup off that day, which reminded me that when I was in kindergarten, we had a play. And that's the first time I had ever worn lipstick and blush, and I hid because I didn't want to take off the lipstick and blush.
Robert Hansen
That was common thread throughout your life.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
That was there. But the alpha male stuff, I think was an attempt to compress that into the unconscious.
Robert Hansen
You were overcorrecting.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Certainly. And so that's what that persona, that mask that we all developed was. It was a persona.
Robert Hansen
Is that a common thing amongst the transgender community, or is that relatively rare? Is there any statistics on it, or?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
No? There probably is. But the thing is what I can tell you, and having worked with now, I volunteered for over a year at County clinic doing gender care. So, I was the one that would do history and physicals with transgender men and women, and prescribe cross-sex hormones, which seemed to decrease the level of dysphoria. Which is that the inside and the outside just don't match up. That's the one modifier that I can tell you is in common with people that are transgender. Inside, outside, don't match up.
Now, it comes on different points in life for many of us. The stories, the economic, socioeconomic background, the way things go in life when the egg cracked and you came out.
Robert Hansen
This doesn't even seem that strange to me, because a lot of bodybuilders, for instance, they see themselves as a very strong man, but they look in the mirror and they're like, I need to put on 50 more pounds of muscle, or whatever. That is just a different form of the same sort of thing where you really don't feel like you look at all.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
And that's exactly right. And I did body building for about a year and a half. I won a contest at the age of 63. But the thing was, is that I was doing it because I was so vain. I knew I was about to start estrogen and didn't want to gain weight. This was the only way that I could determine that I would be at my leanest body mass. So, I've got pictures of me as really muscular at 63.
Robert Hansen
You feel comfortable doing that. I'd love to put it on the Podcast system before and after.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Okay. I'll send you some pictures. But the thing is that all through that alpha male period of my life, I mean, there were periods when this would bubble up. I remember wearing wife's clothing occasionally. And then once they moved to Austin, and I was alone in Midland in my own condominium, then I really kind of dived into it.
Again, I thought it was a fetish. I thought that this was something untoward, had no idea. Although I did share with my therapist during this time what was going on. But about once every three or four months, I just get ashamed and would throw everything away. Throw all the makeup, throw all the dresses, anything else that I had and start over. But it was a deeper process than I could account for.
I mean, it was a drive that did not go away. Then the dysphoria began to show up, and that came on later between 2014 and 15 was when the dysphoria really began to appear. And that's that.
Robert Hansen
A lot of people say, "I was born in the wrong body." They used those words. From what you're telling me right now, this wasn't a born thing. This came later. You might have had other things, but do you feel in retrospect that when you were a child that was really a little girl running around, that there's just the wrong body?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I think that I was born with male genitalia and a female soul. That’s what I think. I think this whole movement has been a movement of soul. And you're going, "Well, what is that?" Well, that psyche. That indefinable aspect of us that is something, it's there. And I think that's what is lift me forward. And that's what you'll see today. And I'll come back, I'll wrap around that and tell you why I think that. But the thing is that the dysphoria then changed the game in 2014.
So, dysphoria is where the inside and outside create an ambivalence. And so it hurts. I mean, it's a deep emotional pain, and it's not like wanting a drink. It's not like that. I mean, it's deeper than that. There was this deep longing for the inside and outside to match up. I read something from Caitlyn Jenner that she had started estrogen, and it really had helped with her dysphoria.
So, I found the guy that in San Antonio that was helping me with hormonal therapy over the years, testosterone et cetera. I talked to him about it, and I said, "Can I try estrogen?" And told him the reason, and he said, "Sure." So, we started pellets then.
Robert Hansen
What does that mean?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Every quarter I get pellets of estrogen put in my buttocks.
Robert Hansen
Interesting. So these are slow, slowly dissolved.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Slowly dissolving, but it's a steady level of estrogen. Really high, low doses. As we tried different formulations, et cetera, but the higher the dose did mean much better.
Robert Hansen
And in what way? How did you feel before and after? Can you describe it?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I just felt comfortable in my own skin.
Robert Hansen
But what way? Like, something about your mentality changed?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
It was a change in consciousness, Robert. And that's the best I can say, is that I felt that the deepest level, this is who I am.
Robert Hansen
And this is how you should feel.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
And how I should feel. The exterior really was secondary phenomena. It was mostly something that was a change at a deeper level. And I'll just say it was a soul level. This was something beyond spiritual. It was soul doing its work.
And so, that's the way that I explain it now. But the thing was, is that even though the dysphoria was helped by the estrogen, I had conversations then by 2015 with my wife. And she says, "Hey, listen. I hear what you're saying. I just can't do this. And so, I mean, I honor that." And she says, "The girls aren't going to either." I mean, we're a close knit family.
I mean, after 40 years married to my best friend and the things that we'd done in relationship in a medical marriage to survive was miraculous. I mean, this is a beautiful, competent woman. And so, here I am saying, "Okay, I can't be alpha male for you anymore." And she's saying, "I can't there for you in that way. That crosses my boundaries." And so, she was very clear, and I honor the way that she handled it. But it was extremely excruciating.
Robert Hansen
And so, at that point, you guys broke up.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
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.
I mean, I loved her even more. I'll love her more today than I did when we first met. And that was hard for all of us. So, fast forward I start writing a book with Megan Fitzpatrick, was the editor, and really with about 30 vignettes trying to just put images and feelings together throughout my life to kind of figure all this out.
Robert Hansen
This is the Calling from the Bones, right?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
The Calling from the Bones. And so, that was self-published, and it's still on Kendall, A Calling from the Bones, and it's 30 vignettes. And we found a good illustrator. I mean, it's well done, but it's a descriptive of life events from the time I was five onwards through medical practice. And then the early part of transition.
Robert Hansen
Can we talk about transitioning for a minute?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Sure.
Robert Hansen
Just the actual act of doing it, because I really think this is not particularly well socialized unless someone really cares about the topic. But there are as many different things that have to happen in this process. And as a medical professional, you probably have better insight into this process by virtue of osmosis, if nothing else. I'm sure you did your plenty of research beforehand.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Well, but remember I volunteered at County Clinic. And so, I was able to see that firsthand.
Robert Hansen
Can you walk us through sort of what it might go. All the things, all the steps you have to do to fully transition?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Well, let me just say this, Robert, is that there are different bifurcations at every point. And some feel with gender fluidity. So, they come in and out and one thing, and then another thing.
Robert Hansen
I mean, just atypical transition between the two but with stair steps. Let's just assume it all happens and walk us through that.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I know what you're saying. Caitlyn Jenner.
Robert Hansen
There you go. Sure.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
So, the first thing is trying to determine, and once that's established, I say I'm transgender. Then what does that mean? Well, typically, it involves therapy. Having on the team would be a psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist helps in doing neuropsychometric testing, make sure there's no pathology, nothing that can be hung on you in those terms.
And then, a therapist who has some understanding of the gender and gender dynamics, that's another thing. If there is a significant other that is going to stay in a relationship, then that sort of therapy is begun as early as possible.
Robert Hansen
And what about like children or any other people?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Same thing. Anybody that's directly involved, the earlier that they are engaged in their own process and able to walk through that, the better off everybody's going to be. And the reason is that we carry images which carry, which have a valence. Which are information that we project on others. And it's built into our unconscious. We do it without thinking about it, but I mean, mother carries the archetype or the pattern of mother, which is a timeless energy pattern.
So, my mother carried the archetype of mother. I carried the archetype of father, a physician of mate. And so all of those things are what I carried for others. And it's not until I went through the master's program and understood this in a little different, in the psychological terms, did I realize the I impact of that. But that's what was happening.
And so, in an ideal situation, you've got a team that helps you and the family to able to work with this. Mount Sinai in New York as a transgender transition team. They've got a surgical subspecialty there. And so, it's very much advanced. But the main thing, then there are transgender physicians now.
Robert Hansen
Hormones next, right?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Hormones then would have started during this period of time. Cross-sex hormones seem to somehow lessen the dysphoria.
Robert Hansen
And is it always these pellets?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
No.
Robert Hansen
That's just one version.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
That's the expensive version. And so, you can take oral estrogen and spilactone. Female to male is testosterone. And so, the younger that you start, the more dramatic the results are. And so, I did have hormonal replacement therapy until I was in my 60s. So, it was late incoming.
Robert Hansen
So, do you do other drugs to suppress your existing hormones as well, or?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
You can. Spilactone is something that is prescribed typically from male to female transition. And theoretically, that suppresses the testosterone. But ultimately then the only way of doing that is orchiectomy, or bottom surgery in which the penis and balls and sac are turned into a vagina. And so, the surgery now that can be used for bottom surgery.
There's probably not more than about 35% of transgender men to women, so transgender women that undergo bottom surgery.
Robert Hansen
35%, that's pretty low.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
That's about 65% to 70% of us that don't elect to do that. And I'm still in that middle ground right now where I don't know. It's a year of recovery time. The surgical procedure has gotten to be fairly common and they can create a clitoris that allows one to have orgasm.
Robert Hansen
So, they actually can reserve some of the sensations.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
They can.
Robert Hansen
That's impressive actually,
Dr. Sheila Newsom
To have an orgasm as a transgender woman is something to look forward to. But the thing is, is that in that middle ground between, yes, this is who I am, the psychological support that goes with that to the family, to the transgender woman then extends into then what are the options in order to feminize.
And so, that's where facial feminization surgery has become such a profound art. And not everybody does that. One, its extremely expensive. And so, my part is that I had the resources at that time in order to have the facial feminization surgery.
So, I found the best person in the world and flew up in 2017, put down my money. I was evaluated. They walked me through what they did. And so, the next year, one year later, I would return for facial feminization surgery.
Robert Hansen
And then vocal?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
That came later. And breast augmentation came a year after the facial. Well, four months after the facial surgery.
Robert Hansen
So, this is years of surgery, it sounds like on and off.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
This was 2018. My oldest gets married at our Nevis house. It's in Society Magazine. It's a huge deal, but everybody on my side knows that this is the last time they will see Gary. That after that, the day that I leave to come back to the states, I'm committed to a full transition.
So, May of 2018 is the last time my wife sees me as Gary. And so, September the 12th of 2018, began to drive to Boston. There's a Dr. Jeffrey Spiegel has a clinic there. And so, the 20th of September of 2018 I underwent a 10 hours of surgery. And it was extensive. I mean, they make a incision across the scalp. They pull down the scalp. Males have frontal bossing that's prominent here.
So, they shave down the bone, pull back the scalp, raise the eyebrows, blepharoplasty of the eyelids. They put implants here and here.
Robert Hansen
Around the cheekbones for those on the audio.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
In my jaw. They lifted this lip up. They injected fat, they shaved off the adams apple and did a nose job. And then, there were a couple of little lesions that were, were trimmed off. But I mean, this was 10 to 12 hours of surgery, and by that time I was 68.
Robert Hansen
That's pretty risky surgery.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Well, it was extensive. I mean, it was just extensive. But the thing is though, Robert, is that I remember waking up 13 hours later in under an anesthesia in a darkened room. Didn't know where I was. But the first thing that I hear is that voice, "Sheila, you've done good."
So, I mean, the grotesque image, the grotesque swelling that you might imagine from that. My brother and cousin both volunteered to spend a week in a little place out on the main coast outside of Boston at Massachusetts Coast, out in Rockport, taking care of me.
And so, my brother, I spent two days in the hospital. I'm swollen. I'll never forget. I'm sitting there and kind of nodding off, and my brother's sitting where you are. And he goes, "Bro, I just want you to know your face looks like a basketball. My brother is the one help to ground me.
Robert Hansen
Tells you how it is.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
My cousin did the same thing. So, two weeks up there, and then I drove back. I drove back by myself. But that was the bifurcation.
Robert Hansen
That's when you believe Sheila really born.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
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.
And so, I flew up to New York and was selected as their woman of the week. And so, they took pictures and everything. So, I was all over the internet as MM Flore Woman of the Week. That served me as well as could, because that story was what I could always refer back.
Robert Hansen
Who didn't know you could send them this article.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Send them that.
Robert Hansen
And how did that go?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Oh, I loved it.
Robert Hansen
No. How did it go with your friends and the people you shared it with?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
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.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
And so, the pitch and register are a little higher, but it's a completely different way of expressing myself. And so, it feels much more authentic to me in the way that I hear myself. And it may not sound differently, but I feel differently, and I know that I can't scream. And so, that's another thing. But the thing is that, during that period of time that I realized that this was a deeper movement than just the physical.
And that fortunately I had a compulsion to look as feminine as I could. And there are a whole grade of the way that people who say that I am a transgender woman. There's a whole spectrum of the way that people present that gender to the world. It's gender expression. So, that's an individual thing. And having the resources to do this was really phenomenally important.
Robert Hansen
I mean, is it really any different than tomboy of old? It's all gradients and the same thing.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
It's gradients. If I had all the money in the world, I mean, I would set up a scholarship program, and I'd talk with Dr. Spiegel about doing this. To give women a scholarship in order to do the facial immunization surgery. If, if that's what they wanted.
But where I really felt affirmed was in my time at West Point. I kept going back to the meetings and stayed current with the association of graduates. And so, I would show up at big events and the way that my classmates helped, the interest that they took in fact, it was May of April of 2019 that I sat down with them. There's about nine of them that had come back for a meeting, and they wanted to hear my own story from me. They took the time to sit down and say, "Sheila, what is all this about?"
So, I told my story, and the way that I was able, I think, to get past all of this, Robert, with the people at West Point, is that I say this and it's the truth. Nobody gets through those gates without feeling a calling. You just don't happen to come to West Point. There is a calling. It's part and parcel of getting through those gates. I said, "This is another iteration of that. This was a calling." I heard it in the same terms as I did about coming here, going to medical school and being transgender.
Robert Hansen
So, what do you feel like your relationship is to your old self now? Like when you look back, is that a different person or is that just a different evolution of yourself? Like, how do you internalize your previous life? Does it feel like a movie you're watched, or does it feel like it was you?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I have watched it. Here's what happened. 2002, I'm in Las Vegas on a vacation trip, and I'm leaving the hotel room suite, and I'm about to close the door, I turn and look at the bed, and there's a woman sitting on the bed naked from the wait up. And she's looking at me over her left shoulder and she smiles at me. And I mean, as real as you are.
And so, I see that from here to there. And I'm just amazed. I've never seen an apparition. I've never seen a ghost. This was an apparition. It was a waking dream. But I closed my eyes and opened, and she was gone. Flash forward, I'm at a conference at Pacifica Graduate Institute 2019. I go to the bathroom, I'm sitting there washing my hands in the women's bathroom. I look in the mirror and realize, it hits me, the epiphany, that face of the woman on the bed in 2002 was my faith now.
So that image, in certain terms, had lift me forward. And so, that's why I say, if you want to frame this as far as movement, something has lived me forward in certain terms.
Robert Hansen
Are your friendly terms with your old self, or?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Well, here's the thing Beverly and my girls taught me. And what they did, very early on, it was Christmas of 2018, right after my daughter had gotten married and we'd done that in Nevis. They go to Big Spring where we're all, where my wife and I are both from, she's about nine years younger, but they go up on the mountain, its scenic mountain overlooking the planes there.
And that's where my wife and I had gotten engaged back in 1979. So, they have a ceremony and they bury Gary up there. So, it was a way for them to, I mean, they didn't know what else to do. And so, that was a way for all of them to have closure.
Robert Hansen
And you weren't invited to your own funeral?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
No. I mean, by that time, I mean, between 2018, 2019 into 2020 were really hard years in trying to just try to stay up with each other and stay in each other's lives in ways that were important. Beverly and I still were married, are married have some finances that we do together. She's got her own home.
And so, those were things that we negotiated. But it took a lot of giving on each of us of our part. But the thing was, is that it hadn't been until fairly recently that I had to really look and see. When I felt in regards to Gary. And when I look at that epitaph I can only compare it to what I feel I am now as a transgender woman. Gary was a wonderful alpha male that did his best. I miss being sure certain of things in that alpha male way of saying, "This is the way that it is. This is the way we'll be." I miss being certain in ways that I know that just aren't real.
Robert Hansen
I think you're underestimating yourself. For the audience here, this studio is sometimes extremely cold and sometimes it's very warm and comfortable, like right now. And I was warning Sheila, like, you might want to have layers because it was cold, really cold one day with Raymond. It was like freezer in here. We were both complaining. And I remember saying that to you and you're like, "I went through ranger school, I'm going to be fine." I think you have a lot more strength than you.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Well, and I acknowledge that. And especially, in the transition, I realize that, that strength though is at a deeper level than just the persona. So, the childish, emotionally sensitive, grandiose individual, I think was able to be expressed in those masculine terms.
And so now, I mean, I feel I'm the same entity and yet there's, it's a kinder, gentler version of me that looks and speaks in a different way. Now, there was two other things I want to tell you surgery-wise, is that I didn't do anything to protect my skin for 40 years. I took great pride. I never wore sunscreen, didn't bother about that, wind weather, whatever.
So, I've gone through two deep laser surgeries with the local plastic surgeon where they completely, under general anesthesia, took down the layers and it is just all scab for two weeks. But is the only way to get texture back in which to have feminine skin. So I mean, I've done what I think that I need to do.
Robert Hansen
So, you wear sunscreen is the moral the story.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
It's built into the makeup.
Robert Hansen
Well, why don't we get into the next question, because it's related?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
All right.
Robert Hansen
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.
So, one is the anima or soul. The other is spirit. So, it's a way of thinking of those terms. Does that exist in reality, It does in some shape, form or fashion, but it's a way of thinking that there is a doorway that that the soul opens to.
Robert Hansen
And even if you don't believe in those things, you have to believe there is some state between being awake and asleep. And that transition, there is some lucidity, there's some ability to control your dream state and have some sensation that awaiting dream or other things like that.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
But the other part about that is, Robert, is that most of the extroverted sensei thinkers don't acknowledge that there is an unconscious. That there is something that, the ego is just a very small part of the universe and the ego.
Robert Hansen
Throw a ball at them, and then they'll figure out what the unconscious brain does.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Well, as death approaches then that those unconscious things begin to bubble up. And so, that's what we began to see as life goes forward, is that these complexes, these energetics that are deep in the ocean began to bubble up and you can do whatever you want with them. That's what came through when I was in 2014. Something from the unconscious. And you've seen Dune?
Robert Hansen
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
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.
The bigger this thing gets and the more remote this gets, then this thing thinks that it rules everything. The 12 steps are just a way of keeping it small.
Robert Hansen
And this thing being the ego for those listening.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
The ego then also recognizes that it is attached to something larger and is part of something bigger.
Robert Hansen
So, with your name, your old name, Gary, if someone calls you that, do you assume the worst of them? Do you assume that they just don't know? Are you assuming that they're just trying to get your attention and trying to get you from walking out in front of traffic or something? Like how do you feel when that name is used?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Well, I mean, by this time, so I'm now seven years into this, deep into this, so I can kind of tell when somebody looks at me. And by now, I mean, I can pass. So, if somebody dead names me, then it's an intent just to say something irascible.
Robert Hansen
And does that happen?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
No, not now. Okay. It doesn't. But the thing is that, those who were early on in that transition, if somebody, especially family call me, dead name to me, then it was an ego thing. I mean, it hurt. You aren't respecting my boundaries. It gets to be an ego boundary thing. And so, for a lot of folks that are transgender, they're very sensitive about it.
And so, I think the wisest thing to do, the most compassionate thing to do is to listen to what the pronouns say.
Robert Hansen
Well get the pronouns in a second. But I think if I'm going to try to steelman this argument as much as possible. It reminds me a lot of when women change their last name after marriage. And if you start calling them by their old name consistently, you might get away with it once or twice, but then after a while they'll start correcting you. Like, "No, that isn't my name." My name is this now. And they're very proud of this new name, and they don't want you to use it anymore.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Well, let me just say this. Is that the hurdles that you've got to go to change your name also make that a really important marker in gender transition. So I mean, that's what I did at County Clinic. Also, I signed the paperwork, you go down to the courthouse.
So, legally Gary's debt. And so, to be called Gary now is unusual. But especially with our oil and gas stuff, I mean, that's what's on the deed. So, I mean, I'm called back into that. But I'm more desensitized to that now than right after I changed my name and had a paper. I remember going to get my license changed,
Robert Hansen
So, you're saying you got more sensitive immediately afterwards and less sensitive over time?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Exactly. Well, I mean going to the DPS to get my license as Sheila was a remarkable day, dressed up, before I had surgery. It was a big deal. As it turned out, they misspelled Sheila. Which I didn't realize until much later. Well, the name on your driver's license has to match up exactly on your passport.
So, I had to go back and get it done. But the thing was, is that just that movement and the energy that it took to change names, it was a sensitive thing. So, if my wife called me and called me Gary, I would've said, no. Hey, listen to me." So, I would've called anybody on. As things go on over a period of time I get less sensitive to that, but it becomes less of an issue.
Robert Hansen
I suspect if a lot of people are still in that, if that is true of everybody. That a lot of people are still in that earlier phase. They haven't had seven years under their belt of being this new name. And so maybe that's some of what we're seeing here.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Well, I think it goes to that culture of compassion. Is that it may not mean anything to you, but it may mean something to me. And just that fact that it may it may not be abrasive. But it may not be compassionate to call me by that name.
Robert Hansen
So, what about in situations? Caitlyn Jenner is a perfect example of that, where you look back in time and Caitlyn Jenner didn't win those medals. At least not, you look at these old books and the name isn't, Caitlyn. You certainly, I mean, you said you have deeds with your old name on it. I'm sure there's plaques somewhere with your name on it.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Exactly. I mean, how allergic are you to that old name? Erasing history is really what it comes down to.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
And again, I can't recreate, I can't restructure history. I mean, that name is part of who I am.
Robert Hansen
But I mean, you could make a demand to have the plaque erased or whatever.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
At West Point, I'm Sheila Grace Newsom on the class of '73 role. I've changed my medical license. I've changed all of those things that I can. But that somebody calls and wants to know, to talk to Gary Don Newsom about a lease in Howard County, then, I mean, it doesn't offend me.
But again, that is a perspective that I've developed over a period of time. Robert, I mean, you know those folks that will drag things out to you . And so, there are those, and I just try to stay away.
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
What are your pronouns?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
She and her. But again, the way I look now, the way I sound, the way I dress, those things, I'm not misgendered now, typically. But again, if somebody does that, I realized it's not my problem, it's their problem. Now that’s seven years, eight years into this…
Robert Hansen
You got some time under your belt.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
A lot of work. But somebody young, just getting out, fighting tooth and nail with family, friends, to establish who they are, from a gender perspective, completely understand that. I realized though, that there's a whole cultural inertia that sees this as being a representative of a softening, feminization of culture that is antithetical to the way they think.
So I realize it's a battleground. It's not going to go away easily.
Robert Hansen
Well, I'm just going to keep hitting you with these. Another one is the identification of oneself somehow confers rights. For instance, if I decide, I'm in prison, let's say, I decide that I'm a woman, but nothing has happened, other than me making that decision, do I now get to be going to the women's prison?
What point do we decide that there even is such a thing as men's and women's prisons? Or is this all just some big muddy mess of lots of shades of grey, what point we go from? I get to decide identify to there being actually some reason that this person shouldn't be in men's prison as an example.
This is an extreme example, but I think, these edge cases are kind of where the we can find some understanding.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Again you're talking about institutional inertia. So especially once you get into the midst of the military, or the prison system, any of those that have systemic inertia, and try to navigate that by claiming something along the lines of gender, it's going to be really difficult.
So that's why I think that those are issues that need to be clear, very early.
Robert Hansen
No opinion on how that should play out. I think your voice might actually pull some things and add some weight to this. If you had your druthers, if someone is in prison, they just say I'm a woman. What would you do?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
That you're asking that and the voice of Dan Patrick, of somebody that has a political agenda in order to say, yes or no, you have this right, or you don't. Drawing that line around…
Robert Hansen
I'm not saying that they're right or wrong. And, or even that they do or don't believe it? I'm just saying, would you say, “Okay, now, we got to put you through steps to understand what the real situation is” or?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
What I do think, though, is that we need sensitivity if somebody does bring that up within an institution, it's the same thing that happens in military. Good friend of mine produced a film called Trans military.
What do you do with those people that served well decided 15 years in and they were some other gender? What do you do with that? Well, from an institutional standpoint, you've got to have things in place in order to address what that might mean. So there should be certain steps, same thing within the prison system.
Same thing, within any institution. When somebody says, I think this is something that has happened here, that I'm feeling, then you send them down a certain quarter in order for them to establish, and if that's verifiable or if it's determined that is something legitimate, that we've talked about here along those lines, then you confer them into whatever gender they feel that they are.
Robert Hansen
Or maybe prisons are totally broken from the ground up.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I think that may be maybe that's a great question for a different day. But I think that the main thing is, is it requires institutions, from schools, to hospitals, to military, to the prison system, were advanced enough from a cultural standpoint, to have means of addressing those sorts of changes.
It's the same thing that race has taught us, you've got to be able to address your institutional racism. In this way, this is gender ism. I think those may not be exactly the same…
Robert Hansen
You are going to get a lot of hate mail for that one.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
But the thing is, is that the way in which institutions have to learn to address that…
Robert Hansen
Yes, similar design.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
All it says I think about our institutions, is that we're capable of evolving over a period of time, based on the inner work and the interior of what people see themselves as. I think that we've given permission to people now to make that change and declare one way or the other, throughout life.
That's what I see that I'm most thankful for is that I was able to go through something that involved suicide, and death. And death is the modifier, of suicide is the modifier with all of this. My way of thinking, is that 40% of all transgender men and women tried to commit suicide. And most of them think about it.
Robert Hansen
Is it before trying to transition or after?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Over the arc of the lifetime. So if 40% are willing to die over this issue, or the ambivalence associated with it, it's something to do with something really deep. That's why I think that it's so important to address this in those institutional terms because of what it does to quality of life and death.
Robert Hansen
Let's talk about my least favorite topic of all these, Trans bathroom rights. This is one of those that just keeps rearing its head. I don't know how this just keeps coming out. But we don't have to spend much time on this. But I'm just curious.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
But again I think it's that ability to pick a subject like this that is so polarizing, that you either agree with it or you don't. I'm not going to change you one way or the other.
Robert Hansen
You changed me. I don't know about the rest. I have a pretty open mind.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I had to learn pretty early on to be able to pee in the car while I was driving, because I didn't want to stop and try to find a gas station when I was going back to West Texas. I just didn't want to mess with that.
Robert Hansen
Because you fear that someone might try to hurt you? Is that why?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I just didn't want to go through the drama. Especially before I had facial feminization surgery and breast and everything else. Now it would not be such a big issue. But again, it becomes a political football to be played one versus the other and I don't think it's a political thing. I just think that again, it's a matter of institutional inertia.
Robert Hansen
I think it’s literally a matter of architecture, we have this pretty terrible design where there's just two bathrooms, and no meaningful stalls between them, where there's like a foot of gap on top. If you’ve spent much time in Europe, for instance, every bathroom is completely isolated, who cares who's going in which one or not.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
You go to Backies, those are bathrooms of the future. You've got a walled off interior, and even if male goes to one side, and the female goes to the other, at least they're walled off, and there's privacy there. I think that making bathrooms usable by either gender makes sense.
Robert Hansen
The W here in Austin is a perfect example where they have, it's not just separate stalls, which I think is also great, but also separate sinks. So everyone uses whatever. But the problem with this and why I think it actually is worth talking about is, if I was a nation state trying to figure out a way to cause billions of dollars’ worth of damage to the United States.
Making every small business change their bathrooms, it seems like a great way to do it. It costs nothing to cause that kind of conflict. I can see why small businesses are very hesitant to go, “Oh, this is just a mess, I'm going to have to change the plumbing.”
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.
Should that be allowed from your perspective? But also, is that taking something away from women to allow them biologically born women?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Again, Robert, I speak for nobody,
Robert Hansen
Of course not. But I think your voice is very useful. You have a lot of perspective.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Here's the thing that I would say, I used lots of testosterone, for erectile dysfunction, then the body build. I know what lots of testosterone means. You look at the 70s, and 80s, and performance enhancement, and football and baseball and all. I think if there is an advantage given to competing individuals by the use of hormones, that…
Robert Hansen
And blood doping, and all these other things. They're all kind of in the same category of improvements.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
That the blood doping thing is…
Robert Hansen
I'm just putting it in the same category of all these different things that do provide advantages.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I think the blood doping thing is different in that the amount of change that you can get from EVO in blood volume.
Robert Hansen
Testosterones is what you're saying.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Lance Armstrong still had to race those miles. So whether or not he had a matter cred of 48, or 54, was not the thing that made that happen. Now, testosterone for females to males, is that an equal competition that is created there? I don't know.
I think it's an individual basis. I think that it devolves on the State School District, State and the school districts to decide what those policies are. But what I would say is, I think that if an advantage is given with hormonal therapy, in one versus the other, with somebody using that gives him an unfair advantage as far as strength or speed, then I have problems with that.
I know that would be unpopular, especially in some conditions, in some states, but my way of thinking is that if it gives an unfair advantage to a competitor over somebody else in that gendered class, then I don't think that's fair.
Robert Hansen
Is by definition not fair if it's unfair, right. So it's difficult to find fault in that logic. But do you think that it's unfair to the women to have men who have spent, let's say 20 years of their life, and they're transitioning in college, let's say, and so they've had all the advantages of testosterone through their system, more bone density, muscle mass, etc.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
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.
Or, at some point, they start feeling like that was a big mistake, what they did.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I've read studies, I think the number is no more than about 2%, in the studies that I've read 2%. Now what goes on over a long period of time, I think your numbers here by the questions that you asked me is we said 1.4 million in the US. I think it's much greater than that. I think it's probably closer to 3% worldwide, then that turns into a lot…
Robert Hansen
3% of the population is transgender.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I think so, are questioning.
Robert Hansen
Only 10% are homosexual?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I've seen upwards to 15%. Again, you're talking about a minority and you're talking about the way that it shapes in in regards to a majority.
Robert Hansen
Would that indicate that we need to do more education upfront? Or is it simply a matter that doesn't matter how much you educate these people ahead of time? They're just not going to know until they know.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I know the answer to that. I see that, one, it's surprising that there isn't more regret.
Robert Hansen
Why do you say that? it’s curious? Because it's so life changing.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
2% of anything is such a small number, but the millions who have now gone through some form of hormonal replacement therapy, and who have gone through facial feminization top or bottom surgery, I think that points to a reality there, that underlies that somebody's self-examination that has occurred over a long period of time.
Is reflective, that somebody is able to determine when inside and outside don't match up. I think that again, going full circle about what we've talked about, that's the only modifier that I can come up with that is consistent that inside and outside don't match up.
Once you get to a point of making the decision to do something about that, whether or not it's hormone replacement therapy or surgery, then how many of those people regret that? If it's only if it's 2%, then I think that pretty well proves the point that there's something here that it's just not a matter of something untoward, something ephemeral. It's something deeper than that.
Robert Hansen
So how does that jive with a 40% suicidality?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
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 the thing is even with the sophistication that we've got with the human genome, that there's no way to point to that.
Robert Hansen
So you would say that, although maybe there is some biology related to it, it is largely social and environmental?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
And all of the above. Yes.
Robert Hansen
So that definitely flies in the face of a lot of people who say, “No, I was born like this. I was born in the wrong body.” And they're saying as if this is…
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Again, I think that’s a way of speaking about a natural history, that perhaps I wish that I could have been in this body, in this gender, earlier than I was, and saying that, from an early point, I remember when I thought that I was something other.
So there are folks, there are a lot of people that can remember back and say at this point in time, when I was five years old, I remember blah blah blah and fill in the blank. So I think that's a metaphor for that they use I was born into this.
Well, they may have, but the thing is that the external genitalia, which determine what sex were assigned at birth, is still the modifier which sticks with us, that determines if you're cisgendered, or what you are, from a cisgendered standpoint. How quickly you can change that, then depends again, on an individual history.
Robert Hansen
How has your dating life been since this whole thing? I know, your wife and you are separated. how have things progressed on that front? What's the dating life?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I can't tell you that. I mean, I haven't dated, per se, I've got a group of women, professional women, who I call friends of Sheila, and they are good friends. They become really good friends. And what I will say is that since I am still married, that's one thing. Also for the last few years I've had my head buried in the books. So I really haven't made the time to be out.
Robert Hansen
Is that something you plan to change? You want to get out there and… literally this is none of my business. Feel free to tell me that.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
I've thought about it because it was on the list there. who do I want to date? What do I want to date? I've thought a lot about that, is that if I was dating, I think that I would like to date women. So I would be a lesbian in the vernacular.
Now, if and when I get bottom surgery, as I kid with my friends of Sheila, I go I might like to test drive this just to see whether or not I can have an orgasm. So it would depend on the individual that… funny I was on Instagram, somebody from a class different from wrist band, wrote me the other day and said, “How does an attractive woman like you keep showing up in my Facebook as a suggested friend.”
So I had to write you back. I said, “Hey, I'm class of.” So that's probably how. So anyway, he took it in a good nature. But so it to be honest with you, how would it be to be out in the world? It would have to be the right individual.
Robert Hansen
I think that's the answer everyone should give.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
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?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Is it a concierge ketamine service.
Robert Hansen
Yes, ketamine and DMT. Is that right?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
No, just Ketamine.
Robert Hansen
Just ketamine. Okay. So these are both dissociative anesthetics is that? isn't that right?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
DMT is a very short acting anesthetic, or psychedelic. Ketamine is the classic dissociative anesthetic, it was developed in Vietnam to get wounded veterans, wounded soldiers medivac back to the hospital safely.
So that's what it was developed for is to inject in a wounded soldier on the battlefield without cardiac or respiratory suppression, in order to get them in the medivac. Back to the mash hospital, and stabilized.
So in the first 20 years or so, there was known to be a psychedelic component of this, which was thought to be a bad side effect. It wasn't until some of the studies earlier done by Stan Grof, and some other really forward thinking physicians began to look at the history of this.
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.
Love seems to bring the people that I work with back to an anchor point. And for some reason, then I will say that ketamine does seem when it's framed in those ways and again, it's a particular ritual that I use, but if it's framed that way, I haven't had anybody that has had a bad trip, nobody.
Robert Hansen
The other thing about ketamine is, it’s much faster through the cycle, right? It's only a handful of hours. It's not an Ayahuasca?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
That's correct.
Robert Hansen
It's not a multi-day sort of journey.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
It can, but now, the way that I offer it as a building a platform, and I think that's the best way of describing that, as that, yes, it's about 45 minutes to an hour, hour and a half with an injection.
Robert Hansen
Which is something you can do right after work before you grab a bite to eat with your friends kind of thing.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
No, but again, I encourage people to treat it as a really formal ritual.
Robert Hansen
it's probably much more effective when they treat it seriously.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
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.
Especially after we go through these things, especially three days in a row, then there's a bond. I'm a physician, they're patient. So there's something sacred in that. So I continue to try to honor that. But I'm afraid, though, that if you pull up at a ketamine clinic, which are holistic now, get plugged into an IV, it may help, especially from the anti-inflammatory.
Or the pathways that are reformed, that's great, but that wears off fairly quickly. The thing that I'm talking about is a consciousness change that occurs with using it in a certain tethering it in a certain way.
Robert Hansen
So safety concerns, people are overdosing or anything like that?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
The thing is, there's a certain dose range that I use intramuscular, which is about five times larger than what you would use at Inter nasal at a rave party or whatever. But it's 10 times less than what you would use as a general anesthetic.
So it's a very safe range to work in. So the thing is, the half-life of the drug is short enough. Again, it was built with the fact that there is no respiratory or cardiac suppression.
Robert Hansen
So it's not like an opioid.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
No, it's not. But the thing is if there was something untoward, I sit there the whole time and watch respirations, I've got a blood pressure cuff, we do all of those things. But the other thing is that I screen, I make sure that there's no underlying cardiac or respiratory issue.
If there's any question, I just go that this is probably not something that I feel comfortable about. But I've not excluded anybody on the basis of just the physical malady to start with now.
Robert Hansen
So, I know we've burned through about three hours now. I'm sorry.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
This has been fun. I love it.
Robert Hansen
I had a whole bunch of other things we want to talk about, but maybe we could do it some other time. So most importantly, where can people find you, follow you and read your book?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
findingmetus.com. METIS, metis is the goddess of wisdom. findingmetis.com is the website. I'll be at a meet up at South by on the 14th at 11:30, over at the Marriott.
Robert Hansen
Your book?
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Written in 2018. self-published, actually, I published it as Sheila Grace MD because of family stuff. I just didn't want to get everybody involved. It's, on Kindle.
Robert Hansen
Well, thank you very much for doing this. It's perilous. It was a hard conversation in some ways, but you handled it with grace.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
Well, I appreciate that.
Robert Hansen
No pun intended.
Dr. Sheila Newsom
The questions were impeccable. I'm really glad to explore at this level, because most folks just aren't interested in diving deep into this, which I think is vital if we really got to understand the issues that we're talking about.
Robert Hansen
Thank you so much for being here. I really, really appreciate it. You've been watching the Rsnake show with Dr. Sheila Grace Newsom. Thank you again.
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