Name: Ketamine Doctor Jason Pooler | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #341
Uploaded: 2021-05-21T13:00:31.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Ketamine Doctor Jason Pooler | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #341' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-05-21. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Ketamine Doctor Jason Pooler | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #341' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-05-21. Transcript available.

Ketamine Doctor Jason Pooler | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #341

Today's episode is brought to you by Liquid Death. You know, it's good.
What's up, guys? I want to let you know that I will be touring in St. Louis. We've
added a show.
Cincinnati, Charlotte, Durham. We've added a show. Chattanooga, Knoxville, Wilmington,
Wilkes Bar,
Minneapolis, Charleston, Richmond, Baltimore, Albany. We've added a show.
Buffalo, New York,
and Columbus, Ohio. Columbus, we will be adding a show if we haven't already.
Theovon.com
slash tour. The only place to get tickets. All other sites, they're going to
jack up the prices.
So go to the links through Theovon.com slash tour. And thank you for supporting
me in my dream.
Recently, I've undergone ketamine therapy. And I wanted to speak with someone
who is an expert in
that field and to learn more about my experience and learn more about the
therapy overall.
Today's guest is the founder and the medical director at the Chattanooga Ketamine
Center.
It is Dr. Jason Poole.
It is Dr. Jason Poole.
Shine that light on me
I'll sit and tell you my stories
Shine on me
And I will find a song
Dr. Jason Poole. Thanks for being in here today, man.
Dr. Jason Poole. Thank you.
Dr. Jason Poole. I appreciate it. And so, you're a doctor of?
Dr. Jason Poole. Well, I'm an MD. So, I'm a physician.
Dr. Jason Poole. Okay.
Dr. Jason Poole. And a physician is what? Just a doctor?
Dr. Jason Poole. A medical doctor. Like you go to four years of medical school
after college.
Dr. Jason Poole. Okay. That's not like Dr. Dre.
Dr. Jason Poole. No, no. It's like the, in the United States, you know, the MD
is sort of the,
what people think of when they think of physician. Those are, you know, that's
the standard process.
You go to medical school.
Dr. Jason Poole. Okay.
Dr. Jason Poole. Then you usually do a residency to sort of sub-specialize into
a different area of
training. Dr. Jason Poole. Okay.
Dr. Jason Poole. And then you go to work.
Dr. Jason Poole. And so, these days you're working in a ketamine.
How did you get working in a ketamine therapy? And like, where are you at with
it right now? Like,
are you actually practicing it? Are you running a practice that provides the
therapy to people?
Dr. Jason Poole. So, both.
Dr. Jason Poole. Okay.
Dr. Jason Poole. I was, it's kind of one of those,
um, long routes to get back to where you started. And I, I originally trained
as a general surgeon,
um, a long time ago. And then I went into anesthesia and I did that for about a
decade.
And ketamine therapy sort of became, um, more studied as a result of its use in
anesthesia.
And, um, because it's an anesthesia medication, but it had some interesting
side effects that they,
they looked at over time that, that they couldn't explain. And that research is
what has brought us to
ketamine therapy today in the use of treatment resistant, um, depression and
other, you know, um,
mental health problems.
Dr. Jason Poole. What exactly is it used to treat the therapy?
Dr. Jason Poole. So you can use it to treat a lot of different things. It, it
depends on
what you're doing with it. The way it is used most often is to help people who
have had
a lot of problems with depression, who have failed, uh, a lot of other
therapeutic approaches.
Dr. Jason Poole. And so, so what ketamine offers is a new tool to help people
who are
still suffering tremendously kind of springboard back onto the road of life.
Dr. Jason Poole. And, and, um, it is, it's really interesting that the way it
works,
it doesn't work like normal antidepressant medicines. It has nothing in common
with them.
Dr. Jason Poole. Um, the, the way,
Dr. Jason Poole. It's almost a new technology then I guess in approaching
treating depression. Dr. Jason Poole. So the, the, the easiest way to describe
it is
why they started studying it to begin with. Dr. Jason Poole. Okay.
Dr. Jason Poole. And that was back almost 20 years ago.
Dr. Jason Poole. Oh dang.
Dr. Jason Poole. They, they realized that when they gave ketamine to patients
getting operations,
they required less narcotic pain medicine, um, during the operation in the
hospital and after the
hospital stay, uh, than, than other patients. And they said, why is this? It
just doesn't,
you know, why are they having less pain? They had no explanation. So they, they
looked at it and what
they discovered was that what it does is it changes your perception of pain. So
you can see something
that you've experienced as less painful. Hence, you don't need as much
medication to cover your pain.
Dr. Jason Poole. I see. So you're not feeling as much pain because you're not
seeing it.
You're not seeing the seed of whatever it was as, as painful. So therefore like
the growth of the pain
isn't as severe. Dr. Jason Poole. At that time, uh, uh, the way, the best way I
like describe it to
people is. Dr. Jason Poole. Yeah. Dr. Jason Poole. I have two daughters and,
and say,
we go get flu shots and one daughter gets a flu shot and she's like, ow. And my
other daughter,
she gets a flu shot and she's like, ah, and her response is much more. Okay. We
know that the,
the shot is the same, but the response is different. So one is perceiving
something
with more distress than the other. And the way ketamine works is it helps
your pain sort of shift from that, that more visceral response to a more that
hurt,
but I'm okay response. Dr. Jason Poole. Okay.
Dr. Jason Poole. It's like, it's like changing the lens on how you see pain
so that you can see things and you can kind of look at them from a distance and
sort of
go around things that have happened to you and you can kind of connect to
yourself from those places.
And it's a, it's, it's, it's not spiritual, but it's not far from it.
Right. Do you think it gives you like a look at yourself? Like you kind of see
yourself?
Whereas a lot of us have a tough time seeing ourselves because we're in
ourselves, you know?
Dr. Jason Poole. Exactly. Yes. 100%. Because it's like, if you're on the
playing field,
you can't really see what's going on and it sort of puts you up in the stands
of your life.
Dr. Jason Poole. That's interesting.
And you have a lot of places in your past or a lot of patients that have come
to me is,
you know, you're living your life and life's hard and people get hurt. And
depending on where they
are in their life, they sort of package that up and they put it away because
they don't want to feel
that anymore, but it doesn't really go away. And so those, let's call them
firewalls.
They're no-go places in your brain, but they're still sort of resonating
through your existence.
So they're shaping typically your relationships and your career.
Dr. Jason Poole. Right.
Dr. Jason Poole. Right.
Dr. Jason Poole. And that's like that, what is that movie, Kung Fu Panda?
Dr. Jason Poole. Oh, I was thinking of...
Dr. Jason Poole. Master Oogway and his...
We often find our destiny by trying to avoid it.
Dr. Jason Poole. Oh, yeah. Interesting. Yeah, I was thinking of that movie
where that boat
gets stuck in Boston, you know what I'm talking about, where they go fishing,
you know what I'm
talking about? And there's all the storms, perfect storms.
Dr. Jason Poole. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
That didn't have a good ending though.
Dr. Jason Poole. Yeah, it didn't.
But, so I see what you're saying. So yeah, it kind of gives you an experience
to step outside of yourself.
Dr. Jason Poole. After you guys working in anesthesia, were you able to see
people having
that experience? Like, were you able to visually see that? Or were you not able
to grasp kind
of the concept of it, of exactly that until, I'm guessing later, which we haven't
discussed yet,
until you got into actually experiencing using ketamine?
Dr. Jason Poole. When I was practicing anesthesia, I used it.
Dr. Jason Poole. Because you're that hitman. Anesthesia guy is that hitman that
rolls in there.
Dr. Jason Poole. Yeah, so...
Dr. Jason Poole. That's the guy a lot of people, some people don't even need,
they'll be like,
they just want the anesthesia, some people. I have a buddy who's addicted to inoculations.
And he's breaking into Walgreens and doing all the damn, whatever it is.
Dr. Jason Poole. The COVID?
Dr. Jason Poole. I don't know if it was COVID before this, so it was just doing
flu shots, you know.
But that's, you know, people get, people get, people get into certain things,
you know. But anyway,
I don't know why I told you that exactly. But what I'm trying to tell you right
now is just that,
okay, so yeah. So were you able to see stuff whenever you were working as an
anesthesiologist?
Were you able to see some of that? Or was it more like that you got a stronger
idea to work with
ketamine, like, and understand it later on? Dr. Jason Poole. What I noticed was
that when we used it,
and we didn't use it a lot. I mean, you just give them it as part of anesthesia,
they did better. So everything seemed to work better. They just sort of seemed
more functional.
They had, what we saw was they just, they felt better. They came out of it
better. They got up,
they got around. And that was sort of how the ball got rolling on, why is this
happening?
And then, you know, then they started figuring out that, hey, this is actually
doing something in the
brain for real, not just some accident. And then they started experimenting,
not experimenting,
but they started, you know, using it in a more of a clinical sense for people
who are really struggling.
Because before ketamine, really the only thing that they had was ECT, you know,
putting electricity
through your head. Dr. Jason Poole: Right. Dr. Jason Poole:
And I have taken care of a lot of patients with that, and they did not like
that. And I can see why.
Dr. Jason Poole: So what, did you ever have to do that to people?
Dr. Jason Poole: I did, actually. Not, not as…
Dr. Jason Poole: Because I'm not even familiar with that.
Dr. Jason Poole: Yeah, I did it when I was an anesthesia resident about a
decade ago. They'd bring
us a bunch of patients from the psychiatric hospital and they'd line them up
and we put them to sleep and
the psychiatrist would shock their heads. And we were like wide-eyed and like,
is this real? And
I guess it helped. Dr. Jason Poole: So you would put them to sleep first?
Dr. Jason Poole: Yeah, just very briefly. Dr. Jason Poole: With a…
Dr. Jason Poole: Like propofol or something. Dr. Jason Poole: Okay.
Dr. Jason Poole: So you would just make them unconscious just for a few minutes.
And I remember
this psychiatrist, she had like this head of hair that was like huge and it was
like gray and kind of
back to the future style. Dr. Jason Poole: Yeah. Dr. Jason Poole: And she would
put these probes
on this guy, on these guys' heads and like, and you know, we're kids and we're
just like, okay.
Dr. Jason Poole: Wow. And zap them decently? Dr. Jason Poole: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Dr. Jason Poole: Oh yeah. Dr. Jason Poole: Yeah.
Dr. Jason Poole: Yeah, because we had to paralyze them because when you shocked
them, they'd be like…
Dr. Jason Poole: And what was supposed to be happening?
Dr. Jason Poole: So my understanding is… Dr. Jason Poole: Because that seems
kind of bootleg, you know? Dr. Jason Poole: My understanding is it actually
helps a lot of people, but it is not readily accessible. So we were doing this
in a hospital,
in a recovery room with an anesthesia team in sort of the critical care area of
the hospital. So
that's not something that is accessible to 99% of the population. Dr. Jason Poole:
Right.
Dr. Jason Poole: Any given day. And so that's sort of the problem.
Dr. Jason Poole: So this electroconvulsive therapy,
Dr. Jason Poole: Anywhere, small electric currents are passed through the brain,
Dr. Jason Poole: triggering a brief seizure, changes in the brain chemistry,
Dr. Jason Poole: quickly reverse symptoms of certain mental health conditions.
Dr. Jason Poole: So this was almost… This was kind of like a ketamine…
Dr. Jason Poole: Ketamine is kind of like that?
Dr. Jason Poole: No. Dr. Jason Poole: Okay.
Dr. Jason Poole: No, that…