🎙️ Healing Addiction and Trauma with Microdosing Mushrooms | Keegan Downer of Mindful Meds

📘 Show Notes:

In this deeply moving episode of Linda's Corner: Inspiration for a Better Life, we sit down with Keegan Downer, founder of Mindful Meds, to talk about the healing power of microdosing mushrooms, and how it’s helping people overcome addiction and trauma.

Keegan’s journey is raw, real, and incredibly inspiring. Born into generational trauma, he watched his father self-medicate with alcohol and die young. Keegan himself rose to early success, but one decision haunted him and sent him spiraling. After cheating on his girlfriend and hiding it for a year, he was overcome with shame and guilt. He began to drink to numb the pain, ultimately ending up on the edge of a building, contemplating ending it all.

✨ “Don’t ask ‘why the addiction,’ ask ‘why the pain.’” — Gabor Maté
This quote beautifully frames our conversation. Addiction is not a moral failing; it’s a coping mechanism. Keegan’s story illustrates that truth vividly.

Despite surviving that harrowing moment, Keegan continued down a destructive path until his body gave out and landed him in the hospital. That moment was his wake-up call. He entered rehab, learned tools like breathwork and mindfulness, and began the long journey of healing.

But sobriety isn’t a straight line. When life got stressful again, Keegan felt the familiar pull of addiction. That’s when he was introduced to microdosing psilocybin mushrooms—and everything changed.

In 2020, he launched a study involving 40 people struggling with addiction. The results? Life-changing. People found healing not just from substances, but from the root causes of their pain.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• How trauma lies at the root of many addictions
• Healing is all about reverse engineering how you got there
• Why guilt and shame can be just as deadly as any substance
• The powerful role mushrooms can play in trauma recovery
• How microdosing helps rewire the brain and release emotional pain
• The difference between managing addiction and healing from it

🎁 Free Gift: Keegan is offering a free 62-page Microdosing Guide and a complimentary 1-on-1 session with a facilitator. Just DM him on Instagram to claim yours!

👉 Connect with Keegan:

• Website: mindfulmeds.io
• Instagram: @mindfulmeds_
  
  

This is a conversation about pain, truth, healing, and the courage it takes to face your darkest moments—and rise. Whether you or someone you love is struggling, this episode offers hope.

A Hospital Without Walls: Redefining Healing with Dr. Ross Ellenhorn
Guest: Dr. Ross Ellenhorn, CEO of Ellenhorn
Website: https://www.ellenhorn.com

In this thought-provoking episode of Linda’s Corner, we’re joined by Dr. Ross Ellenhorn—pioneering psychiatrist, sociologist, and CEO of Ellenhorn—to explore a radical reimagining of mental health care. Dr. Ellenhorn has created what he calls a “hospital without walls,” offering community-integrated services that honor autonomy, human dignity, and the healing power of social support.

Together, we dive into threat assessment theory, which views life’s difficulties as either challenges or threats—and how that perspective shifts based on the resources we believe we have. Many people avoid looking inward because it feels like a threat, not a challenge. But when we are surrounded by supportive relationships and people who believe in us, our self-efficacy grows. We begin to say, “I can do this.”

Key Topics Discussed:

• The dangers of the “fix-it” model in psychological care
  
  
• Why true healing requires respecting a person’s autonomy
  
  
• The importance of collaborative relationships in creating change
  
  
• Why change is a choice—and how people resist it because staying the same feels safer
  
  
• The role of social support in helping people want to change
  
  
• Understanding the fear of hope and how it’s really the fear of disappointment
  
  
• Moving from “What’s wrong with me?” to “What happened to me?”
  
  
• Why depression is not a trait, but a temporary state that can be changed
  
  
• How treating people with respect and viewing them as the experts of their own lives creates the conditions for transformation
  
  

Dr. Ellenhorn’s work challenges traditional models and invites us into a more compassionate, empowering approach to mental health. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in healing, hope, and human potential.

Connect with Dr. Ross Ellenhorn:
🌐 www.ellenhorn.com

Join the Conversation:
If this episode inspired you, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review!
🎧 Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you listen.

Untangling the Past: Dr. Joan Peters on Psychoanalysis, Childhood Trauma, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves

Episode Summary:
In this powerful and thought-provoking episode of Linda's Corner: Inspiration for a Better Life, I’m joined by Dr. Joan Peters—professor emeritus of literature and writing at California State University and author of Untangling: A Memoir of Psychoanalysis. Together, we explore Joan’s deeply personal journey through psychoanalysis as she worked to understand the hidden roots of lifelong nightmares, inner turmoil, and a mystery that lingered since childhood.

From the outside, Joan’s family appeared ordinary—a mother, a stepfather, a brother, and a seemingly normal life. But beneath the surface, she was waking up screaming multiple times a week, haunted by dreams where someone was trying to kill her. Why?

The trauma didn’t come from abuse—it came from a little girl’s desperate attempt to make sense of the incomprehensible. When Joan was born, her father was dying of cancer. Her overwhelmed mother administered morphine shots to ease his suffering, often while Joan sat nearby in her high chair. Though she couldn’t understand what was happening, Joan felt that something was terribly wrong—and she internalized the grief, fear, and silence around her. When her father died just before her second birthday, his memory was erased from family life, never to be mentioned again.

Through decades of silence and self-blame, Joan carried the belief that she was responsible—that she was the "angel of death," and that someone would one day kill her because she was bad.

In this moving conversation, Joan shares how psychoanalysis helped her unravel the stories she created to explain her pain—and how retelling those stories with compassion became the key to healing. We also discuss the power of acknowledging trauma, the danger of unspoken grief, and how rewriting our inner narratives can transform our lives.

Learn more and connect with Dr. Peters at UntanglingJoan.com.

Key Topics Covered:

• The hidden impact of early childhood trauma
• How children internalize grief and pain
• The silence surrounding death and how it affects family dynamics
• The power of psychoanalysis in untangling subconscious fears
• Rewriting our personal narratives to find peace and healing
  
  

Connect with Linda:
Website: HopeForHealingFoundation.org
Podcast: Linda’s Corner: Inspiration for a Better Life
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If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who may need to hear it. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review—it helps others find the show and join our healing journey. 💛

#UntanglingThePast
#ChildhoodTraumaHealing
#PsychoanalysisJourney
#RewriteYourStory
#EmotionalHealing