Annual motorcycle run raising awareness for veteran suicide
The Team Timmy Motorcycle Ride for Life is taking place next month.
Tim Neild was a Captain in the Army, a bronze star recipient, and a veteran of the War in Afghanistan.
Following his deployment, he was in a serious car crash in Upstate New York that worsened the post-traumatic stress disorder that he had gotten from the war.
Neild committed suicide in October 2017.
Since then, his father, Rick, has held the motorcycle run to raise money for a scholarship fund for graduates of Candor High School, where Tim went, and neighboring Spencer-Van Etten.
Rick says the run serves as a potent reminder of the importance of addressing and de-stigmatizing veteran mental health.
'TBIs, traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, they're very real and they need to be discussed. One of the things that has been my mission since we started this was to make the V.A. more aware that, in Tim's case, you're almost shunned if you said you had an issue. Things are improving, slowly, but we're getting there,' said Rick.
The run takes place on Saturday, June 7, and will conclude at Turkey Trot Acres in Candor for an all-you-can-eat buffet reception featuring an open mic.
The Team Timmy Ride for Life starts at 11 a.m. at Tim's gravesite, located behind the Candor Town Hall.
After a brief memorial ceremony, the bikes will leave at 11:30 for a 125-mile trip that includes brief stops in Whitney Point and Owego.
The reception at Turkey Trot runs from 2 until 6.
The cost for the run and party is $40, $10 if you only want to go for the ride.
Tickets must be purchased by this Saturday by calling (607)659-7849 or emailing TurkeyTrot@FrontierNet.net.
Annual motorcycle run raising awareness for veteran suicide
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Those certified to administer psychedelics are required to receive 160 hours of training — compared with the 625 hours mandated for licensed massage therapists. Franklin had an aesthetic perfectly suited to psychedelic medicine in the Instagram era. Glattstein, once a tech entrepreneur, had reinvented himself as a shaman. EAST — short for Entheogenic Assisted Spiritual Transformation — was founded in the fall of 2021. Located on the ground floor of an office park in northwest Atlanta, its ceremonial space had the look of an ashram outfitted from an Anthropologie catalog. White sheepskin rugs were arranged in a circle; Buddhist statues adorned an altar lined with candles and a large geode. The veneer of curated calm was periodically pierced by the racket coming from Insight Virtual Ballistics, a bar and "virtual shooting" arcade next door. The initial draw for many of the trainees at EAST was Franklin, who ran a therapy and mindfulness business in Atlanta before meeting Glattstein. An ethereal beauty with long, dark hair and a radiant smile, Franklin has an aesthetic perfectly suited to psychedelic medicine in the Instagram era. Her look — a seemingly endless rotation of hand-dyed silk dresses and turquoise jewelry — was at least partially attainable: A gift shop in EAST's entryway sold brightly hued dresses and robes for hundreds of dollars a pop. If Franklin, 40, was the draw, it was Glattstein, 65, who ran the show. He spent years in the up-and-down world of tech startups. In 1997, he cofounded an internet services company called Virtual Resources that raised $25 million in venture capital, only to sell for $6 million two years later. In 2018, after several subsequent startups also flopped, Glattstein turned the page. Instead of pitching companies, he was now pitching his own rebirth. The story, as he's told it in various interviews, is that he had fallen terribly ill — with what, he doesn't say — and despite being given "all of the Western medical treatments, all the therapies, all the drugs," his mysterious condition only got worse. "They had given me three months to live," he recounted on the "Psychedelic Conversations" podcast. "All my systems were shutting down." All that changed, he said, when he heard a voice command him, "Heal yourself." Glattstein says he stopped his medications, cut ties with his doctors, and started practicing with a shaman. His hair grew back and his body grew fit: His illness was gone. He started teaching, and Franklin was one of his early students. The two became a couple, bound by a passion for Eastern medicine and, they've said, their shared feeling as outsiders in Atlanta — Glattstein, the child of New York Jews in a predominantly Southern Baptist area; Franklin, whose mother was Vietnamese. They soon began hosting mini "medicine" retreats with friends at a cabin in the woods outside Atlanta. "It was just a small group of us doing mushrooms," said a friend who asked not to be identified for fear of professional repercussions. After founding EAST, Glattstein and Franklin proved to be gifted promoters of their new venture. Latching on to reality TV as a pulpit for their psychedelic gospel, they appeared as spiritual healers on Lifetime's "Little Women: Atlanta" and Bravo's "Real Housewives of Atlanta" spinoff, "Porsha's Family Matters." They trademarked the "EAST Method," which they said provided "profound healing benefits for depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction, compulsive conditions, pain management, and end-of-life demoralization" — though it's never been proven to be a treatment for any condition. Once they welcomed their first "council" of facilitator trainees, Glattstein — now calling himself a "world-renowned shaman" — took on the roles of teaching classes, sourcing the medicine, and setting the dos Before long, Glattstein was surrounded by a following of true believers. His supreme self-confidence, Beth says, made it hard to resist his instructions. "There were moments where I did feel connected to him," she says, "because of the drugs." On ceremony weekends at EAST, Friday and Saturday nights were reserved for psilocybin "journeys." On the first night, half of the council would take a high dose of mushrooms of up to 4.5 grams, according to six of the trainees. The other half would be given a relatively low dose, up to 1.5 grams, so they could help facilitate the others' experiences, they say. Franklin says that the doses were lower: 3.5 grams "was at a much higher end," she told Business Insider, while the low dose would be "up to one gram." The next night, they'd swap roles. As the students waited for the drugs to take effect, Franklin and the other lead facilitators would don dresses and ceremonial robes, play music, and dance. "I will always regret not saying, 'Wait a minute, Jeff, she's telling you that her intuition, her body, her spirit, is saying that she shouldn't do this. Why would we override that? We're here to learn how to be facilitators." The next day, the trainees would talk about their experiences from the night before. Glattstein would also lead sessions on topics like neuroscience and shamanic healing. The trainees, some of them healthcare professionals, said they found the lectures light on science. "Jeff gave some very basic information about the limbic system," recalls Sarah, a trainee in the third council. "I was like, 'Are we not going to get into serotonin receptors and how psychedelics interact with the brain?'" There was also no discussion about the boundaries between the facilitator and the subject, trainees say. "There was never anything about ethics, or what we should do as facilitators if we found ourselves attracted to somebody who was doing the medicine work with us," says Beth. As psychedelics move into the fields of medicine and therapy, the training in how to handle them is, in many cases, being conducted by spiritual healers who are intensely critical of Western medicine. Trainees say Glattstein could be openly hostile to the medical establishment. Zoe, a former employee of EAST, says she started to see a shift in the center's attitude that she wasn't comfortable with. "Their messaging was becoming increasingly, explicitly anti-mental-health treatment," she says. "Like, how you shouldn't go to therapy, and take mushrooms instead." At one ceremony in February 2023, a psychologist named Joan, who was part of Tim's council, was experiencing what she described as "serious insomnia and unrelenting anxiety." She says she asked Glattstein if she could skip the mushrooms that weekend and stick to facilitating. But Joan says Glattstein insisted she go ahead with the ceremony as planned, and she ultimately agreed. Two trainees recalled the interaction and say they wish they'd spoken up for Joan at the time. "I will always regret not saying, 'Wait a minute, Jeff, she's telling you that her intuition, her body, her spirit, is saying that she shouldn't do this," says Beth. "Why would we override that? We're here to learn how to be facilitators." Franklin says she knew Joan was struggling, but denies Glattstein pressured her to take mushrooms. As the course progressed, Joan's symptoms got worse. By the time it was over, she was a wreck. "I couldn't sleep. I couldn't work," she says. "I stopped doing pretty much anything." Her husband admitted her to the hospital, and she remained in the psych ward for two weeks. The same weekend that Joan asked to skip the mushrooms, Tim also tried to scale back his dosage after his bad breakup. Ahead of the ceremony, he says he went to two of EAST's employees, one of whom was Scott, and told them, "It may not be appropriate for me to take a high dose of psilocybin this weekend." When Glattstein proceeded as normal, Tim agreed to take the high dose. He remembers his trip that night as healing, helping him to view the breakup as "just a blip in our cosmic story." He was filled with a sense of "overwhelming love" for his ex, and was certain they would meet again in future lives. As the ceremony wound down, Tim was still tripping. Trainees say this was a common issue at EAST. The medicine ceremonies ended after three hours, and the effects of a high dose of psilocybin might last up to eight hours. It took so long to come down that trainees would make arrangements for someone to drive them home. Tim and Scott knew each other from years earlier, when they'd gone on a few dates, but both say it never turned sexual. That night, Scott was already due to give Tim a ride home from the ceremony, along with another trainee who was staying at Scott's home that weekend. Now, Tim says that Scott suggested Tim stay over, too. Wouldn't that be better, he said, than returning to the home Tim shared with his ex-boyfriend? Oh, Tim thought as he stared out the window, gazing at the passing lights amplified by the psilocybin. How lovely that this person would offer me a place to sleep. After several months of psilocybin use, he felt a deep affection for everyone involved with EAST, including Scott. Since the other trainee would be staying on the couch, Tim says Scott suggested that they could share his bed. (The other trainee did not respond to requests for comment.) Still feeling the effects of the psilocybin, Tim agreed. But as Scott crawled into bed with him, the feeling of love and connection Tim had felt on the ride home dissolved into confusion. He "kind of turned into this archetype of a tiger," Tim recalls, "with the growling and these half-closed eyes." As Tim recalls it, Scott tried to undress him and physically force him to perform oral sex. "I put my underwear back on at least three times," Tim says. Finally, Tim says he gave up trying to resist. In a telephone interview with Business Insider, Scott denied having "any sexual contact" with Tim. According to Tim, they wound up having one more sexual encounter with another man, though Scott says he was present but didn't participate. Business Insider has reviewed text messages between Tim and Scott, in which they exchanged friendly banter and, on one occasion, Scott sent Tim an explicit photo. A few months after the alleged assault, and after Tim had opened up to his therapist, Tim says he came to believe that EAST had taken his money and put him in the care of someone who took advantage of him while he was in a suggestible state. In retrospect, he puts much of the blame for what happened on Glattstein and Franklin. After all, they were the ones who put Scott in charge of getting him home safely. "How," he began to wonder, "are these people running a training program?" The lack of clear guidelines is a widespread problem in facilitator training. The gold standard for centers like EAST is a manual developed by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, the country's leading psychedelic and research advocacy organization. But the guidelines provided by MAPS are murky at best. For example, the manual states that facilitators must "always ask for permission regarding any kind of physical contact." The guidelines don't address the fact that a person under the influence of psychedelics may not be in a position to consent. Suggesting physical contact with someone who is on psychedelic drugs, by its very nature, fosters an environment that is ripe for abuse. "It goes against everything we know about therapeutic boundaries and ethics when the facilitator or therapist leans heavily into touch," says Neşe Devenot, a researcher at the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation at Harvard. "And when the client is on these suggestible substances, that touch creates a feeling of intimacy that can be exploited." Betty Aldworth, the director of communications and education at MAPS, said the organization's guidelines are clear. She says the MAPS manual stresses that touch is optional and that consent for touch can be revoked at any time and in different ways, including nonverbally. She added that proper training and sound clinical judgment are crucial to the process. 200 psychedelic practitioners and advocates have signed an open letter calling for accountability and transparency in the psychedelic community. In 2019, MAPS acknowledged that Richard Yensen, an unlicensed therapist in one of its clinical trials, "substantially deviated" from its manual while treating Meaghan Buisson, a trial participant who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming in part from sexual abuse. Video footage of the treatment showed Yensen and another therapist cuddling, hugging, and aggressively restraining Buisson while she was on MDMA. In a lawsuit, Buisson alleges that following the treatment, Yensen continued to act as her therapist and repeatedly sexually abused her for more than a year after the initial incident. After Buisson sued him for sexual abuse, Yensen argued in a legal filing that the relationship was consensual and, because his therapy license had lapsed, he was not under a "duty of care" as a medical professional. The case was settled out of court. In 2022, California's Board of Behavioral Science brought eight "causes for discipline" against Eyal Goren, a therapist who trained with the Center for Consciousness Medicine. The claims included sexual misconduct, gross negligence, and emotional harm against trainees who had taken psilocybin, MDMA, and ayahuasca. Goren denied the allegations, but agreed to surrender his license for at least three years. Goren declined to comment. In 2021, 200 psychedelic practitioners and advocates signed an open letter calling for accountability and transparency in the psychedelic community. A healthcare blog published by Harvard Law School, and co-authored by Devenot, concluded that the accounts of abuse throughout the rapidly growing ecosystem of psychedelic medicine "align with the familiar social dynamics that make up destructive cults." Franklin says EAST did consider ethics when setting up the program, but she concedes they could have done more. "EAST was not perfect, obviously, and there's a lot of growth area for sure," she says. "But we definitely did our best." Still, she adds, the institute can't be blamed for what happened outside its training. "What people did when they stepped outside of the doors, we just don't have control over that," she says. Members of Tim's council were shell-shocked by his allegations. As they debated what to do, more allegations surfaced — this time about Glattstein. In October 2023, two women from EAST's first facilitator training sued Glattstein, alleging that he had sexually abused them during private "energy healing" sessions. One of the women, Mica Davis, said Glattstein would touch her breasts and vagina over her clothing, ostensibly to help clear her "root chakra" — energy that resides in the groin area. Doing so, he told her, would "make her husband happy." The second woman, Jacqueline Wigder, who had come to EAST in part to work through trauma stemming from childhood sexual abuse, said that Glattstein would press his hands on her pubic bone and reach under her bra to run his hands between her breasts. Her sexual energy, he allegedly told her, was "like a caged tiger that needed to be released." Glattstein and EAST have denied the allegations. In a blog post on his personal website, Glattstein says the women signed informed consents specifically for "hands on" energy work. "The reputation of an incredibly gifted healer that has dedicated his life to helping humanity was severely damaged," he wrote. The case is still pending. In December, EAST filed for bankruptcy. The EAST website is now blank, and all posts have been deleted from the group's social media accounts. Franklin, meanwhile, has migrated some of EAST's offerings to her personal website. Earlier this year, she offered a six-day trip to Egypt called "The Awakening," which she advertised as a "reclamation journey of the powerful Priestess within" that will unlock "dormant cellular DNA." Today, she says, her goal is "to share what it really means to be an impactful, courageous, conscious leader in the healing and psychedelic spaces." As for Tim, he hopes for a day when psilocybin therapy is fully professionalized, with credentials and oversight boards. In a sense, it's not that different from the process that Western medicine underwent at the turn of the 20th century. Back then, medical schools were required to implement standardized curricula and training requirements to counteract widespread public dissatisfaction over snake-oil salesmen and other medical "quacks." Properly regulated, Tim believes, shrooms and other psychedelics could one day be as commonplace as talk therapy — a trusted treatment for the traumas and anxieties of modern life. Getting there will mean establishing appropriate boundaries between patients and practitioners, ensuring proper oversight, and moving beyond the field's anything-goes roots in the New Age counterculture. "I still believe this is the future of medicine," Tim says. "But you can't just have some tech guy walk in and call himself a shaman." Katie MacBride is a freelance writer. Read the original article on Business Insider Solve the daily Crossword
