Saw my last patients 9/30/2026…
A brief CV:
After almost not graduating from HS (too many drugs), found my groove in Nassau Community College AA 1973, then on to Binghamton BS 1975, grad school at Madison WI with MS 1979, PhD 1981, and then Med School at Stony Brook MD 1985, was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha, Honor Society for the inaugural AOA group at Stony Brook 1985, then residency in internal medicine combined with a science post doc fellowship in immunology overlapping with a rheumatology fellowship, landing a tenure track assistant professorship in rheumatology at Madison WI 1991, tenure in 1997, spent 25 years on faculty, ran a lab, along with doing teaching and clinical work, retired from academia in 2016, spent the last 10 years in private practice rheumatology…
Highlights of my academic career include doing a fair amount of reviewing grants for the NIH, teaching medical students, residents, rheumatology fellows, particularly being the faculty mentor for the Integrative Medicine elective at Madison, then elected to The Gold Humanism Honor Society, as faculty, 2008. Met all sorts of interesting people while doing research, mentors, co-faculty, co-reviewers, students, research fellows. Had a lot of fun helping to revise all 4 years of the medical school curriculum over about 3 years with a great team. Had an opportunity to help in a study of psilocybin at Madison, being one of the study MD supervisors as well as being a guide, working with a great team including my wife as the lead trainer.
I do note that many of my training and job decisions were driven by my worries about financial security:
After getting a PhD and seeing my mentor struggling to get grants I decided to go to medical school, ran a basic science lab for about 15 years, then struggled to keep my lab funded, had an opportunity to work on curriculum development for another 3 years, then while contemplating doing mostly clinical rheumatology, saw that I might as well get paid better, so went into a private practice environment for 10 years.
When my wife and I decided to move to Colorado 10 years ago, it was with the idea of my doing clinical medicine for about 5 years and then possibly starting a practice of psychedelic medicine together. We so much enjoyed being partner guides for 8 individuals for about 3 sessions each in our psilocybin study. My wife continued to work on an MDMA study as a guide, and we both helped train student in psychedelic medicine at CIIS, she taught there much more than I. She also did administrative work at the CIIS psychedelic training program and retired about 2 years ago.
Much has changed these past 10 years…
When we came to Colorado, cannabis was legal, psilocybin was not, we thought about using cannabis as a psychedelic substitute. Then psilocybin became legal, or at least decriminalized, and we watched the attempts to set up legal psilocybin programs both in Oregon and Colorado. We have been aghast at the difficulties and expenses of setting up such programs as well as the increasing corporatization of psychedelic medicine. I continued to work in clinical rheumatology for a full 10 years.
Now, soon to be 73, I felt that I can stop working for a salary…
It has been about 6 weeks now since my last day of work…
I have been doing a lot of lazing around, doing some biking and hiking, catching up on reading my myriad magazines, mostly was behind on astronomy magazines, reading a few brain candy novels, just started on Michael Pollan’s “A World Appears.”
I figure it will take about a year to settle into a new flow of life…
Currently, I am not interested in volunteering, seems like a lot of retirees get into volunteering…
My wife is very involved in her fiber arts, mostly loves spinning art yarns, she also knits and crochets, and has won quite a few local fiber art awards. She has a lot of fiber arts related friendships.
As of currently, we are no longer contemplating setting up a practice of psychedelic medicine, seems too difficult…
We love spending time together, hiking with our 6-year-old standard poodle, Zev, not a dainty poodle, he is 75-80 pounds of muscular poodle, well trained by my wife, also continuing having our stimulating conversations, or just parallel playing, sitting and reading, etc.
I have many things I need to organize and things to sell, these are not my favorite activities…
I plan to drag out my telescope more often, perhaps in investigate astrophotography, contemplating restarting playing guitar…
Of course, writing this Blog, as you can see here…
My deepest interest continues to be in how individuals can grow and evolve on the evolutionary scale…
I continue to believe that meditation and psychedelics can help people evolve...
Noting there are dangers in both. Tricycle, Fall 2026, pp 94-96, recently reviewed a book “Meditation Sickness: A Sourcebook on the Dangers of Buddhist Practice,” and The Atlantic September 4, 2026, published an article “The Dark Side of Mindfulness.”
I do not see any clear road to being active in helping people evolve, except through writing this blog…
Right now, I am still feeling “lazy”…
It feels a bit like being a teenager again…
Just smoking a lot less pot…
Actually, not intaking any cannabis!
Not sure what will unfold for me in the future…
I still can upregulate a lot of energy…
We shall see what unfolds…
Namaste
