Key Points from my Conversation with Lowan Stewart

YouTube: Watch full video on YouTube

Key Points

• Prioritize Quality of Life Over Mere Duration
  Shift focus from just surviving or extending lifespan to actively improving how fulfilling and meaningful daily life feels, as prolonged suffering despite “adequate” care is a signal to seek better approaches.
  
  
• Recognize Persistent Negative Patterns as Changeable
  View stuck thought loops, behaviors, or emotional ruts (depression, rumination, addiction, avoidance) as reinforced neural pathways that can be disrupted and replaced with new, adaptive ones through deliberate effort.
  
  
• Actively Reinforce Positive Changes After Breakthroughs
  Any temporary lift in mood, perspective, or motivation (from therapy, insight, lifestyle shift, or treatment) acts like “fresh snow” or “stronger muscles”, it only becomes lasting if you consistently use the new flexibility through small behavioral actions (reconnecting with people, pursuing meaning, breaking old habits).
  
  
• Transform States Into Lasting Traits
  Aim to move beyond fleeting positive experiences or relief to embedding new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting into your core personality and daily life (e.g., going from “I felt better for a week” to “this is who I am now“).
  
  
• Be Open and Curious During Difficult Inner Experiences
  When facing dark, confusing, scary, or unexpected thoughts/emotions (in meditation, journaling, therapy, or altered states), adopt an attitude of gentle curiosity (“What is this here to teach me?“), rather than resistance or forced control.
  
  
• Set Intentions, but Remain Flexible and Surrender to the Process
  Have a clear goal or focus before deep inner work, but accept that what actually emerges may differ from what you planned. Trust that what needs to surface often does, even if it’s not what you expected.
  
  
• Bring Maladaptive Patterns to Awareness Just Before Change Efforts
  Intentionally recall or prime the specific problematic memory, craving, fear, or belief right before therapy, journaling, exposure, or mindset work to potentially strengthen the “disruption” and re-consolidation of that pattern.
  
  
• Seek Rapid-Acting Help When in Acute Crisis
  If suicidal thoughts, severe depression, or overwhelming distress persist despite standard treatments, recognize that some interventions (like certain emerging therapies) can produce relief in hours to days rather than weeks/months. Do not delay asking for escalated evaluation.
  
  
• Value Integration as much as the Experience Itself
  Lasting benefit rarely comes from a single insight or session alone. Commit to follow-up reflection, discussion, behavioral experiments, and continued psychotherapy/support to anchor and expand any meaningful shifts.
  
  
• Persist in Helping Yourself and Others Despite Resistance
  When you witness real transformation (in yourself or someone close), that evidence becomes a powerful internal driver to keep going, even when systems, professionals, or your own doubts push back.

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Transcript

Intro

Every year about a million people kill themselves.
That’s more people than die in all natural disasters and all wars combined.

Once you’ve seen somebody who tells you that they’re alive today because of the process that they’ve gone
through with you (the treatment that they went through). You can’t stop.

Joachim’s Intro of the Guest

Today’s guest is Lowan Stewart.

In 2019, I met former Chief Investment Officer at NBIM (basically “the Oil Fund”). A few years later, I saw that he’d taken on the same role for Tor Dagfinn Veen’s family office, TD Veen (who my family have some relations to). I noticed that one of their investments was in Axonklinikken, and got very curious. I read up on the company, and its founder & Medical Director: Lowan Stewart.

As I’m interested in innovative & evidence-based approaches to health care,
I was intrigued & very impressed!
He’s a board-certified Medical Doctor & Emergency Medicine physician, with 20+ years of experience in the US & Norway. A global pioneer in ketamine infusion therapy for treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction, and suicidal ideation. He founded the first ketamine clinics in New Mexico (Insight Ketamine) and Scandinavia, dramatically improving access to these treatments.

Lowan also lectures worldwide, and serves as associate editor for the Journal of Psychedelic Studies. And, he has co-founded the Norwegian Association for Psychedelic Science, which advises major international trials on psilocybin, MDMA & ketamine. …and now dear friends, my conversation with Lowan Stewart.

⏱️ Timestamps

0:06 – Key quotes from the conversation
0:37 – Guest intro of Lowan Stewart.
2:07 – Differences in emergency mental health handling between US and Norway.
5:00 – Personal shift from emergency medicine toward mental health innovation.
9:24 – Discussion of depression as leading cause of disability worldwide.
10:49 – Discovery of ketamine as a legal psychedelic option.
13:20 – Challenges introducing ketamine treatment in Norway’s public system.
20:25 – Landmark Norwegian decision on public reimbursement for generic ketamine.
28:38 – Overview of a typical patient journey with ketamine therapy.
39:10 – Description of the ketamine experience during a session.
50:07 – Rapid anti-suicidal effects observed in practice.
1:01:01 – Anonymous patient stories illustrating profound personal transformations.
1:19:49 – Safety profile of ketamine, including use in elderly and medically complex patients.
1:38:08 – Lowan shares his core personal motivation for the work.