Episode
PT 638 - Dr Jason Konner - Psychedelic Oncologist
- Podcast
- Psychedelics Today
- Published
- Nov 18, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 4354
- Processing state
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Summary
In this episode, Joe Moore sits down with Dr. Jason Konner, a longtime oncologist who recently left his full-time clinical role at Memorial Sloan Kettering to devote himself to the emerging intersection of cancer care and psychedelics. Dr Konner shares how, after more than two decades treating people, he hit a wall. The accumulated grief, constant exposure to death, and intensity of oncology left him deeply burned out , though he didn't have that language for it at the time. A chance moment in a yoga class, overhearing someone say " ayahuasca retreat" just before he was scheduled for hernia surgery, became the turning point. Within a week, he was in the jungle. That first week with ayahuasca, followed later by work with mushrooms, "absolutely transformed" his life. His fear of death lifted. The burnout he hadn't even recognized in himself was both revealed and relieved. When he returned to his practice, Konner describes feeling like he suddenly had a "superpower": he could stay present, connected, and compassionate with patients facing advanced disease without collapsing under the emotional weight. He and Joe explore what this third path looks like: not the classic binary between either hardening and distancing as self-protection, or staying open-hearted and getting shattered. Instead, psychedelics helped him hold deep relationship with patients and families while maintaining inner stability and meaning. This opened space for authentic conversations about spirituality, fear, grief, and what it means to live with (or die from) cancer. From there, Dr Konner zooms out to critique the broader oncology system: The lack of training and support for oncologists around their own emotional and existential load, How little space there is for relational work even though it's centr…