A Spark of Hope: How Tina and Momin of Neuroglow Transform Mental Health with Psychedelic Therapy?

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Mental health is a crucial aspect of our lives that often gets overlooked. It affects our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and if left unaddressed, can lead to severe consequences.

However, with the advent of psychedelic therapy, there's hope for people suffering from treatment-resistant depression and anxiety. And two individuals who are leading the charge in revolutionizing mental health through this therapy are Tina and Momin.

Tina Marie and Momin Zafarullah are on a mission to transform mental health through their ketamine infusion clinic, Neuroglow. Based in McKinney and Flower Mound, Texas, Neuroglow focuses on providing psychedelic therapy to people suffering from depression and anxiety. With a strong emphasis on scientific research and a controlled environment, Tina and Momin have helped countless individuals who have exhausted all other treatment options.

In this episode, you'll get a glimpse into Tina and Momin's journey to revolutionize mental health with psychedelic therapy. You'll discover how their clinic is making a difference in people's lives, the research behind ketamine infusion therapy, and the hope it brings to those struggling with treatment-resistant depression and anxiety.

So, if you want to learn more about how Tina and Momin are transforming mental health, this episode is a must-watch.

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Tina & Momin of Neuroglow

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Tina Marie: I'm Tina Marie, I'm with Neuroglow. Neuroglow is a ketamine infusion clinic. We do psychedelic medicine. we are located in McKinney, Texas and in Flower Mound, Texas. 

Momin Zafarullah: My name is Momin. Basically our business is called Neuroglow. We're basically a ketamine infusion clinic. Right now, we focus on psychedelic therapy. When I say psychedelic, basically a lot of people might think like, okay, people are gonna come to this clinic and trip out, and that's what we do. But it's in a very controlled environment. We're basically, ketamine drug that has psychedelic properties, but it also has been researched really to treat treatment-resistant depression, anxiety. The research is strong on it, so we're not out here just doing random things. everything we do is backed by science. And we've helped a lot of people and really our mission is to help as many people as possible with this type of therapy. A lot of people come to our clinic, they've tried everything else and this is kind of a last resort for 'em. That's what kind of keeps 'em going.

We get a lot of people that have told us like, "Hey, if it wasn't for the clinic, they, they wouldn't be here". So, that's our fuel, that's what keeps us going. I mean, that's kind of our mission, honestly and I think, me and Tina are pretty passionate about that. It goes beyond.

I mean, yes, it's a business, we gotta survive, but it's a passion project in a sense too. I didn't really know about all the people that we could help before we started. We kind of didn't know what we were doing when we started, but seeing all the people that we helped, it kind of keeps us going, And, Tina can talk to you a lot. She has a lot of love for veterans and we've helped a lot of veterans and stuff like that. But, this is just, yeah, that's what we do. And a lot of people are talking a lot more about this type of therapy. And you're gonna see it in the next couple years. I think it's gonna really revolutionize, the way we kind of treat mental health, honestly.

So that's where we're at. 

Atiba de Souza: Okay. So stay there right for a moment. Yeah. Okay. the revolutionary side of mental health and like you're gonna revolutionize mental health, what do you really mean by that? And what do you see with that? 

Momin Zafarullah: Well, when I say revolutionize, I feel that. Look, my background's in anesthesia, so I'll say that out, out there. I'm not a psychiatrist. We work with a lot of psychiatrists and therapists, but I see it from a different angle. Right. I see it from the outside looking in. Psychology and psychiatry right now is limited to a certain amount of medications that you can give somebody slash therapy that you can give somebody. Right? And that's great. I think it works for a lot of people. Right? But for about 50% of the people that doesn't work. What do those people do? What are the people that have tried everything? They've been on every medicine, they've been on every therapy, and they're like, "look, this ain't working for me". My next step is I'm checking out. I'm going to, I'm done. Right. Those are the people that we are helping. Right. And when I say revolutionize, this type of therapy has been around I think, if you look at traditional cultures for a century, look at South America. They've been using psychedelics for healing, right?

But going back to what he said about revolutionizing, it's not really revolutionizing. It's bringing a modality that's been around for our civilization. There's a form of this probably in every civilization. when you look at South America, you look at Africa, you look at all these areas, there has been a form of this, but in America, it's like, all right, you got, you're depressed.

Here's some medicine that don't work. Take trust in therapy with it. That don't work. I mean, that's it. Right? So that's an outsider looking in. I saw like there's a huge limitation here. What do these people do? I mean, you look at the suicide rate in America, it's one of the highest, you look at the suicide rate, it's among veterans.

It's one of the highest, it's one of the highest. So it's like, what do those people do? Right? Right. And I feel like this is not only backed by science, but we have actual, we work in this field, we've seen it with our own eyes. People coming in that's been on four or five medicines and within six months, They're off all these medicines and they're living a normal life.

I'm not saying that happens to everybody, but we get so many people that, that are like, wow, this, I didn't know, no one told me about this. I didn't even know this thing existed until I randomly saw it online. And I think that's where society's heading. I think they're like, they need, people need options. They just don't wanna pop another pill. And I'm saying those medicines might work for a lot of people and I'm not knocking on that, but I'm just, there needs to be more options for people and I think that's what we're bringing to the table and we're trying to do it in the best possible way.

Highest customer service we want. We wanna treat these people with respect. When people come to their clinic, they've been through their ringer. Sometimes, they're like almost emotional just talking on their phone. Cause they're like, "wow! People, y'all are just nice on their phone", right?

Because they're calling around mental health clinics, they're flooded with patients. You're just another number. Right. So we're trying to make that human connection with people too because it's not like— these people have been looked over most of these people, because they've been told, "Hey, you're crazy". We've talked to psychiatrists before, and they will agree. I mean, they're they're limited. They're just like, after this is, we don't really know what to do. We just go up on their dosages but, this helps kind of open up basically your thought process, the way you process the world, the way you process everything around you.

It makes you see it in a different light and hopefully make that pivotal change in your life. That's what we're trying to do. 

Atiba de Souza: Yeah. And so is this only for people who are, that, I don't wanna use the word far gone cause that's, 

Tina Marie: it's okay to say far gone. 

Atiba de Souza: Is it? Okay.

Tina Marie: Yeah, totally. 

Atiba de Souza: that they've tried everything else, or, if you're earlier or in the depression cycle, if that's a thing. Does it work there as well? 

Tina Marie: Let's talk about my story as I'll make it like about me and be opening up. And I went through a super hard time this year. I think it was a consolation of just life catching up with me all at one time. Not healing. I'm treatment resistant. I can't take antidepressants, they make me numb, fat, psycho. Every side effect you read on an antidepressant, Tina Marie gets, I get it. I've tried it and I've went through bad time. I'll just be open. We're on a podcast, right? I was sexually assaulted, 

Atiba de Souza: I'm sorry. 

Tina Marie: Four years ago. Thank you. And, I didn't take time to heal myself. I did think going on an antidepressant and going to therapy was enough, but it wasn't enough. Went through a bad breakup and everything hit me at once and in December I had just, I had it. I was at my woods end. I didn't wanna go back on antidepressants and I thought, you know what? How can I work on psychedelic medicine if I don't try it myself? Right. I was scared. Oh my God moment. I was so scared. We had a film crew come in, I had art therapists come in, our doctor come in because I wanted to film it for the world to see that I'm an actual human and it work for us, Right. My job is to outreach, coordinate, and let people know in the community, like, we're here to help. And I've worked in the psych field and the addiction field for years, and my background is in psych but to actually go through it. And the first time to go under, and I thought, I'm never gonna wake up. I'm gonna go under and I'm gonna go to a scary place in my life. And I did six treatments within two weeks. I did a booster. I've been in intense therapy but you know, my first time going under with ketamine and going into that, we have this amazing music you listen to and a whole team, a crash cart, totally supervised, healthcare professionals around you, a whole team. This isn't just a one man show.

Our clinics are legit. So when I went under into my ketamine journey, it was like, a kaleidoscope into my past. And I mean, at one point I was riding a big wheel down the streets of Chicago in the city. And that was a childhood memory that I had that I didn't know I had, that psychedelic brought back to me and it made me so happy.

And one part of my journey, I was petting a cat and I loved cats and before I went in, our therapist said, let's talk about things that make you happy. We want you to go back to a happy place and work your way out of the stuff that went bad in your life. I'll tell you what, Atiba, in December, I didn't wanna live.

Tina Marie was like, "I don't wanna live". 

Atiba de Souza: Wow.

Tina Marie: I could cry talking about it, but I didn't wanna live. It's like I'm done with breakups. Yeah, I'm gonna get super emotional about it, but I'm here and now I can, and God's mission for me is to go out there and tell people, meet people like you. I mean, we've met in Vegas, right? And now look at us. We're in Dallas. But anyway, psychedelics is here to change the world. we're on a mission to change one life at a time. I can think about a veteran. I had a phone call with six months ago. That guy had tried to kill himself so many times. He was an alcoholic. He was on meds. He had been in and out of psych wards. And when I just happened to get a call through, one of my veteran connection said, "Tina Marie, can you help this patient?"

I said, well, let me talk to him. I'll try, I don't know if he's gonna be open to psychedelic medicine, but I'll tell you what? He came into our clinic when I told him, what if I treat you with psychedelic medicine? How do you feel about that? He said, "I could do that in Texas? I thought I had to leave the country."

I said, no. We'd be happy to help you. Finances weren't an issue with him. We worked with him and his testimony is on our website. he's offered to go on a podcast with me and talk about it, and he's back to work. He's not on meds, he's living society. He's not drinking anymore. So. 

Atiba de Souza: So, so let's dive in there, right, because I think that's a really interesting side of this here and there are two sides. So one, for those who are ignorant that just don't know. They hear this and you think, okay, I'm going on drugs, so now I'm just gonna get addicted to a drug. That's one side, but then both of you have said, did some treatments, came off of medication, right? Is that like, did some treatments, a placebo came off of medicine, stop drinking for a little while, and then you know, four months later you're back on again.

Momin Zafarullah: I think it's a really important question. I think we addressed that from the beginning before somebody shows up for their first treatment. We tell them like, what is your intention of starting this treatment with us? Right? Like you gotta define those goals before you start something this big, right? We help them define that. And one of those goals most people want or have is that, look, a, I don't want to feel like the way I do. 

Atiba de Souza: Right? 

Momin Zafarullah: A lot of people's like, Hey, I'm on a lot of different meds, if I can just get off one or two of 'em. I'll feel better. Right? So we define those goals in the beginning and then we work to get there. Right? And we tell them like, look ketamine is, it's not a silver bullet, right? It's not gonna just come and just work magic on you. You don't have to do any work. It's really a 50-50 thing. It's gonna help a lot on what's happening on the neurochemical brain side and the psychedelic properties it has. But if you come in there and you just, like, you don't got no goals, you have no vision for what you're really trying to do. 

Atiba de Souza: Right. 

Momin Zafarullah: We're pretty candid. We tell people like, if you just come in here and get this and go home and not work on yourself, within about two months, you're probably gonna feel exactly how you do before you came to us.

You know what I mean? We're pretty transparent about that. And we tell ' em like we don't want that for you. This is a time commitment. It's a money commitment for people, right. So how do we not do that? Right. and I think going back, it's about intentions, about goal setting, and then you actively work to get to that goal. And unfortunately, I think, society in a way, medicine is now, it kind of trains you to be like, okay, I have this, so I just take this medicine and it just,

Atiba de Souza: it solves everything,

Momin Zafarullah: it just solves it, right? Like, and then what happens? You're on that medicine the rest of your life, or you're on that whatever for the rest of your life. Right. Ours a little bit different. It's like, yes, ketamine is a medicine in a sense, but we're actually using it for a transformational experience, right? We're trying to use for— this is almost like a stepping stone or a pivotal moment in your life to change for the long term and you know what happens?

A lot of people, they get these intense first series of infusions. It's about six infusions over like a two or three week period. And they feel good. They know this is working for 'em. And there's people that come back to us every two months, every three months. They might get one infusion, but at least they know like, all right, now they know there's something that works for 'em.

As opposed to before, they're like, nothing ever worked for me. Right. And in between. To me, that's still a victory because these people have gone two, three months without any other medicine. Any other medicine, or they've used those two, three months to wean off their medicine. Yeah, we work with psychiatrist. We don't tell people like, Hey, just take these meds, we make sure to supervise and there's some people that, that can't get off 'em, which is fine, but they're actually able to function in society better, right? Yeah. They have a relationship with their spouse or whatever.

They can hold a job, you know what I mean? They're able to get that spark back. 

Atiba de Souza: Yeah. 

Momin Zafarullah: It's a synergistic thing, right? It's working. Yeah, it's working better than it was before. But we made it clear to them, look, this ain't a silver bullet. You don't just come do this. Go home, boom! Magic. Everything's good. 

Tina Marie: We have an ecosystem of, when Momin and I started talking about the journey of like transformation, wanting to get better, stepping out of outside of the mental box, mental health box of take meds, follow up with your psych doctor, see a therapist, boom, you're done.

Really, if you look at the body in a whole, we were able to bring on a meditation coach, Damien Rider, out of Australia. We brought on Paula, who's a functional dietician, to look at the whole body and diet. 

Atiba de Souza: So you're doing holistic. It's not just ketamine. It's a holistic approach to your health.

Tina Marie: Exactly. So we're transforming what mental health looks like. Typical mental health clinic, you've got a psych doctor and some NPs, 

Atiba de Souza: and that's it. 

Tina Marie: And that's it. 

Atiba de Souza: Yeah. 

Tina Marie: We'll see you next in two months for your prescription review. 

Atiba de Souza: Right.

Tina Marie: And how are you doing? They do ask, doctors. There are a ton that do care and there's a ton that,

Atiba de Souza: but they don't have the information.

Tina Marie: Right. 

Atiba de Souza: And when you have everyone working with you and information share, you get better treatment. 

Tina Marie: Exactly. And recently, I just talked to Rick Ferris. We brought on a Pharm D, which we need to involve a little bit more with our patients to look at what meds are you taking, how is that working with your body?

So we've got, a meditation coach that's included with your Ketamine treatments. We have Stormy, our integration coach. We've got Paula, our functional dietician, Damian, 

Momin Zafarullah: we're bringing on a full-time therapist in July. That's really gonna kind of help bridge that gap too. And one thing, we're still kind of looked at from the psychiatry or community as like, "man, who are these people?" You know what I mean? Yeah. Because, we've been into offices and they're just like, 

Atiba de Souza: yeah.

Momin Zafarullah: We're a threat. Right? Like,

Atiba de Souza: Right, right. And that's how they see it. 

Momin Zafarullah: It's like, "wait, you're trying to get people off meds?" like, you know what, like, our business models that keep people on meds, you know what I mean? Right. Like, they come every month and again, I don't want to think, say too negatively on psychiatry or medical professionals out there. It works for some people. I'm not saying that you know what they're doing wrong, but we haven't had that support until literally the last six months that you see it on the news.

You see Elon Musk tweeting about it. You see, every week there's an article, in major publications now, and they're not just like any. So that movement is there and now we're getting therapists reaching out to us versus before, two years ago, we used to go to talk to therapists and be like, they'll literally not respond.

 I don't know what y'all are doing. We got therapists reaching out to us, like, "how can we be involved in this? We know this works". We're bringing on a psychiatrist, right? And what we told him, and he conferred everything we said is like, he's a psychiatrist, he's in this field, and he is like, we're limited. Right. We're limited. There's only so much you can do. There's like half of the population, they need something different. And, so again, going back to the ecosystem. So yeah, we are trying to build that system for people, because a lot of people, if your diet sucks, you could get all the ketamine you want, but you know, your vitamin D levels are, you know, horrible. You're gonna feel bad cuz your body's not optimized. So we are slowly working in those things too. And I think for us, we were outsider looking in and I think that's what we were able to add these things because we weren't in the system.

Like, we weren't in the system. So for me, when I go in, be like, Well, why isn't nutrition involved? Why isn't these other things in 

Tina Marie: whole body.

Momin Zafarullah: Yeah. To me, it just seems like a no-brainer. But I think if you're in the system, you don't think of it like that. 

Tina Marie: And I think, Atiba, me working in the psych world for so many years and watching patients go into an acute psych hospital, what made them psychotic? What was their breaking point? And watching, sitting in with the discharge team and watching the care team put together their plan, I felt like a lot of things are missing. What about their diet? What are they eating? Who's their dietician? If they're malnutrition or if they're overweight or they're just in the middle. We do get a lot of questions. This has been a big one for me lately, is will you all offer ketamine at home?

And there's companies doing it at home right now. You can go on, on the internet, on Facebook or Instagram and order your ketamine at home kit, but I would love to do a podcast about my house and what it looks like at home. I got dirty dishes, I got dogs barking. I got my cat, my dog eating out of the litter box. My other like ketamine. 

Atiba de Souza: Yeah. It's not safe. 

Tina Marie: No. Your ketamine journey should be peaceful. A whole team around you. It should be relaxing with a whole ecosystem ready there to help you and change your life and Momin and I are on a mission to change lives one at a time and we're not about the money.

We feel like if we can seriously change people's lives, the money will come and the more money that comes, the more people we can help. 

Atiba de Souza: That's right.

Tina Marie: We're not looking to get rich over changing lives. We're looking to enrich lives. And in that return, something that I'm real passionate about and Momin is too, it's about putting together something for our veterans.

We are working. Hopefully, closer with Marcus Capone, he's amazing. He's got a whole VETS foundation. 

Momin Zafarullah: Marcus Capone, he created an organization called VETS, V-E-T-S, it's Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions. He's an ex-Navy SEAL that he was on SEAL team, I don't know, like 12 or something, like, like the highest level of teams. He was a real soldier and obviously he saw stuff and he had PTSD, et cetera. He came back from serving and he basically was, had a gun to his head and he tried stuff and he was like, this ain't working. He was married at the time and basically somebody said, Hey, you should try Ayahuasca in South America. And he was like, "Oh, what's it gonna hurt? Let me just go down there, try it". It completely changed his life. This was like five years ago. 

Tina Marie: Amber told me, when we went out to the Vet's Conference or Vet's Gala out in Coronado, she's like, "I was done with him.

We were done. I was at my wits end. Something had to change. He wasn't taken charge of his mental health and went away and did psychedelic medicine and came back a changed man". 

Atiba de Souza: Wow. 

Tina Marie: And now they're out to change the world. And we just happen to be like, you know what, we're from Texas. We work, I work with a lot of veterans. We wanna help you change the world. 

Momin Zafarullah: We went to this gala of his in California a couple months ago. We were at this table and at the table there was like, I think, two Navy seals there on our table and both of 'em were like, "we were gonna kill ourselves basically. We came back" . I feel bad for these people, these people out there serving the country and they come back, they're nothing. They're in the system. They went to the VA, they're like, it didn't help. And these are young people. I'm not talking about these like older, these are kids in their twenties, early thirties, got the whole life ahead of 'em.

They're like, I'm just gonna end it all because I can't see a way out but they were all healthier psychedelic therapy and now they're actually giving back. Those two that we met, they're in organizations to help veterans get into psychedelic therapy, whether it's in Mexico or Marcus Capone, he's setting up an infrastructure to refer people to clinics like ours, that can help these veterans for free because a lot of them, they can't, that PTSD, they can't hold jobs.

They can't afford this therapy. 

Atiba de Souza: Right. 

Momin Zafarullah: So I think it's just a start, honestly. His organization's awesome. Y'all should look it up. I don't know who's watching it. Anyone's gonna see this, but he 

Tina Marie: get you, next November out to November 11.

Momin Zafarullah: Yeah, he does it on, Memorial Day. But, the event was awesome and it raised, I don't know, I think maybe $5 million and 

Atiba de Souza: Wow. 

Momin Zafarullah: All kinds of people there. And Rick Perry, the ex-governor of Texas was there as a keynote. 

Tina Marie: Yeah. 

Momin Zafarullah: And the reason I'm bringing that up, cuz this guy is like a hardcore right wing Republican. As a keynote speaker at a psychedelic conference that shows you, it's not like a, it's not like a left or right thing, right?

Atiba de Souza: No. It's a human health thing. 

Momin Zafarullah: Yeah. Rick Perry, country dude out there telling people, "Hey, we need to support this cause". Right. And it was kind of mind blowing cuz you see, you, you don't associate that country. 

Atiba de Souza: Right. Exactly. 

Momin Zafarullah: Right wing, Texan person. But he's out there like advocating like, Hey, we gotta get these people help. He knows it works. He's helping at the legislative level of getting more stuff legalized.

Atiba de Souza: That's awesome. So let me ask you guys this. Just as we kind bring it all together, and we started by saying the name of your company but how do people actually find you? What's your website? How do they reach you? Somebody who needs help watching this, how do they reach you? 

Tina Marie: A lot of people find us online. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Google, neuroglow.com. 

Momin Zafarullah: Our people just find us online and we actually encourage, we're trying not to be so impersonal.

We got somebody nine to five that, if y'all are interested in finding out, you call us. Somebody actually will pick up the phone they're actually will talk. If you fill out a form online, contact us. They'll contact you that same day and talk to you on the phone. And it's not just about getting you in the clinic, they're gonna ask about your life.

Atiba de Souza: Fantastic. Guys, thank you for being here. 

Tina Marie: You're welcome. 

Atiba de Souza: This is great. You guys are doing great work. Keep it up. Change the world one patient at a time. All right. 

Tina Marie: Thank you for coming to Texas. 

Atiba de Souza: Oh, absolutely.

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