Jason Konner, Psychedelic Oncology: Healing Cancer’s Wounded Healers

How do oncologists witness death after death without burning out? And what happens when the medical system trains oncologists to see death as ‘failure’ rather than a natural outcome? In this episode, we speak with Dr. Jason Konner, founder of Psychedelic Oncology and medical oncologist who practiced at Memorial Sloan Kettering for over two decades before leaving to pursue psychedelic medicine full-time. Jason discusses the concept of wounded healers and how oncologists often carry accumulated grief with nowhere to process it. He shares discovering ayahuasca after years of unrecognized burnout, which revealed a third way of being present with patients without depleting himself. We explore why psychedelic literacy among healthcare providers matters for patient care and Jason's vision for psychedelic oncology as a subspecialty addressing the existential, emotional, and spiritual dimensions that conventional cancer care systematically ignores.