Brian started his medical career in the U.S. Air Force, attending the Uniformed Services University school of Medicine. There he received the outstanding medical student in psychiatry award. After graduation, he was invited to apply for a residency in psychiatry in the U.S. Air Force. After much consideration, he chose not to apply for two reasons. First, he wanted to spend time with his military brothers and sisters where they worked and lived – to really get to experience their challenges, triumphs, joys, and grief as closely as he could. Secondly, he was dissatisfied with many of the tools available in psychiatry at the time. They seemed to reduce anguish and depression often at the cost of losing emotional connection with much of life.
He found his home in operational medicine starting with attending a family medicine residency, becoming board certified, and then becoming a flight surgeon. The choice to attend family medicine training first allowed him the opportunity to experience the whole military family through an entire life cycle. He delivered babies, took care of children, and served as a companion to military members and retirees facing terminal illnesses. Accompanying the latter group gave him valuable tools to help people facing their mortality navigate a complex medical system to empower themselves.
His military career allowed for a joyful interplay between deployments around the world with his military family at times, combined with helping families back home get through the stressors of deployment of their loved ones. Additionally, his deployments led him to do a great amount of mental health work in places as far flung as Antarctica where there was no other mental health support. This led to him attending a residency in aerospace medicine and becoming board certified in aerospace and occupational medicine. These skills eventually led to him to jobs such as working as a regional flight surgeon for the Federal Aviation Administration, training physicians to become NASA flight surgeons at the University of Texas and serving as the Chief Medical Officer for a Veterans Administration facility.
All of these experiences led him back to think about the difficulties faced by our current mental health system. Then something amazing happened. After military retirement he began working as a volunteer for a group that provides physical and mental challenges for combat wounded veterans. It was through some of these amazing humans that he first heard of groundbreaking research in neuromodulation and psychedelic assisted psychotherapy.
After about 4 years of work with this group and contemplation, he enrolled in a PhD program in transpersonal psychology and psychedelic assisted therapies. Utilizing the groundbreaking research and theories of Dr. Stanislav Grof with foundations in Freudian and Jungian psychology, he feels he has found the tools that have traditionally been lacking in mental health. Combining the latest technologies in medical science with these psychological tools as well as traditional healing methods, Dr. Pinkston’s vision is to provide individualized treatment based upon your needs. He truly feels that you have the inner healer within you. His job is to enable the process of removing the roadblocks for true, long-term healing to begin.