Camp Gagnon - How Heroin Addiction Works | Heroin Shaman Dimitri Mugianis

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

🏞️ Sign up to Camp for exclusive updates: https://camp.beehiiv.com/Harm reduction expert Dimitri Mugianis came by the tent to share a very intimate discussion about drugs, psychedelic trips, and addictions. Dimitri details about how our body chemistry and organs react to a drug craving. Dimitri has seen it all when it comes to drugs, and frankly tried it all. i personally found it gruesome when he walked us frame by frame of a psychedelic trip experience. Drop a comment about your views...

I think heroin is bad. Do you agree with that? Wait, really? No. Opies are a boon to humanity. Okay, I guess people abusing heroin. Me, look. I mean, I was on it for 20-something years.

It wasn't because it was terrible. Would it be triggering for you if we talked about your early heroin and opiate usage? Like, is this going to make you want to relapse? If you start shooting up in here, I'm going to feel so bad. I've spent a lot of my recovery with active drug users. That first hit of heroin. Yeah, the first hit, was like home. The anxiety was gone. You know, if you look at side effects of opiates,

may it's got to be a little blubble blubbblah bluflia. And so there was this feeling of euphoria of connection. And I should say the person I first did it with is dead. It's a bargain with the devil. Can you explain what a heroin craving feels like? Twelve hours in, you start to get a little sweaty and then the stomach gives way. Your nose starts to run, sneezing and yawning, and then your joints start to hurt. The thing about it, while this is happening, you know that there's one way out. The vast, vast majority of people who have gotten off of opiates

have done it without Ibogaine. So then the first time you use ibupacan, what is that experience like? Within 40 minutes, my withdrawal symptoms were alleviated. I went on this three-day journey. Where'd you go? It was just like this frog orgy

that I was in for hours. And the words dead so long, the earth's gone through you. And the reason I'm hesitating is because that's not what happened with everybody. I must have to say this publicly, but whatever. Demetri. Thank you so much for joining me today, brother.

Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate it. This is going to be a lot of fun. At one point in time, you were known as a shaman. You are a shaman. You are helping addicts recover from their addiction by using psychedelic, specifically Ibegain. And then later in your career, you became a bit of a critic of that. But I've continued to sort of help people and heal through their personal journey,

not only with drugs, but just in their general life using other psychedelic substances. I want to get into all of this. Right on. But I think an interesting place to start, and this is going to be political, okay? Yeah, well, I'm down with that. I think heroin is bad. Do you agree with that? Wait, really?

That is shocking. I thought, okay, I'm going to say something dumb up top to get this guy to be like, okay, yeah. No, I mean, if you mean heroin and you meet opiates, right? Yeah. Opiates are a boon to humanity. Okay, I guess people will. abusing heroin. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, but like good drugs, bad drugs. Now we're getting into harm reduction right away. Yeah, me look. I mean, I was on it for 20 something years, right?

I'm immediately, I realized that this was actually a lighter when you're out of the room. So this being of addiction, now I'm going to be touching that all the time wanting to light it. But I was an addict for addicted to opiates for over 20 years and it wasn't because it was terrible. It became terrible. That's a good ass point. You know, so for the, there is a couple of opioid crisis. I'll start out by saying that. One is that folks are dying from opioids in the United States and mostly in Western countries around the world.

But there is a crisis of overdose. And the other one is a lack of access to opiates in poorer countries where, you know, they can help with, you know, when people need opiates. So I would say the drug is maybe perhaps neutral. That's fair. And it's the way in which one uses it and engages with it. And so I would say that heroin gave me so much and took away much more. I began my use of all drugs from Detroit as a very young kid. And at first it was.

a twofold. It was sort of an expansion of my world and in a balm to my pain. And expansion in who I met and Leonard Cohen says something about where in the street where the races meet.

It's like this, you know, in the drug world these people who never would talk to each other are meeting and I'm fucking up the poet's lines. something like that. But expanded me because I think it had to do with my artistic curiosity as well, right? Because all these great artists were using it. And then it was ubiquitous in Detroit.

I mean, it was everywhere when I was growing up in the 70s. How old were you the first time you did heroin? Or an opiate. Hey, what's up, guys? Sorry to interrupt this amazing program, but I need a little bit of help. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can probably see our subscriber number rate down.

here. And if you're able to, it would mean the world if you could subscribe. That is the best way to support this show. Because when you subscribe, I'm able to show it to potential guests or to different brands and stuff like that. And it really, really helps grow the show, get us cooler guests, have cooler conversations. And it helps everything so, so much. So if you don't mind, thank you so much. Let's get back to it. Like maybe 17. But I was doing like alcohol from a very, as a kid. Right. Cigarettes and shit. Poo. Cigarettes. I was like one of those like each side kid movies, like 10-year-old smoking. And if they don't have them any. or whatever they called Eve cigarettes.

They were like ladies cigarettes. But those are nice, so they're kind of soft. They could feel nice. They're for ladies, right? They were on the bottom shelf at the store at the supermarket. I was tended my brother just to stub the curtains down my pants and send me out of the store. Wow. But so always there was an experiment with drugs and a desire to change my consciousness, right?

And I think it was both expletory and a release of pain. We used to do this trick as a kid where we'd breathe really super fast. and then have like the big kid like squeeze your stomach, and then we would drop it out, you know, you'd sort of get this breath work thing. Wim Hof. Yeah, Wim Hof. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You were the first Wim Hof. Yeah, we were the first one in Detroit except for it was just cold. Yeah. Because it was Detroit, you know? But, uh... Yeah, would it be triggering for you if we talked about your early heroin and opiate usage? Like, is this going to make you want to relapse?

If you start shooting up in here, I'm going to feel so bad. You're not going to, right? I don't think it's, no, it would be. It's what I do. I've spent my, my, I've spent a lot of my, my recovery with active drug users in the production setting. It doesn't trigger me at all. How is it?

When you say it gave you a lot, that first hit of hair. Yeah, the first hit was like home. Like, the anxiety was gone. There was, you know, if you look at the side effects of opiates, right, they have all this, that big list, you know, you know, may it cost consumption, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, euphoria, right? It's like, it's a side effect, right? And so there was this feeling of euphoria, of connection. And for a long time, I was a musician and a writer and a performer.

I could write and interact and fuck and do everything on it for many years. It took me a long time to hit my bottom with that. So initially it was just this release of pain. I should say the person I first did it with is dead. and he was like a dear friend of mine I grew up with in Detroit, Paul Hodge. He's dead now. And then we did it again together

at the Hotel Chelsea of all places. But just to be corin, I don't know if you know the history of that place, but maybe some of your listeners will know sort of a legendary drug spot. But I lived there for years. But anyways, so at first, it was beautiful. And my world's sort of

expanded my it became it was like a balm a salve on my spirit and uh i could write and perform and stay up and do my shitty day job and then playing the clubs at night and and do all that shit easier and then you know gradually it's faustian it's a it's a bargain with the devil it my world became smaller and smaller and what maybe at first was a conscious and perhaps unconscious reaction towards, you know, everything, including the economic system, made me an absolute slave to the economic system. I was, you know, I think Burroughs talked about how the junkie becomes the perfect consumer, you know, and they can denigate the product and degregate the consumer at the same time, which is like a metaphor for all sort of, all the capitalist markets,

but I think in a very big way. And so my life became very small. That's really interesting. Yeah. And I ended up back. in Detroit, you know, after being in New York and, you know, being sort of politically involved as an artist and all kinds of stuff. And I ended up back in my parents' basement, you know. That was Rock Bottom. Yeah, yeah. My wife, who's a common-law wife who was pregnant, died with the baby.

There was just like, yeah, yeah, there was just a lot of death. Complications from drug use? It was, you know, this is one of the reasons why, well, it is an illustration of why, like, harm reduction is so important. She could be alive today, and maybe that child would be alive, but she got endocarditis, which was a result of using syringes that weren't clean. And she was in Georgia. She was an actor.

She was working in Georgia at the time. And there was no access to safe syringes, safe access to injection equipment. And there was a lot of death. You got to remember, I'm 61. and the amount of death experienced for someone my age who was living in sort of the Lower East Side of New York and the epicenter of the HIV crisis and there was sort of a first wave

which is called heroin chic in the early 90s. Just a lot of death, you know, a lot of death. By the way, this neighborhood used to be like a big dope spot. Yeah, insane dope spot. Like Hasid and Puerto Ricans and dope, man. It's a really nice combo, actually. Yeah. I'm getting a nice coffee anywhere.

I think that little arc is actually important for people because for me, I've never done heroin. I don't really do drugs, to be completely honest with you, just by looking like I invented weed. But I do think that it's important to highlight the seduction of that first hit in that I understand why people get hooked on it and how it can overcome and suppress all of that pain, all of the problems that you're dealing with.

This one little substance can make everything go away and give you so much more. Like, it is truly a Faustian bargain the way you put it. Yeah. It gives you so much, but unfortunately, it just becomes all-consuming.

Yeah, depending on the individual, because there's plenty of folks that could do that hit. You know, there's people do heroin twice a year. Right now it's more complicated because of fentanyl, and I wouldn't recommend experimenting at all. You think people are doing heroin

just like casually, like twice a year? Yeah. Really? Yeah. People that are just not addictive. Yeah, it's just not going to happen. I know people like that. I just,

I'm just an enthusiastic guy, you know what I mean? Wow. But do you think it's more addictive than other things? My assumption is like it's so good. There's a physical dependency on it that makes it different than cocaine. I mean, I was addicted to both. I was speedballing, which I can talk about that, which is the combination of cocaine and heroin injecting it for many, many years.

And I was in psychosis for a long time. But is it more? It's physically dependent. You can become physically dependent within a matter of weeks if you do it on a daily basis. But there are people that do moderate opiate intake, right? And there are people that can do it for pain and then with some discomfort get off of it and never think about it. It's like, you know, that Scooby-Doo, you know, like that thing. Those of us are going, you know, they get that little, you know, like, hmm, what's that, you know, that, you know, whatever that is that want to stay there. Yeah, I met a guy one time outside of a 7-Eleven and... Sounds good already. Yeah, exactly. This is in a Popka, Florida. Oh, wow.

This is a little bit of a kind of a rough area. I need some meth already. He had two kids. He had a wife. They were living nearby in a popka. Not extremely wealthy, but just kind of like living like a regular kind of like lower, maybe like middle class lifestyle. And he was in his 20s.

He was a skateboarder. He liked skateboarding. And he was skateboarding and rolled his ankle, had to get ankle surgery, got prescribed oxies or something. Maybe correct me from all. Some type of opiate he was prescribed. Loved him. Yeah.

Over prescribed. He got a bunch. Yeah. popping them, and now he's popping two, three a day, and he sees the bottom of that bottle and the pills inside going away. Yeah. And he's like, oh, shit. And then he starts talking to a guy that can get him some more pills, and he gets more pills. And now he's like, okay, I got more pills.

And now he's just like, his ankles healed. He's got the surgery. The pain's mitigated. But now he keeps on finding these pills. And then he moves off the pills and starts getting into the actual heroin and just lost his business, lost his landscaping company. his wife took the kids, hasn't seen his kids in three years, and now he's outside of a 7-Eleven trying to get some food, trying to get money to get more heroin.

And I was like, holy shit, that is a crazy five years. Yeah, five years, yeah. I've heard a similar version of that story many, many times. That sucks. Yeah, it does. There's a couple of things that we should think about. We should think about the way, I mean, that story brings up so much. So there's a medical entry into that.

So there's a couple of things. There's a couple things to know with this. Yeah. So there's a, there's the medical thing, right? It was prescribed. You know, in the psychedelic world, we talk about holding. And holding is kind of what you're doing now. You've created an environment and you're holding the space for, and it's kind of what.

We can talk more about what you do, because there are similarities what you do in terms of attunement. But that's in a later part of the conversation. So I don't want to, I have a tendency to digress as I'm doing now talking about digression. But, but. So there's the medical aspect of it. He had a legitimate medical problem. He was prescribed this drug. Now, the doctor, we know now, could have been influenced by the commodification of that drug.

So the information that was given to the doctors was, you could have been from the Sackler family or some other pharmaceutical, which was saying that, you know, these won't get addicted. There's such a thing as breakthrough pain and all this kind of nonsense. that doctors swallowed whole. So we should remember that as we think about psychedelics going into the medical system, right? And so doctors are equally susceptible to what I believe is, well, what is the direct result of a for-profit medical establishment and pharmaceutical industry. So he was given for pain, like what kind of holding, what kind of time did that doctor have? It could have been a pill mill, it could have been a legitimate doc who he or she or they were just

trying to do their thing, right? So, you know, what kind of follow-up did they have? Did they check in with this guy? Okay, so there's that aspect of it. Then there's the aspect of what was going on with that guy personally, you know, what was happening in his spirit? Was he, did that, those kids, was there pressure? Could he not skate anymore? And then I believe that also has to do with societal issues, right? Like the pressure to earn a living, the pressure to be a father, to be a man. A lot of these people folks are men. A lot of them are working class men, right? That's sort of a typical demographic.

The guy works with his body, right? And that's a lot of that demographic. So what is it about that segment of the society? And what race was this guy? A white guy. So it was a white guy. So there's also an interesting demographic with white working class young men

who are, whose death, their rate of death is on the increase, right? And so that's something to look at. So there's those aspects. And then again, back to what not just the material and situational aspects of that young man's life, but what's going on inside him, what was his history, what kind of trauma had he endured, and that type of thing. And where was he able to express it or find a way?

So you find a home in opioids. I want to say just one thing. If the opioids were legal, he might not be in front of that 7-Eleven. Because the other thing about opioids is that, and that's not true with other drugs. We have to take drug by drug, right? But you could be a decent worker and be strung out on opiates all the time. Just as long as you got your opiates, and that's been proven over and over again. I'm sure that the illegality in that played a role in that.

So a role in the dysfunction of his life. That's not to say that if all heroin was legal, that there wouldn't be dysfunctioned. There certainly would be, as we can see with cannabis now. I mean, I think there is, especially the high level of THC, there's problems with it. There's issues with people who overconsume tobacco or alcohol. But there's very few people that are sort of stealing to get alcohol. There are people that just end up on Skid Row and are begging. But so all of that plays in.

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So when you say legality, if it was like, do you see a future or some type of utopia where opiates or hair? heroin is legal? I don't think it's even a utopia. I hope to see a future in it. It's brought with all kinds of problems.

I think it should be, absolutely. Really? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you look at a place like Portugal, where they decriminalized everything and the rate of crime just went way down. Now, they still have social issues. They decriminalized it.

They offered treatment. They offered jobs. They offered maintenance, all that kind of. There's heroin maintenance in Switzerland. There's heroin maintenance in Vancouver. The people that like it best are the police. Because as much as I don't want to be on their side about anything. Because, you know, these sort of nuisance crime goes down.

Now there's pushback in places like Portland that's saying that sort of the homeless population and the crisis of unhoused people are directly related to that. But I think that's bullshit. I think the problem with housing is just a problem with. housing. 40% of the New Yorkers who are unhoused are working people, which should anyone, anyone should have a home, especially if you got a fucking job. Right.

Yeah. But if you're having a job and you're also addicted to heroin, it might be a little bit harder. Well, it is. I think that illegal, look, I was like what they call functioning. I mean, I'm a, I'll go out of a lid here and say I'm pretty high functioning human. being, right? But I was able to maintain a job at least. I was parking cars at the end,

but I went to work every fucking day. While you were on there. Yeah, yeah, I'd never, but I was scamming and I was hustling, I was doing selling, I was doing all kinds of other shit, but I always had a gig or three or four hustles. I think it's just kind of who I am, but it was also coming to a point where that might have broken down. What I'm saying,

and that broke down mainly because of the cocaine use, too, by the way. Because I could have probably maintained on that dope run for much longer, right? especially if I had some sort of maintenance thing. I mean, your tolerance goes up. It's complex.

It's complex. And I think that's maybe the main issue is that we can't arrest it away. That's not going to happen. And we can't even treat it away. So we, you know, the harm reduction, which, you know, harm reduction is basically a movement for those that don't know that came out of the HIV crisis that I was talking about before, where people were just dying from HIV AIDS. And like so many people at that time

when I was coming up about your age, man, Lower East Side, were just, we're dying. Queer people who are my friends in, like, the artistic world and the community I was involved in, and then dope fiends like me who were just, you know, I don't know what the statistic was. It was some insane statistic, like four out of ten or something like that of people who were injecting.

And so it started by just giving out clean access to clean needles. But the basic tenet of it, that is that you meet people where they are. And, you know, as my work as sort of like coaching or counseling people who are going through a drug problem, I never judge the drug. I judge, I can have judgment around or I can use discernment around the behavior, right? So if someone's not keeping up with an obligation, they're just not keeping up with an

obligation, right? But there are some dope fiends that can do that. what was my point with this? The point is that we have to have a nuanced way of looking at that. We're far too fucking nuanced. And that's the problem with psychedelics. The way that it's being presented is not nuanced. I just met a lady in kind of a great couple of a coffee shop.

That's sort of this cool, nerdy couple. I mean, they were pretty nerdy. They just wanted a super fly was playing. There's a Greek restaurant around the corner, by the way. So I walked in there and they gave me a menu and I, and talked to the guy in Greek. a little bit. Then I went to the coffee shop and they noticed the menu. There's this dirty couple, like probably in their 50s. And they, and she just wanted to talk and they were kind of, he was

British and kind of eccentric and they're cute, you know. And so they were, we were talking about super fly because it was playing. But anyways, they started talking about psychedelics. And she asked, will it work for anxiety or phobia? And I just don't think that's, this is not antibiotics, right? That's what people are looking for when talking about things like addiction, things like sadness or depression or anxiety or

phobia or rumination that goes out of control or whatever it is. But they're looking for an antibiotic solution to that. It's way more complex. Way more complex. And quite, in some ways beautiful.

But... Hmm. Yeah, we can, we can touch on that. I'm curious about the psychedelic component, but I guess just to button up the legality angle, I guess I would be a, just, again, I've never done drugs, really. I'm not

going to be, pretend to be some type of expert in this, but my suspicion is like, hey, as drugs become introduced into society more, there are more people that are strung out. And I guess maybe there's a issue with legality. Like, obviously if you decriminalize it, there will be less crime

objectively because that's, ratios going down. But I guess I'm, I don't I don't know. I'm just a little skeptical that. Well, we can... That humans can handle the addictive nature of heroin specifically. Well, you can just look at places that have done it. Just look at Portugal. Just look at, you know, maybe provide that statistic for you listeners and viewers.

It just hasn't happened. It hasn't happened. And I think with drugs like heroin, there wouldn't be an advertising campaign. Like there sort of is with weed. You know, there might be an argument. I don't know if weed consumption has gone up. I don't know. but it'd be interesting to look at

but the same thing happened with alcohol we've been through this we simply know and we know we know we know we're doing a shitty job of it right now now I wonder if you can casually use alcohol or weed in ways that you can't casually use heroin I know that obviously you were kind of talking about

like functionality and holding a job but you know could you use heroin at like a party and just kind of we do it one time? There's a guy Carl Hart he was making a lot of press last I know Carl a little bit. Carl has been talking about being a record,

and he's a professor at Columbia. He's talking a professor of maybe psychiatry. I don't know, I should know. But he's written a couple books, and he was on Joe Rogan, been on all kinds of stuff, and he talked about being a casual heroin user. And I think it's possible. You know, there, like right now,

it's fucking because of the election, illegality, it's dangerous. What I know is because of the illegality that there are people who are dead now that wouldn't have been dead. And whether they lived to recovery or not, they're still human. And so, I mean, the question is, what do we do with people who aren't going to get in recovery who are just going to use? I mean, are they just not valuable? I mean, the guy you talk to is a lot of people who use drugs. I'm not saying everybody can be a sweetheart. And, you know, maybe he was pulling a little bit of a con to get that five out of you. But like, you know, what did you say?

We're all sensitive people, so much to give, right? So like, you know, there's a lot of sensitive folks doing this, and what do we do with them? So the answer to your question is, yeah, you could. You could do heroin casually. I used to, one of my hustles was I would go and buy, I would go get dope for people who wanted to do it once a month, like some stockbroker or shit.

I charged the fuck out of them, right? Because they're too afraid to cop. But I had customers like that. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And then what drug, what illegitri-you know, cocaine is different than heroin, is different than MDMA, is different than ketamine, is different. You know, all these drugs are different.

But what we know is that we can't legislate our way out of it. I mean, look, if you're talking about complete oppression, then, yeah, it could work. I mean, China wiped out, you know, the opioid use. A mile wiped it out. Right. Unless we're willing to go to, and we've used draconian measures here. let's be clear, we incarcerate more people than anybody else on the planet. This is the least free country in the world, just based on statistics.

If you're based on how many people are in chains, this is the least free country in the world. Right, based off that metric, sure. It's a pretty good metric. Yeah. But I guess I wonder like about, you know, other places that have done it. Obviously, Portugal has seen success with it. But I wonder if there's co-founders within the society that would lead Portugal to have better success than we would. You know what I mean?

Like I wonder if there's a different social. pressure. And again, I don't know, right? But some people I've talked to that have done drugs, either, you know, like huffing paint or whatever else, it seems like it can be some type of social escapism. You're ultimately trying to substitute a different reality brought on by this drug that can take the place of your current reality, which might be a little bit painful or difficult to handle, whether it's anxiety or, you know, some type of trauma that you've gone through, et cetera. So I wonder if our society is set up in such a way that it could handle the amount of people that would want to substitute their reality with substances.

And that maybe countries that have affordable health care, you know, maybe less of like anxious work culture might be more palatable. I think you're talking about what like the conversations around addiction and trauma are missing. And that and that's, and I believe it's the economic structure. And I don't know. I haven't looked into it. You might look at Portugal as, you know, they have a, it's more of a homogenous population. and they're Portuguese for the most part,

although there's a large African and Arab community there. And there's a, you know, there's tradition there that... Yeah, I mean, there's affordable health care, all that stuff. I mean, when we look at any sort of health, we have to look at the, you know, what do they call it, the social impact, social impact, right? Yeah. And so I believe that, but, you know, I mean, that's the shit we need to change, right?

Yeah, exactly. Right. I don't think that's a cop-out, but I do think it's worth it. You know, I mean, what's... I don't know if this relates. But... What's up, guys?

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And I believe because it's like a villainized population and it doesn't fit into the stereotype, but you rarely find him, and that might have changed in the last few years since I've been kind of out of that. But I was working at, in Harlem, at a harm reduction center up like just three years ago, you rarely find young black men,

black men and women mainly coming in to receive services there. And I think there was sort of a, what I think, I don't know. I'm sure there's sociologists there are writing about it. There was some sort of communal correction. Like the stigma and what they saw with what I believe was a deliberate attack on their community. Funneling crack.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they saw that and decided to make other choices. Right. They saw what happened to their parents or their uncle and said, fuck that. Yeah, but I mean, you tell people who aren't involved, you know, particularly white people who aren't involved in that, they're surprised. I'm starting to see through young friends of mine different explorations within that population,

but this is strictly from my observation, but different explorations around drugs, but not those same types of drugs, cocaine, crack specifically in heroin. Yeah, I mean, I just think stereotypes kind of die hard. You know what I mean? It just takes a little bit to correct what those narratives are.

In one time, sure, there was a lot of drug usage within black neighborhoods, and as that goes down, it just takes, you know, generational time for that to catch up, you know, unfairly. But I do think that's a, you know, a symptom of narratives that get built and why it's essential to create narratives that are, you know, positive for your community. So I want to talk about Ibogaine a little bit, which I know that you have a bit of a,

you know, back and forth as far as your history with this substance. So I guess my question is just for everyone that is not familiar, what is Ivagan? Okay. Ibegene is a hydrochloride extract from the aboga plant. A hydrochloride means just like, I'm going to fuck this up. I'll say it like this. What coca is to cocaine, ibugane is to Iboga. So there's a plant in Central Africa, the aboga plant.

And the second layer of the root bark is a, is a powerful drug, medicine or sacrament. And I want to include all those in depending on how you view it, right? That is at the center or the root bark, not the hydrochloride, not the powder, but I'll get to that, is at the center of a spiritual slash religious practice called Bwiti in central Africa, in Gabon, equatorial, central Africa, Western Africa.

Gabon is home to Iboga and home to Buiti. Buiti is the spirituality that grew up around the ingestion of the sacrament, much the way that peyote or mushrooms or ayahuasca has grown up as the central sacrament. And similarly, there is a cultural component

that grew up around that, which is the, when someone ingests the medicine, that's sort of the performing arts as healing arts. And then an understanding of the pharmacopoeia, the medicines of the surrounding area, in this case, the forest of Central Africa. It's a rich and beautiful tradition, which I can talk a little bit about. But Ibogaine is one hydrochloride from that plant that was found. You've got to be careful to use the word, Discover, when you're talking about.

about extracting things from the global south, white folks finding it, but was found by my friend and mentor, the late Howard Lutzoff, to alleviate and perhaps even eliminate in some cases the symptoms of withdrawal from opioid dependence. Wow. With little or no withdrawal for most people. And for some people, a window of opportunity

afterwards with some people don't have a craving. It also is one of the most powerful psychedelics on the planet. It can last for hours. The initial trip anywhere from 12 to 18 hours, and then some folks go on longer, but the experience itself could have you on your back for three days even. In Central Africa, in Gabon, it's consumed as a, almost, it's sawdust, basically. And it's, it's Here, the hydrochloride is a white powder. It's still a Schedule I drug in the States, but it has been used.

Howard Lassoft discovered, found Ibegain serendipitously. He was strung out in the Lower East Side in the early 60s and was just taking it because it was a drug. And almost no one had heard of it and then came out of it. It's a beautiful and long story, but came out of it and realized that he wasn't dependent. ended on it anymore. And then he was this 19-year-old sort of nerdy Jewish kid from the Bronx who decided to start giving it to his other sort of post-beat pre-hippie scene on the Lower East Side

and the ones who were strung out and he started to notice this thing and that's where that movement came from. Wow. So that's sort of like an entirely self-led drug user's movement. And then how did you find out about it? You know, I was a living at the Hotel Chelsea in the side for many years and I knew people just sort of involved in maybe which was maybe the last gasp of Bohemia for forever. I hope not but but sort of that you know just use that word bohemian culture you know and I heard about it through activists particularly through the work of a guy named Dana Beale who's I think just got released from jail again at 77 yesterday he called me he's a pot activist former yippie

but also was really a proponent and madman for this stuff. And his work in other people in sort of the late 80s and early 90s, there was a squat scene. There was a scene sort of an anti-genification scene and an artistic scene happened in the Lower East Side. And there was sort of the myth in the junkie world of this thing, this urban myth. And that's when I first heard.

I first heard it shooting up by my friend Adam Nodleman, the musician who also succumbed to heroin. and it's not longer with us. But that's when I first heard about it. So you hear about it. And then when do you do a ceremony or a healing? Ten years later, man. Ten years later.

Yeah. So like I heard about Lower East Side and then more deaths, more deaths, and lost track of Adam. And I met Adam through my friend Herbert Hunkey and one of the prototype beatniks, for those of who know. I would suggest you read his stuff. And you try to quit Cold Turkey. Oh, so many times, man.

Yeah. So many times. You wake up and you're like, I'm done using it. Or plan it and go away and take some valium with you and go and fucking get sick. And then, you know, five days, six days, two weeks, starting to feel better. But, yeah, you would just get back. And then on methadone, off of methadone. I didn't go to too much treatment because I was just too stubborn.

I went to like one. But, you know, I don't. You go to funerals and you're like, yeah, I'm done with this. You go to enough funerals. Well, funerals, I'd probably do more. more, and then a few, you know what I mean? And then sometime later, you know, I tried all kinds of stuff. And what are the treatment options if you're addicted to heroin today?

Today it's a little different. I mean, methadone is one that people are familiar with going cold turkey, which is rarely successful, but you could do that. Yeah, there's methadone and there's suboxone buprenorphine subutex, which is all basically the same medicine, which is another maintenance treatment. Sometimes people get hooked on methadone, though. Well, it is. You are hooked on methadone.

kind of, look, at first it was introduced as a detox, but then it became a maintenance. That's the point. I'm not going to be able to do it justice scientifically, but the half-life and the liver lasts longer than a short-acting opioid. So the idea is that you sort of bounce it together and string it out and it sort of like takes care of that craving. You know, these evil bastards took out that one side effect, euphoria. So it was invented by the Germans, so you can see that.

How can we get into this euphoria? Yeah. And what's the point then? Well, you know, I guess the point is for some people, it acts as a way to, to handle the cravings. And they can get back to a normal life and they can just go and sort of take it. And subutexin buprenorphine or subluxone is all the same thing. That you don't even need to go to a clinic. You know, the problem is it's really hard to get off of some people.

For most people, it's really hard to get off. Can you explain what a heroin craving feels like? Like you try to go cold turkey, seven days goes by. What do you feel? It's so funny, you said that. And I just noticed that there was a craving there back of my mouth to light the cigarette. Okay, it's been a while since I've been there. So the first, like the first couple of hours, like, let's say 12 hours in, you start to get, what do you call it, like chicken skin, start to get a little sweaty.

And then your stomach starts to go. And then the thing about it, while this is happening, you know that there's one way out, right? And you know what's coming if you don't find that one way out. So, you know, it's been reported. And even in this book called You Can't Win, written in the, I think, 1890 something where a guy gets locked up and he's got an opium habit. And it's like way easier because he couldn't get it. But that's what happened whenever I'd get locked up.

It would be bad. But you're going to Rikers Island or the. tomb so there's other shit to worry about right anyways and there's no chance of release with that so um so that's the beginning right and you know it's coming and then the stomach gives way you have diarrhea um your nose starts to run sneezing a lot of sneezing and yawning and then your joints start to hurt and then just excruciating what's happening is my understanding i'm probably going to get this wrong scientifically is that like your opioid receptors are just offline right they stop working so sitting comfortably in a chair lying down sleeping is gone you can't the things that make it comfortable for me to

sit here right now it'd be uncomfortable i'd be moving myself constantly constantly moving and then i'm laying in bed and my my stomach is jamming up but i'm shitting and i'm puking and i'm yawning and i'm sneezing and there's no comfortable way there's no sleep it's you're not going to sleep for a couple weeks and the first three to four days is going to be this that symptom will just keep coming and coming and coming and then the thing is after you've gone through it several times of just cold turkey you're like in the middle of that you're like what the fuck am i doing this for i'm going to use again and you know that there's one fucking release there's one release and that becomes the challenge so people go away and people you know um go you know there's ways of detoxing with methadone that are easy and you're easy and There's ways of slowly gradually grinding off of it. And, you know, for sometimes that's successful. I should say that the vast majority of people, the vast, vast majority of people who have gotten off of opiates

have done it without ibupain. Right. They've done it through other means. Right. But cold turkey just seems brutal. I mean, the amount of willpower. I probably did it 30, 40 times. And what was the longest that you had gone?

Do you remember? Was it like... Yeah, something like that. No more than a month in 20-something years. And you just feel those symptoms. Well, the symptoms might go. go. So what you call a post-acute withdrawal.

Post-acute withdrawal would be the symptoms might go. And then, but then there's still an irritability. There's inability that you can't really sleep for a long time. For guys, like, you come when the wind blows, basically. So there's a sexual dysfunction, which I think for dudes, like, sends guys back because they think that's the way it's going to be forever. Like, basically someone looks at your dick and you're. come. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And then there's

like the bottles don't get back in. And then you get depressed. You know, I mean, there's something physiologically happening, you know, something happening, you know, with trying to get on board. But then there's also the wreckage. You know, it's not like you stop doing dope in your car

payment. You get a house apart. Your life is falling apart. Yeah, your life's already falling apart, like, for the most cases. And so how to deal with that. So the kind of support that folks need around that is just not really available. Our structure's not really set up for that. I mean, that is brutal.

Yeah, and but also is not set up for when you have an abstinence-only model as opposed to like this sort of continuum of an idea that change comes in many different forms, right? And in many different ways.

If you have just like, it's got to be abstinent. And that's problematic too, especially given fentanyl, right? But, but it's, people go out, they might not come back. But if we're talking about that model doesn't seem to work either, we have to recognize that, and this is also difficult to do under prohibition, that there is a sort of continuing, you kind of go and come back and go and come back. And if there's a way that we can

support folks who have relapsed and trying to keep them alive, not just alive to recover, keep them alive because they're human. And if they don't, quote, recover, that's okay, too. And we can improve the lives of active drug users. I know this for a fact. But if we can have this continuum of change, you know, I think that that would serve not only the individual, it's the humane thing to do, but I think societally it'll be better, too. So then the first time you use I've begun, what is that experience like?

Like, take me through all the whole story. Like, you're at rock bottom, life falling apart. I'm 39 years old. I'm living in my parents' basement. Thank God I live in a co-dependent culture with Greeks. They're never going to throw you out. I'm like, oh, poor Jimmy. He just burnt the entire neighborhood down.

It's those other boys that are bad. Anyway, so I was living in the basement. I just, my first, I wake up every morning and I want to kill myself. I go to sleep every night, want to kill myself. That's my thoughts. My life, I'm parking cars all day long, $200. I'm in psychosis when I shoot the cocaine, which I'd been in, you know, and then I'd go back to it,

which is a whole other thing, you know, talking about an addiction, the addiction of cocaine, it sort of either smoked or injected, and what happened for me was the insanity that grew out of that. What do you mean psychosis? I was, they were at the door, you know, here in the helicopter that wanted to come after me for the $25 a Coke I bought, like some crackouts. It was literally like that.

Oh, yeah. Like every fucking time. go for the rush, and then that would be, and then I couldn't stop injecting the Coke. You could not stop. You hear a police siren immediately. The police siren. I think people's greatest fears would be there.

Mine was, I think authorities often, but often the greatest fear, because one guy I used to get high with his dad would show up. The dad was thousands of miles away. Like a helicopter in Detroit is really going to come for me, you know, for like, you know, this little bit of come. Intense paranoia. Intense paranoia.

And then the rush would be so momentary. pleasurable after a while. Look, at first it's great, but so momentarily pleasurable and then just paranoia and a desire to try to get that rush again. Yeah, it was fucking awful. It was taking methadone on top of it. I was just getting high in the parking

in the methadone clinic, and they were telling me that you couldn't feel, there's supposedly a point, and for some people it works, but they told me you can't feel high on methadone. I was high as a motherfucker man, because you're supposed to block the heroin. All right.

So I was just sort of at my wits end in a Greek-American, and I wanted to go to Greece. Because I hadn't been in 30 years, and family and friends were constantly going, but I couldn't go with a habit. And then I would just come back and die. So the idea was I would go and I would do Iboga. We found a place in Holland, the great Saraglott.

And I would go from there to Greece. And then my plan was just come back and fucking do it, you know? Indiaboga was the last chance, like the last thing that could work. I was just so done, man. I mean, like, I wasn't writing. I wasn't creating. I wasn't performing. You know, I was just fucking doing drugs.

Purposeless. Yeah, yeah. And so I, my family scraped together the money. Didn't have a lot of money at the time. And the idea was get me there. I was going to Amsterdam. Back then, Amsterdam was considered like Mecca for heroin, right? Every, you know, 20-something years ago, that was, like the wire, they talked about

Amsterdam. I don't know if you know the show, but back in the day, that was like, because of their decriminalization, right? So anyway, you know, I remember Adam told me, the guy I got high with, Adam told me that there was this lady Sarah, and I reached out to Dana Beale who hooked me up with Sarah. well actually hurt me up with another mentor who became my mentor Richie or Globdick and then they hooked me up with Sarah

and I was going to go to Amsterdam they were going to give me a couple grand and then I and my brother's like fuck this you're going to go to Amsterdam but you're never coming back right it's going to go and relapse there so my brother jumped on the plane with me and I got pissed drunk on the plane

because I'd been on a transatlantic flight in international flight in years I had a passport I had to do all that shit right and i just like free fucking alcohol right so i just i shot up um god i could tell you the time i shot up uh may i think may 21st at noon uh eastern standard times last time i took a hit of dope and coke right and my and before i got on that plane before i left for the airport in detroit and i got on there got drunk landed couldn't even make the phone call my brother thank god he was there got us in the cab and we found her way to Sarah's place and you know Sarah came out and she

it was this sort of beautiful little farmhouse of this Brooklyn Brooklyn he said I don't know they don't know how to pronounce the we know how to pronounce Brooklyn right but it's spelled the same way it's town outside of Amsterdam and there's a fucking windmill in the back and you know and and this I thought Sarah would be this blonde woman it was this little swarthy woman she looked like she might you know she turned out to be his race and she had six kids and hippie, you know, smoking a joint, and her mother was there.

They kind of looked like my grandmother. So it was kind of cool and weird, and I was kind of drunk and I took my first dose. And a lot of things happened that day. And the first dose is interesting because you take the first dose. They used to do it like this, and I know things have become way more medicalized now, right? So I'm talking about shit, because I haven't done this in a while.

But the first dose, when I noticed, because I was in the first, beginning oh that's the other thing i was in the beginning of that withdrawal that i was talking about so i was feeling the stomachache and fidgeting yeah the fidgeting the sweating the sweating like fuck i'm here now like what the fuck if this doesn't work i'm i'm bolted but my brother's there my brother's no joke right he'd come and get my ass right but um what i noticed before it became a uh I would say a psychedelic dose was that within 40 minutes my withdrawal symptoms were alleviated.

I didn't have withdrawal. And then I was taken to Daphne's room. Daphne must be a growing, she is a grown-ass woman now. God damn, she might be 36 or 7. But she was a teenager. And I was in a teenage girl's room. This kid's running around outside

and there's pictures of pop stars and cute soccer players on the wall on this little girl's bed and it was dark and they gave me more and they increased the dose and I went on this three-day fucking journey that I vomited and I shit and I came and I snod

every orifice or so I don't think I got any earwax out of me but everything was just coming out of me right and it was hellish and they had to give me more to address the withdrawal, which wouldn't happen if you were... By the way, a boga and I began is not only for addiction. In Central Africa, she was for initiation, but in this case, and she gave me a boga, which is unusual in the detox mode,

but she had access to something called... It was a type of aboga, Indra, which is a different kind of extract. But I went on this three-day... journey in that dark room I was trying to count the sunrises and sunsets and I lost count I didn't know how long I was in there for I didn't eat the whole time they were making

sure I had water and they were checking on me and taking care of me and myself and my brother would come by you know he used to stay in a hotel nearby but in that process I had fucking deep visions where'd you go I went

I went back through my life I was able to just, well, I was walking in there with the belief that I had killed my, that I was responsible for my common law wife's death and my baby's death, right, my unboard kid. And I realized I wasn't. It wasn't even a vision. It was just, that's not me, right? I did see her. I saw all kinds of my dead friends.

They, at one point, filled the room. They were just coming and coming and coming. And I went back to my childhood. I had to got to explore my relationships. And then I went, I went backwards back into my ancestral history. I had no idea that the Buiti, the spirituality from Gabon, was like many African spiritualities, is one that is heavily concerned with the ancestors and healing of lineages. but I went way back, you know, and by the way, I was on my way to Greece, too, in 10 days.

So I went way back, and I went back to my grandmother. I went back to me a kid in Detroit, and I saw her, and I saw my other grandmother, and I, you know, and I could smell their food, and then I went further back to where I was with some ancestors, and there was just this, this is where she begins to get weird, but my life got weirder. And it was already pretty weird. But there was an idea of presence of a matriarch from my mom's side, which was in the Peloponnese, different from the island I went to, and that she was in the dirt.

She's been dead. And the words, dead so long, the earth's gone through you, dead so long, the earth's gone through you. It was just repeated like this mantra, where you become to earth. and there was something about that that became this. And the meaning of that has changed for me over time. But like, but it was comforting. And then I went forward.

I'm saying this like it's a linear thing. It's not. It's all happening at once and not at all. And sometimes I'm just lying there and going, what the fuck? You know, I went forward and I saw what my life would be. I saw that I would be engaged in this type of thing. I saw that I would be on this American life, very peculiar.

Specifically? Yeah, yeah, I used to like listen to it and shoot dope like on Sundays when I would get up. But I thought, yeah, I'm going to be on this American life. I saw the image of this guy, this older black man that was in the jungle and a forest, I should say, with a beard and piercing eyes. And I met him. And I knew that I was going to do that work. and you know that's not unique a lot of people that go through the experience

want to work with it but I knew I would wow and then you know the other thing was that there was you know there was fucking canals everywhere so at night the sound of frogs would be like deafening and there was this hours where they became

like this frog orgy and so it was like this Demerite and it was just like this erroneous Bosch like fucking frog or that I was in for hours. So that was one thing. I went to a frog orgy.

That was part of the deal, I guess. And, you know, I came out of that. And there's a thing called Boga coincidence. I began coincidence. I didn't say this. When I was going in, I mentioned Adam, who I thought was dead, who was kind of like a little brother to me, the guy who told me about it.

Sarah said he'll be here in two days. So I came out, Adam was there to do another treatment, and Adam went through his thing, and eventually went around Amsterdam because he had lived there as a squatter and as a musician before. But I came out of it, day three, you know, I could never ask for that again. I tell the story a lot, but I actually get moved every time I tell the story, right? Because I don't think that, I can never expect that again in life.

life, the absolute freedom. And as I'm saying this, I'm hesitating because I'm telling a story that there's somebody out there who's suffering greatly right now. And this might prompt them, as my story has in the past, you know, to go out and seek the treatment. And the reason I'm hesitating is because what I discovered is that's not what happened with everybody. And we reinforce brokenness when we're going to be.

try to do a one-size-fits-all. So people would see Dmitri and like, wow, man, that's it, I need it, I need this, and then they come, and something else happens. Because I should also say, I went to Greece for three months after, and I spent the time in the village. So there was that moment when I came out,

and I walked out, and I, and everyone was sleeping, and I kind of like, somehow, like, I literally washed the shit off of me. I mean, they were taking good care of me, but, and shit coming, you know, I mean, like, everything came out of me, right? And I, and I went for a walk in the morning, due, like, and I fell at one point

because I'm walking in the back of the joint, like, there's like these, and you think it's like flat ground? Like, I'm in Detroit, New York. I haven't walked on anything but fucking concrete for fucking 40 years, right? And I tripped and I fell in the dew and like, I had euros in my pocket and they went scattering and there were geese and then just laughed and I got up out of there and I went in and I sat down on the couch and I was sitting there and I was just, Amazing God. One of the other things that happened was, you know, my lineage, you know, which is Greek Orthodoxy, right? Not that I'm a big church goal or anything, but like, I believe my entire quest for drugs was a spiritual quest as well, right? I was very much looking for God and thinking about God. And for me it manifested, and I think it's just a manifestation for the individual. But for me, it was in sort of the revolutionary image of Christ, right? The forgiving image of Christ. and I was just sitting there in the living room saying, praise God, and just crying and laughing. And the little girl, who was one of the daughters, who was this little sassy girl, she said,

oh, there was a black man from a place called the Bronx who was saying the same thing last week. And so, you know, this idea of just being, actually the idea of grace, when I look up the word grace, like this unmerited help from God, this is help from God. And, you know, Adam came and we went and we ran around Holland for a few days and then I made my way to Greece. But I spent three months in the village where my grandmother was from, which I think was as much a part of the healing as anything. So I had the privilege to do that. Wow. So now was the relief immediate?

Like the next like four or five days were you in any way itching for another shoot? Look, I was not. I was with Adam who knew every cop spot in. in Holland, I had money in my pocket. There was no locks on the door. And I didn't have any desire. I still don't have a desire. I mean, yeah, you know, man, I've worked in needle exchange.

People have given me their heroin everywhere detoxing. I've watched people shoot up. I have never had a strong desire to use those drugs again. But that isn't the case with everybody. You know, after working with 500 people in this and then seeing the trajectory, most people relapse, right? And that's the problem with the way it's being presented. It's being presented as sort of an abstinence-only model.

And I think that we can really hurt people by doing that. People who come out and have a different relationship with the world or with their drug or just go in and heal something and then go back to dope. I mean, that's not a bad thing either. If someone can resolve or begin to resolve some sort of pain or trauma or like forgive themselves or take accountability for something they've done,

forgive or take accountability. And I think that's valuable too. But I think what we're missing with the whole psychedelic movement is we're looking for this one-size-fits-all cure. And there's some other problems with bringing it into this structure. But for me, that's what happened for me. And because I have this gift, which I'm this is my gift right now right man we're talking like I talk that's what I do right

part of it and then it turns out I had a gift for for holding people in a way towards healing right but because I had this gift I used it and I became a proponent for Iboga but I'm not a proponent for any any type of treatment I'm a proponent for like changing our see if we could change the structure in which we do all these things and I think second else could still do that but they won't do it by itself

we have to have the we have to have a the intention to change actually to me too do you mind if I just take my magic mind this is like a supplement I take in the morning with my coffee that just like keeps me alert I actually feel like it like extends the life of my coffee for like the entire day. Okay.

It's got all sorts of good stuff in it. Nothing that you would partake. And there's no heroin in here. But it's got like Ashwaganda. It's got Lions May and a bunch of other like good supplements. And it actually tastes delicious, which is super nice. But anyway, sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to tell you about this.

So go ahead. And so I went to Greece. I didn't have a job. I had a little bit of money. My family has not had a lot of money. But I could stay in Greece for pretty cheap. understand some cousin's house why they're gone. I didn't have a car payment.

I didn't have a mortgage. I didn't have children. I didn't have a wife. You know, sort of like I could just do whatever, right? You know, and frankly, you know, I'm white passing man in America, right? So like, you know, and the privilege of that, right? So what I did was as an act of radical services, I, you know, I went back to Detroit. I did some stuff I've done with my brother before,

like some promotion shit, did some house nights and stuff like that and some music nights and shit like that. And they started writing again. And then I was just preparing to come back and just bring this to the world. And I did it completely out in the opening when it was a felony, which eventually,

the day that I said, this is the last treatment I'm doing, DEA came for me. No way. That was like 10 years later, yeah. Wow. But I did it in a real public way Because I really, I was concerned with changing the law.

And I'm not that concerned with that anymore. I just, I mean, I'm concerned. I like, I think drugs should be legal, but I think, I think, you know, I'm a medical communist, you know. And so I kind of, you know, I mean, that's just one, one thing that should be sort of up to us as, as in the community, right? But I, I sort of made that. My focus did a lot of work in around, a lot of work.

I did. I was in the, in the drug policy world. I didn't do a lot of work. And then I also started working in harm reduction, which was the other thing that really changed my life was harm reduction. Before all that, I would never have gotten to the Iboga if there wasn't people, you know, if there wasn't the guys in 1991 from ACT UP, which was the queer, I don't know if you're familiar with them,

but they were like these militant queer folks who wanted to change access to Sarenz laws and develop medicines. And I just walked up on a corner where I used to get my works. And these gay guys were standing there with a table, and I knew what act up was, and they had these bags of syringes. And I used to get my works there. They were often used works.

When I mean works, I mean syringes. You know, I would open up the package and squeeze it, and a little water would come out, right? And this is the time when, like, Russian roulette. I don't know how I missed it. I don't know how I dodged it. But I dodged it because I met these, folks. Wow. And what they did is they handed me a bag of syringes with information and when I asked

them how much they said it's free and when I suspiciously asked why they said we want you to be safe. And man, I was like a pariah at that moment, you know what I mean? No one wanted to deal with me. And the fact that that was an act of love. And so what Sarah did for me and what those people did for me, that was like my motivation to go into the world. So that became my work and that became also there was a film made the making the second part now but the filmmaker said my buddy Michelle Negroponte in his narration of I'm Dangerous with Love said Demetri used to front a band now he fronts an exotic plant and that's that was kind of what was happening for wow and so how many people did you end up treating with Iboga I estimate around 500 people and can you estimate what percentage of them

were in recovery for a long period of time, or I guess recovered for a long period of time or just kicked it cleanly like you did? I would say somewhere between 10 and 20%. So, I mean, look, I could look at it like, actually, man, if I start to look at it just as that, as that's the only result, then we're all going to be failure.

It's like looking at death as a failure, right? It's like looking at, you know, man, like, you know, I didn't smoke any cigars until three days ago. Is that a failure? I'm going to puff one now, especially since you've triggered me so much. No. So I would say this, man,

what psychedelics do, especially a bogus because it takes so long, but what psychedelics offer, their greatest feature to me, because it's resistance towards capitalism. The greatest feature is they're not efficacious in that. If you do it right, you're going to spend a lot of time with somebody.

If you do it right, you're not going to be that doctor that just wrote that script to that guy standing up in front of the 7-Eleven, right? You're going to have to pay attention and be with somebody and then honor them. And that's when the ceremonial aspect came to me, man. This is an opportunity to hold people as precious, to hold people and to make it about them. And so if the majority of those 500 people or so felt held, felt seen, felt loved, felt in a competent way, then that's all, that's it, man. That's the fucking success.

And the fact that I was able to do that is an incredible gift for me. How are you getting access to the Iboga when you were doing your ceremonies? I mean, I was a dopey. I'll get some Iboga today. I mean, there were... You just had plugs and people,

Yeah, yeah. And then there was also, you know, we did this project when we came to New York. Like, I was dying to do it. But I had this guy, Ritchio Glognett, who was like one of the unsunging heroes of Oboga, who had, she used to call him Frankie Three names because he had different names. And we were walking around with all these burner phones. And it was so wild because we were trying to get like people off a dope, but we were just acting like dope dealers, right? And which is part of where I liked, right? Because I dug that. That's what I came from. I liked, you know what I mean? I was younger and even crazier than I am now. And, you know, Richie, Richie was like, go, you know, I know you want to do that. A lot of people want to do this. Go and have a normal life for at least one year. He said, get into treatment. If you want to go to meetings, go to meetings, have a job, have your own car. Be living by yourself. Be like a fucking human being, right?

Before you go and try to treat somebody else. And one year is like, like, I'd realize now, like the bare minimum. So that's what I did. And then he had this insane, great, wonderful, mad project to go. and do this thing in New York, which I wanted to get back to New York. You know, I was in Detroit, I wanted to come back. You know, this is where I, you know,

the place, I love this place. Wow. And we were going to do this thing where we were just going to be out, we passed out flyers and we, he was going to trade, I don't know, something like, it's a crazy number, like, 20, what they call providers.

And then we were going to treat hundreds of people for like almost nothing. It didn't become 20s. It became like five. And we treated probably, In that summer, I don't know, maybe we treated 50 people for nothing, but we did it with flyers. This is before, like, you know, social media. We stand out in front of a methadone clinic with a flyer that said methadone is slavery in Harlem.

And like just like this huge line of people. And then we had an 800 number and we'd be literally at Grand Central Station. Basically like, hey, we're committed to felony, call this 800 number. We had a website. And we just did it. And he was training me as it was going. And it was chaotic and insane. And that's what started my practice in New York.

And then I eventually moved here with my then wife. Wow. And when did you go to Gavon for the first time? I guess it maybe maybe 18 years ago. Okay. So this is like a couple years after. Yeah, I was an I being provider. And I, yeah, I was hungry to go there.

And why did you go there specifically? And what did you seek to learn from them? You know, it was a point where there was some near deaths. Because, by the way, a bogus risky, especially if you're doing it in a hotel room. You know, I would always make sure that I had the EKGs and that kind of shit checked out by a medical professional. And then after a couple of years, I'd always make sure there was someone who could start a heart with me, right? A nurse, a nurse practitioner, at least an EMT, somebody would keep a heart going until someone else came. So we had a lot of setbacks

and I was Michelle Negroponte was making the film I'm Dangerous with Love and he suggested that you know maybe we go and ask the Buiti and I've been dreaming about going I started to really get into the music and I just

I went because it was offered you know the other thing about my life is that I never traveled so what happened as I became this harm reduction you know I was started to create holistic spaces for people

active drug users and so as a harm reduction person and there was also this early proponent, not early, but 20 something, you know, second generation of Ibegame people, you know, in the States. So I traveled that and I would go anywhere. I'd go to New Jersey. I would go, I was on the road, which was great. I traveled, I don't know, to like 30, 40 countries, something like that. And so the idea to go to Gabon, which is at the center of, um, of this and the music was really interesting to me as a musician.

So I went there just to see and to learn and to be initiated. And it was a deeply impactful experience for me. Wow. And so what were the people like that you were with that were using the Oboga in the ceremonial way? Were they just like standard, Gabonese people? Yeah, they were Gabonese people. Gabon is my under, yeah, Gabon is a colonial. distinction, right? These are people of that center and so that happens to be Gabon and

Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon and I'm gonna fuck it up. Anyways, some other countries, I'm blanking on the name, one of the, one of the Ginnies, I forget which one, but anyway. Gini Basel. Gini Bissau, yeah, and there's Papa and I always confused them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. So you went there and these were, were these like more rural, like, rural folks that were specifically using this type of thing in ceremonial ways? Like, can you break down the social structure? Yeah, as much as I can. And again, I ask for forgiveness for people who are, who are, who know more than I do, way more than I do about this. So I'll do it as best I can. We're really popular in Gabon. They'll lift me up and track me down. And I'll get, I'll get some comments like you fuck this up. that up and that's okay. I'm here to learn. So,

all right, what I know. What I know is that the root bark, the root grows in Gabon that the first people to consume it were the forest people sometimes known as pygmies. The pygmies were the holders of

Iboga. My understanding was that these forest people have consumed it for, the fossil records go back 7,000 years, so it's longer, right? And then maybe six or 700 years ago, Bantu people, which most African Americans have Bantu blood.

Bantu people were fled, Savannah folks from that area, fled Abrahamic persecution. for their sort of fetish beliefs, meaning the use of objects to change the material plane. What do you mean by that? So you've got to have a fetish somewhere in this joint, man. You've got so much shit here.

A fetish is just that. that, you know, Marx talks about fetish, commodity fetishism. And so, I'll just give a plug for Marx as we're into this, right? So, like, the idea that he said, the only way you can talk about commodities is through the language of religion. So a fetish, okay, like the classic voodoo-dow, that's a fetish, right? The idea that you can do something in this style and it's going to create a change, like through an object, we'll create a change in the world. just Mark said that just money is a fetish, right? There's no, it's a piece of paper,

but there's a belief in it that can make the material world change. And if there's a belief structure around it, you can actually see the change. That's proof to me that fetish works, okay? So these were folks that were in traditional beliefs, right? And they were being persecuted. So they fled the Abrahamics, the Christians and the Muslims,

and they got to the forest, and they encountered the indigenous people, which are the pygmy people, who took them in and showed them how to live. Very similar to some of the stories we hear about, you know, folks fleeing religious persecution and coming here, you know, people from England and Holland.

It wasn't as a catastrophe for the forest people as it was for indigenous people here. But they suffered too because of that clash between. between sort of nomadic people and more village people. Anyways, that's another story. So as they learned about the way to survive, they're also introduced to this medicine, Iboga. My understanding, and it's limited,

and I ask for forgiveness again, my understanding is that this syncratic spirituality developed, where the pantheon of the Savannah people, the Bantu people mixed with the animist religion of the forest people, the belief that the entire forest is alive and also their incredible skill as healers with the pharmacopoeia of the forest. And then that turned into ritual and those rituals developed over six to 700 years, bringing in different ethnic groups because a place like Gabon with a million something, when people say

Africa, even when you say Europe, you don't realize how many different people occupy these continents, let alone a place the size of Colorado. These are different people. These are different ethnic groups that are living there. So 50 languages or something has spoken in a place of just over a million. So as the, as Buiti spread, people brought their own beliefs in it and there's different, it did what people do. It's splinter. and grew and this beautiful plasticity that is human and the creation sort of created and flourished and all these different kinds of witi. So there is like peyote, I think I said this already, but I'll go over it again, like peyote,

like ayahuasca, Iboga is the central sacrament, the performing arts as healing arts, singing, and in this case dance, there's certain types of wiki that can actually, I say it because I believe it, but they say, I believe it, because I've seen it, can heal someone through dancing. I think it's called gondon. No, no. I'm going to mess it up, so I won't. But in the south of Gabon, they practice. But so dance, the painting of the body, music, incredible music, and storytelling, all this stuff is part of the healing.

And then the cornucopia of the forest. all the different healing plants and baths. So when you walk with a Gabonese healer, with a Buiti healer, like I would with my teacher, Papa Andre, who I saw in Holland, I met him in a town called Jerusalem. He would be picking out that plant for Elizabeth and that plant for Pierre. Oh, he's got this ailment. There's all kinds of stuff, of course, to get it up, right?

So this one, because dudes are looking for it, right? So this incredible rich tradition. And so what I saw, I went with a film with Michelle who was filming. So, okay, there's that. And I went for authenticity, which A is impossible. I'm a white guy with another white guy with a fucking camera coming looking for authenticity. Yeah. And I just wanted to learn.

I wanted to see if there was something that I could learn from this. And so when I got there, the first person, You know, Michelle Negroponte arranged for me, for our guide, our person, this guy, Taitayo, who was this French hippie. And I was like, you know, fuck this French hippie. I don't want to these white guy, fucking French hippie. And when I got off the plane, I realized that I had found my long-lost twin brother. He had been there.

He's been there now for 50-something years. He speaks Fong, which is one ethnic group. And he had this compound, and I didn't want to really do it in that compound. And so he took us around Gabon and we talked to several people, not deep into the south, but we went traveling. And I went into Jerusalem and I saw Papa Andre. And he ended up leading my ceremony. And it was kind of perfect to do it with a hippie the first time I went because he brings all the different ethnic groups into his compound. And it's not perfect and it's chaotic and it's wonderful.

But Papa Andre, who was the elder of that other village, came and Mama Lucy, his own. wife. And what I and I was, you know, this was the second time I tripped on a massive dose of a boga, but I'll say this is what struck me is that there was the music

that I love, which is at some point the core of the music that I love was it's Africa. So I could hear the blues, I could hear modern jazz, I could hear house because there was this repetitive sort of trance-like music.

Yeah, yeah. drumming or actually the pounding, excuse me, the drumming doesn't really happen until after initiation, depending on the type of bleating, there's many types of bleeding, but there's a big stick, not a stick like a plank that's held by rocks on both sides and two percussionists sit on both kind of hit it with sticks like right behind your head while people, when they play this harp. And, well, I'll get to that in a second, but what I saw was that, that there was the music I love or the roots of the music I love. And then there was the sacrament, which was a drug,

which someone was taking in the middle, but like everyone in the village, from the little girls to the old people to the dogs, were taking it as well in smaller doses. And there was dancing, and it wasn't without drama and hierarchy and all the shit because it's people, but there was this beauty that I had seen

in the house scene and in other scenes and this collectivism and this way of getting somebody over. And I started to understand something about ceremony and the way that I had been doing it back home was, you know, the way it was given to me, just a black room and just a lot of love and care. But that it was really similar to what I saw when I was a performer, spaceholding, when I was a bartender, when I ran after-hours clubs, and then eventually when I was an organizer in creating spaces for active drug users, there is, to me, that's the most important thing,

was the space that has created. So there was this incredible space that they created, and that started to change the way I did my practice. And, you know, for me to undergo it from that dark room when I was kicking heroin to just an initiatory practice with all the preparation with bat bathing and ritual and what anything would signify. And what it meant, it was incredible.

It was an incredible experience. I had another deep trip, but beyond a trip, because I was surrounded, fires, and people playing music and singing and dancing, and people are painted. And it was profound, and it changed me, and it deepened, it changed the way I started to do my practice. I started to see if I could bring that back.

And in some ways, for some time, I was trying to replicate it. I wasn't initiating anybody because I didn't have the authority to initiate it. I continued to use Ibegain, which is not a Boga. But I would see how much of that practice I could bring back to make sense for people. So we'd go to the forest before, we'd go to a park, and we'd just be like talking to the nature, and we're talking to the ancestors, and we're looking for an ancestral cure or an ancestral healing.

and I brought aspects of the baths, and sometimes we replicated the way the thing looked, and I did that for a while. And then I started to change away from that, and I started to move away from Iboga after my arrest. But why I left, because I'm not from Gabon. I'm a Greek boy from Detroit. And there are traditions here that I can use.

So, like in Cardea, I first, time I suck and said my business and I'm fucking out. I'm really good, right? Cardea, Cardea, Cardea, Cardea. Cardea is like sort of right now where I am in sort of this, I guess, evolution. I was trying to do, trying to use some aspects of Witi or the influence of WITI to contextualize the experience. And I think it was successful as the experience of the detox, right? And then what happened is I sort of started getting away from, stopped after my arrest, I continued for a little while. But then I saw that I was,

it was problematic to work with Iboga the way I was working with it as this sort of cure to addiction, because I didn't see that happening. I saw that something else was happening. And then I also got burnt out. And I started working with other medicines, like MDMA and psilocybin and now ketamine. And what I realized was that what the Buiti were doing,

And what should people who are doing, just on a real basis, is they're creating the space. So that's what really fucking interests me. What you did here is you created a space, right? When you go into a nightclub, there's a space created there and it's going to affect the way the thing goes, right?

So you adapt to the space that you're in, you adapt to the club, you adapt to the acoustics. Comedy is the most sensitive thing to this, in my opinion. Like, that is the most space precious thing in my estimation. any art form could be. But the space is so fundamental

for how the art form works. Yeah. You need, the ceilings can't be high. This audio can't be coming from behind you. The audience has to all be collectivized in a very intimate way. They all to be very close. They can't be too comfortable.

The temperature can't be too hot or too cold. I would actually rather it be a little colder, to be honest with you. Yeah. And there's so many little things. The lights have to be just so. If it's too bright, it won't work. Like comedy outdoors doesn't work.

Like there's so many specific little things to create the space for the thing to work. And that's it, man. That's it. That's what interests me most. That's what interests me way more than any of the drugs. So how do we create a container? You just described a container in which you can, you can, for the best reception, and then within that, you are attuned to the audience, yeah?

You don't walk in and do the exact same way and the exact same thing. You're improvving, right? And you're attuned to the audience and you're feeling the vibe and there's something that you can't explain other than you've just been doing the work. And so that's where it gets to be, I get worried about both the sort of toxic hierarchy of tradition and the toxic hierarchy of the medical profession.

And so the way, I contextualize it now. I'm really grateful for the Bui T. With the three level of initiation, I am not a spokesman for Buiti, I am not a good student of it. You're not black yet. I'm not black yet.

I just, yeah, exactly, man. I'm just, and I've respectfully, with great to distance myself for a long time, for over 10 years. And so, and I learned so much, I changed so much. I grew so much with what I learned there.

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Let's get back to the show. So I say Cardea, and the work I did underground for years after that, Cardea is, it's not medicalized, but it's medically supported. I'm going to check with the doctor, right?

I'm going to check, you know, if you're on meds, we're going to figure that out. I want to talk to medical professionals. But it's not a medical process. right and we're not we're not following in a sort of orthodox

tradition of the traditional holders of these medicines although we are recipients and we're grateful for their knowledge so we're not from Johns Hopkins and we're not from the forest or the Pueblo at least I'm not what we are is from

the comedy space the dance floor the theater, the book, the gallery, the podium, the podcast, we're from the good things about modernity. And that's about being forced to create ourselves. You're forced to create yourself instead of a working class French-Canadian, right? You're forced to recreate yourself. Or you're going to have, you know, or you can just be confused, right?

So you're creating yourself. That's a really scary proposition. And so how do we navigate that and how do we help folks navigate that? And I think through, I call it ceremony because it's a big fucking deal. It's separate from everything else.

But what I do is not coming from any particular tradition except for our own. So when I think about my cultural ancestors, I mean, Jimmy Hendrix is over there, right? Stanley Kubek is over there, more Jimmy Hendricks, right? I mean, Houdini's over there, you know? These are like cultural icons, right?

I think about Lenny Bruce, right? I think about Coltrane, right? And then we have this ceremonial form, which means there's a beginning, a middle and end, and we're going to honor the person. And we're going to, so we use vibrational instruments. We use voice. There's sound is what carries it, right?

So I'm back to fronting a band again, right? I play with extraordinary spaceholders and musicians. But the idea is that we have to be improvisational. So a good therapist is an improv. You have to be improvisational. We have to be in tuned. And so that's the job. And the most important thing is the relationship

between the person providing it. and the person receiving it in terms of trust and the ability to be plastic and changeable in that space. Can music literally heal people? Oh, yeah. Can you explain how that works or how you've seen it work? Can you give an example of how you've seen it work? One good thing about music when it hits you feel no pain.

That's what Marley said. I think that I say, yeah, just like that, but it's not a scientific thing, right? And I'm not going to be able to speak about it. It's like, music opens up the space for, it opens up the space. Sunrah said space is the place. So if we're talking about space, we have the psychedelic drug or ketamine or Bogha or whatever it is. And to me, there's the possibility, if done sort of in a dark space or with a, I'm asking a comfortable space that it can create space inside of you, right?

Or it could create perspective, right? And the idea is, sometimes that perspective is right here, right? And there's an idea that, like, you know, you're coming in with rumination or guilt or whatever, it might be right here. And that might be helpful, but sometimes, and you can work with that. But so the medicine itself can do that or start to create this expansive space, right? and then the sound sound done well can create

that space can make something come up here or make it come way out there right and then the way people are held maybe they can have some freedom when I mean held the way that they're being watched over and cared for can make the freedom to navigate within that and through that perspective and through that maybe healing

So that's what we're doing. We're not performers, but we are in some ways performers, right? Could you give an example of something that was healed with someone, just in your experience, where there's music involved? And would these typically be like psychological or mental health things, or are there physical healing that could be done as well? Well, I hesitate to say healed. I can say I've seen, because then again,

and we're coming up with a linear approach to like, we're coming in to do this. But people have expressed in the sound, something moving in them, and, you know, a release from guilt or shame. I mean, shit. I'm so blessed, man, because, like, I get to witness this shit on a regular.

But it's really important that we don't say, coming in to do this and this happens. but there's someone who was at the ketamine space just a few days ago, and we were doing group ketamine at Cardea, and I was playing, and this is a woman, I imagine, in the late 40s or early 50s,

successful woman. She came out, and we were having coffee, I mean, tea and fruit and stuff, and she just said, that's what was created there with the live sound, with the vibrational instrument, in this case, ketamine,

I just forgave my parents. And that was, just on a Sunday afternoon. I often see that happen, right? I mean, people who have been able to contextualize, and often it's just a contextualizing because we're not going to heal from, we're not going to come, it's not going away,

like a scar is not going away, right? So this idea that you're going to take MDMA or some psychedelics and then PTSD from having, been exposed to or committed some sort of evil, right? It's just going to be done. It would be a relationship with that. So the

sound can be part of that catalyst. It's not like coming in and buzzing at a certain frequency and then your brain, it might be, I don't fucking know. But what's happening is the space opens up and something new happens. Do that. That's what art does too. Like,

it's like when you go to a museum, a painting, can change you, right? The first time I always saw the self-porture by Otto Dix and he traded into art. Something happened. I was changed or Vermeer in Holland, right? Or the first time I saw Iggy Pop.

Something changed. Now, did I walk around just changed? No, I walked around with deep pain and sorrow and addiction and all kinds of other shit, but there was some change that I could refer to, maybe, maybe not. Same thing happens in comedy. What's happening?

You come up on stage, you're fucking thinking like a healer. You're thinking like a shaman. You're thinking like someone who holds space. Like, where's the sound coming from? How cold is it? How high is the, you know, how's the light hitting me? Where's the light? They're not too comfortable than that.

You're trying to create the optimal space. And then you're using words. You're using words and lights and sound and maybe even smell to change somebody. Something will be changed. You're affecting a physical reaction from people. And something will be changed. Often comedy is some of the most healing shit there it is. And also, you seem incredibly well-balanced for a comedian, but I appreciate that.

What the fuck? I mean, you see? Maybe I'm not a good comedian. I mean, that's the problem. I'm going to hold out that you don't have to be a neurotic mess to be a comedian, but I've never met one. But it's nice to meet you. I appreciate it. I'm neurotic in a different way.

Okay, okay, cool. I keep it under wraps. But also, yeah, I mean, often it comes from people who are deeply fucking damaged. And that's, that's me too, you know? Yeah, that's really interesting. So can you talk to me about MDMA and psilocybin therapies and how you sort of integrate those and what the outcomes from those have been?

So I stopped doing underground work because of my company. So I'm only working with ketamine and psilocybin. So I could talk about MDMA. In the past, have you used MDMA? Yeah, I've used it in combination with psilocybin, which I think will be used more and more. Really? I mean, the underground does stuff before people research it.

The idea behind it is that there's this sort of a base of MDMA and can sort of maybe buffer or act as a base for the experience of the psilocybin. But what we do with the psilocybin in the psilocybin retreats in Jamaica and soon in Costa Rica is, It's a week-long retreat. My partner, Ross Ellenhorn, is a therapist and sociologist, and he's written several books. You should get him in here, I think you'd probably like him.

He's written several books on play and change, but serious play, and creating the plasticity for curiosity, basically. So the work that we do in Jamaica, it is a retreat, so it's not, we're very suspicious of a lot of the claims made that it's going to cure anything, but we're also suspicious of folks coming to do deep healing work from serious conditions. So I wouldn't go to a retreat to sort of unpacked early childhood sexual trauma for the first time. It's not a retreat setting.

So what we do there, this is for folks who want to sort of expand and explore. It's not a diagnosable. It doesn't require a diagnosis, and we want to be really careful that folks aren't going to unlock something. on a week in Jamaica experience and not be able to hold, right? So what we do in Jamaica is we do a version of what we've done, you know, in the ketamine space. And what I've done for years now, I work with our director of sound and music is John McLean. His professional name is Juan McLean.

was a DJ music producer so we work with John and whoever the other spaceholders slash artists are and we create an environment of immersion and sound five play for four to six hours

of continual live sound starting with vibrational instruments and vocals and maybe 30 instruments in total and then that's combined with the creation that Ross sort of beautifully, Ross Ellenhorn sort of beautifully has created this model of creativity to sort of, through the actual making of art,

for not capital A artist, for just all of us this sort of creation and getting more plastic and playful. So three ceremonies combined with these other activities in an incredibly beautiful surroundings, which has been transformative for a lot of folks. And do different drugs function differently for different types of problems?

Like, why would someone be better off doing ketamine versus psilocybin? So the most obvious thing, if someone wants to get off opiates or at least go through a detox, Oboga can provide that, I begin. So that's, there are people who could talk, and it would be more animate about what each drug does. There are certain indications for people who shouldn't do some drugs. But I'm not that person.

I'm a spaceholder. And, you know, there's some people who are just experienced a co-sace or who are not prepared that I would stir them away from that. Or maybe they're opening something up that doesn't need to be open right now. They need to build a safe container in which of self before they open it, right? So I believe that space is the place. So, but there's studies on all that kind of stuff and we'll see more. And I'm resistant to it, actually. But I will say that ketamine, and I had my prejudice against ketamine,

just because of where it's from and my history of ketamine, if you come to our ketamine clinic, you need to see a doctor, and he or she will decide. Our doctors will decide or our clinicians will decide whether it's a good idea for you. You do need a diagnosis. Ketamine is only a couple of hours. We extend that, which I like. Sometimes a visit there is three hours.

People are welcome to stay longer. Our space is this incredibly curated space by this brilliant Randy Palumbo. It's literally made of mushrooms and really beautiful space. And our clinicians, Jill and Zach Reich, are just amazing clinicians. And the team's amazing. But ketamine, a couple things. Most of these psychedelics you need to be off SSRIs or antidepressants. Right.

There's counter-inidocations that are dangerous for some of them or the drug simply won't work. That's not the case with ketamine, which makes it for people who are experiencing extreme events of mood or mind or some diagnosable event. It makes it far more accessible, right? So there's that. Then there is the time that it takes to do ketamine. You can come in at noon and be out the door by 233 o'clock. In our case, we invite people to stay for as long as they want. And then there's for some people sort of an immediate,

or not, I mean, for some people, I don't want to put expectation, there is a noticeable effect in terms of rumination or intractable sadness or whatever. whatever it is. Not for everybody. What we believe, again, is that the spaceholding is paramount. We don't like to make the claims that other people are making. That couple that I met around the corner, this lady really wanted me to tell her that it was going to fix her phobia. And she was quoting maps, which is the big second-ed-ele proponents, you know, which has done great work. But I think what happens is the message gets reduced to a simple sort of meme.

And so we're not going to say that. We're not going to say that this is absolutely going to remove pseudicidal ideation. But what we want to do, and that's different from the retreats. We want to make sure that you are, at least have someone to hold you afterward, whether that is a therapist, whether that is a 12-step community,

synagogue or a mosque or a priest or whoever, that somebody that can hold you in this journey afterwards is really super important. And our job is to be the best spaceholder as we can in the spaces. So we have great clinicians. And then we play live sound or the recorded stuff we make there that Juan McLean has made that. And we believe that still we bring that art artistic approach. And we have, we was also in our group stuff, we create art together.

But if someone was interested hypothetically and they were like, oh, I, you know, might be feeling those feelings of anxiety or maybe I have depression or maybe I occasionally have suicidal ideation. And I wanted to see if psilocybin could be beneficial for me. And they don't have the ability or access to get to a clinic, but they're able to get their hands on psilocybin. What would you say in terms of them creating a space for themselves in order to actually do healing work?

And again, this is excluding someone that wants to just like have a good time or see something cool, assuming that people are not doing it for the wrong intentions. But they have a real pain. They would like to try and see if this could be a solution for them. What would be your, you know, profile for who could, use it. Okay, cool. And then how can they use it? But first I have to say that recreation and having a good time and fucking un-psychadilics

is not the wrong reason. Some people, I mean, that's great. You know, I mean, it could be great. But okay. Okay, so you can do basic work and understand what is counterindicated, right? So sometimes it'll just, but just make sure that whatever medicine you're taking is not counterindicating for it. If you have a history of psychosis or some sort of break from reality, I would really consider not doing it or talking more with folks about it and doing some more research on that. So what would that mean? Like my aunt is schizophrenic?

So, okay, look, I'm going to get in trouble with shrinks. I don't think so. I don't think that's what it means. I mean, have you exhibited this? I mean, the thing of I'm getting into territory that I would be medically supported. That's the time I pick up the phone. I say, Doc, like this person has a history of schizophrenic. And maybe if they're in the early 20s, maybe that's something to think about because

sometimes that's the only real danger of, most often, that's if someone has sort of like a profound negative experience that lasts, which is very rare. It's usually those, my understanding is the time period when people are susceptible to what we call schizophrenia. I think for a young man, it's in the late teens and early 20s, and I think for a young woman a little later. So just to keep an eye off for that. Okay, let's put all that aside, right?

Yeah, I've had no schizophrenic episodes. Okay, all right. So the idea is to create the safest container you can. And so you would think about the same thing, a comedian would think about. You'd think about, I mean, does it seem like the walls are big, you know, high enough? Let's go, let's take your, like, the lighting should be right.

I'd go for low lighting. It'd be great to have a little eye mask so you can go inside. It depends on. If you want to just go for the introspection, then create your playlist. There's plenty of good playlist out there. I would suggest something to begin with without lyrics until the last part of it, maybe four or five, because of the idea of the lyrics, you might want to do that. But if you want to go for introspection, sort of drone music or, you know,

Brian Eno always works. There's this guy, John Hopkins, and there's a bunch of good playlists, but check them out. Make sure that the playlist, the music is so fucking important. And that's why when there's a live person on the other end,

make sure that it's not triggering. I remember a friend of mine freaked out because he did an MDMA session. He was listening to the Johns Hopkins playlist. And Wagner came on, and he freaked out because he was Jewish. like lost it. And he's like, fuck this.

So make sure there's, you know, think about that. All that's important, you're in a highly susceptible state. Then comfort. Make sure you're comfortable. Make sure that if you're a parent, that it's particularly moms, that you make sure that your kids are okay and that you don't have to worry about that. If all that stuff, as much of that as you can cover, and then, you know, protect yourself from the,

the outside world, protect yourself from the devices. Physical space should be really super comfortable so you can lie comfy or comfortable clothes. Of course, if you're doing psilocybin, just see if you know people have done the same batch. Careful of that. If you're doing MDMA, see if you can get it tested, at least test it for, you know, the very small chance that it's adulterated with fentanyl. And then if you could have somebody who is maybe saying, sitting in the room or the next room who's not going to be interfering in the process,

but is going to be there as sort of a neutral loving presence, and that's not going to try to analyze it or push you in any direction that can sort of help you walk yourself off the ledge, then that's a good thing. And then dosing, if you're not experienced, you start out on the lower side. I mean, there's all this talk about ego death. I've only exceeded ego death in the cases where people have been died. You know, so dead people have ego death. Everyone else might get an ego nap for a bit.

But like to go into a very frightening space might be complicated. So you don't believe in ego death. No, I believe that sometimes your ego goes offline. But the pursuit of it, I think, can be, yeah, I think it's good to ego go offline. For all that's happened to me. It's great. It always comes back. But I don't, the pursuit of that is the only goal or the most,

the optimal goal, I think, is damaging and silly. It's damaging because people are consuming large amounts that may not be in any way useful. The question is, once you have an ego death, like, this is the question. How do you treat people on the subway? It's the question. How do you treat yourself?

What happens when you lose your temper at someone you love or someone you hate? You know, that's the most important shit. So if it's in service to that, fine. But like going in pursuit of eagle death, It is one of the most egoic pursuits that I've ever, I've witnessed. And this, whose egos died the biggest, who's got the biggest ego death? You know, so, I would say at the first you probably don't want to do that if you're a novice.

You probably want to start out on the low end and understand that you can tritate upwards with psilocybin. And so if you're doing mushrooms, that would be like a gram? Yeah, gram, gram and a half. And then time it in an hour. You can check in and see if you want some. the more you might want a timer there so you know it's an hour because you lose track of time. Just see where you're at. If you're cool at a gram and a half, it's beautiful.

And do you recommend being outside versus inside? It depends on what kind of work do you want to do. For me, like, outside is a different experience. It's wonderful, but if it's out, it's, it's this coming in from outside. And nature has a lot to teach us, right? Clearly, or the parking lot or wherever, right? But like, inside with a mask in a controlled setting, and maybe in the country,

or maybe Brooklyn, I don't fucking know, or Cleveland, I don't know. But like, you got, that's more of it going in work, right? That's more work of, like, that with like a great soundtrack. I mean, that's what we specialize in. It's like playing that sound

and we're in tune like you were in tune. Like a good therapist is in tune. But you can't do that. The soundtrack's next best thing, but the idea is to go in. With what frequency should someone be doing this? I did psilocybin, basically this exact thing. I went outside, I got an eye mask.

I played a John Hopkins playlist. I did about a gram, gram and a half. And it was extremely productive. Genuinely like a turning point, I feel like in my adult life where I was like, oh, wow, I took my own advice. I could not have recommended it more. I really like kind of satiate a little bit of my anxiety, just like pre-show anxiety. about to go on stage and thinking like all these people hate me

and instead of thinking that I'm walking out there we're going to be so fun we're all going to have fun together and just made the shows better just genuinely it was profound and then over time kind of the the wear and tear of life and my psyche kind of weighs on me and then the anxiety kind of builds back up and the neuroses

kind of edges out some of the piece that I had and I'm like huh is this something that I should do every six months? Is this something I should do every year? Like with what frequent should I approach this, you think? I think that's really up to you. I think that... Is it possible to do too much?

If I'm doing this every weekend? Is that like, all right? Depends. There's a thing in 12 steps, the first step, right? The first step is my life has become unmanageable. If there's... And I think it's a really good metrics. If your life is unmanageable

or in some way unmanageable for the use of any drug or substance or behavior, then it's something to look at. I would say in your case it seems like you know you are just you're thinking about it and that's the most important thing you're thinking about it and you're described so it's just like

it's your life unmanaged I mean there's people that are just doing it over and over again whose you know his job is not to do it I mean I don't do it that much anymore at all but like I do a little bit with people and I don't do it that much at all anymore but what happens for me is like what happened with

the ketamine for instance is like I was doing sound experiment with John and other folks. And I was in a deep state of rumination at the time in anxiety. And I just noticed that the fucking thing got turned down. So do I go back because I really enjoyed the ketamines? That's fine too.

But can be a little dangerous on that end. But the idea is that when that voice gets too loud or when that message is so far away, because you learn something, right? Your example is perfect because that's kind of it, man. We're fucked. but we can be a little gentle in our fuckness and maybe we're learning something.

You know, that thing that you came with with, oh, we're just here to have some fun. Well, that's still in you, right? And so what I do is I just use it as needed, you know, to turn that volume down a little bit, right? Or now it's time for a fucking total catharsist, right? So like, be your guide, but use, I think that idea of unmanageability,

my cigar intake, when it's unmanageable, I need to, like, watch that, right? I need to, like, oh shit, man, smoking one of these a day. That's insane. I'm not going to do that. Right. You know, it's... Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Now, that was still aside, but I think I

might have hurt myself doing MDMA one time. I'm curious what you think of this. It's funny, because you said you don't do drugs, and then all these drugs are coming out. But go on, keep the list growing. I'm kind of on this wave where I'm like, I'll do anything once. So if like... It's a hell of a statement. Exactly, right?

So I don't consider myself like a drug user, especially like someone like you, that's, you know, a fucking junkie. Yeah. I know. So if I'm talking to someone like you, that's, you know, obviously experienced in a clinician and these types of things. I don't want to conflate our experiences. I have done drugs. I don't do drugs. So given that, I like, and this MDMA experience I had kind of turned me off of it where I was out, we were with friends, we were taking it, and we're just going to be at a party rave kind of situation, just having

a great time and then go to sleep. And that's basically what we did. The whole experience was awesome. This is the third time I had ever done in my life. I had a great time. Everyone was having fun. And I think I kind of chased a little bit. And, you know, I went to my body. I was like, yeah, you got any more? Like after like two hours. And he was like, yep, did more.

And I think I did more, one more time. Just like kind of like sand on my pinky kind of thing. And then I remember reading, people say, oh, don't do caffeine in MDMA. And I was like, oh, maybe that'll exacerbate the feeling. So I did caffeine. And I drank a Red Bull. And at this point now, and then I felt like kind of nauseous. ended up throwing up. Still was feeling

awesome though. Still obviously having the best time. And then woke up the next morning and felt generally fine and then over the next like three four, five, ten days. Yeah, it was basically like a week and a half that I felt like I'm not in my body.

I felt very disconnected. Like this conversation that we're having right now I feel very present with you. I would feel like I'm watching myself have the conversation. I would go on stage and do stand-up and I felt I was like watching myself doing stand-up. It was the most bizarre thing ever. And then that made me really anxious.

Yeah. I self-diagnosed myself as having what people would call D-PDR, like depersonization, derealization. Which again, I don't know if any of this is real. This is just me kind of going on a rant. Just reading about shit. And just feeling like, oh, I'm very disconnected. I'm not very present.

Instead of talking to you, I'm thinking about talking to you and thinking like how I look. And I'm like completely over-analizing every single situation my life and it was like crippling and I had to go on stage just performing in front of theaters of people just like with this feeling of like I don't know if I'm going to be able to remember the things I have to say yeah and then over time it kind of stopped and I like took care of myself and slept and ate cleanly and worked out a lot working out was the thing that ultimately fixed it yeah before shows I would just go run I would sprint like a 5k and just exhaust myself

to the point where I couldn't overthink and now I feel like I'm better but I'm curious How long ago was that? It's maybe like six months ago. I'm curious about your experience on stage, but I'll ask you about that later. But, okay. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because it's 2024. And it's time to talk about something important.

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So that part of it is held in a really beautiful way. Then where does that start to go away from sort of a held container? And this is, there's something beautiful about the chaos of it too. And you say you're not a drug user, but they're like, this is what they say not to do, Lou it's exactly the drug user mentality. There used to be something that would happen is like there would be like a bad bag of dope that was killing people and it used to be on the front page of like of the post or something. back when people were the daily news and you'd find out what corner was on.

You'd be people walking around with that paper under their arms looking for that bag, the dope that killed people. Anyway, because you had to be good. Feelings are so weird. So to me that's where, like, there was no holding there, we'll say, right? You were, and maybe there's a couple on what, you didn't know how much you were taking.

And then you coupled it with caffeine. Okay. Then, personal question, do you have a therapist? I saw someone for a time, but with no frequency now. Okay, so there was no one to sort of check in with about it, right, to help you contextualize it. To say, you know, Mark, that you're going to be okay, I've heard about this, or, you know, your serotonin might be fucked up. to sort of walk you through that. So you're like on your own with that,

which I don't know. I don't know physiologically. I won't claim to know. But those are the spaces of holding. Like how can you hold someone after an experience, right? And yeah, that's what I would say would happen. I don't, people who have had traumatic events with a particular drug. It's like I can never thank God, not that I would, drink,

drink, what the fuck's the name of that sweet fucking southern comfort again, right? because when I was 14, I drank it with root beer, and I threw up, and it's just like the bottle makes me sick, right? I mean, it's pretty disgusting shit, as I remember. But, like, so I can never do that again, right? So the same sort of connection with that, but that might not be the truth with MDMA. But given that it was such a significant impact,

you should be cautious about it. And you don't know how much you fucking took, yeah. No. So do you think I could try it again? Because the first two experiences were awesome. I think you could. But I think if you knew a really good practitioner somewhere. But it's illegal.

Is it? Yeah, I've never talked to someone about that. Wow. Okay, so that makes me feel better. So if I were to try it again, I wouldn't be. I would also think, like, okay, look, that happened and, like, I don't have any gigs. This is the other thing. When you're doing it in an intentional way, like, as much time afterwards.

I mean, look, going out to the club's one thing, right? But if you're as much time afterwards, the better. Spend two weeks and just be like, hey, I'm just going to have two weeks where I'm kind of chilling. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, yeah. You've ever experienced Detora? Oh, wow, man.

No, I've never done it myself, but I've no people who have. That's like a pretty gnarly thing. Yeah, I knew, yeah, a friend of mine who, you know, I don't ever call myself a shaman. I would never call myself a shaman, by the way. People call you a shaman. You know, man, yeah, but I would never, I would never call that. Maybe we're doing some of the work, but, like, you know,

there was publication that's out of public, The Village Voice, which was a big thing for a while in New York. It was on the cover of it. It was all over town. Like there's box, use boxes that were. The shaman will see you now with my picture on it. I've never lived that down. So, but anyway.

It makes sense for marketing. People like the idea of this. But I would never. What is this guy? He's like a spaceholder that administers healing. I got a podcast like tomorrow and she's like, give me a sentence. I'm like, no, you figure it out. I don't know.

I'm a fucking sentence. But what was? Oh, I was the Torah. I knew somebody who did it in a, It was a shaman who's actually, and he's trained in Shepibo and spent a lot of time in the jungle, and he did it. And, you know, people can lose their fucking mind. Yeah, I mean, that's what I've heard. Yeah, I know someone else who did it as a diet.

But this guy, he got to the point where, this is the best, he got to the point where he said that he could go into a village, who's in Peru, and he could smell what was, he would smell what was happening in a house and then visualize everything that was happening inside. what? It's bizarre. Yeah, man, fucking awesome. Yeah. I mean, crazy. Was he accurate or is this just what he thought? I think he was accurate. But, you know, I mean, look, dude, there's stuff that I don't like to talk about publicly, but, like, there's all kinds of weird shit, man.

I mean, like, when we talk about psychological suffering, I don't fucking know. Some of it's beyond that. And for me, that will call it, what will we call it? We're called supernatural. And my practice in that, I never will say what's to a client, to someone coming in. This is that this is what's happening in my internal space. Have you ever had a telepathic experience?

Oh, yeah. What's that like? This is shit I don't originally talk about in public. Because I don't want to put that. spin on it with folks. All that happens is if you have an experience that's loving and cared for, what it's like is it when it becomes, when it starts to happen more and more in your life, it doesn't, you know, I'm not a telepath like some people are, but sometimes that happens and I've seen things and witnessed things without any drugs in my body. And at this point,

especially I've been initiated into a couple different traditions that have been working in this world, it becomes pretty normal. Look, the reason I don't talk about it, and I don't come in and say, I am this as opposed to just a spaceholder, is because then I'm imposing something on your experience. I also am not going to interpret something for you. You can go to someone else for that.

My job is to create the experience. Now, there's certain things that I may see and I may do things, but my sky god is my business, right? And I think that it's aiding people. I'm pretty sure it is, But I like it when I do some sort of energetic work, particularly my private practice, and the person never asks,

they have profound experience and they never ask what it is. And that's better for me. Interesting. Because they can put any sort of interpretation on it they want. Have you ever heard of two people consuming a substance together and then seeing the same thing? Yeah. It's not exactly telepathy,

but it's some type of like third. Yeah, it's being in the same space. Yeah, absolutely. Do you have an example of maybe a friend or something that maybe you've experienced in that regard? If you spend, let's say, I'm getting older so I can't do it. Like, if you spend three days a week or the I-Bigate experience even longer

in some sort of space of that, of the unordinary space, three days a week, eight hours a day or more for 20-something years, then it's like asking like a truck driver, how many potholes have you hit? It's that frequent? Well, it's just, I don't know how freaking, there's just weird shit happening.

And I think, I don't know if the, I think even like therapists can attest to like just weird shit happening, right? I think that what, that what, and I don't want to fetishize it or make too much of it because this is my trip, right? But I think it's something that the medical community certainly is not prepared for. So there are people who are,

oh God, this is shit, there are people who are seers in a way that I'm not. So I know people who are, there's some people who are apprenticing with me right now. And this is more outside of Cardea, right? But who can see what's going on. And then there are people who like me who are just simply acting or moving

by some sort of impulse, right? And so, my God, man, Let me think, man. Like, what happened this week? I mean, you know, man. Like, you know, people, like, people will be saying, you know,

like, my mom came and I'm like, yeah, yeah, you know. I'll be talking to, like, an apprentice or somebody. Like, did, was her, do you feel her mom's present? And, like, yeah, I'm saying, shit, I shouldn't say publicly, but I'm going to fucking, like, did you feel her mom? Yeah, this is, like, heavy mom energy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Next day, you know, man, I was just with my mom, you know? I mean, it happens a lot. And is it a visual manifestation or is just a feeling of like... For me, it's a feeling, but some people have visual manifestations. Wow. The thing is not to create a cult around it, not to create a religion around it, not to create a... I used to say hierarchy, but I think the issue is a toxic hierarchy.

So just because you can hit three pointers all day long, don't make you a good person, right? Just because you have an ability to tell good jokes, right? doesn't make you a good person, you know, to make a room full of people laugh. Does it not make you. And the same thing with healers. And so we got to be really careful because people want to assign so much to you. They want to assign like a guru status to you.

And like, you know, I might have at this age, hopefully some, accumulates some wisdom. But that's also just a job description. Yeah. And so do I believe that I have some talent in that area? Yeah. But it's not what I'm telling folks. It's not what, and I, and I'm not going to bring it up later. You've met some of these like shaman bros.

Yeah, yeah. That, uh, that, uh, they kind of enjoy the, the thrill of giving people an experience and giving people a show. Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, it's a temptation for anybody, right, who anyone who's doing it, right? Like, I enjoy giving people an experience. I enjoy using sound and light, and, but I got a, look, I'm not a mute. I'm like, you know, I was a performer, man. Something like's not right with me if I want to get up in front of everyone and say, me, right?

Yeah, that's why I know something's fucked up about you, but we'll figure that out in some mushrooms, man. Yeah, I don't know what it is. Yeah, we'll find it. But to create space around you and people around you to check that and, you know, and people can make a lot more money than I've made. I mean, you know, I mean, I've been doing this a long time, and I've been doing along with a lot of folks. You know, you see the shaman bros, the shaman women who, you know, the divine feminine and, you know, not that I'm, like, discounting that there's a divine

it's interesting that there's just a whole non-binary world except when it comes to plants and, like, suddenly we can just, anyways. I don't know, I don't, like, plants got a sex and, you know, a gender, you know, like, okay. same folks are saying the same shit I don't know maybe it does I'm an old motherfucker so I don't know so like this idea of mother Gaia and things like that

yeah you know man for me man Earth feels very mother it feels very gendered man but you know and this is not dismissing or any way mocking not you know not binary folks at all I'm just saying you know to me it feels I mean people say they get a masculine it's funny that I'm trying to like

hold like feminine space like when I'm in the space people like that was really masculine I'm like well man I was trying to I was trying to tune into the most gentle feminine part For me, for me it was. Anyway, if you're not doing like a ton of work on yourself, you're going to really fuck up. And I'm not saying I haven't fucked up in this world. But I've always had people checking me. And I've, you know, I was in 12th step for years.

That was really a good way to check. I've always had elders in my life, right? People who are in shamanistic traditions and different healing traditions, always had that. Always been in touch with therapists, call them up, hey, man, like, this is what's coming up for me. If you're out there and you've got the magic powder and you're giving it out, like, you become, you know, you become Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, right? Or like, whatever, you become the guru. And, yeah, I mean, if someone is super formulaic with you, fuck them.

You know, if they know the answer, fuck them. Dalai Lama don't know the fucking answer. Neither is the fucking Pope, man. Sorry, they don't. They got a answer. They got some wisdom. I kind of like this Pope, right? But like, well, compared to what, right?

But like, but they, they don't. They don't. And so you want someone who might not know the answer and is willing to say, I don't know. Or let's discover this together. But that takes, to do this work, it takes a lot of checking in with yourself. Do you still keep in touch with your sponsor? I keep in touch with all kinds of 12-step people. My sponsors, yeah, some of them, yeah, yeah.

Hmm. Yeah. And have you sponsored people? Yeah, in the past. I haven't been in a substance 12-step-program. I co-founded, I'm not supposed to say this publicly, but whatever. A 12-step-12 tradition fellowship called psychedelics in recovery. But, yeah.

Dude, that, that is the, look, I don't believe in a disease model. So there's a problem there. Hmm, yeah. I've heard people say that, you know, addiction or alcoholism is a disease. Yeah, I understand. I mean, I understand why they say that. And I understand the utility of saying that, but I also see the downside.

I mean, it's the same thing that happened in harm reduction and happened in psychedelics as we, they decided to medicalize it as a way of making it more available. Yeah, normalized and bringing proof into it. And then it just takes over. So what would be an alternative to the disease model? I think you have a syndrome. You have a, you know, I like, there's the doctor's opinion,

and my understanding of it, which is in AA book, is he describes it as an allergy, but he's just using metaphor. It's the same problem with DSM diagnoses, right? These are essentially metaphors that become fucking medicine and science, and it's not science. DSM is not science. it's a book of metaphor that carries the weight of not only science but law.

And so the same thing happens with 12 steps. You can be sentenced in some states still to 12-step fellowship, which is an antithesis of the 12th traditions, which is like it's voluntary. So, you know, I mean, we got to be careful. You know, we're using medicine in this today's psychiatry as the ultimate authority. but 101 anarchism says, you know,

Noam Chomsky says, authority is not self-justifying. So if you, you know, Norm Chomsky uses the example of, he has no right, no authority to smack his, to grab his four-year-old granddaughter, right?

But if that child is going into the street, he has the authority to grab her, snatch your little ass up and get her out of the street, right? We got to look at psychiatry, which is being used to legitimize. And also if you look at the work of Robert Whitaker, who has done extensive research on the way psychiatric drugs are researched, we can see that their authority is not justified. They don't have a great track record as scientists. I mean, the industry in itself.

I mean, they've just gone back on brain disease in chemical imbalance. the brains like years ago, but the word hasn't gotten out. I mean, what's his name, Insel, the guy who's former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, I think? I mean, he wrote a whole book about like, sorry, we're wrong. You know, so, I mean, again, they're looking, so they're looking for the antibiotic for human suffering. And so they use this metaphor, but it takes over everything. And they haven't done a good job. That's not to say medicines and psychiatry hasn't helped people, but it's not the sort of exact science at all.

And if you look at what they're saying now about SSRIs and stuff compared to placebos, I mean, they don't stack up very well. They stack up okay. I mean, look, it helps some people. And I think the same thing is true as psychedelics. It's being the same industries, the same institutions. I'm not saying the same people, but let's just say the same ethos and the same disciplines are researching it. And with the same metrics and looking for the same type of outcomes, I think what's the most interesting and the most powerful is placebo, which is space, which is what you do, which is what I do. Placebo is where it's at.

Like, placebo is what everything's measured against. So it's just a placebo. Wait a minute. This is, wait a minute, it's the placebo. let's go in there. Because if it was just the jokes, if it was just the drugs, then it doesn't matter if the ceiling's high or low

or the lights are this way or that way. It's just the jokes. Scientifically, it's been measured that, you know, Mark, you know, hit it this many times. Well, why didn't it work? It worked in Oklahoma, but it didn't work in Newark. Like, what happened, right?

It's the same thing. And there are good psychopharmacologists. I'm not saying. It's so weird. I have so many psychophilicologists. friends now. It's kind of crazy. And what they do, what it seems to me

they're doing is there's an art to it. They say, okay, here's my toolbox and maybe this could help this person or not help this person, but mostly psychiatrists don't have time with people, like whoever prescribed your brother in front of the 7-Eleven, and it's all about time.

They have to get it out, get it move, and keep it moving. It's all about time. It's all about like the nuance of we're so complicated. We have to be that caring, noticing that, same way that you are as an artist. A good therapist, a good healer is an artist who's improvising. This makes more sense. I understand your perspective, I think, more fully, that when you can't look at any of these individual things as cure-alls and panaceas and silver bullets.

And simultaneously we need to reject the people that preach these things as the cure, whether it's, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy is the cure for everyone. And, you know, pharmaceuticals is the cure for everyone. SSRIs is the cure for depression. Psychedelics is the cure for whatever anxiety you're feeling. All of these things individually are tools, you know, in this larger tool belt that thoughtful and artistic healers can sort of administer to give different people different treatment.

Right. And that and that and the other end of it, it could be weapons that can be used for for oppression and have been used and psychiatry has been used and the use of many drugs have been used as in tools of war. And so we have to be careful about that. The stigmatization of folks, there's literally, I forget the name it,

there was a diagnosis for runaway slaves. lives. You know, there's, there's, and that continues, like, on. I mean, there's a diagnosis called authority, what is it, authority defiance disorder, but there's a guy, Peter Levina's great psychologist, calls himself a, you should get him, man, he's fucking awesome, man. He, he, he calls himself a dissident psychiatrist, psychologist. He says, interesting that there's a defiant disorder defiance, what is it, authority defiance disorder. It's a disorder, but there's no compliance disorder. Interesting, right?

There seems there should be a compliance disorder. This person that complies with everything. It's so agreeable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They always do whatever you have. We're apologizing for everything. And so, you know, these things, you know, those diagnosis is the diagnosis for a woman is different for a man.

For a poor person is different for a person with resources. For a black person, it's different from a white person. So where's the science in that? And so we have to understand that these things can be really used for tools of oppression. And in order for them to be used, I also believe that we can use these medicines as a way to support change. I mean, one of the things we're doing, we have a, I should talk about this, where, you know, my, I worked in underground and worked for years. And I worked in drop-in centers doing holistic work in the harm reduction world for years. And what I started to notice was that like the people who do the work who are, you know, reversing overdoses, the people who are driving ambulances, the people who are working with autistic kids, right?

The people who are working with formerly incarcerated people, they are fucking burnt and they're fried. And the people who are working on climate change or working for peace or working for, you know, a decent living. They're fucking fried. And so what we decided to do is we've created this further fund, which gives, the spaceholders, the people, we started out with harm reduction workers, people working in the, what we saw is the veterans of the war on drugs. So veterans who are just burnt from working in that field, not only just to recover from burnout, but from the trauma that they've experienced of watching people die on a regular basis or the trauma that the experience of working with

in a public school system with autistic kids where they don't have the resources. So we're starting to expand it. We worked with, we've got 70 people going through the process. right now. We've done hundreds of ketamine sessions. We started to work with climate change activists. And I believe that we could use these medicines as a way to support folks who are making change and as a catalyst for organizing change as well. Wow. And so that's the further fun we're doing with Carda. It's supposed to be a New York Times article that I thought I could bring you by now, but the motherfucker ain't come out yet. Well, Demetri, this is awesome, bro. I'm genuinely impressed and grateful for the work that you did. And yeah, I think that it's cool that you've dedicated your life to helping so many people.

And for being this therapeutic artist that uses all these tools of your disposal to truly, you know, helping people going through, you know, mental health crisis, addiction, or even just trying to learn about themselves more. I think that's genuinely awesome. And, yeah, I'm really grateful that you took time today to share this with me and explain the work that you do. Thanks, man. It's been really great. Yeah.

It's been really easy, too. It's been really great, man. This is awesome, brother. I really appreciate it. Yeah, you should definitely, if you have a YouTube channel, comment here, and then link everything that people can see, and then I'll pin it. Okay. I got the worst, I mean, bludgeoning YouTube, man.

I fucking have. Yeah, okay, the answer is yes. Let's do it, and then we'll have all the links, and that way you can find you. My website I need to fix, but the Cardea website too and all that kind of stuff, absolutely. Amazing. Yeah. Thank you. That was fucking awesome.

Let's do this again, man. Yeah, yeah.