Digital Social Hour - Nico Lagan On Taking Ayahuasca, Curing PTSD & Trauma & Being Raised By A Single Mother | DSH #141

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

On today's episode of Digital Social Hour, I sit down with Nico Lagan and discussed the power of psychedelics, growing up without a father figure and his opinion on the public education system. BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] APPLY TO BE ON THE POD: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH HelloFresh: https://www.hellofresh.com/50dsh AG1: https://www.drinkAG1.com/DSH Hostage Tape: https://hostagetape.com/DSH LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Because you're a. Like at the end of the day, if you look at your track record, you're a. Right. You know, I say this all the time. If your life sucks, chances are it's your fault. Mm. So do you believe everyone has good and evil in them?

100%. Because what about people like MrBeast? Everybody has the possibility of being evil. You need to be surrounded by people that are like-minded, that want the same thing as I do. So if I'm not learning from you, why the are we around? Wow.

Welcome back to the Digital Social Hour, guys. I'm your host, Sean Kelly, here with an amazing guest today, Nico Lagan. What's going on, man? What's going on, man? I'm excited because I'm on a spiritual journey and you seem like the guy to talk to about it. Yeah, I think so. You know, one of the things I don't talk too often about, but it's the fact that I spent about three years in the woods. My girlfriend and I left Canada about nine months ago.

We've been traveling the U.S. in an RV, just not knowing where we're going. I'm just following my, you know, I used to call it instincts, but I call it faith now. I have faith that I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. Wow. But three years ago, about six years ago, I bought a property in the middle of nowhere because something inside me told me I'd need it one day. And I ended up spending

three years there. A year and a half to two years of them was by myself with my two dogs. Wow. So if you want to explore your mind,

this is the way to go. Like you look at literature from Buddhism, from the Bible from any philosophy out there there are heroes I've always spent time by themselves to fight themselves you know if you look at most people look at religion and they're like oh Satan yeah Satan didn't exist Satan is you 50 of you is of you is good. 50% of you isn't. Right. But you need to face it. We're so distracted today by phones, television, social media,

everything. Everything's a distraction. We never take the time to put ourselves in a situation where we're just ourselves with ourselves. It is the scariest thing you can do when you think about it isolate yourself spend time with yourself yeah people go crazy in jail when they go to iso i think it's too confined but the way you did it was more open and good explore i don't think it matters in oh really no no because it's how much at peace are you with yourself because you're like at the end of the day if you look at your track record like if i looked at my track record i'm i've hurt a lot of people there's a lot of

things that i've done that were selfish that were my responsibility admitting that to yourself sucks most people don't want to look in the mirror and say you know what it's your right you know i say this all the time to people that if your life sucks chances are it's your right you know i say this all the time to people if your life sucks chances are it's so it starts from there right look at all the issues that we're having today name it it starts from one thing self-responsibility we do not accept our role of responsibility in what we're doing that's so true i mean even i struggle with it but everybody does people don't want to own up their mistakes no because it it makes you look weird it makes you look weak yeah but yet at the same time what we fail to realize is if i have the power to up my life i have the power to make it exceptional because it's my it's it's on me i choose to have faith in whatever i want i choose to say i can do this i can't

i can continue being an soul because it's too hard to confront it the choice is yours right but the consequences are yours as well right that's your responsibility as well double-edged sword so do you believe everyone has good and evil in them 100 because what about people like mr beast just great guy on social media, you know? Everybody has the possibility of being evil. Everybody does. The possibility is different. No, but it's there.

It is there. Because if, you know, they say money corrupts. To me, money doesn't corrupt. Money exposes who you are the more money you have the less restrictions you have on what you can do but it's already there what you were prior to money is already there it's just now you're in a situation where you can actually live it you don't have to you don't have restrictions as to what you can and cannot do but if you look at a guy like dr jordan peterson says that all the time if you need to be

a monster as a man i am a monster i am capable of vicious vicious things but as a man it is my goal it is my duty to control it it is my duty to be tempered it is my duty to be calm but if you walk into my house where my kids are, where my wife is, we're going to have a problem. Right. And there's no, at this point you need to be controlled. Because if you look at what's going on right now is men do not control their emotions. They let their emotions drive them and they do stupid things all the time. Because they're, they're easily triggered.

They're easily controlled. They see, you can hurt people's feeling with words nowadays. You could type it these days. You don't even need to say it. You're absolutely right. But it's all about self-control. But self-control starts with self-understanding. You have to know yourself.

This is the first step is look at any issues that you're ever going to have. You have to first admit that you're the problem. As soon as you admit that you're a problem, now you can start and sit down and say, okay, I'm a problem. I've done a lot of stupid stuff. Maybe for my own conscious, I need to apologize to people. Maybe it's time for me to acknowledge that I'm a. And then what do you do? You can't, you can't just live in the past

because that's another thing. Look at most people. Most people are anxious about the future or they're stressed. They've never made peace with their past. But what's the first step? Always admit that you're a problem. What do you do next? This is the fun part.

What you get to do after is where change happens but the first step is always the same how do i go from okay i was admit yourself that's the first step and then what do you do next yeah this is why spending time alone is the best so what age were you when you realized all of this you know i've had the chance to like you were talking about before we started recording i i did not have a man in my life to teach me this right like my dad left when i was 14 and i can count on one hand the amount of time i saw him before he died yeah so i had to it's not one time and it was i was enlightened like i wasn't under a bodhi tree like buddha and somehow all the answers came to me it's just piece of peace it's just you know i don't know what you

do but when i tend to meet people like you and i met today for the first time later on when we're done this i'm going to be by myself i'm going to sit down and I'm going to say, okay, what did Sean teach me today? What was I supposed to learn today? Is it me that was supposed to teach him something? Maybe it's both. Maybe I'm supposed to learn something. Like what's his role in my life? Why am I here right now?

But this, if you start looking at your whole life like that, it's illuminating because you start paying attention to every single thing that comes around you and this again starts from admitting that you're a problem what can i do to change it be more self-aware when you start being more self-aware you start being aware of what goes on around you you start paying attention to the people that are around you so to answer your question it's 20 years it's really i you know I've done a lot of stupid when I was younger. When my dad left, I started selling drugs.

I became an addict. I did all the wrong things because I was looking for a father figure. I was looking in all the wrong places for somebody to help me. And back then I was a big fan of rap, big fan of hip hop. Like I listened to Tupac and Wu-Tang. So to me, guys made, sold drugs, made money, had women. They were real men. Right.

So that's what I went to. But one day I realized it's b****. Those are not, it's not because you make money that you're a real man. So in my 20s, I went back to school. I studied. And then over the years, if you start paying attention to people that are around you you meet people that are there for a reason you you you know there's certain people and I'm sure this is true for you there's people you've met in your life that gave you a

chance when nobody else would they saw something in you that nobody else did probably you didn't even know was there yeah for sure but then you're like oh when you start talking when you start thinking about it okay hold on why did he give me a chance what did he see that i didn't see so i can name you probably 10 guys that did that for me i don't know if lucky or blessed is the right term whatever you choose to to call it but it's just a matter of paying attention but it's something that never stops this is a life like it's like temperance. The hardest thing you can learn is to be tempered.

I'll never be tempered. I'll always try. I'll always try every day to be better than I was yesterday, but self-control is a hard thing to master. Yeah, I like that. They say you can control luck too by just putting yourself in the right situations. You can control as much as possible. Right. To a certain extent you can control luck too by just putting yourself in the right situations you can control as much

as possible right to a certain extent you can but can you control the fact that your father wasn't there can you control the fact that you're gonna get hit by a car if you walk out of your studio not that i'm not here because this is not what I'm saying at all. But, you know, there's things you control. There's things you control, others you don't. Yeah. But you can put the odds in your favor if you want. Yeah. So I know you're big into psychedelics.

You've done mushrooms. You've done ayahuasca. What have you learned from these experiences? Wow, that is a loaded question. That is really a loaded question because those, those, you know, if I started playing around with psychedelics when I was 14 years old, like I was doing LSD, I was 15 years old. Yeah. But I was doing it in a way where it was for part, it was for like a party trip. Right. People to do that we'd chill we'd watch movies but never was

there the intent when you're going into it because i'm a big fan of mushroom i don't i don't talk about this very often i'm super happy to talk about it though but it's not a subject that comes up very often but it is all about intent what are are your goals with this? Because those can be life-changing experiences. I've done ayahuasca in Peru, in the Amazon. I've done ayahuasca in Canada with a friend of mine. And you know what? I liked it in Montreal better than I did in Peru. Really?

Yeah. Why? Because the guy that's there, Matthew, that's all he does. He's been doing it. He spent more than 10 years in Brazil, and he has a way with people. He's just, there is something about him. You see him for the first time.

The first time I saw him, I'm like, man, you look like Jesus. And that's exactly what he looks like, but he has the same temperament of it. But again, it's all about your intent. What are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish because psilocybin mushrooms is great for ptsd if you have veterans that have massive ptsd case that cannot be cured it is the only way right now that we know how to really cure ptsd and it's one as per john hopkins university it's one or two sessions it's gone your ptsd is gone yeah because it allows one thing that most people

don't understand is ptsd hijacks your prefrontal cortex so all your logical side of you is shut down so all you do is go through the experience that traumatized you so you never get to face it for what it is all you're doing it's like a a loop. You're just looping, reliving it, reliving it, reliving it, reliving it. Psilocybin allows you to face it for what it is. I can guarantee you that four hours is going to suck. It's going to f***ing suck. Because for the first time since you were traumatized, you're finally able to see it for what it is. But they're capable of fixing PTSD within one or two sessions. Crazy. And that's very cheap too. Oh yeah. Why do you think it's not being pushed by pharmaceutical companies?

Because mushroom costs almost nothing to grow. And your one pill, you're literally talking about probably a heroic dose, so maximum five gram. But I saw the pills, they're super tiny. So there's no way there's five gram in there. It's probably- Probably a micro dose. It's probably bigger than a microdose it's probably like a gram and a half like a gram gram and a half you're not gonna like hallucinate on that but they're pretty strong

oh they are what i gather i'd love to try it though i'd love but i don't have ptsd so they wouldn't take me in their study right i like to do that by myself yeah i did it first time i did it was in amsterdam Changed my life. What happened? Took an eighth. So it's legal there. You walk in the store, they're in binders. You go to the page you want.

I said, I want the strongest one. Ate an eighth. Walked for eight hours straight, just smiling the whole time. Yeah. It was amazing. Life-changing moment. And from there, now I just microdose. I don't do full trips anymore, but mushrooms in general have changed my life. So the microdosing part, obviously mind clarity.

Clarity, focus, new ideas. I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs should be on it, honestly. It's very good. And it's dirt cheap too. Super cheap. But the heroic dose, like the 3.5 gram to 5 gram, this to me is where it's at. Really? Oh, yeah.

So you're the other way. You like the… I like microdose. I've done my own pills for years. Yeah. Like I've been doing them for a long time. It's just that you get used to how you feel microdosing. It just becomes your new normal.

But when you do a heroic dose, there's no way for you to get used to it yeah every single time i've done it i i always do some type of tea with it yeah as soon as i swallow it i'm like i'm what the in your experience every time no but i regret it every time i swallow it i'm like oh mother again yeah because there's no taking it back you can't take it back you just have to go with it but so to be honest with you, I've never told this to anyone, but I'm scared to do a hero dose again. As you should be. I'm scared. Every single, are you kidding me? And like, people think I'm like, no, my friends are like, yo, why are you like that? But it's like, I don't know if I could do it, man. But it's supposed to be like that. Yeah. You know, again, it depends on your intentions my intentions when it comes

to psychedelics like ayahuasca or mushroom i want to have somewhat of a revelation right i don't do them just to do them i do them when i feel the need i'm feeling the need right now oh yeah like recently i've been starting to i in a slump no no no is i have questions i met i meditate on i'm a big meditator i meditate every day but i meditate on ayahuasca i isolate myself wow like normally ayahuasca is a group thing they play music it's all about the people that are there and you're feeding off of other people's energy i always escape i'll spend time there but then i always escape by myself to just meditate wow because to me it opens i do mushroom and ayahuasca in order to help my meditation practice because i've i don't know if you meditate but uh i do but i wish

i did it more so just do it i know it's an excuse for real yeah I wish I did it daily you should because that is life-changing yeah it's you know the the thing is is it allows you to connect with parts of you or parts that are not yours in a way that's extremely personal to you like it doesn't matter to anybody else like I'm a big fan of Carl Jung and if you look at a lot of the things that he was talking about later in age because he wasn't worried about how it would sound to other psychologists and other psychiatrists but he's experienced his book the red book by call young is he speaks about all of his intimate i don't know if relationship is the right term, but what he's experienced under meditation.

Some guys are just incredible. Like some guys are capable of achieving the state that I can achieve on magic mushroom naturally. Wow. Like if you look at a Carl Jung, if you look at a Nikola Tesla, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant individuals, but they talk about what they encounter when they're just meditating by themselves.

It's just, They're so open. Their subconscious mind is so accessible to them that it's incredible what they're capable of doing. But this is, to me, what it allows to do. If you have PTSD, great to help you heal PTSD. If you have problems that you need to deal with that you're not capable of facing by yourself, a trip of magic mushroom or ayahuasca won't give you a choice.

Once you hit that road, you're screwed. There's four hours that don't belong to you anymore. Whatever happens, happens. And you just ride the wave because you can't fight it. It's only going to get worse. So you might as well just accept what comes and try to make sense of it when you reintegrate all of that in your regular life. But this is what the intent of those ceremonies are.

If you look at the guy in Canada that does it, he asks you to change your diet for 10 days to 14 days prior to it. So no more social media, no more movies. Like remove, he wants you to go basically vegetarian to remove everything he wants to shock your body no caffeine no nothing wow and then when you get there you spend three days there and then you can go but he wants to prime your body so that there's nothing that's going to interfere with the medicine but also your mind because what you're looking at, what you're reading, what you're watching on TV will impact your trip.

So the more time you spend with no distraction, the more time you spend with yourself thinking about what really matters to you. Because that goes back to solitude, as we were talking earlier. To me, they go hand in hand. You need to get to know yourself and ayahuasca and magic mushroom will force you to you don't have a choice yeah so it should be scary that's intense man i can't imagine going without electronics for two weeks is he saying that you have to go without i would imagine that most people would not do it.

But you need to shorten what you're doing or be at least, you know, be conscious about what you're watching. But this goes all the time. You should be conscious about the type of material that you consume every day because it will impact you at the end of the day. I'm very conscious, but my whole life, most of it, I wasn't.

I was just a slave to social media. I was just absorbing everything i was talking to people that were doing worse than me and it was just yeah i look back and i'm like wow i was absorbing all that information and that's why i was so stagnant i think for until i was 24 and then i elevated my circle you know how old are you now i'm 26 oh you're still young yeah good for you but it took me a while to realize that it was really holding me back, what I was putting into my brain. So I implore people watching this to really take a look at what you're consuming on a daily basis. But it's everything.

Yeah. It's as important what you're, how you treat your, you know, we're a society that's over-specialized. We see everything in silos. Like we don't step back anymore and have jack of all trades. I'm a jack of all trades. I know about pretty much everything out there. I'm not a specialist about it, but I've learned to step back and look at it for what it is. And there is a connection between how you treat your body, how you treat your mind, and your spirituality. What you're, call it soul, call it spirit, however you want to call it. There is an

interconnection between your body and your mind through your spirit. But we don't see it for what it is anymore. We think the body has nothing to do with your mind, has nothing to do with your spirit. Yet they're all interconnected. But we forget this. We forget that, you know, your inner circle, show me your five closest friend and I'll show you exactly what you're going to become. I can easily tell you if you hang out with those five people what's going to happen to you wow it's a direct translation i agree yeah and most people don't realize that no and you know it's unfortunate because the so right now i've been on the road for nine months i don't have time for a lot of things except the business that i'm running and spending time with

my girlfriend this is almost all the time that i have. There's two guys that I deal with on not a daily base, obviously, but every week we tend to have a conversation. But then outside of that, there's nobody else. I don't have time for it. I know what I'm doing. And in order to get there, I need to be surrounded by people that are like-minded, that want the same thing as I do. So if I'm not learning from you, why the f*** are you around? Wow. No, but seriously, I don't want to be mediocre. I want to be great.

Right. So you won't be friends with someone if you don't think you can learn from them. Unless they have something to learn from me. Because it's a give and take. Like any relationship, you're responsible for 50% of it. Like between you and I, for example, our relationship, you're responsible for 50 and responsible for 50 right but it's supposed to be an exchange you're not supposed to be sucking everything dry out of me and vice versa yeah but if you're not on the intent to be great why why are we hanging out why

the what's your most simple what is the most valuable thing that you possess? What'd you say? What's the most valuable thing you possess as a man? As a man, is it your brain? No, time. Time. That's the only resource that you possess

that you have no idea how much of it you actually possess. So it has no price. It is invaluable. And who you choose to spend time with is the greatest gift you can give. Like to me, the biggest compliment I can give you is spend time with you. Wow. Because I understand how important my time is. The time I'm spending with you, I'll never get it back.

I can't spend it with anybody else because I'm spending it with you. So it's a choice. You need to look at yourself like you're actually valuable. But again, this goes back to what we were talking at the beginning. It's a lack of self-responsibility because as soon as you're responsible for your actions, you start realizing that you're responsible for a lot of value. because there's three things in life you control you control your emotions you control your actions and you control your reactions that's it and arguably reaction and actions could be the same but i like to separate them because reactions are hard to control right those are your subconscious mind is just acting like you're not even thinking you're just doing but the point is that you don't control

much but what you control is powerful and your inner circle it it's it's on you 100 on you it's your choice yeah but what sucks though is you know and i think that's a hard part and i'm sure you well you tell me afterwards but it's not because you choose not to hang out with your friends that you were very good friend in high school or in college with but they're necessary or that you're they just don't serve a purpose anymore like how many people keep friends around because they're cool to hang out with yeah but every single time that you hang out with them all you do is let's say watch football and drink alcohol yeah how's that contributing to your why what you want to accomplish at the end of the day i have a goal i have a purpose here but most guys don't have purpose they don't know what their purpose is they just around

do a nine to five and next thing you know they're 50 years old i'm never going to be that guy horrible yeah but i can't imagine that look at people around you this is a lot but this is it's not a lot it's the extreme majority. You're the exception. Right. A guy like you at 26 years old thinking the way you do is incredible. I did not think like you when I was 26 years old. Yeah.

Like, good for you. And to be honest, I got bullied for it, like, in school. Like, I used to mention lucid dreaming. I used to mention astral projection. And people bullied it. So why do you think people don't teach spirituality in the mainstream so why do you think people don't teach spirituality in the mainstream why do you think they don't want that because unfortunately spirituality is attached with religion and so look in the united states look at canada look at

north america as a whole i'm a christian i got baptized two weeks ago so i just got tattooed to remind me but my whole life i was kind of shown that religion wasn't necessarily good like there's a dogma attached to religion and any dogma out there is dangerous right if you believe what's written on your paper and you're not allowed to question it it's dangerous whatever it is whatever it is you should be allowed to you should feel the need to question it and to try to make sense for it for yourself like try to figure out what it means to you right does it make sense does it not make sense you're allowed to question it and unfortunately spirituality now is very attached or it's been attached to religion forever we associate spirituality with Christianity because it is the most common religion here like our whole

system of law is based on the ten commandments when you look at it yeah but at the same time this is something that Christians won't like but I believe that Jesus Christ was very aligned with Buddhists like if you look at the teaching of jesus christ that came 500 years after buddha they're very similar wow so again is spirituality is just supposed to be a connection between you and the whole however you want to call the whole you call it god call it nature call it the universe i call it god because that's what i choose to call it but at the end of the day it is a connection between you and something greater than yourself this is what spirituality is is that religious i guess right but that's my point like automatically we hear spirituality we're like religion yeah because we're attached to dogma and if you want to push it even more

there's a lot of we're done in the name of god that is not right right there's a lot of violence that was done but take it for what it is everybody that i know that does magic mushroom that does ayahuasca extremely spiritual very and they're always trying to further their boundary of what spirituality is to them and this is exactly why i do it i have met God on ayahuasca. Really? Yeah. Whoa. I'm not scared of the dying. I've been there before. Wow. So, but, but this is the type of hope if you're ready for this, but you have to understand that your first trips are going to suck because you have a lot of deal with internally. And I know that's why you're scared. Yeah. It's been eight years. There's a lot of that I haven't addressed. And it's the best way to do it. That's like a crash course on how

much of an it would probably be therapy for six months no no i don't think so i think that if you have a good person that helps you reintegrate it because this is one of the biggest problem i see too is you can do a retreat but once you're gone you're left with those new everything you experienced over because sometimes you'll do it two three times in a weekend sometimes people do it twice a day for a full week oh yeah it's crazy how you can push it but you're supposed to reintegrate that in new information and see how okay what does that mean yeah like i still today have revelations from trip that i've done two years ago wow so sometimes you don't get the answer.

You might get the answer, but you might not get the answer for an extremely long time. So you're just puzzling over this. So that's why it's good. Again, having good people around you. Yeah. Cause it is, it has the opportunity to be extremely life-changing. Absolutely. Man, Nico, I could talk to you for hours. Um, do you have any closing thoughts and where people can find you? Closing thoughts. I I'll never shut up. I always. Do you have any closing thoughts on where people can find you? Closing thoughts? I'll never shut up. I always have a closing thought.

But yeah, people can find me on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, at RealNikoLagan. Love it. Thanks for watching, guys. Digital Social Hour. See you next time.