Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Adam Strauss

Episode Date: April 9, 2017

Duncan talks about the return of his depression and is joined by comedian and Psychonaut Adam Strauss who bravely shares the tale of his recent journey to Peru to drink of the vine of the little death, Ayahuasca.

Get out and do something new this week at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. On view now. See this major retrospective from the internationally renowned Pennsylvania photographer Judith Joy Ross. I use an 8x10 new camera wooden box with a lens on it. Explore this amazing body of work as she shares her soulful, timeless portrait of everyday Pennsylvanians. The PMA. See shop eat open late every Friday. Tickets on sale now at philamuseum.org. Hello, my sweet, beautiful friends. It is ID Trussell and you are listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast. Spring has come to New York at last and I, my friends, am depressed, which sucks. If you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time,

you know that I struggle with depression. Hasn't happened in a lot, hasn't happened in a while for me. But I'm definitely in a nice little patch of depression right now. Depression is a creepy thing. It's creepy for a lot of different reasons. One of the reasons it's a creepy thing is because depression, it kind of has its own personality. And one of the first things it wants you to do is to keep, is to just not, is to be secretive, secretive about it. It's the only form of fucking sick. It's one of the only forms of sickness where you're embarrassed by it. Like, if I get the flu, if I got a cold, whatever, if I broke my leg, it's not like I'm gonna be like, oh, I better hide the fact that I have the flu from the world. I don't want people to judge me for

it. But depression, good Christ, man. That's one of the things it does is like, don't tell anybody, put on the fucking smile, everything's fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. And that sucks, you know, because you have to like lie to the world. You have to pretend you haven't been taking depression naps. And man, let me tell you the difference between a depression nap and a healthy life nap. Oh, God, it's such a vast gulf in between those two forms of nap, the depression nap, sticky, vertiginous, just fevery, you kind of like, you don't even really sleep, you just sort of go into this like state of super numbness. And then you kind of come out of it, like, even more tired. So that's a shitty thing that I've been doing. And then this blurry kind of like ignoring like

shit that is obviously needs to be, you know, dealt with in your life, that's part of it, it wants you to ignore everything. It wants you to cast aside all your responsibilities, forget about any, anything at all and just sort of sink into a quicksand pit of self loathing and anger and just all the like miserable things that if you're someone out there who is depressed or has dealt with this fucking rotten goddamn state of consciousness, you know what I'm talking about? Depression is the God of procrastination. Depression will tell you to put off letting people know that you feel depressed. Depression will tell you to put off going to the gym. Depression will tell you to put off doing those things on your list that you know that you need

to accomplish. It'll tell you to put off every single thing until you don't feel quite so depressed. But the problem is, the more you put things off, the more depressed you become. And so this creates a slippery, spirally slope that the longer you procrastinate in the ridiculous hope that the procrastination in some way or another is going to help the depression, the more powerful the fucking depression becomes. It's demonic. So that's what this is. I'm just letting everybody know who listens to this show. I feel a little depressed right now. And that makes me feel a little better because I don't feel like I'm deceiving you guys. And then I'll report in more about it, or maybe I won't. I don't know, but just talking about it feels good.

There's other folks out there depressed. Feel free to say hi. Maybe we can start a club. But the main thing is, here's what I'm going to do. That's it. I want to do articulate, see, I'm all foggy and shit. It's really annoying. I want to articulate what I'm going to do. You know, that's a, that's part of magic. That's part of therapy. So here's what I'm going to do. Even though I feel right now, like a dusty, blind cave bat, a hairy cave bat, a hairy, pale, blind cave bat, I'm going to drag my cave bat ass out of my apartment and I'm going to go work out. Even if on the treadmill, I look like the fucking hunchback of Notre Dame or something that just climbed out of a sewer and is running on that fucking treadmill. I'm going to do it.

I don't want to do it. Do you know what I want to do? I want to order fucking grub hub and I want to lay on the couch or lay in my bed, fall asleep after I eat, maybe some porn in there somewhere. That's the game. The depression wants me to play with the universe, but I'm going to go to the gym. I'm not going to play that game and I'll tell you what's going to happen after I run in that stupid treadmill. I don't really think it's stupid. That's the depression. Everything's stupid. The other thing that happens when you have depression is everything that you talk about is stupid. You just accidentally use those words for everything. God, this fucking stupid thing. I got to do a stupid email, stupid fuck. Everything becomes dumb. I'm going to watch my language.

I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to run on the treadmill and I bet I'm going to feel better right away. Then after that, do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to come home and I'm going to stand underneath a Wim Hof level cold shower. That's the third thing I'm going to do. Then I'm going to take care of all this other shit I've been putting off. That's what I'm going to do. My depression doesn't like it. I can already feel myself making excuses, but rather than going back and trying to re-record this thing to make it sound more nuanced or to sound like less of a confessionalist, because I know that this is not a very fashionable proclamation, and I really would much rather be announcing to you that I discovered some new system of meditation or

exercise or magic that had reversed my depression and that I felt fucking great, but that's not where I'm at right now. Possibly by doing this, maybe I'll be able to report in and I'll be feeling a little better. I don't know. I'm not going to always come back on every episode moaning about my depression, by the way, so don't worry. It's important to announce it. I feel like if I announce it, maybe that gives some of you permission to announce it, so you don't have to keep hiding this ridiculous form of mental illness, which is so ridiculous. It's ridiculous that you are afraid to say when you're feeling bad to the world that this thing doesn't want you to say that. It's ridiculous. It's very similar to when you're getting conned. I don't know if you guys

have ever been conned before, but when you get conned by a con artist, you know you're getting conned because there's certain things you can't talk about around the con artist. If you've ever been to Grateful Dead parking lot, you know what I'm talking about. At least this happened to me. I got conned for like a day or two by this professional con artist, and it was amazing the tricks that were being played on us as a group and how easy it is to succumb to that con and depression as a con artist because depression does all the things a con artist does. It wants you to lie to the world and pretend everything's fine. It wants you to pretend that it's okay, like it's an okay state of consciousness to be in. It's totally normal to take two naps in the

afternoon and sleep till one o'clock. Totally normal. I'm just chilling, man. Can I enjoy life? Can I just enjoy life? God, mind, really? You're going to bother me about this? I'm just enjoying my life, man. This is what animals do, dogs. Animals sleep all the time. No. No. Depression. That is not normal. That is depression. So that's the trick it plays. And you got to just tell people you're feeling woozy because that helps. I already feel fractionally better right now. And I know as soon as I go to the gym, I'm going to feel that much better. And look, I'm not saying there's a quick fix to depression. There's a reason people like us get depressed. There's all kinds of external variables in our environment that we have to deal with.

You might need therapy. I might need to go back to a therapist. I love therapy, by the way. It's another thing I put off getting. You got to deal with it. That's the point. But the first step, open up about it. Tell people. Second step that has worked for me in the past. Go exercise. Go outside. Go into the world. Get sun on your face. Third step, drink a fuck ton of water. Take cold showers. All these ridiculous things that essentially whatever your depression tells you to do, do the opposite. When it wants you to nap, do push ups. When it wants you to keep it a secret, call someone that you love and tell them that you're not feeling that great right now. When it wants you to eat shitty food, get a salad. And the whole time it will punish you for this.

It will make you feel like you're having to force healthy stuff into your mouth, but just do it. And then somewhere through this practice, hopefully it'll get better. And if not, then you got to take it to the next level in this ridiculous war that those of you who deal with depression like I do know and have experienced. I don't know what part of the battle you're in right now, but the unfortunate thing about depression is it comes back. If you've had it, it can come back. It can creep in. It creeps. So, all right, there you go. That was fun. You guys feel better now? Sorry. I had to unload on you, man. If I don't tell you what's going on, I don't even know what the point of doing this fucking podcast is. If I can't just tell you how

I feel. If I look, if I get depressed and I don't tell you that I might as well just turn into Jimmy Fallon, you know, no offense to Jimmy Fallon or whatever. I mean, you're doing your job or whoever, Bill O'Reilly or whoever gets in front of the goddamn camera and acts like they're doing great every day. They stay in the character. You know, that's not what podcasting is. That's a different art. Podcasting is a different form than that stuff. And the form is that we say how it's going as much as we can. So that's what's going on with me right now. And I appreciate you listening and allowing me to confess that to you, my sweet friends, because it makes me feel like I'm podcasting again and not bullshitting. All right. All right. Okay, that feels a little better. We do have a

great episode for you today. It's about one of my favorite topics, something that perhaps I should be doing to deal with this depression. I don't know. Today's guest, Adam Strauss has a wonderful one person show called The Mushroom Cure about how he treated his OCD, another rotten form of mental illness with mushrooms. And most recently about this ayahuasca retreat, he went on in a night where he had to confront his darkest self in the most intense way. This is a very good podcast. And it's a story of adventure. It's a story of the dark place that psychedelics and plant medicines take you to as part of the healing process. And I'm very grateful to Adam for being so incredibly honest on this episode. And I think

that may have inspired me a little bit to also be honest. That's the cool thing about trying to be honest as much as you can as maybe it inspires other people. And Adam certainly inspired me in this episode. So it's a good one. And we're going to jump right into it. But first, some very quick business. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by the lovely people over at blueapron.com. Blueapron. It's the number one fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service in the country. Here's what happens. You sign up for Blueapron and these sweet darlings will deliver to your door delicious food from over 150 local farms, fisheries, and ranchers across the United States. Look, if you're like me, some depressed shrub, then you've just been ordering

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vegetables, maybe mixed in with some chicken or something like that. Some special sauces in there. It's just a simple thing. Somebody taught me how to cook it. Or like, here's something I'll tell you, man, this is ridiculous. I shouldn't even be proud of this, but I went over to my friend Johnny Pemberton's house and he whipped up this great breakfast, which was just some eggs, some spinach, which he tapped down on the eggs and he mixed that in with some goat cheese. It was delicious. Ever since then, I've got that. I know how to make that. I add things, I take them away, whatever. That's a permanent thing you give yourself when you learn how to cook a meal. So Blue Apron is like a combination food delivery service chef school, if you ask me, because they send you

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You got to become a neural farmer and go up into the barn of your brain and milk the udders of your synaptic vesicles. So they start spraying out that sweet happy juice and you clamber out of that hole that you managed to get into by tricking yourself into thinking everything was okay. And one fantastic way to do that is through Blue Apron. Go to blueapron.com forward slash trussell. Sign up today and experience the delicious glory of farm fresh meals. You could pick these by the way. They're customizable. They're easy to make and their freshness is guaranteed. Let's do it. Blueapron.com forward slash trussell. Also my sweet lovely children of the wind. I'm going to be doing some live shows coming up. I'd love for you to come.

I promise I will not break down in tears on stage or take a nap while I'm performing. You can come see me in San Francisco. I'm going to be the independent theater. That's coming right up. That's April 26th. And then I will also be performing at on the April 27th in LA. And that's at the Harmon Castle in Burbank. All these dates are on my website. You can get tickets there. There's lots of great ways. Oh, also I'll be doing a live podcast at the Bell House on May 16th. Friends, there are many ways for you to help this podcast if you feel so inclined. The number one way to listen and to not judge me as you listen. The second way if you're going to buy something from Amazon, why not go through the link located at dunkintrussell.com. If you scroll

down and look at the bottom left hand corner of the page, there's a little Amazon link. You click on that, zap through, and voila, you're in Amazon land. And let me tell you, I did take the most satanic leap a person can take. An Orwellian leap, friends. And I know what many of you are going to say. What the fuck are you thinking? Why did you do that? I got an Alexa. Okay. I did it. Maybe it's a sign of the depression. I don't know. Did I want a little robot sitting in my living room where I don't have to get up and turn the lights on and off? I can literally lay in my bed prior to a depression nap, jerk off to some kind of rotten porn. Forgive me, I don't mean to say negative things about porn and then yell to my Alexa to turn off my bedroom

lights. I don't even have to get up. I can just lay there a trembling mass of depression meat and the Alexa will turn the lights off in my house. It's a blast. Who wants to switch filthy light switches when you have this beautiful little robot being that you could say to it order toilet paper, you know, Alexa order final exit. Just kidding about that, by the way, but it is incredible. And I highly recommend it as long as you're comfortable with knowing that potentially the CIA is using it to listen to you. It's great. So order an Alexa. I'm telling you, I know it sounds insane, but it's pretty awesome. That's what I, and also once you do that, you like end up, it's probably, maybe you shouldn't order an Alexa. You know, I don't know. Is it good

to be able to like come home drunk and slur out some comic book that you want to order so that suddenly bought, Hey, what the fuck is this box? You know, that's what starts happening is boxes start showing up and you're like, Oh, I guess at 4am the other night, I thought I needed some Swiffer wipes. So that's kind of cool. The thing is, if you're going to do this, go through our link, get your, get your Alexa through the Amazon link. They will give us a very small percentage of whatever you buy and it costs you nothing. It's a great way to support this podcast. We also have t shirts, posters and stickers at Duncan trussell.com. They're all there for you. Much thanks to those of you who have set up a subscription service. Some folks have

gone that far, which I'm grateful for. They pay a monthly fee to the podcast every month. That's pretty cool. You don't have to do any of this stuff, man. I really mean it. I'm just glad that you listen. You can't imagine how therapeutic it is for me to have this. And I hope you know that I don't take it for granted and I'm incredibly grateful that I get to have this as a job. I love you guys. So there we go. That's all the announcements. We got a really good podcast for you today, everybody. And today's guest, as you heard before, is a comedian. He has a wonderful show called the mushroom cure. It's going to be opening up in San Francisco soon. And he's a psychonaut and a brilliant human and a really smart brave person. And I feel really lucky

to have had this conversation with him because I think it is one of the things that it began to push me in the right direction out of the fly pit, that sticky fly pit of depression. And that's one of the other wonderful things about doing this podcast is you get to be around inspirational people. So now, everybody, please welcome a man who has a story of a confrontation that happened in the dark jungles of Peru under the influence of that oily, strange tea, ayahuasca. So send out those tendrils of love. Open your hearts. Open your minds. Let Adam feel the healing blasts coming from those of you who know how to send healing blasts. Please welcome to the DTFH Adam Strauss.

It's been Duncan Trussell. Adam, welcome to the DTFH. Thank you so much for coming here today. Yeah, thanks for having me, Duncan. Man, I just I saw you stand up recently and was blown away by it and how you are really like bringing the psychedelic universe into your stand up in a really beautiful way. I think it's just cool to see somebody translating that into comedy. You just got back from Peru. Yes. Tell me about this trip, please. So Peru, it was, well, I was, as you know, we've talked about it a little bit. I was doing what you might expect a guest on the DTFS to be doing in Peru. I went for primarily an ayahuasca retreat at a place called Niue Rao. And it wasn't a decision I made lightly.

My period of sort of heavy psychedelic, I wouldn't say experimentation because I was using it as a means to an end, which arguably is the wrong way to do psychedelics, but we can get to that later. But the period of where I was using fairly regularly, that ended years ago. And I really haven't had much psychedelic experience since then. A little bit of the sort of, what is it? It's the Alan Watts, if you get the message, hang up the phone. Yes. Though, you know, I think there's different perspectives on that. But I felt like I had kind of gotten what I came for years ago. And my trip started to feel a little bit repetitive after that point. So I stepped away from it. But in recent years, you know, there's always, there's always more work to do. There's

more integration with self in the world. And, and of course, I'm, you know, I always avidly read about all the research going on with psychedelics. And I started feeling like, yeah, you know, now would be a different phone call, because I'm a different person now. I'm facing different challenges. And so I was interested in kind of delving back into the psychedelic waters. But I didn't, I wanted to do it, when you look at the research that's coming out of like Hopkins and NYU, and the results are phenomenal. I mean, life changing stuff with a variety of conditions, with a small number of uses. But the key thing is they're very carefully controlling the setting there. And the mindset to some extent, as much as you can by preparing people, setting intention,

all of that stuff. And so unfortunately, we're not yet in a time where I can, you know, sign up for psilocybin clinic at NYU, unless if you have a certain condition. So I started thinking about it, and it seemed like the closest thing I could get to, I don't want to say controlled experience, because the beauty of this stuff is that with psychedelics, it's never fully controlled. And that's, I think, why there's so much potential for learning and self discovery. But a somewhat structured mediated experience. So I was looking around for them, I realized the closest thing now would be would be ayahuasca. And I'd never had much interest in ayahuasca. I'd actually had this is your first ayahuasca trip. Well, I had a few in New York recently, I'd never done it until

until December of this most recent year. So until about four months ago. And I always kind of rejected it because I dislike the idea of having a shaman of having some sort of hierarchy of saying this person is an authority. Because ultimately, I believe, you know, they're my own experience and my own interpretations of that experience are as valid as anyone else's. And here's what's interesting, though, what's because you just articulated. It's really curious. And I really love this. Yeah, there are two clear communities that have developed when it comes to spirituality or advancement of the self. There is the like the Ram Dass Satsang, the meditators, the yoga people, the tantric people, the Buddhists. And what you find there is they like teachers, they like the

hierarchy, they like the game of sitting at the feet of the guru. And then in the psychedelic satsang, you hear again and again, I don't want to fucking guru. This is insane. I don't want to play this hierarchical game. But I just think it's interesting that there is a clear cut divide, because both communities, I think, share similar intention in their practices, which is they want to improve themselves and by that improvement, improve the world. They want to heal themselves, heal the world. And yet they have two radically different ideas of how to go about this. And one way is this, like, I, the teacher is the plant medicine and myself. That's it. Not some fucking shaman, not some guy in a blanket. I'm not going to play that game. It's too dangerous. And look at,

look, we know that it doesn't work. That's the psychedelic or the staunch. Right. The extreme view. Yeah. But you are reflecting that idea. Yeah. And I think that was my idea. And I think part of it is these experiences, well, experience period, the experience we're undergoing right now, I mean, any experience is so ultimately unknowable, you know, it's an experience. But once you start categorizing it and putting into language, that's not the experience. It's, well, you know, the Buddhist finger pointing at the moon. Sure. But I think psychedelic experiences particularly seem, you know, bizarre and unfathomable. And well, not, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I think we create our own meaning. We decide our own story, our own narrative. And especially with

psychedelics, I didn't like the idea of someone else's cosmology sort of impinging on my interpretation. Someone saying, Oh, you saw a snake. Well, that's Mother ayahuasca accepting you. Or you saw a black lotus. That means, you know, whatever, you're, you're going to get male pattern baldness in six months. Right. But the idea of, which now having experienced it, I know it really, it's not that black and white, but that was sort of my idea of what it would be like. And I, and, and yeah, I wanted to be able to make my own meaning free of anyone else's because everyone has their own baggage, everyone has their own history. But this is still okay. So like if we think about this, the psychedelic experience, and what's, I think, really curious about it is there is a subjectivity,

but there's also an objective experience that people report regardless of commonalities. You know, yes. And that commonality would, so any place where there's commonalities or any place where there does appear to be some evidence of a terrain. Yeah. If that, if that, if it's pure subjectivity, I get it. Like, I don't need you to tell me what this fucking thing like dream guides. Like I'll have a dream where whatever, you know, like I'll see a, I don't know, like an old lady tied, tied, trapped in a basement, creepy dream. And I'll tell my girlfriend and she'll like go to a dream journal and look up like old ladies. Well, here's what it could mean three things. And you're like, no, mind works. I don't buy this shit. But, but when we're dealing

with like DMT, Iowa, apparently, Iowa's guy haven't tried it. I would even say mushrooms, the geometries that you see in MDMA, and the art that you see from, from DMT, which I guess is a Iowa's give basically freebase Iowa Oscar, injected Iowa Oscar, whatever. You do see this commonality of form, which would then imply that if there is a commonality of form, and there's a person who has more experience in that terrain, then sure, there could be a place for a kind of tour guide who at least could be like, you know, for example, when I smoked DMT, I had this fucking, I got healed by DMT. I had this pain in my chest for years and years and years and years, like this never ending dull, stupid ache in my chest. Like heart area, would you say? Yeah, heart area.

Gone to the doctor about it, like I'd gotten like scans, like it was, never mind. So I smoked DMT, saw these like tubes coming out of, I don't know where, like beautiful little tubes that went right into the place where I was hurting, some impression of voice saying like, take it, take it, just take it, you know, like, relax, let us do this, let us, you know, it's kind of in a hurry. Let us work on you. Let us work, yeah. And then, and since then, gone. Now this is years of pain. And like, I remember telling the person who was taking me through this about that, and he's like, oh yeah, we call those like the little doctors, I think is what he said, he had a name for it, like he's like, oh yeah, yeah, those things, they, those are the things that heal you.

Like that's the appendage that comes from, and it's like, oh, so at least now I know there's commonality. So and now that makes it, that deepens the mystery at least. So it's like, holy fucking shit, you mean I experienced a thing other than something from my subconscious or what was so anyway, so my POV on it is we can have these teachers, it's just you have to be very careful because, you know, you get a bad teacher, you're going to get your entire, especially with something like psychedelics, then you're in danger of a funhouse mirror effect, whatever this terrain is being warped through the teacher's ego to fit some power dynamic he wants to impose upon you. So I see. Or things he's not consciously aware of. I mean, I think that people can have the best

intentions and do terrible harm. Absolutely. That's what they say, you know, like that. Well, right, that's not an original thought, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well, yeah, or don't start like, you know, like if you're going to be a fucking, you know, driver's ed teacher, you better really know how to drive. Yeah, you know, because if you don't, you could really cause car, people could really hurt themselves. If they follow you, if you're going to teach someone how to parachute, you better know how to parachute and parachute it a bunch and be really certain. Well, these things are serious. If you're going to teach a doctor how to do surgery, you better teach him how to do surgery the exact right way.

Cause what if he does this operation? So I get it. So we have to be very careful. But anyway, go ahead. I just wanted to point out that there, there isn't, you are a upstanding member of the psychedelic community. And so I think it's interesting to hear that POV because it seems to be one of the repeating POVs in that particular spiritual path. Well, and, and I will say, just to cut to the punchline at this point, I subscribed to your POV after spending time at this retreat center and even before I came there. And I think part of that sort of radical individualism, I mean, you know, and we can talk more about this, but as you know, I, my sort of Western medical diagnosis would be obsessive compulsive disorder.

Yes. That's what initially inspired me to do psychedelics. After reading a study out of the University of Arizona where that psilocybin had dramatic effects on treatment resistant OCD. And I am, you know, I've, I'm doing a lot better now. I wouldn't say I'm cured. But I think I retain certain traits that are characteristic of sort of the OCD thinking. And one is kind of a self-reliance to a fault sometimes feeling like, well, no one really knows better than me. Right. I accept the expertise of people in certain domains, but when it comes to stuff like interpreting experience, it's kind of like, well, yeah. And it's also a, yeah, sort of a lack of trust sometimes. Yeah. But as you pointed out, trust is you, you want to be very judicious in

who you trust when it comes to this stuff. Yes. Like a parachute instructor or a surgeon, because, yeah, you're in an incredibly on psychedelics, open, vulnerable, malleable state. Certainly in the ayahuasca cosmology, at least the place I studied, there is absolutely a belief in entities and forces that are not necessarily all benevolent. Right. That can, you know, worm their way into your consciousness and into your body and into your spirit if you're not careful, if the space is not well protected. Yeah. So you can get some parasites. Yeah. That's a good way to, good way to put it. Yeah. Yeah. So, so now after this experience in Peru, so you asked what was it like? It was, well, so I hadn't done ayahuasca before, done a bunch of psychedelics, stopped several years ago after

the OCD had gotten significantly better, not solely as a result of the psychedelics. I look at them as sort of necessary, but not sufficient. Right. They showed me possibilities. Yeah. Ultimately, I still had to make different choices. Right. But they did, they facilitated an opening that made change possible. OCD is really, really rough on a person. Yeah. It's a motherfucker. It really is. And it's kind of like, I think what's shitty about it. I mean, there's a lot of things that seem shitty about it, but with depression, nobody really makes fun of depression. I don't know if I did this joke when last time we did a show together, but where I talked about, you know, I said, you know, I have obsessive compulsive disorder, you know, which if you have OCD,

raise your hand six times. Yeah. And then I go on to how people don't take it seriously. There's a cleaning service in New York called OCD cleaners, which I think I did see. Maybe I'm reflecting that. Yeah. I'm not going to do the whole bit, but absolutely that is you hear all. And when I say that on stage, if anyone has OCD, raise your hand six times, often people will raise their hand and invariably I'll interrogate them. I'll say, what are your symptoms? And sometimes they legitimately do have OCD. Sometimes it can take a little bit of a dark or a sort of intervention type turn, but more often it's like, oh, you know, I just need to have everything really well organized. Well, that's not OCD. That's you like being organized. Yeah. But having said that, I think

that does reflect a choice, which is OCD, and I would say most quote unquote mental illnesses, and I can get into why I put it in quotes, but you know, I think there's a number of reasons, but let's go with the phrase mental illnesses exist on a continuum where most people have some degree of tendency. Right. And I think that's especially true of OCD, where, especially in a city like New York, most people have a tendency, at least in some areas of their life, to try to over control. If I, if I'm like on a marijuana bender, if I remember when I was really like eating too much weed and getting like, just all the constantly eating words, I'm not enjoying it anymore. Like it's, it's become like, yeah, we can be addictive psychologically. Absolutely.

Or just you're, you're in a, you don't even realize you're just in a constant state of anxiety, because you, you know, you have to take breaks with marijuana. You can't. Yeah. It's good to take breaks. So, but I was in kind of the midst of, you know, like you're walking your dog and you turn a corner and you're jumping. So, but in that, when I was experiencing that, I think I can remember getting a, like correct me if this isn't OCD, but I would leave the house and I would always have to go back to check to make sure I blew a candle out or that the oven wasn't on. I kept thinking like, fuck, I'm almost positive that, and I would be, you know, a mile away like, no, no, oh shit, I know I definitely left the burner on and the fucking stove. I'd have to go back,

check it. It's fine. You leave. And then it's like, God, this is OCD. Like this is the thing. Yeah. Being triggered by like consuming massive amounts of marijuana every day, some latent OCD, and it sucks because it like your, your entire, basically for me, it was like, okay, I want this to be the greatest day of all time. I want it to be a great day. And to, for it to be a great day, all the components of- Do you mean you want it to be a great day? This is a general mindset in your life or at this particular time you're really stoned and- You're still, you're like, hey, I'm going to go see a movie. Right. You're trying to perfect everything. I'll get the right degree of stoned. It's the right movie. I like to really enjoy it. I have to make sure my house

isn't burning down. Right. And so then, so it's a mind plague because it's just, it's, it's, it's popping up as a blockage or some terrible blockage because you really can't sink into the universe. You're just always trying to spin dials. Yeah. And that's a, that's a really rough spot to be in all the time. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I really wasn't at all the time. That's what drove me to psychedelics initially. And I'd been on, you know, everything. I'd been on Prozac, Paxol, Zoloft, Xanax, Afexer, Lomikdoll. How long, when did it start? Well, so I always had tendencies towards, I'd say a high baseline level of anxiety, which I'd say is still fairly true. And, but it didn't assume this form of OCD, this form of, let's say, control until actually I had a

significant relationship end. And I didn't make the connection until I started talking about this on stage with my, with my solo show. Prior to that, I never really saw the causal relationship, but it was very soon after this relationship ended that this anxiety, this sort of free floating anxiety, assumed this, this behavioral form, which for me, the OCD, and I don't even know if we've ever talked about this before, it was about decision making. Okay. So an example would be, well, I'd make a decision, let me come up with a specific example. I would put on a short. Yeah. And, and then I would find some flaw, you know, the collar spreads too wide. It's not, there's a slight stain, whatever it is. So I'd take it off and put on another shirt.

Let me put, let me slow it down a little bit more. I'd feel anxiety about this perceived imperfection. Yeah. My mind would start coming up with scenarios, well, what if, you know, I'm doing a show tonight, what if, what if a manager's in the audience and they notice my sloppy shirt and I don't, these sort of catastrophic scenarios that weren't totally implausible, but, and that would drive my anxiety. And finally, I'd say, all right, I'm going to put on a different shirt. And when I put on a new shirt, I would actually feel relief, the anxiety would go down for a little bit. But then, then I'd start thinking, well, wait a second, but this shirt has this problem, you know, maybe the shirt I had on last

time, that actually wasn't that bad. Let me put that one back on. Jesus. And I could spend hours doing this. Wow. Hours. Hours, hours. So you would look up in like two hours. Yeah, it was not, not always, but yes, it consistently, it would, you know, that could be an hour of my day. And then I'd leave the apartment and I'd start walking to work. And, and I'd, this is, these are examples I cite in my show too. I'm walking up one side of the street and then I noticed there's more sun on the other side of the street. But the side of my, his trees and, you know, in New York nature is precious. I love trees. I love the green, but sunlight, that's a physiologic necessity. That's vitamin D. And I would start, so I would walk up, I was living on 8th Avenue at

this point. I would walk up 8th Avenue almost every day zigzagging back and forth down the street. I'd say like a crazy person, but it's New York. No one noticed, but, uh, well, it sounds like just an amplification of the human experience. Yes. Where we never know what the right thing is. And that's fucking terrifying. That's why being human is hard, among other reasons. Yeah. And you're always penduluming back and forth to like, you get in this, you think, Oh, that's the sweet spot. Yeah. Go towards that. And oh, shit. I left the sweet spot and not like, why did I leave that? And then, but it's, this is like, you're defining in one walk down the street. You're defining, I think, what's the pattern of most many people's lives, which is that infinite. It's like my,

you know, I watch my dog pick a place in the bed. Like it's an arbitrary spot, but then the dog will start doing this primordial, like the spinning and spinning and spinning and kicking and then like go through this whole ritual just to sit in this rather arbitrary, the whole, it seems arbitrary to me, but for the dog or for whatever is inside the dogs, genetic structure is somehow just, this is a very important thing that it has to do. So it's interesting to hear what you're talking about and realize like, Oh, this is the reason that Jack Cornfield teaches mindfulness practice. Choices. It's just so, and I think part of it comes down to evolution. I've been thinking about this because we evolved in a context where choices that we had to make, they had a few

features that our choices today often don't have. Yeah. First of all, they were genuinely life or death. If you're deciding whether to go into this cave to forge for food, that may be your last decision. Right. Second of all, they were time limited. You either went into the cave, you didn't go into the cave, you didn't spend weeks thinking about, should I go into that cave or not? You'd starve to death by that point in time. Right. And third of all, there were just fewer choices, many fewer choices. So I feel like there is maybe some evolutionarily adaptive reason why we tend to, at least for me, I have an intellectual awareness that the choice of whether to have a drink of water right now, which I am doing, is minor. I don't even think of it as a choice most

of the time, but it's a part of me that if I stop and think of any choice, it really does feel life or death. It does feel high stakes. Wow. Okay. And I think maybe that's one of the things that puts me on an extreme end of that sort of OCD continuum. Gotcha. But I think that's true of other people, maybe not to that degree where I don't think we necessarily evolved to say, all right, this is an unimportant choice. So I'm not going to worry about it. It's more like, I think for a lot of people choices become unimportant only relative to more important choices, right? If, you know, if this desk catches on fire, I'm not going to worry about whether or not I should adjust my cushion because now a more important choice. But I think in the absence of more important choices,

any choice can seem important. You're always playing like you're always playing high stakes poker. Yeah. Everything you do is this, if you're, if your mind is somehow attached these everyday actions to this kind of mortal imperative, then you are playing this Russian roulette every time you take it. Your brain thinks every time you take a sip of water, it's Russian roulette. And let me be, yeah, clear. I'm not at that level now. And I wasn't that bad in terms of like a drink of water, even at my worst, but I do think this might be said for the fact that, I mean, what are evolutionary progress? Well, number one is to survive. I'd say number two is reproduced, but number one is survive. Yes. And the tool that we have is agency. We have choice arguably,

but it certainly feels like we have choice, like we are free will. Yeah, we could just stay there for now. I mean, I buy free will. A lot of people say it's a trick of the mind to deal with the problem. Yeah, I buy it too, though. I buy it too. Experientially, well, first of all, if you don't buy it, you're kind of in an existential corner. It doesn't seem to give you much freedom or reason for living. Well, it's curious because, you know, even like the free will argument is, it comes up in the Bhagavad Gita. And it's this idea that, you know, like going into battle, should he fight or not? Well, it's this idea of there's these three modes of material nature, the mode of ignorance, the mode of passion and the mode of goodness. And these three, three like, they're called the gunas

are the sort of when they're in that picture in the Hare Krishna version of the Bhagavad Gita, it shows a person and above him are these three like deities who are marionetting the person. And these three things are your karmic predilection. So depending on what your balance of these things are, that's what your decision making process is actually stemming from. It's not really stemming from free will. It's just stemming from these habitual predilections. And interestingly enough, if you swap, if you go over to like the Gurdjieff camp, he says the very same thing. It's like, you have never made a free choice. Like whatever you think you're doing is imitation. You humans imitate and then the imitation becomes habit and the habit becomes the different mechanisms that

create you the way you react to the world. And so even your decision about which mechanism you're going to use to react to the world, that decision itself is another mechanism that you learned. So we have these gears that are spinning that where none of the gears at all are based on any kind of autonomy. It's all a kind of in the same way, like your heart. It's like, okay, your heart is beating. Thank God, our hearts don't have free will. Thank God, our heart is like, I am just gonna, you know, I don't think I'm going to beat today. Like I'm done. This is, this sucks. Right. Death, instant death, right? And so then if you look, okay, well, the heart certainly doesn't have free will. It's not autonomous. It just beats when it's supposed to be my metabolism

certainly doesn't have free will my cellular process hopefully doesn't have free will my brain, you know, my neurochemistry, the crazy whatever's going on up there. It's like, well, where's the free will there? It's not there. I dilation, you know, et cetera, et cetera, physiological functions are not autonomous. And yet somewhere in this field of complete non autonomy, there is some autonomous agent. No, no, not at all. Certainly you can't find a physiological mechanism to justify free will. Right. And then subjectively experiential. That's the only real justification I come back to. Well, that's it. And then, you know, that thing is about that. And again, so the, so why do we want to be why do we want free will we want free will because free

will gives you a sense of self, right? If you don't have free will, what the fuck are you? You're just dust in the wind, man. You're just like some kind of like the heart of the universe. You're just another non autonomous organ and an infinite array of phenomena that is, you know, not really that special because you're, you're any more special than it is to be part of an entire living breathing universe, right? So it's like, yeah, anyway, free will for now, for the sake of the game of being human, right? Let's say we're on this level, let's, yeah. Well, I'm making this the right. That's part of the part of what we come here with is this illusion you're saying of a free will, but I'm curious. So then what does with the Bhagavad Gita, what,

what is the causal mechanism ultimately? Okay, so we have that. Oh, so the idea is like we have the controller and the controlled, right? So the idea is what is the controlled and what is the controller, right? So, and I think the word for that is Ishwara, the supreme controller, Ishwara. That's God, Krishna, whatever is the supreme controller. And so the universe is springing from the Godhead. And all of us are droplets that have sprung out of this like ultimate, progenitive, super intelligence that is beyond comprehension. But for sake of being human, we have to try to put it words to it. So we use the word Bhagavan, which means like the ultimate of ultimates, the most beautiful, the most well, the most intelligent,

the most wealthy, the most famous, the most incredible, superlatives, the ultimate superlatives. So it's like, or a better way to put it is high tech. You could say the, the cutting edge of technology is God. God is the crest of the wave of technology flowing into time. And all technology and all of us are just sort of droplets, springing off of this thing, coming into eternally, infinitely, transforming itself into the present moment. So that's the controller. But because we are all like droplets of the controller, we want to control, right? Because we are like, like a photon, this is the example Prabhupada gives, like you get a photon coming out of the sun. It's not the sun, but it came from the sun. It has qualities of the sun. It

has within of it, it's infinitesimally smaller than the sun, but maybe the fractal inside of it is still sunlight. So in the same way, sunlight, right? sunlight. So in the same way, we're Godlike in that book in Genesis, emanation from, from this Godhead. Yes. And so we have the same predilections. We want to control. So this is the human problem is because a human being comes into the world and wants to start functioning like God. So a human being wants to control everything. That's what our predilection is. We want to control. And when you see like examples of it all the time, you will see there are controllers out there. Bosses is what we call them presidents, emperors, kings, controllers, they control. And then there's the controlled. And so the idea of

it is that the more you relinquish your idea of being in control personally and then submit that to the idea of there being some kind of supreme authority that's actually controlling things and that you take on the relationship, not of the controller, but of the controlled. You take on the relationship of not of the king, but of the servant to that which is controlling, then your life suddenly hits this kind of harmony because the fundamental nature of a human being, according to this particular style of yoga, bhakti yoga, is to serve. Right. That's what we're here to do. Not to be served, to serve, not to control, but to be controlled and to be controlled by not the wrong things. Because this is the right things to be controlled by nature, you know, to be controlled

by the flow of harmony of life and not by some dude in a suit telling you to like go fix the copier or some woman or man who's telling you, like, you can't wear that when you go out or you can't go out or where are you going or what are you doing? No, not like that, but to be in the control of some higher and so anyway, that's the essence of the thing. And so the supreme controller is what's pulling the strings here, but because God is so merciful and wants us to feel, to learn, I guess, God is like, oh, yeah, do it. Take the wheel. Take the wheel. So we do, this is what I'm not clear on. So do we have genuine free will? I mean, and we can then choose to use that in the service of something greater than ourselves or to try to, you know,

profit this illusion of control, but do we actually have free will? I think in this equation, it's like we refer to, and it could be a cop out, the concept of simultaneous, oneness and difference. So that's what you kind of have to refer to. It's like, yeah, right now you definitely have control. There's no question about it in this particular moment. There's a famous story in my college. There was a professor there, John Casey, who recently passed away and amazing human. And there's a famous story. I guess there's some kid in one of his philosophy classes who really love to harp on the idea of how no one really has free will. And I think, and again, I'm sorry for anyone who knows John Casey, if this isn't

true or I'm fucking up the story, but as I recall, he grabbed a piece of chalk and threw it at the kid. It was like, I just decided to throw that like that is free will, you know, like, shut up, you know, like right now in this thing, yes, it's here, you know, and if you refer to simultaneous oneness and difference, then we are all this like infinitesimally small emanation of some ultimate autonomous super intelligence. Then there's some total of all things. Who's controlling what in that, you know, like which brain cell is making you decide to throw the chalk? Who the fuck knows? Where does the initial electrical impulse starts that begins the cascade that brings your hand to the chalk to throw it at the annoying student? Who fucking knows?

In that situation, there's no way to really tell. It's an organismic decision, you know. So if there's a total or perhaps extra organismic, I mean, it could mean because where does that impulse that electrical impulse originate from? And then you get into first causes, which is which is the which is the Godhead. And so so so in the sum total of all things, is there autonomy for the individual? Well, probably not. But in the in the micro frame by frame moment to moment experience of past, present and future that we're all in right now. Yes, I am making decisions. I decided to be kind to someone today. Or I decided to be an asshole. I decided to have the third beer. Or I, you know, I didn't decide that and maybe that decision was like being like warped by addiction or warped by

some other thing. But still in the innate fundamental decision is like otherwise we why do we even have a fucking justice system? Why do we have laws? Yeah, why do we have why are we executing serial kill? Why are we executing murders? Why are putting people in jail? They didn't have free will. They were just fucking tidal flows of activity that like shit, man, they shouldn't go to jail. There's no reason to do court to do trials anymore. You know, so anyway, on one level free will on another level, we could say we are part of an infinite decision that's being made in the present moment to be, you know, I am. Yeah, the only certainty, you know, sort of the I think therefore I am. Yeah, right. I exist in this moment. That's the only thing I can know whatever what that I is is,

of course, unknowable. What this moment is is unknowable. But something is here we are. Here we are. But then when you and but it's a fun experiment to be like, Oh, okay, well, I'm going to be a servant to the original decision. Instead of I'm going to be making these decisions myself. It really takes a load off of you, man. It's a pain in the ass to imagine that you're doing all this. Yeah. And that was part of my recovery as well was the idea of service to other people who are struggling with similar things. And yeah, and trying to connect to something beyond myself. And you know, I said earlier, psychedelics sort of showed me possibilities. And that was one way they were helpful is giving me an openness to an openness to the idea of being able to connect

to something even if I can't grasp what that thing is or even know that that thing is. I mean, ultimately, you know, it's called the leap of faith for a reason. Yeah. So and that thing, you know, that's the thing and that connection is the healer that I would imagine that that's got to be as someone who wants to be in control to just give yourself the idea that just maybe there is something that knows a little bit better than you do what the right thing is. This is why I love like the Lord's prayer, you know, because what is the Lord's prayer? Our Father who ought in heaven, how it would be thy name. Now, of course, when you like read the actual translation, it's way, it's way cool. I was just reading the actual

Aramaic translation. But with the things gotten translated into like the Kings English. So it becomes kind of authoritarian and stuff. You end up with like our Father who ought in heaven, how it would be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily. This is like when they ask Jesus, what should you pray? How do you pray? And he said, this is what you should pray. But as he wasn't saying, literally say this prayer, like here's the essence of intention when you're calling out, which is our Father in heaven, how that kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us and lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. That's the Lord's prayer. It's really cool. Yeah, I like it. But in the essence of it is thy kingdom come that will be done on earth. So the idea is like, help me serve you. Yes, your will. Let me get out. Let me be, let me, let me get so far out of my way that I have just become a process that is part of your process instead of getting in the fucking way. Like, you know how like, I don't know if you've ever had the experience of, I bet you have because you like to control things. And so as I do too, sometimes a lot too much. And you are with someone who is legitimately not good at something legitimately not good. Like, you know how to

do the thing because you've done it a million times before and this person hasn't really done it that much. And yet the person who hasn't done it that much is exerting their will and they want to do the thing. Even though, you know, if I just fucking do it, it's going to get done faster. It's going to get done right. It's going to get done right. If they do it, it's probably not going to be right. It's going to fuck shit up, you know, whatever it may be, right? So that can drive me up the goddamn wall because if I just, if you just sit down, you know, like someone's like, how do you do this on the computer? Classic example, your parents. Yeah. And you're like, give me the fucking goddamn, give me the fucking computer. You know, I don't have to spend nine hours like walking you through

this shit, you fucking asshole. Like just fucking punch the thing in, you know. So in the same way, it's like, if the concept is that there's a supreme force in the universe, then like, I bet you're, we're the parents. That's a free force. It's like, come on, man. I'm, I'm make I just let me just move aside for one second. Just it'll take one second instead of 15 years to get rid of this one fucking or 15 lifetimes or six million lifetimes or 15 billion repetitions of the same incarnation. You know, amen. Amen, brother. Yeah. No, it is. And it's, and that's really been a lot of it for me. And, you know, you asked me when I, when I came to your door today, you know, how am I doing? And I said, it's been, we've gotten kind of far afield, but it's the, it's been a

month since I got back from Peru, and it hasn't been easy. And I think a lot of it has been, you know, integrating and accepting and making choices based on what I experienced there. But certainly one thing I did experience was the sense somewhat similar to what you were saying about DMT, the sense of something working on you and kind of the best thing you can do at certain points is just lay back, try to relax and, and trust. Don't help the doctor. Yeah. If you're getting brain surgery, for example. Right. You're not like, try the scalpel. Yeah. Oh yeah. Three wrong scalpel. You need to. Yeah. Are you really going to use that scalpel doc? Use the one next to it. Trust me. I saw YouTube. Here, let me show you how. My own brain. You don't want that.

You know, you don't want that. So yeah, I love that. And I love the way that the patients of the medicine with humans and its understanding of like their desire to like resist. Yeah. Yeah. Because that was, that was, you know, I was there for, initially I signed up for six ceremonies over 10 nights. I wound up staying for 10 ceremonies. Not one of them was easy. There was, and I think that's somewhat typical, but I think, I think I made it harder than I needed to. There was only one ceremony where I just outright lost my shit, screaming, crying, ruining everyone else's trip. Though amazingly afterwards, when I got up to apologize, everyone was like, what are you apologizing for? This is your process. We're proud of you, which was

quite touching. Let's talk about that night. What so if you want to. Yeah, no, no. Absolutely. I'm an open book about this stuff. Okay. So let's talk about the afternoon before that ceremony. What were you doing? Well, so, I mean, there was so many realizations over the course of, I was there total for about two and a half weeks. And well, let me start with this, though, right? So that day, there was often fear the day of ceremonies. For me, you know, is it one day on one day off? No, it was a little more aggressive for like a better term than that. It was, so we would drink on Monday and Tuesdays, Wednesdays off, drink Thursdays and Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays off. So four nights a week. Okay. And it's a lot. It is a lot. It is a lot. And

you know, you're at this place, you're never pressured to drink. And people do sometimes skip ceremonies. I went for all of them. Where are you sleeping? It was, I had a fairly comfortable cabin in the woods. Alone? Yeah, I was alone. Cool. Yeah, I lucked out. I got a solo cabin. Cable? Satellite dish. You're in the jungle, man. Are you kidding? No, no, no, nothing. No, it's a fucking mosquito net with bamboo on top of it. It's not five star accommodations. I was about to buy a plane ticket right now. I was going to stop the podcast and head out there. It's the one thing keeping me from doing ayahuasca and brew is no forensic files in the day. This place actually did have Wi-Fi, which was a mixed blessing. Ultimately, that was another form

of learning where I saw my sort of addictive tendencies with that, you know, because it's all about OCD for me, man. And it's, it's, it's about avoiding pain and loss. You know, that's really what it's about. It's about there's something I'm experiencing now that I don't want to experience whether it's an obsessive thought or a feeling. And all right, let me go over here and try to control, control, control this thing, optimize, perfect, make things better. And so much of, and I realized this. So I did ayahuasca a few times in New York prior to this. And one of the things I, that became clear, I think my first or second ceremony is I'm just, I'm always trying to figure shit out. And most of the time, I mean, essentially for me, future

stuff, I'm always trying to figure out what's going to happen. And certainly in some context, that's necessary and useful. But the vast majority of the time I do it, there's no value. And there's high cost because it takes me out of the present. It creates anxiety because I'm imagining different scenarios, some pleasant, some unpleasant. But our minds, I think we did evolve to focus on negative possibilities because again, number one evolutionary prerogative is survive. You have to pay more attention to the potential threats than the potential upsides. So I realized I'm constantly trying to figure out what's going to happen next. And the number of times I've known what's going to happen next is zero and will always be zero. It's not like sometimes, again, strategizing.

I mean, you could guess what's going to happen. Right. Probabilities. And it's useful sometimes. But sometimes, you know, you know, when cars are coming by based on when the light is red, so there is ways to prognosticate like future events with some. Definitely. So I'm not saying it's not, it's not adaptive in some context and some context that's highly adaptive. But for me, and I would wager for many people, it can be stuff like thinking about, Oh, what am I going to say to this person when I see them tonight? Oh, so you're doing scripts. So sometimes it's scripts. You're like living out like all the pot, like it's like you're my the simulator. Let me just first one second, just something I've thought about because it's really,

it really like shows how incredible the human mind is that your mind can instantly simulate a future moment and run the simulation over and over and over again with all these different scenarios. Like if this, what if they say that, and then I'll say this, and then I'll say that, and then I'll say that, right? And then they'll say that, and then I'll see your, see your mind is like, okay, that's simulation A. Now let's run simulation B. Right. Okay. Let now see. Now we'll run D and it's doing it with absolutely no effort at all to the point that it is draining you. I was going to say, right, there is effort. It's not a conscious effort, but it is. It's consuming energy. Absolutely. Yeah, it's consuming energy. And it's pulling you out of the present, which

it feels to me that that's the place where you can get energy. There's something about being grounded and rooted where it feels like you can actually generate, not just conserve, but generate energy. Sometimes it feels that way to me. Man, this is why I love chanting because chanting, if there ever is a great antidote to this simulate, the simulator, the simulation tendency, chanting is really like, I, breathing meditation is cool and everything, but something about just like falling my breath, it's just not juicy enough for me to hang on to you. But a mantra, I love it because you're just like, you're just focusing on the sound. So when your mind, when my mind is really in a fucking froth and going through all the things,

this is Jack Cormfield calls it when he's sitting, he talks about how his mind has, like the radio plays the top 10 hits, like his mind will have the top 10 repeating worries and just play. Well, they can be fantasies too. You know, absolutely. Oh, I'm really, it's going to, I'm really looking forward to breakfast tomorrow. I mean, that's, yeah, but whatever it is running through and then, yeah, and then like, you know, the idea is like, okay, okay, well, I'm just going to watch these things and study the way that the mind is simulating future events or simulating past events because clearly it's a simulation. It's obviously not happening. What's happening is this right now. So when you're watching this incredible

light show that your mind's putting on for you or it's grabbing symbols from memory banks and throwing them into some animation, it's animating symbols. It's animating images of your friends right in front of you in a VR style setup, three completely immersive simulation of future events. And then when you get into the practice of like, instead of getting so sucked into that, actually watch it and be like, wow, mind, look at you. Whoa, this is a good one here. Oh, wow, look at this. Uh, at my mom's death bed. Oh, wow, you really are. Damn, look at that. I didn't even really, when I was at my mom's death bed, I don't think I noticed that on the wall. Look at that. Wow. And then you're like, Holy shit, my mind is so super powerful. It's able to summon

these things up. But then instead of like being pulled into it, like the son of a bitch wants you to, you can at least like gaze upon it and be well, I think it's appreciation. I think that's a key. And that's something that I've worked on is not seeing the mind as the enemy because the mind, my mind does a great job doing what's designed to do, which is keeping me safe, keeping me protected, trying to ensure comfort. Unfortunately, my mind sometimes doesn't realize that it's, I kind of think of it as it's very short sighted. It doesn't, for example, when I was at my worst years ago, it wouldn't realize that the potential benefit of having a marginally better shirt, however you define better, isn't worth the misery of, you know, missing a show because I

couldn't leave the apartment, losing friends because they got tired of that bullshit, the isolation, the loneliness, all because the minds don't understand time because, well, time is a whole, no one understands time. So it's in the moment, every decision, you know, when I was at this point in my life was, was crucial. So my mind, it was, get this decision right, get this decision right. So again, it can cause suffering, but it's aim, I feel like my mind always has my best interest at heart. I never, that's, I do sometimes see it as an enemy, but I try not to because I don't think that's accurate. I think it's trying to protect me. It's just like my dog, when my dog goes out in the fucking steps and is barking, there's two ways to, I can look at that. I can

think to myself, the dog is intentionally trying to hurt me right now, which is ridiculous. It's a poodle. It doesn't know that I don't like it's barking. And in fact, I think if I can- I feel like you said it's a poodle, like other breeds could be manipulative. It feels like Jack Russell then. Yeah, right. But it's like, especially, you know, this, it's a tiny little poodle. Yeah. And I think that if I could turn, it's like sentience up enough so that we could actually have a conversation telepathically. And it learned that I didn't like it's barking. I think it would be shocked. I think it would be like, Oh, that's why you were screaming. I thought you were screaming because you are scared of the squirrel too. I didn't know. Yeah. You know, I think that it would

not, or it would just be like, man, I was just doing me or it would be like, I didn't know. Yeah, I'm trying to protect both of us. Yeah. This is why you have me, right? I'm guarding the territory. That's it. And so then when you, when, so I think the mind is, that's the mind. Yeah. You're like, you're just doing your thing, man. I don't know what, what, I don't want to like rain on your parade here, mind, because you're, you're really burning a lot of energy for this like incredible show that you're putting on. But man, guess what? It's not like it used to be anymore. Like you're kind of like, right, we're not actually being attacked by saber-toothed tigers. But this is, well, you mentioned a dog. So one of the things that I got from this center, there were,

you know, it's a glade carved out of the jungle. They have a bunch of dogs there. And really, I mean, I think it's mostly companionship and there's a lot of property, but ostensibly, part of the reason for having dogs is the only real mortal threat, at least in this part of the Amazon, is poisonous snakes. Very, very rare. Sure. But, but they do exist. So the dog's job in so far as they have one is if a snake comes out of the, out of the jungle, pounce on that thing. Yeah. But the dogs aren't stressed out about this. This was an incredible teaching for me. The dogs, they're just lolling around in the dirt, sleeping, playing, eating, sleeping, a lot of sleeping, a lot of relaxing. They're not sitting there thinking, all right,

what am I going to do when a snake comes out? If a snake comes out of that brush, then I'm going to hit them at this angle and I'm going to catch, but if it comes out of that, and if it's a, this type of snake, they're just chilling out. And then when a snake materializes, if a snake materializes, they trust, maybe that's not the right word because it assumes a certain degree of sentience, but let's use it. They trust that they will bring all of their resources to bear in that moment in dealing with that snake. And that's more adaptive because in that moment, and this is true of us too, in the moment, we have all the data we need to make the best possible decision. Thinking about a situation in advance, you don't have all the data. If you're doing a script about

a conversation with someone, I don't know what their facial expression is going to be that's going to communicate a certain emotion. I don't know what mood they're going to be in. So that was a real teaching for me, the idea of relax. And when it comes time to take action, when a threat materializes, trust that, you know, you've existed on this planet for a few decades, you're still here. You have certain resources at your disposal, intellectual, emotional, etc. Trust that you'll bring all those to bear. How cool is it that this center is so magical? That the dogs taught you, they gave you a seminar and how to, it's so funny how the dog, I love the way like, because our teachers come to us. It's like, and it's really funny for you,

you know, entering into this and being like, I don't want some fucking teacher. And then the dog is, yeah. The dogs are like, they were, we're your guru now. And on an ongoing basis, so what I started doing in ceremony and in life, because when you're drinking this much, it's sort of all blends together, which is part of the idea, is when I'd have a thought, it didn't have to be an overtly threatening thought, but a thought that was a future thought that didn't require me to do anything in this moment. I would say to myself, go snake, go snake, because it's not even a real snake, my mind is creating the ghost of a snake right now. And kind of like what you were saying,

just watching it, just labeling it, and then letting it go. And then what can I do in this moment? Well, if there's nothing to do, do what the dogs do, just relax, go into my body and try to release the king that, you know, that's the kingdom of heaven. That's heaven, you know, because if you could, and I love like, I already, I always know I've hit it, because like, when I'm there, as I'm entering the boundary between not being there and there, that imaginary boundary probably. Are we talking about on psychedelics or anytime? Yeah. And you're like, you know what, to entering into something is sort of that, that timeless state we could call it the lawling around in the dirt, yapping, sleeping, not being perturbed by what is perturbing them.

What appears to be the majority of our species, the majority of our species is in a state of constant trouble, constant mental dis- anguish. Yeah. For themselves and creating it for others. Yeah. And if someone dares, if you dare to take a nap or just for a second, not be doing anything, like, you know, I'm just not gonna, like when I watch my animals, they don't really do anything. Yeah. They just chill. They relax, they play, they eat, they'll bark sometimes, then they forget they barked. And it's like to fall into that pattern as a human for even four minutes to hit that spot of pure, absolute, tranquil peace in the midst of species. And connection, because it's in that state that you are at that level, at that animal level, which sounds not in a pejorative way,

but you're a creature existing on a planet with other creatures. Yeah. And it's right there for you anytime you want it. It's always right there. All you gotta do is just realize that it's just all ghost snakes. Yeah. Almost always. I mean, there are real snakes occasionally, but I think. What a delight. Yeah. Right. And then when that appears, you know, you deal with it, but because those dogs like it, because I guarantee you that when they're laying around and the snake finally fucking appears, that's fun for them. Like that's a moment of they get to run or at least engagement, at least maybe fun isn't the word, but this is, this is their purpose. This is their job. This is, yeah. Yeah. It's glory. Yeah. So in the midst of,

so when that happens and they become the defender in that moment, they're, they're engaging in a sacred battle against like an archetypical symbolic enemy of humans, the poisonous snake. Yeah. You don't get much more archetypical. No, they're fighting the dragon. And so in that moment, they get to be the heroes, the savior of men and it's a beautiful thing. And in the same way, when that moment comes for a man or a woman and you find yourself truly met with an actual snake and you get to witness as your body flies into action and suddenly like you hear these stories, this is actually someone who taught Zen, taught me Zen would say that compassion, what is compassion and how, okay, we hear these stories, icy lake

bus crashes into icy lake, person dives into water, starts pulling people out of the water, pulling people out of the water, person is interviewed later, person has like frostbite on his hand or her hand or whatever. They're like, you're a hero. And they say, I don't remember doing that. I didn't think about it. I didn't decide. I just did. I wasn't there. I jumped in. I said, I served. I was my purpose. They don't say it like that. But like, I feel like a hero. Right. This was the thing to do in the moment. Clearly. Yeah. And this is what they were called to by, by the moment, by everything that led up to, but yeah, no planning, no seminars, no weekend retreats to prepare for the moment, the bus crashes into the fucking thing, just the, they just were

there. And so this is a curious thing. If the idea is that all of our time is spent worrying over these future events, future event comes, and there is an autonomy in the reaction to the future event, because if there were autonomy, then more than likely that would, in a lot of ways, inhibit our ability to survive that are, are like one second of hesitation. As you're yanking someone off of tracks, one moment spent, is this the right thing to do? Yeah. Death. Yeah. And that's where it really becomes interesting because then you realize this thing that you maybe are thinking, oh wait, this is actually, my mind is actually doing some evolutionary beneficial thing and it's never ending planning. You realize, wait, maybe not. Maybe in fact, this is a kind of bad adaptation

that wasn't ever supposed to be there anyway. This is a, you know, the expanding neocortex. Maybe we got a little too much of a little too much of something. The point is like, maybe it isn't beneficial in the way that we think it is necessarily, not to say training has been beneficial, because you know, that's what fighting is all about. Learning how to be like a UFC fighter, you can't just like be like, I'm going to jump in the ring and hope my instincts take care of things. But in the training process, I think they learn that if they spend too much time worrying over the fight and not the training and being in the moment of the training, then they're certainly doomed when the fight happens because they were thinking about the fight and

not the, the, just committing to muscle memory, all the patterns. I think, I still feel that our minds that the, I mean, because certainly there are split second life or death decisions we're thinking is, is maladaptive, but there are decisions, you know, you're, you're hunting for food, you know, 20 million years ago, there is decision making there in terms of do I go to this, this far or that far. So I, it makes sense, of course, there's no way to know, but it makes sense to me that, that minds do have utility in trying to optimize decisions consciously. This is actually reminds me. So I've been reading this book. And by Steven Kotler called stealing fire. And it's about like, you know, people and it's a great book, but it's about uses

of psychedelics and other like flow state technologies to buy like very powerful CEOs and corporations to create a state of God, what's a beautiful name for it in this book? I hope I can remember it. It's called, I think he calls it ecstasy, which is like, so in an interview with like, so he goes to like Google and like the Navy seals and he like talks to them about what is it you're looking for? What is it that you want? And so the Navy's the famous Navy seal, like initiation or when they're picking who's going to be the seals. And we've seen the videos, it's called hell week, or I don't know what they call it before like seven tense sort of initiation, six days of just running and laying in cold water and just getting smacked and punched

and just it sucks. And during this, you know, they will kick you out if you're not meeting some standard. And so in this interview, the guy's like, a lot of people think this is about endurance, like we're trying to see if these guys have the endurance to do something or another. But it's like, no, it's not about endurance. We already know these are world class athletes, they've gotten this far along. It's not about endurance. It's, are they able to surrender their identity and merge into the whole with the team? And that state of a seal team, merging together as one organism, they that is a that is exactly what their training is all about is surrendering the surrendering any kind of in the moment, like contemplation or mind stutters,

and just becoming a super brain that consists of all these other members of your team. And then that's how you become this deadly, super efficient, incredibly powerful thing. So this is actually it's surrendering that produces something far more effective than, I don't know, planning in the moment, what you're, you know, when you're on stage, you know, you're doomed when you're on stage, and you start thinking about what you're going to do next. You're like, Oh, fuck, this ain't a good set. I'm planning, man, I got to get out of this whole fucking now. I'm like, now you're not sharing that reality with the audience. Now you're in this other reality in your head. And yeah, and you're done. Yeah, you're doomed as soon as you leave that reality. Yeah. So if it's true for stage,

it must be true for life, right? Well, the moment that you're like, lost in the stutter, you know, you're, you're, you're going to be less efficient. I think, well, in my experience, I think most of the time, yes, I think there's something to be said for, you know, if I'm, well, so you moved to New York, not that long ago. Yeah, there was a certain amount of planning and logistics that went into that. You didn't just, you know, drive to LAX one day, buy a plane ticket, hop on the plane. So I think when there's sort of concrete specific things that you know you're going to need to do, planning and figuring out how to do them can be helpful. This is the song of the devil. Not that you're singing that song, but it's like,

I remember when, when I was reading about Ram Das, and he runs into Bhagavan Das, who is the guy who brought Ram Das to Neen Krali Baba and Bhagavan Das. So he runs into this super hippie out there in India. And so Bhagavan Das takes Ram Das, who was about to like leave India and Ram Das feeling this kind of like, this guy is like, definitely seems to be emanating some, some thing. Like he certainly seems to be in it. He certainly looked the part. He was wearing the right costume. Like he's got the beard and that looks like Jesus. Well, he looks like, but um, so Bhagavan Das starts taking Ram Das, um, around with him and they're just walking. And anytime Ram Das would start saying like, where are we going? Or what are we doing? You're like, it doesn't matter. Just be here.

Be here now. Be with me now. Be with me now. Let's just be here together now. And it was always a returning to that. Just always a returning to that. Just here. We're here now. We're here. Oh, you're, and Jack Cornfield talks about this. He had malaria once and Ajahn Chah's teacher came to him when he had malaria and sat with him and said, it hurts. Doesn't, doesn't this hurt? It's hurting. It's hurting just in the moment, in the moment, in the pain, in the moment, like here, here, now, this, this, this. And I know what you mean. We must plan. We must pay bills. We must be in the marketplace. That is part of the game. But there is a way, I think, to do that minus the, um, not being in the moment. Well, Eckhart Tolle, you know, he talks about how you kind of oscillate

between the, the state of presence. And then when you need to use your mind, you use it for a few minutes and then you come back to presence that you're constantly sort of dipping into that deep well. Right. Um, and yeah, and, and coming back here again. Yeah. Yeah. Because right. Because I certainly have a tendency to just travel off, you know, into the mind for light years. But this is where the dogs are. Like I, I can feel the dog teachers with you, man. They came with you here. Like I can feel them. Like I could, like it's weird. They really came to you and like I can feel it. And it's like, Oh, the dogs are here. Like they're hanging out here. They're just like in the mud here. Well, even now talking to you, I'm continually, and this is novel for me. I did not do this prior

to this retreat. There's a continual, not continuous, but continual coming back to, all right, you know, my ass is on the chair, my feet are on the floor, just feeling the physical sensations in my body. And that is tremendously helpful because OCD is, it's entirely a mind thing. Yeah. So that, that was one of the things I, I learned out there was rather than trying to solve OCD at the level of the mind, it's about presence and presence. I, you know, I meditate, we've talked about this, I think I did Zen meditation for many years while the OCD was really cresting. And, you know, it, it became sort of a, a means to an end. I talk about on stage, you know, how like, you know, I'd be there if I could just attain enlightenment, everything would be

perfect. If I could just attain enlightenment, everything would be perfect. If I could just attain enlightenment, everything would be perfect. That's not technically a mantra, but that sort of was my de facto mantra. And God bless my teacher. She was, you know, intelligent enough and insightful enough to kind of realize at a certain point, Hey, you're, this is, this isn't the way to be doing this. But, but meditation for me, I think the reason I didn't get that much out of it, and I did get something is it was largely a mind thing. It was mind trying to master mind. And now what I'm trying, and you know, I'm a baby at this stuff, man, but what I'm trying to do and what, you know,

over the last month, as things have not been uniformly easy, coming back to, all right, the mind is doing what it's doing, but that's, you know, that's eight or nine pounds of the 180 pounds of my matter. So what, what's going on with the rest of me? Let me, let me drop out of here, not shut it out, not repress the mind, but just not give it my exclusive identification and attention. And what are my feet doing? Yeah, right now my feet, my toes are slightly cold on your floor. Yeah. And just connecting to that dog, to that animal level. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. I mean, that's it. And then I can be present with, with you in a way that I can't because we can share this physical reality and to a greater degree than we can share

our minds with each other. Yeah. And it's a beautiful spot. And I love it because like, you know, like, especially in, in New York, where there's such a high population density, many people love to find a place where there's not a lot of people around, especially like in nature. It's really nice, you know, to find a little spot where there's no people. And then when you realize like, you don't have to go to a spot for low population density, all you have to do is get in the present moment because there ain't a lot of people there. Right. Plenty of room to spread out. The whole subway car to yourself during rush hour. Yes, exactly. No one's there. And it's fun. And it's a beautiful spot, you know, and it's like the spot to be,

and it's the reason everybody endlessly talks about it. So is ayahuasca going to gentrify the present moment? Is that what's going to be a lot more people crowding in here? A lot of like super expensive bagel shops are going to open up in the present moment, like specialty bagels. But we have to, you know, keep, this is the practices to keep coming back. And you know, I want to, I still, I really need to hear about this night. Oh yeah. But very quickly, like, you know, the funny thing is, man, are you sure those were dogs? Right. Because a lot of those people out there have heard they can turn into animals. Okay, so let's talk about the, let's talk about the, the, so I want to talk, I'm just, I guess I'm really interested in the details of the,

I know it sounds mundane, but I just kind of want to hear about the day leading up. Were you in your cabin? So this particular ceremony was, what day was it? It was a, it was a Friday. It was going to be my last ceremony. Okay. It was supposed to be my last ceremony. And so I'd had a ceremony the night before on Thursday. I don't particularly remember what that Thursday night ceremony was like. So, but the day after ceremonies was always so for me in particular, it was largely a physical experience. I didn't get visions at all. I did have some sense of maybe communicating with an entity, but it was, it was largely physical and psychological working through this stuff. And people say, you know, ayahuasca kind of, it works at the levels it needs to work. And so I think

maybe for me, if you accept that viewpoint, it would be, yeah, just before it could do anything sort of more ethereal with me, it had to get me connected in the present moment, it had to get me into my body. Right. But I mentioned that because interestingly, we would drink at eight o'clock at night, I would feel the medicine in my body very strongly until one or two PM the next day. Sort of rather pleasant heaviness and surges in my body. Yeah. So up until that point, I'm very, very relaxed the next day. So on this particular day, the day leading up, I probably didn't sleep. Actually, I know I didn't sleep. I slept about an hour the night before. Okay. I also didn't really sleep much during this time. Not unheard of, but somewhat unusual. It wasn't necessarily a

problem. But my mind kind of thought it was a problem. Like I was typically sleeping about two and a half hours a night. Right. I just couldn't. It was just too strong in my body. Again, once the initial surge of the ayahuasca would pass the first hour and a half, I'd generally be fairly comfortable, but I just couldn't sleep. So that day, I remembered fairly well that Friday, I felt good. The ayahuasca started wearing off sometime around lunchtime. And then there was, for me, what was always there, this anticipatory anxiety about the ceremony. That was the snake, of course. I'm going in. It's my last ceremony. I was aware I was really, really tired. I only slept an hour that night and about two hours the night before. But I was also aware it was my last ceremony.

So yeah, I'm going to do a substantial dose that made that decision. So sort of this fear, eat breakfast, eat lunch. What are you eating? Very, very restrictive diet. And this was a teaching to for me. So basically, fish caught in the Amazon, not it's the tributary of the Amazon that runs by the center. Beans, rice, bananas. That's it. Yeah. How do they serve it? Are you in a cafeteria? Yeah, sort of. I mean, there were typically over the course of time, I was there at very, but generally, 15 to 30 people there total. So yeah, there are set meal times, everyone gathers. Like picnic tables? Yeah, long tables, under mosquito netting. Everything's pretty much under mosquito netting. And you make friends there? Yeah, you do. Well, because after not to jump around

too much, but when the ceremony ends, ayahuasca, I know you haven't done that before, but well, it's not dissimilar to mushrooms. For me, after the experience, you feel very euphoric. You're kind of still in it, you know, so the like I look at mushrooms, the first 45 minutes, bumpy ride for me always. Always. One of the reasons I haven't done mushrooms in many, many years, then you settle into something where it can be intense, but it's workable. And then that sort of melts into, for me, this very euphoric, effusive, quite peaceful, but quite talkative state. And that latter part, and I'd say that trajectory, topography, if you will, somewhat similar to ayahuasca, at least for me, early part rough, then workable, then you feel good, you've made it through something. And

so in that state, you want to talk to other people and people would talk. So the ceremony would officially, we drink around 8 p.m., maybe 1.30 or 2. The shaman would announce that, you know, la ceremonia, or el ceremonio, I don't know, Spanish, estermanada. And you can go wherever you want, but you can't stay here. Well, no, you can stay there, actually. You can stay as long as you want. And people would stay there and chat for hours. And since I couldn't sleep, I would always be the last person up. So you really bond with people because you're still in the state, you know, you're still very open. And that was a tremendous part of, you know, the whole learning experience for me is hearing about other people's experience. And invariably, whatever someone

else had gone through that I was talking to, it would just trigger stuff in me where I'd realize, oh, shit, I do that, or I can learn from that, or I can start doing that. So you asked about, do you make friends? Yeah, you form pretty intense bonds with people. Are you still talking to some folks that you met out there? No, fuck those guys. Yes, I am. Actually, I talked to one of them today. Yeah. Yeah, because you also really care about, you know, how are they doing? Yeah, sure. And it's incredibly bonding. You're out in the middle of nowhere, taking psychedelics with these people. I can't even imagine.

Yeah, you're really, and you're going through, you know, of the guests there, they were pretty much all Westerners. So you have to realize a whole another level of the trip is that you're dropped into the middle of the rainforest. And that is, are people hooking up? No, not that I know of. That's strongly discouraged. Though now that I say it, it wasn't overtly addressed. But the idea is that you want to be giving everything you have to the work here. Also, that you're very open energetically when you're drinking this stuff. And you don't necessarily want to mingle your energy with someone else's. Yeah, I get it, man. I could, I mean, I was just, it's curious, like,

it just seems like I'm sure it happens. I'm sure it happens. But the shamans aren't like, no humping guys, we got to focus on I'm trying to remember if there was because there was some sort of orientation talks that might have been covered. That might have been covered. But I know at the end, I had, I asked about that, like, basically, oh, this is what I'll disclose this. I may be too much information. I didn't masturbate once the entire time I was there, which was over, which was about three weeks, which is a record for me. And I had no desire to, which actually was was kind of a great blessing to just be freed of this desire that otherwise is, you know, sure. But I can't imagine it, because especially if I wasn't able to sleep,

yeah, no, it just wasn't, I just feel like it's dangerous combination. It's a terrible because you know, if I jerk off, I'm going to fall asleep. Yeah. But you're like in this, you know, you're, it's like you some deeper part of yourself knows exactly. That's what it felt like. You're not at a best Western right now, man. You're right. You came here for a reason. And I knew that the, I knew I didn't want to masturbate when I was there, but I thought it was going to be like difficult, very difficult. And it wasn't at all. And I even maintained for quite a bit of time after I left there effortlessly. So, so I don't think there's much hooking up going. There is attraction that develops no question. I had that develop with someone. So,

and I'd imagine that's fairly common for the same reason that they encourage you not to have sex because you're so open, connecting it. And also the something in that state where you, so the next morning, so you talk afterwards often, you don't have to, but people will hang around. The next morning, early the next morning, you meet for conversation. The shaman is there and people are talking about their experiences. And it's not like sort of a sharing circle. The idea is this is diagnostic for the shaman. He wants to hear what you experienced, what visions you saw. Yeah. So that he knows how to calibrate the work he's doing on you via song, because that's the primary modality at this center. And I think most is they're singing to you to shift your energy.

And when you get there, they do an intake interview. They don't use that word, that phrase, but basically why are you here? What are issues you're dealing with? And then they ask you a whole host of questions, like when you go to a new doctor, you know, have you had issues with this? Have you had issues with that? What drugs have you done? What's your sexual history? They're trying to understand, because my very vague understanding of the whole sort of, I don't know what the word is, but the ethos behind this is that, well, it's mind, body, and spirit are not separate. So that traumas on any level can permeate other levels. And that basically traumas exist at an energetic level. So this relationship that ended 14 years ago,

that caused a lot of trauma is maybe still in me energetically. And that's part of the purging, the vomiting, is you're actually letting that go. And they use song to target these energies, these horses, these things that are lodged in you. So yeah, it really is. And traditionally, I'm not sure if this is true of all tribes, but I believe the person who I was working with is from the Shepibo tribe. And I believe they're typically, the way ayahuasca is used, is the doctor slash shaman, they drink the ayahuasca, but the patient does not. Wow. They're drinking ayahuasca to help them see energetically what's going on with you, so that they can sing more effectively to you. That's so cool. Kind of like how a doctor will,

you know, pop you in an MRI so they can see what's going on and prescribe something. Oh, God, it's so cool, man. Yeah. So they say, I know, I hope you check it out. I think you do. Terrified. Yeah, you should be. Only because when I take mushrooms, it's like, man, the thing, that pattern that you're talking about, I just, that initial like thing, it's like, I can't, if ayahuasca truly is. It's a little less the early part, and I haven't done mushrooms for years, but the early part is a little less bumpy than mushrooms. But as I'm saying, I'm like, is it really? Because what we haven't gotten to the night, I flipped out, but that's the part of the experience that happened. Let's get to that night. Let's cut to it. So that day. So anyway, so this

conversation that day, you know, the ayahuasca starts fading around noon. I start having some anxiety about that night, but you know, I'm going to do it, but I'm really tired. And as the day we're on, I became aware, I am really tired. I've been here at this point. I've been there about two weeks. I really have not been sleeping. Right. But okay, this is my last one. I'm going to, you know, go out strong. I've gotten a lot from this already. And so I got into ceremony. And one of the things I love about there, as opposed to what I've done in New York, is there's no, they just cut right to it. The shaman walks in, there's no chanting or anything beforehand. They just, you know, start calling people up, pouring them the drink. It's very, I like it because it's like,

okay, let's get to work. We're here to work. Let's do it. Yeah, it's great. Yeah. So I got called up and one of the facilitators there, a guy named Joe Tuffer, who actually just had a book come out about his experiences, he's an American MD who was one of the founders of the center, Ni Wei Rao, really wonderful human being, really committed to helping people. And so he was up there with the shaman kind of, you know, helping pour the drinks and they poured they poured me a dose. And I was like, let me do a little bit more. And Joe's like, are you sure? That's a pretty solid dose. And I was like, yeah, because I thought they were just eyeballing it. I learned later that there are actually faint demarcations on the ayahuasca glass.

So Joe knew what my typical dose was. And he was saying, Hey, this is a good deal. But I thought, yeah, this looks to me. So, so I took a pretty hefty dose. Though interestingly with ayahuasca, it's the dose response curve is all over the place, the same dose, different night. Yeah, that's what I've heard. So anyway, I did take after you. And that's an interesting thing. What do you think? Now, because there's the like superstitious or the metaphysical idea. And clearly this is a metaphysical medicine, because we're talking about singing out your energy patterns. But like, I do think about that because people will say, well, it is metaphysical. But also, I mean, that's not that far from Western medicine. If you look at some of

the therapies that they do with, I mean, what is it is? And I guess what I'm saying is it's not that dissimilar. If you look at like a PET scan or something where what we're bouncing energy off your body to see certain masses. And then we're trying to when we're talking about the the drink itself, okay, the root in the bark, yeah, whatever other they just use that there just the the chacruna leaf and the ayahuasca like some kind of water, obviously, like it's some kind of liquid. So like, but also if it's a root in a bark, then we nature doesn't work with in the way that like right. So like the amount of DMT per every like, you know, gram of of of the mixture of the bark, I guess, which is it's in the root. No, it's in the root. The the so there's the

M. A. O. The vine is which is actually called ayahuasca is the is the M. A. O. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's different things people use for the DMT but the most common I believe I'm pronouncing it right is chacruna, okay, which is a leaf. Okay, so there is a bark too that can be used. So in that leaf, we can imagine that the DMT is equally is equal. Yeah, like there's well, but this one the same. So they do you because you see them cooking up the I mean, these people that's one point of like, they're mad men because there's always a giant vat of ayahuasca cooking there. Yeah. And it's, it's, there's so much care put into every aspect. So they use a certain type of wood to burn under the ayahuasca to make the fire because it burns the right way. So anyway,

just a side note. So the same batch is is can produce different effects. Right. And what is that? Is that a, is that a relation to the physiology of the imbibor or is that related to distribution? Well, even within the same imbibor. Yeah. And I would think distribution within a batch shouldn't be that different once it's, you know, been all dissolved. So their explanation is that you can block or allow it to varying degrees. And I did see that in myself and other people where I get it. Yeah. So you could, there's some weird way that you can put the brakes on or resist it to the point of like, you know, mushrooms, you can too. It's just kind of, it's, you ain't making things easy for yourself if you do it that way. It's not like the ayahuasca or the mushrooms will

comply, but you can, you got to let them get you. You got to let them, you got to let them in and they're get those doctors or whatever. Well, and that was part of it. Well, so obviously part of it also is over the course of 10 ceremonies, presumably there may be more of a persistent MAOI effect. That's right. My honest answer is who knows. I don't, it's, I think I, I don't even, it doesn't even, I just said a weird part of my brain is curious. I think it's more than just now, before I would have come up with a purely, you know, physiological explanation. Now I feel like there's more to it than that. I feel like intention has something to do with it. And I never thought I'd say these words, the spirit of the ayahuasca, how it wants to work with you.

Right. Right. Okay. So you've taken a substantial dose. Yeah. I wouldn't say heroic, but substantial. Enough where the person's like, really? All right. Yeah. So you, you, you, you drink it. You drink it immediately. Describe the taste. So have you ever drank cactus? No. Not quite as bad mescaline-containing cactus, but close. And like mescaline-containing cactus, it gets worse the more you do it. So the first time I drank ayahuasca, I was like, I don't know what everyone complains about. It's actually almost, it has kind of a musky taste to it. Yeah. By this time. Musky? Yeah, kind of a wet sort of, like a sock? But yes, but more not unpleasant, not, not rancid. Earthy. Okay. Strong. Very strong. Okay. Like dirt? Like, yeah, a little, a little like beats.

I would go with dirt and bitter, definitely bitter. Bitter like when you eat mushrooms, like alcohol. Yeah. Kind of that alkaloid bitterness. But did you hate them the first time you had mushrooms? Did you, did you resent that? I don't remember. Yeah. I, for me, it seems like it's this learned diversion with everything. Just talking about it makes me want to throw up. Just like that. What is this that I'm putting down? It's, yeah, it's not, it's not, and by this time, this, so this was my eighth ceremony in like 12 days. Yeah. Choking it down was, was a challenge. Is there like, do you have something to drink after you drink the ayahuasca to help with it? Like anything to help? You can, well, you can always do whatever you want there, but you're

discouraged from drinking any water. What you can do and many people do is you'll swish around some water in your mouth and then spit it into your puke bucket. Okay. Because of course there's a bucket there, which is. Gotcha. Okay, great. So, so you've taken the dose. Take the dose, go back to your place. And what does your place look like? So this, the Maloka is the ceremonial space. Gorgeous Maloka. It's basically a giant hut, but it's circular and the roof. I'll show you pictures later. It's this peaked roof built in this tradition, the Shepibo tribe tradition, where it's all these crossbeams. It looks kind of like a spiderweb when you're looking up. But a spiderweb of trees, like big branches. Wow. Like if this thing collapsed, it would, you know.

Is that what you're thinking? The thought crosses your mind at some point because it's very lyrical, very poetic, the construction. It's gorgeous. Yeah. So, you know, Western we see sturdy things and they look sturdy. This looks so delicate and yeah, but it's supporting several tons of wood. Wow. So, so everyone is arrayed around the perimeter of this circle. So you have mats at sort of right angles to the perimeter. Are they yoga mats? No, they have these thicker foam rubber mats. When I've done it in New York, they've been yoga mats. Do they smell like anything? No, they're very, they're quite good about hygiene here. Considering it's the middle of the jungle and it's, everything's wet. They change sheets a lot and everything on these mats.

So yeah, they want you to be comfortable. You know, there's no points in kind of the masochistic part of it, at least at this center. So you go and sit on the mat. Lying back more, reclining, pillows back and, and you know, legs stretched out was generally my position. And once the last person has been summoned for their dose, they blow out the candle and it's pitch black. The only light coming in is if there's a bright moon, you get a little bit of moonlight filtering in, but on this particular night, pitch black. Oh, God. Yeah. So you're laying in the pitch. And that's, and that's intentional, I think that's part of it is like the beginning part of the ceremony is you're on your own. So you're in pitch blackness and you're not feeling

anything initially, but you know, it's coming. You know, it's coming, especially by your eighth ceremony. And you know, I never looked at a watch during ceremony because one of the other things I realized early on that I've stuck with is, you know, later isn't a real thing. That was a thought that occurred to me later isn't a real thing. So don't use time unless you have to. What if you have, what if you have to pee? You get up and you say you'll have a flashlight covered with like red tape so it's not too bright and provided you're capable of standing up on your own, you will do that and you'll walk towards the door with your red flashlight pointing at the ground so that you don't, you know, blind anyone else. And I see. Yeah. And if you're not capable,

you just say help and there are facilitators who will help you and I had to avail myself of that on this particular night. So laying in the pitch dark, laying in the pitch dark and you're listening to the sounds of the jungle, which are a lot. There's a lot of stuff rustling around out there. A lot of bugs and bats and who knows what else calling out there. And yeah, for me that early part, it could start to feel a little bit sinister. But you're just waiting. And then so I never looked at a watch, but I would say the onset maybe it starts kicking in 40 minutes or so typically for me. And it's, you know, the first alerts the kind of this feeling of whoa, something's happening. I don't know what it is, but something is happening. And the first thing that happens

is this greatly increased sensitivity, sensory sensitivity. And since you're in the dark, and since you're not moving, that all goes to your ears. So the sound of people breathing and moaning and maybe struggling a little bit becomes very, very intense. Your own breathing can become very, very intense. So is it distorted? Like, you know, like sometimes when you take LSD or there's that that sort of flanging thing. Yes. During sometimes not I didn't get much of that. I got I got less of that than I have on other psychedelics. Yeah, actually, now that you mentioned it, no, I the when it was raining, every rain job had that flanging sound. So it kind of sounded like this weird sort of

morphing white noise. Okay, okay. But yeah, not that strong. Okay. But just so you can you can you're distinctly hearing yes and you're very open and there's this sort of building for me and I think for most people they call this period of the experience this they call it the surge. Okay. So the surge is starting. They also call it the force. Oh boy. And they talk about the way to with the force is you want to ride it you want to surf it you want to use that energy to rise up not to be totally buffeted by it, you know, like a like you're in a tide pool or something. Yeah, right. Okay. Which unfortunately is what happened on this particular night. That's me, dude, every day I the fuck all I be thinking is like, well, I, well, this, I'm, I'm doing this.

Of course, those thoughts do occur, but this was part of the value of the whole experience for me is realizing that, yeah, I can have those thoughts on doomed and I can rise to the occasion and let we're focusing on probably the most humiliating and humbling night of my life in many ways. So and I'm okay with that, but let me let me, but my ego requires me to state that. Well, yeah, this was the low point, but it was a gift because a lot of learning came out of it. So, so yeah, this night being anxiety started, I'd say a little more quickly and a little more strongly. And also I should mention, you drink an order. So everyone's arrayed around the circle and they'd go counterclockwise. I happened to have the mat. Basically, I drank first of anyone

there. No second, I drank second. So, and the course of going around 25, 30 people that takes about a half hour. So the shaman is drinking like last they're drinking, you know, a good half hour after I am. So I'm getting into the experience earlier than most people. That's really interesting. So the trip is actually moving through everyone in a, the, the, the, the, so the force then, if you, if you time out the dosages, then you're actually, it's rolling through the room in an counterclockwise pattern. Interesting. I mean, I think there's individual variation. Some people come up more quickly than others, but yes, in general, yeah. And you, and by the way, you hear that very clearly. Cause you know, like the vomit always starts from here, not always,

but usually. You could hear the vomit coming to you. There were many times where I'd be lying there where I wasn't at this sort of, you know, start or pull position and you'd hear people start to struggle. I say struggle. You don't ever know what they're really going through, but you know, moaning, vomiting. And I'd often have the thought, Oh, thank God I'm not there. And then I'd realize, wait, I may be there in 10 minutes. This is, this is the, right. The ghost of Christmas future for me. The ghost snake of Christmas future. God damn it. That's so wild, man. Okay. So, so lying there in the dark and I start very anxious and I start the thought that started it for me. And it was a thought was

I'm way too tired for this right now. That was the thought I'm way too tired for the experience I'm about to undergo. And then that started snowballing into I'm really not taking care of my body. My body really wants sleep. I'm not sleeping. What the fuck am I doing? I'm not prepared. I'm about to have a very strong trip and I just don't have the energetic resources to rise to the occasion. Meanwhile, the emotion behind is just fear. At this point, I'm not going to say anxiety is just fear. I'm just really scared and getting scarier and realizing that this is going to get a lot stronger. It's just kicking in. And you know, this I'm not in a good state for this. Oh, God. And I can feel it, man. And so I did something I had never done

before or since this is my ego pride saying this, I said help because that's what they say, you know, like the first day orientation, someone said, Well, what do we do if we need help? Just say help. Someone will come. So, so I said help. And this guy, Joe, I mentioned came over and I think what I said to him was, you know, oh, and he came over and he said, Hey, let me just pee and I'll come back. And when he said that, the panic immediately kicked up a notch because it was kind of like it made me realize, yeah, I really need some help right now. How long is he going to be gone for? That's probably two minutes, but it could be a billion years. Right. Time is an illusion. It's all, yeah. So, but I had also credit him. I think it was probably, I think, you know,

he's been doing this for a long time. And I think he's like, yeah, Adam can sit with this for a few minutes. And I wasn't feeling total panic. I was just like, yeah, let me, let me try to reach out while I still can reach out. Yes. So what happened? So he came back. This is where things get really blurry. But at a certain point, I started, I'm going to say I lost control of my body, but in hindsight, I don't see it as I lost control. I see it as I sort of abdicated control. I was just kind of like, I can't sit up anymore. I was lying down. There was a lot of physical surges through my body. My head was, well, for audio I was kind of nodding violently back and forth. It wasn't, it felt like this stuff was just working

through me. Oh, and I should say this. So Joe went to the bathroom, panic is starting to rise, and I have this thought. The thought was this. This can be as hard as you want it to be. And I wanted to make it real fucking hard because basically what happened was so very soon I'm on the ground, rolling around, writhing. I started screaming. Just what were you, any words you were screaming or just scream? Intermittently it varied. Sometimes it was just screaming. Sometimes it was screaming for help. So my intention, you go into every ceremony with an intention. And I don't remember what my intention actually was going into that night. It was, maybe it was letting go of, wow, I don't remember. It was letting go of something. Often intentions

were about purging something. But I settled on, as the experience was coming on, my intention was to let go of everything and see what comes back. Because I was like, I'm going, so let me just, I'm tired of fucking holding on to me, to my identity, to my fears, just let go of everything and see what comes back. So at times I was screaming, help me let go, please help me let go. Well, you said you wanted to die. Yeah. And so that's what the experience ultimately started to settle on is, oh, I'm dying. That's what's happening here. Now, I'm aware intellectually that ayahuasca deaths are almost unheard of. There's been maybe one cardiac death,

but even that's arguable. But my mind came up with a scenario. I think that cardiac death was actually from a nicotine. Well, that guy was nicotine, but there was a female tourist who did ayahuasca. I don't know all the details, but it was like not at a center. I think it was at a hotel in Nikitos where she may have died from a heart attack. But yes, this stuff physiologically is incredibly safe. So it provided you're not on SSRIs or antidepressants or stuff. Did the lights just turn on? Or is that part of my? No, no, no, the lights are set up to do this weird pulsing thing.

All right, helps set the mood for this. So yeah, so that's what just happened is I started becoming convinced, well, yeah, people don't die in this stuff, but how many people have, you know, collectively, whatever, 12 hours of sleep in the last week. And yeah, so I may die. And if I let go, I'm gonna die and I have to hold on. So I was screaming about that. I was screaming, please help me let go. Joe's advice was, ask ayahuasca for help. They tell you that there. You know, try to interact with it. I was begging ayahuasca for help. Then at a certain point, I realized whether or not to die was my decision and I wasn't going to die. I was choosing not to die.

I remember shouting that out loud. I was also shouting out. Intermittently, I'd become aware that I'm in a ceremony. Other people are going through shit. Yeah, this has to be difficult for them. So I was apologizing to other people. I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm not going to die though. Yeah. I remember saying, I'm sorry. I'm ruining all of your experiences. I love all of you. I'm sorry. But I know I'm being selfish. And I was people were cut. Now at this point, people are coming over to sing to me. And some of it did help a little bit. People would also, I was unable to sort of really, I'm going to say in hindsight,

unwilling to navigate reality. I became aware I was very thirsty, but I had no idea. You're still in pitch black. I have no idea where my water is. I have no idea how to move my body to get my water. I became aware at another point that I'm just not getting enough oxygen, but I don't have the energy or so I thought to physically sit up to so I can breathe more easily. So people are trying to help. They're singing to me. There would be moments where it felt like I was chilling out, but this thing, whatever it was, this sort of ball of fear and just I couldn't let go. And I remember Joe telling me, go within, go within. But I was terrified of going into my body. I was terrified of my body. I was terrified

of my mind. I was just terrified. I just didn't want to let go. Even though I kept screaming, helped me let go, but I just couldn't. I couldn't. And of course that I was creating more resistance if that makes sense. It was a simple way to put it is I didn't want to do the work. I wanted it to be better, but I didn't want to do the work and I was convinced I couldn't do the work. I was too tired. I didn't have the resources. And now here's the part that I'm not thrilled to be talking about on a popular podcast, but I am a firm believer in being open about all this stuff because I feel like, yeah, it's what I have to give. Yeah, my experience. I became I became a total fucking asshole, Duncan. I became a fucking raging asshole. These people are trying to help me.

And I became verbally abusive to them. What were you saying? So I was. So here's an example. I'd be like, I'd be like, I need water. I need I need water. And Joe or Sveta, one of these other, you know, angels who are trying to help me. Remember, they they've drank ayahuasca too. Sure. They're but they're trying to help me. And they drink, by the way, not to have their own experience, but because it helps them see it helps them help others. Absolutely. Having said that, they're very sensitive. This can't be pleasant for them. Sure. But they've done it a million times and afterwards we'll get to the afterwards. But so it's like where I, you know, I need water. And I think it was Sveta said, your water is right over there. And I said, I can't see. And she said,

it's right, you know, near your right hand. I said, and I'm like flailing around. And at some point, I said, if I fuck, you know, if I fucking say something out loud, it's because I can't do it on my own. I'm not saying things out loud for myself. It's for, interestingly, when I went into that rage control thing, I was actually quite articulate. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. And that happened several times. And then at a certain point, I was like, if I say, I want fucking water, I want you to give me the fucking water. Or like I was saying, I can't, you know, I can't breathe enough. And they'd say, you know, well, try to breathe more deeply. I'm like, don't you fucking get it? I'm saying, I can't breathe. I'm dying. I'm dying. Really just ugly,

abusive. Abusive. To me, it sounds, it just sounds like primordial survival instinct. Exactly. I was in pain, any kind of courtesy right now, because you need to survive, right? You're in pain, you've hit the, it's like when you, when the, when the, when the dishwashers open and you hit it with your shin, or you slam your finger in a door, you're like, motherfucking shit, fuck someone else. So, right, there was that element. But while I'll get to what I ultimately concluded about it momentarily, but, but yeah, so lashing out, right, not because I wanted to hurt other people, but because I'm terrified, you're in pain. And it was really, and then at a certain point I realized, I think I'd vomited, but I don't even remember, I realized,

I have to, I'm going to shit my pants. And I was okay with that at that point. And I think I said, I'm going to, I'm going to shit my pants. And they're like, well, let's get you to the bathroom. And I probably yelled at them, I was like, you think I can get to the bathroom? But Joe, basically, practically fireman carried me. I mean, I was walking the barely. And I remember getting out onto the porch and them shining a light and being like, which ones are your flip flops? Because everyone's flip flops are out there. And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? You think I'm going to put on fucking flip flops? It was the most, but you're right. It was. It was like, I'm dying and none of you fucking get it. It is a very funny thing to ask someone in the

depths of an Iowa experience to pick out flip flops. And when I'm in any kind of yoga shit, I can't pick out my flip flops with a clear mind. Yeah, it was like, I don't, I don't care if I step on shit or anything. Like this is life or death, man, and probably death. This is not flip flops. You think I'm worried about my under sole hygiene? And I was infuriated and horrified because they don't fucking get it. They don't fucking get it. Of course they did get it a lot better than I got it. And so I got, got to the bathroom. So it's like a 20 foot walk away from the Maloka to the bathroom. They probably strategically put it as close as possible so you don't smell anything. And I get there and Joe says, and I said something else. I don't remember what I said.

And Joe says to me says, Adam, you're being very rude right now. I know you're suffering a lot and we're all trying to help you, but you're being very rude. And that just was the turning point for me. I hadn't realized, of course I knew I'm an adult. I must have, but it didn't register. Something, I like how the lights just changed. Like this is the epiphany moment of the extemporaneous solo show I'm doing right now. If you're in Duncan's studio, the lights just changed. But yeah, it was like, and my reaction was, Oh, I'm sorry. Wow, I'm sorry. And prior to that moment, my thought was Joe's coming to the bathroom with me. There's no way I can pull down my pants. But that snapping to reality, I was like, okay, I can, I'm going to try to go to the bathroom on

my own. And I did. And I went to the bathroom. And also the physical action of going to the bathroom, moving my pants, all of that, putting on the toilet seat, that grounded me in physical reality. And that was when I started feeling better there too. Since we're saying it all, it came also in the bathroom, I had the realization, as I started connecting more to my body, I was like, why am I wearing clothes? It's 90 degrees. Clothes are silly here. Let me just, I don't need clothes. So I walked out of the bathroom naked to this waiting retin to of people who are trying to help me. And they assumed I'd soiled my pants. I hadn't. And they were like, you should put on your, if you're going back in, why don't you put on your clothes for other people? And I was like, oh,

yeah, that's, that's fair. Wow. And I went, and by this point, I, amazingly, only maybe 10 minutes had elapsed since I went into the bathroom, I was able to walk back into the Maloka under my own power, shaky, but I was able to do it. And I got in there. And it hit me, one, how horribly selfish had been because, yeah, Duncan, it was this primordial reaction, but it was a choice to be that crying, which I was, I don't know if I mentioned, I was sobbing quite a bit during the early part two. That wasn't a choice. Riding around, probably not a choice. But swearing and saying that stuff, that was a choice. It was a choice that was, grew out of a great deal of pain and fear, but it was a choice. And it broke over me like a fucking wave as I'm lying in the Maloka,

now feeling increasingly peaceful, that I had chosen to be very, very selfish. No judgment in that. But that had, that was a choice I made. And holy shit, I make that choice on a lower, less dramatic level all the time in my life without realizing it's a choice. I'm in pain. I'm anxious. I'm sad. And I don't think about, and I act in ways that I feel like, well, of course, I'm doing this because I'm hurting. And this is what I need to do, but it's not what I need to do. It's what I choose to do. That's heavy, man. And I realized, I mean, I knew intellectually, everything is a choice. The light's changed again, the timing is perfect. Is this Alexa, who we have to thank for this? Is she monitoring this conversation? It's that which Alexa emerges

from. But it's all, and what I came out of that, it was this feeling of just growing awe that, God, I mean, I wonder about certain things in my life, for example, why intimate relationships have been difficult in recent years and why I can often feel isolated. I do have a lot of, and I'm very grateful for a lot of really wonderful connections and friendships. But there are times when I don't have that or don't let, basically seeing that, oh, I'm just really selfish a lot of the time. When I'm aware I have a choice, I think I often don't choose selfishness. I'll give myself that credit. But it's not really giving myself credit because it's a lot easier to think you don't have a choice than to think, oh, I have a choice, but I'm choosing selfishness.

No, I just don't let myself see I have a choice a lot of the time. Cutting off someone walking down the stairs to the subway from that level all the way up to just being a jerk to my mom who's just calling because she's worried about me. Those are all choices. And it's interesting, isn't it, that when you begin to realize that the decision to be selfish is, in many cases, fundamentally violent to yourself and people around you. Yes, it's a violent form of, and right, and I've hurt myself so much with that. And just realizing how pervasive that choice is and realizing that now that I know I can make a different choice and not being so naive by this point in my psychedelic career and my human career, to think that, well, now that I realize that I'll just make those choices

automatically, but knowing that now there's a chance now I have, I have a degree of freedom that I didn't have around this. And also realizing that so many things that I think are in choices are choices. I give away my power of free will if indeed we have that to, I don't know what to just, you could say the devil, but just habit, expediency to nothing. I don't even realize I'm giving it away so often. And so as I'm lying there, just gratitude, I start tearing up just, wow, so lucky to have this experience, to be given this experience as well as also real real feeling like, yeah, I've probably fucked up a few people's nights here. And also feeling like fighting myself wanting to think about how I'll apologize it to them. But that's a

ghost snake. I don't need to figure that out. I'm just going to be present in a moment and say what I say. And feeling real, real power, but real humility, power that I have so much more power than I realized to choose humility that, you know, I'm so blind that I've been so blind that I've given it away for nothing that I think I'm an intelligent person, I think. But I miss the most obvious feature of my own existence, which is that I'm constantly choosing things. And my choices dictate my reality. The universe is going to respond how it responds. I don't control that. But if I choose A versus B, I'm going to get a different reality. It may not be the reality that I think I'll get from A versus B, but it will be different. And that if I don't like the

reality I'm being given a lot of the time, well, the place to start and maybe to finish maybe the only place is what am I choosing right now? Yeah, who am I serving? Who am I serving? Yeah. Am I serving myself or am I serving the other? Yeah, or within my am I serving or like in a case like this? Am I serving a part of myself that ultimately gets away gets in the way of my service of others? Yeah, in connection with others. And that's in that saddest thing about it is it's like you're it's the it's you know, it's the it's the weird if you're I don't know where I heard this before, but it's like if your hand decided to start trying to feed itself, instead of putting food into your mouth, yeah, then your hand would die. And in the same way, like the ego gets confused

because it thinks the way to gratify the senses is to do whatever it wants. When the reality that we all come into contact with once in a while is that simple moment where you're like, God, can I you know what? I'm going to listen to you right now as a form of service. I'm just going to listen to you. I'm not going to think about me for a second. I want to hear what you have to you know, when someone comes, you know, when someone comes to you, and they usually will in a kind of mundane way start off something and then all of a sudden the next thing you know, they're talking about putting their dog to sleep or whatever, right? That was their agenda. Yeah. Yeah, but they put their dog to sleep like five years ago. But like what you're saying right now,

these things are caught in our body. So the dissonance wants to be healed. So the dissonance presents itself. Well, slow down on that. That's interesting. I haven't heard that you mean so that the trauma over this person putting their dog to sleep is compelling them to kind of bring this out with the hope that by presenting it to you, they can get some healing. Yeah. Yeah. Look, look, I'm hurt. I'm hurt. I'm hurt. I'm hurt. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. And they're going through the whole world going help me. Help me. Help me. And then when they come to you, you know, maybe, oh, yeah, just walking my dog in the park. And this woman, we're walking next to each other. She's like, what kind of dog is that? Oh, it's a poodle. Oh, that poodle,

that poodle looks just like my poodle that I had. Paco had to put him to sleep recently. And then I'm like, Oh, I'm sorry. And she's like, well, not that reason. It's like a year and a half ago. And then like you're looking at her and you're like, Oh, no, it wasn't a year and a half. Right. This was two seconds ago. You're still putting Paco to sleep. If you're, if you're saying that right now, you're still putting Paco to sleep right now. You're in the room and you're watching the needle go in to Paco's neck and you're wanting to be healed. And so you're calling out in any way you don't realize it. She just thinks she's having conversations or walking. So in that moment, you can think, all right, okay, okay, okay, okay. Let's listen. I'm not, I'm clearly not going to

bring Paco back to life. But if I can just be a node for a second of openness to and within that moment, be like, okay, okay, I'm right here. And guess what? You know, else is right. You don't say this or they'll think you're fucking crazy. You say, you know, else is here. Paco, he's right here with you. He didn't go anywhere. He's with you. He's not dead. Paco's here. Everything's here right here. And if you can just pretend that's real for a moment with that person, maybe they walk away. And for us, they don't even know. But just maybe you've like in some way, you've been a tie, you've been one stroke of sandpaper, just taking that edge and making it a little softer. And that's what anyone can do. Just listen, right? And then and then you become the servant,

you know, and just like what this beautiful doctor did for you. Yeah. And also what I love about what he did is because, you know, a lot of times you would think, when I'm thinking, I like about it because I was thinking he's going to say, he's not certainly not going to say you're being rude. He's just going to be compassionate and be like, Oh, no, no, no, act the way that you want. But what I love about it is that he told the truth. Yeah. He told you the exact truth. He said very simply, here's what's happening. You're being rude. And that was the perfect medicine for you. Yeah. Yeah, it was because that was it. That was like, right, I didn't think of it that way. But really what he was saying is you're making a choice right now. Yeah. I am. Oh, wow, I am. Yeah.

Is this the choice I want to be making? No, it's not not for it's not helping other people. And it sure as hell isn't helping me. And that's very true of a lot of the choices that I make, you know, I mean, the OCD is a lot better, but I'm still aware of, you know, we were talking about this before the podcast where, yeah, part of the integration is I think I realized under the OCD is is a lot of a hurt and loss. And I think the I developed the OCD as a way to avoid that. Yeah. And so now I'm experiencing the hurt and loss more. And the broken. Yeah. And and the best. And the best, but a huge part of me that's like, hell, fucking no, run away from this shit. Run away. We'd surf the internet, masturbate,

watch the sunset. This is just litany of things I've done in the last 24 hours. Eat over eat. You know, whatever it is. But but yeah, it's trusting that because, you know, it's the same thing once you're, if you're aware of your vulnerability, this is what terrifies me about Trump. I don't want to bring that. But I feel like he's just totally unaware of his vulnerability and therefore is controlled by it. Yeah. And I think, you know, and I've been controlled and still am. And I think we all are to varying degrees, but, you know, it's a broken heart isn't fun. But if you're really in that moment with it, then there's a freedom there. And there is a beauty

there. And unquestionably. And it helps you serve others because, I mean, man, I've been, I've, I've been tearing up over, you know, just seeing a, an old person alone on the subway who may have a very rich fulfilling life, by the way, and still, but, but maybe I do pick up something like, you know, just seeing what I perceive as the suffering of others and, and being touched by it. Oh yeah. Yeah. When the Nova Cane starts wearing off, it's going to hurt for a second. But then, like underneath that is such a, I mean, the, the broken heart is the X marks the spot on the treasure map. And underneath that is, is, is, I mean, that it's bliss. The broken heart is the pathway into, into bliss. And, and it's, that's what's, that's, but it is, I mean,

it's something to avoid. Well, I think we evolved, let's bring it back to evolution. I think we evolved to avoid pain. And certainly the pains that we evolved to avoid initially, I would say are, you know, the, the pain in your stomach from not having enough food, the physical sensation of a snake's fang penetrating your epidermis, you know, stuff like that. And we're good at avoiding outside threats. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here, right? Our ancestors who weren't good at that, they didn't reproduce. Our, your, Duncan's ancestor, my ancestors, they were good at that. The problem is, I think the mind applies that same methodology to internal threats, to emotions and thoughts. And that's where it becomes pathological, because I'm having these

emotions for a reason. First of all, I can't get rid of them because they're already inside of me. All I can do is try to suppress or distract. But that suppression or distraction actually causes more broken heart, causes more loss. Well, it causes, I mean, the, and an utter lack of service to other people. It causes a, you miss out on the, what, what may very well be the best part of life is that feeling of having a broken heart and how rare it is. Because it's rare, like you don't get a broken heart all the time. You don't fall in love all the time. You don't get a broken heart all the time. It's a very rare thing to have a broken heart. Oh no, my heart is broken. Oh God, no, I hope I never get a broken heart. And yet when you listen to the music and you're like,

well, 80% of this great music came from a broken heart. And then when you read the scriptures and you realize these scriptures came from a broken heart. And when you realize that at any given moment all around the planet, there is a magnetic flow of broken hearts of, of, of pure and, and unadulterated sadness and loss. And then when you are in fortunate enough to have a broken heart, you suddenly are in the company of the saints. You're in the company of people who are experiencing reality firsthand. And that feeling you have walked into this ocean of brokenheartedness now it's not your broken heart. You think that feeling is just your broken heart. No, it's the broken heart that's been broken for eternity. And that is the wound, right? This is

the Garden of Eden. This is like cast out of the garden. This is the original, what they call original sin, the eternal never ending ache, the Fisher King wound, you know, that thing. And then when you're there for a second, then when you're there, that's when you can heal it. You know, that's when in your little pixel of the great eternal broken heart, just maybe by being present with it, and you can convert it, you can shift it and, and start healing like I think what may be a wound upon our species or something. Who knows? I don't know. But I do know when I had a broken heart, Roshi, Joan Halifax said to me at Ramdas's house, this is right after my mom died. And I would, and she said to me, and I'll never forget it. Cause in the midst of it, I was like, God,

I don't know if I really like what you're saying. But she said, right now a window is opened up for you. A window is opened up for you. You're, you don't get this very often. You don't get this very often in a life. You should in this, this is where you can, you can really, really do the work. And whenever your heart breaks, a window opens, and when that window opens, your instinct is to shut the fucking thing, pull the blinds down and pull up, board up the window and start choking off, shut it curtains, you porn. And that's it. But, but when you're, when you're in that, when you're lucky enough that all of your lifetime of effort and like a zombie movie, putting boards in front of the window, fucking hammering nails over the window, pushing the dresser in front of the

window, putting the boards in front of the dresser and then sitting in front of that with a shotgun or whatever. If you're lucky enough to find that that window gets blown open. And what's on the other side of that, isn't the zombies that you thought were there when you, when you first sealed the thing up, but just this beautiful, beautiful universe that you've been hiding from. As Jack Cornfield often says, he, I think he's quoting Hafiz, the Sufi poet, he says, fear is the cheapest room in the house. I hope you choose better accommodations. And like, when you see that, that, ah, when it, when you're like, Oh my God, the thing I was boarding up was heaven. And that, yeah. I mean, when you said that, that, that to me is also part of the signature

of the psychedelic experience where you have this, you know, absolute terror, absolute terror. And then when you open up to it, it's unity. It's the thing. It's the, yeah. Yeah. But it is, but in the moment, and it's, yeah, it's, wow. Man, what a great conversation. I got to tell you, man, this really hit the spot for me. Like, I, I feel like I was there with you that night and I, I'm really interested in this place. What was the name of this place? Nihwe Rau. It's spelled N-I-H-U-E is the first word. And then R-A-R-O-A is the second word. Wow. Yeah. Well, and, and also, um, you, you have a show, the mushroom cure. Is, are you still putting this on right now? Yes. Uh, we are doing it.

We're about to start actually in San Francisco, where I'll see you in Oakland for the MAPS conference. So we're doing a run at the Marsh Theater in San Francisco starting, it's from April 19th to June 3rd. Cool. Yeah. April 19th, of course, Bicycle Day. That's not coincidental. Yes. Very nice. Yeah. So April 19th to June 3rd. And that is the story we were talking about earlier. That's the true story of how I tried to cure my, at that time, really debilitating OCD with psychedelics after reading a study. I think you've got some more things to add to this show, probably. Or maybe it's the next show, but, but yeah. Well, uh, thank you very much. Thank you, man. It's been a great talking really. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Adam Strauss everybody. Go see a show if

you're in San Francisco, the mushroom cure. Much thanks to Blue Apron for sponsoring this episode. Don't forget to sign up over at BlueApron.com slash Trussell. That's a 2S is 2L's Trussell. Thank you guys for listening, for putting up with me. I will see you very soon with a brand new episode. I love you. Hare Krishna. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel out now. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. You've been making better decisions for your busy family for years. And now little by little, you're making decisions for yourself, like snacking a little better, going a little further, sleeping a little deeper. We're here to make that journey easier and even more rewarding

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