HealthyGamerGG - Psychedelics and Mental Health with Dr. Will Siu

Episode Date: May 2, 2020

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That's D-R-I-Z-L-Y.com today. All right. So I guess I will actually start. I should get used to being a bit more responsible like you. And so, yes, this is for educational purposes only. And so, yeah, if you have a problem, please go see your doctor. But yeah, thank you. So my name is Will Sue, as Alak says said.

And, yeah, I'm 40 years old. And, you know, we met when I was in my psychiatry residency about, So I started at Harvard about eight years ago, nine years ago. And at that time, you know, I was raised Jehovah's Witness. And so I was not into drugs. I had only smoked pot about five times in my life. And I was a believer in what we were taught, which was that psychedelics were dangerous. They were illegal and they were addictive.

And, you know, and so I had gotten into the mental health field. I was going to be an academic researcher. And just in case anyone's wondering, I did not have long hair, I did not have piercings, I did not have jewelry back then. I think a lot can assess for that. And I, yes, I was this traditional guy who was like going through the hoops of life

and being like, I'm going to be, you know, if I get all these degrees and I go to all these great institutions, I'll be happy. And I kind of hit like the second big low point of my life. And I was like, I achieved all these things that I told myself I wanted to achieve and I was still not happy. And so, yeah, I went into therapy for the first time, meaning receiving my own therapy. And the story is that, and I started doing psychoanalysis and I was analyzing my dreams and my childhood. Can you just explain to us real quick what psychoanalysis is?

Oh, so psychoanalysis is a form of psychotherapy. It's kind of the most traditional where you're like laying on a couch and telling your therapist about what's going on, basically. And so my childhood best friend kind of did the opposite of me after high school where he decided to not go to college. He just worked and was in a band and partied. But after the financial crisis in 0809, he ended up deciding to go back to school. So he's going back to school into college, his first year of college, as I'm having this life crisis in my early 30s. And he gets introduced to psychedelics. And one in particular called DMT.

And it convinced me to even read about it. He was like, DMT is what's made in the brain and it's what causes us to dream. So I was like, what? And so then I went to our little search engine. And I googled this and searched it in there. And I'm like, oh, my God, it's true. Like, all these government labs in the 50s and 60s were putting most of their psychiatric money and research into psychedelics.

I'm like, that was the first time where I'm like, wait, does the government lie to us? Or, you know, are they not at least only always truthful? And so, you know, I would just say that within, you know, another six months a year from that, I was just so curious and I connected to the psychedelic research community and got involved. in the training and so I've been trained by MAPS. So for those of you guys that don't know, MAPS is the multidisciplinary association for psychedelic studies and they're the main funders of the psychedelic research. It was founded by a guy named Rick Doblin and it has completely 100% funded psychedelic research from donations. And just an interesting tidbit as they succeed to be

You know, a prescribable medication, it'll be the only, the second time in history, a medication was brought to the market by, completely by donations. And so it's a pretty big deal. What's the first case? Yeah. Do you know? Plan B, which is the, plan B is the medication. Yeah, which will, you know, allow someone to prevent a pregnancy the morning. It's like the morning after pill is what people call it.

Interesting. Yeah. And so, yeah, that's kind of interesting. So yeah, once I discovered psychedelics and read into them, I just got more and more into it. And then I was able to luckily have an experience taking MDMA legally in a therapeutic setting in 2017, which was life-changing to me. And this was part of the training for maps for therapists. And I'm happy to talk about that. And it's a beautiful thing because I can then talk about doing the psychedelic without saying, oh, my God, I did something illegal and get in trouble as a doctor.

and I think education is very important around psychedelics. I've also had a number of experiences legally with ketamine as well as a treatment, which I think is a wonderful treatment, works very different. I've also had experiences taking ayahuasca in Peru, where it's legal as well, and so I can talk about those experiences. These days, you know, I have a clinical practice in Southern California and Los Angeles. I am a big believer in public education. I think everyone should know about these medicines, know how to use them responsibly.

And note that I call them medicines, I think, when they're in use for healing. You know, I think it's the most powerful thing we have definitely in the mental health psychiatric bracket in terms of treatment. And so it's very exciting to be involved in this stuff. And I provide ketamine-assisted therapy for many of my clients. So that's the only fully legal, if you want to call it, therapy. with psychedelics that's available in the U.S. right now without being in a clinical trial. And yeah, and I provide what people call like psychedelic integration therapy, which means like if someone has gone out to a retreat or has done illegal underground therapy,

I try to help them through the and process the experience. So it can be, you know, hopefully a healing one for them. Sure. Awesome, man. So thank you so much for that introduction. So generally speaking, when people come on stream, like I'll ask them sort of questions about their personal life and their journey and things like that. You know, and since you're coming on sort of as an expert, I could ask you more personal questions. Like I was curious about a couple of things that you said.

One was that that was the second. That was like you had a mid like a second life crisis. And so I'm curious about what your first one was. And then there's also like more kind of expert oriented questions about like what's the. the difference between DMT, LSD, psilocybin, ketamine, ayahuasca, Ivagaine, like, you know, like, and what do you think, so kind of like more treatment oriented questions or expert questions or like sort of like what your journey has been more specifically? What do you, do you feel like we should go in a particular direction? Sure. I just got to say something because or else

it's going to distract me, but I just opened up this Twitch thing. I've never been on it before. And it's like Triphiom, like, wow, what an interesting interface between all this stuff. It's really cool. Yeah. Anyway, I just say that. I guess that's what makes me a boomer. I'm curious what a boomer is, but I'm assuming it just means I don't know. Yeah. I don't know a lot of things. If you're a boomer, a boomer is someone who is respected and loved by the Twitch community, basically. Yeah, so Twitch is interface. So let me just explain one or two things about Twitch.

So Twitch, I don't know exactly how many people we have watching right now. We can just look real quick. Okay, so we've got about 2,400 people watching. And then Twitch also has a chat, which means that there's, they're like people that are posting things in chat. Like they may be posting reactions or questions or things like that. And that's how we know whether Twitch chat is happy with what we're doing or sad with what we're doing. I try to steer clear of looking at numbers or Twitter chat while I'm actually streaming unless I'm like interacting with them like answering questions or whatever.

So right now let's see what they're saying. Well, the boomer, I don't have glasses. I can't read anyway. Okay. Well, fantastic. See, he understands what a boomer is. He's one of us. He'll fit in.

He'll fit right in. He can feel the boomerness inside. But so what do you think, Will, do you want to talk like a little bit more like about your personal journey? or do you want to like maybe start with more questions or like about more details around different kinds of treatment and where you think the field is going? Sure. I'm happy to talk about, you know, I love talking about stories. You know, I think stories bigger picture is what leads to healing. You know, could I sit here and talk to you about the,

you know, the brain MRI studies with LSD and, you know, that, that, you know, that, you know, the default mode network is suppressed during MDMA therapy, sure. But I think what people really care about is why these things work so much better than your SSRIs, Prozac, etc. And so I think stories really matter in terms of what, you know, what happens to people and how to heal for. Sure. So, you know, my first, you know, big life crisis, I would say, was in my late 20s. I was a medical student at UCLA and my dad had gotten diagnosed with cancer in the middle of my PhD time. And so, you know, that was a first big wake-up call of, like, you know, my dad was healthy. It wasn't something that was expected and it was like, you know, that dreaded phone call as a young man. Like,

you know, the moment we learn that we die, it's like, oh shit, we realize, oh, my God, our parents aren't going to be around. And so I got that dreaded phone call. And then I was, you know, living in D.C. at the time working in a laboratory. And it was just a big low point. And, you know, my dad ended up living about two years and he ended up getting like rounds of chemo and blood transfusions and stuff. But it really was, ended up impacting my mental health. And at that time, I'll say, so I didn't actually decide to become a psychiatrist until the end of medical school, which we don't have to get into the details. But at this point of my life, like mental health was not on my radar. I'd never been to therapy. Like, I didn't even think about, you know, I didn't know what psychology was

or Freud really. So I just got really down and then unconsciously because I was like hiding my feelings and didn't know how to process them. I ended up developing this really bad flying phobia, which lasted two years. There was a two-year period where I did not fly whatsoever. And it was really embarrassing to me at the time. When I was actually finishing my PhD towards the end of my dad's life when he was dying, and I actually ended up taking a boat across the Atlantic because I was too scared of flying. And then when I got to New York, I took a train across the country to go back home because I was too scared.

And so the flying phobia had just taken a complete hold over my life. And so, yeah, that was my first big crisis. And then, but, you know, like, I didn't know how to heal. And so I was just like, okay, power through, keep on the goals. Like, okay, I graduated and I got into Harvard. And I'm like, okay, that's what, you know, it was a few years later after that where I hit my low because I was just like, I'm putting hoop after hoop after hoop in. One second, will.

Sure. Yeah, sorry, go ahead. I just switched to the server to try that. These two terms, I call them perceived values versus true values. To me, true values are the things that we're born with, that we, you know, the things that we want to, how we want to express ourselves in our lives, what we want to spend our lives doing. And then I think of where it's like culture, religion, family, you know, capitalism tells us

X, Y, Z, this is what you're supposed to do. This is what you're supposed to do in life. And then I think this, you know, in perceived values can become so ingrained that they seem true. And so what I realized for myself was that I was all these hoops that I had put in front of myself, they weren't making me happy because that's not what I actually wanted to be doing. I didn't want to be a professor. How did you realize that? Well, it's interesting because I'm actually fast forwarding quite a bit. So, I mean, the actual realization of that didn't come until the end of residency, which, you know, when I knew you, which was around 2014. And so it was through therapy.

It was really through looking at myself, looking at my life. So how on earth can we understand, like, what, how does one develop a phobia of flying and like what happened with that? because you said it lasted about two years. So I presume that you still don't have it. Like, what's your understanding of what happened there? So with, you know, I think it was about, you know, so I actually flew home when my dad was diagnosed when he collapsed. And that was from D.C. to L.A. and again, it was that dreaded time, like went right on kayak or whatever. And I'm like, let's get the next flight out. And I remember in my mind, meaning,

I don't know objectively if it was true that it was like the bumpiest worst flight I'd ever been on. And when we were in the middle of, you know, the flight across the U.S., very bumpy and the pilot went on the, you know, on the intercom and he was like, oh, sorry, there was a plane that flew too close above us. And I was just like, are you fucking kidding me? Like, like, you get like that happens? Like, come on, guys. And then, so I. Sorry, I'm just like getting distracted. The Twitch thing is so, it's fascinating.

Don't look at it. Not look at it. Don't look at it, Will. Resist. How are you looking at it on your phone? Yeah, and it's on, it's not on Wi-Fi. It's just, I don't even know what these words mean. Monka S or something?

I don't even know. What is that? Anyway. So what happened was then, you know, I started a so-soucats, right instead of letting you know we're going we're covering a lot right now but you know what we want in a healthy situation you know when we experience a trauma is that or you know what we call a trauma is that we want to be able to fully express the emotion physically it's like if you if you have a clear glass wall and a bird flies into it right and it collapses it's done for a second it gets up it shakes it like chirps and then it's moves on with its life, then it starts go hunting worms again. It doesn't sit there and it's like ruminating about, oh, fuck, like, I've got to look out for for other glass now for the rest of my life. It, like, it has the experience, it shakes it off, and it moves on. In our culture, you know,

I think of six basic emotions. We don't know, we can get into it later if it matters, but we have a cluster of emotions that we have started calling, that we've started judging as being weak, right? And to me, sadness, fear, and shame. It's like, you know, if you're feeling those, they're weak, you're not a man. And so we don't get that opportunity for catharsis, right? Because we're told from a young age, boys don't cry, hide it, you know. And so then we start locking in all of these experiences in our body year after year, experience after experience, and they build up. And that has to go somewhere. And so, you know, what happened was that I had all this stuff, all these feelings about my dad dying, and I didn't know where to express them.

I didn't have people that would listen, that could listen the way I needed them to listen. And so it built up. And then so the psyche, the unconscious, like, tries to put that somewhere, right? And that somewhere sometimes is, you know, depending on your genetics and your upbringing, looks like alcoholism, or it looks like an eating disorder, it looks like PTSD. You know, for me, that cluster of things at that moment of my life looked like a photo. And I prefer to think of mental illness in these categories of just like, again, because of your unique traits, it expresses this way. But I don't believe in like, I used to believe, but I don't anymore, that there's these like hard evidence, DSM diagnoses that like are genetically predisposed and you can never be healed from them.

Like psychedelics have shown me that like almost without exception, the paradigm of mental illness that we have created is, especially the categorization is a lot of. of baloney, you know, and I think that, you know, we can do really deep healing by revisiting, you know, these past experiences. And so that's where psychedelics come in, right? Because psychedelics, you know, what I'm basically saying is we need to allow the emotion and the movement to come to the surface so that we can deal with it. So I like to think about psychedelics as evocative therapies as opposed to suppressive. therapies, right? Because like suppressive, you can even see that in our, in our, in our, the categories of our medications, the psychiatric medications, antidepressant, anti-anxiety. What, what are those say?

Anti-sadness, anti-fear. If you're feeling something, numb it down. I don't want to see it, right? And we, we as a mental health, you know, field, like, that's, that's, that's, that's, We're not even taught how to deal with increased emotions. We're taught how to suppress them. And that's where psychedelics, that is why they're so effective. Like we're seeing MDMA and psilocybin have both been labeled, and we can talk about what this means in a second. The FDA has labeled them as breakthrough therapies,

which means they get like an accelerated approval through the FDA. That's the only two times in history that that designation has been used for a mental health, a primary mental health condition. And so you're seeing, we're seeing rates of like 60, 70 plus percent of people healed after one to three treatments with a psychedelic, with psychotherapy in between. And like, you know as well as I that those numbers are like unheard of in psychiatry. You know, so a good number in psychiatry is like 30, 30, 35 percent. Yep. Yeah.

So that's crazy, man. You know, it's so interesting. So I think a lot of why we've grown is because our, like, my personal approach is like very aligned with yours. So I think of, I don't think of mental illness is an illness. Like, I don't think these things are broken within people. I think these are adaptive mechanisms that have kind of gotten out of control. So the way that I understand anxiety, for example, is we all have a future functioning capability, capacity within our brain to predict problems in the future, right?

Like, that's what our brain is designed to do. And if we, anxiety is simply that future problem predicting capability, like, gone out of control. And, like, you know, even depression or, or, I struggle with some things like schizophrenia, which in my clinical experience have been, like, more like an illness. Like, I have trouble seeing sort of the value. of that, especially with some of the negative symptoms like cognitive, you know, cognitive problems and things like that. But I think for a lot of these kind of neurotic conditions or feelings of like depression or anxiety or whatever, like they're just our bodies and minds way of trying to

express something and we don't let ourselves express it. And a lot of the work that we do on stream, the reason that we kind of ask personal questions. And I think part of the reason that we've grown is that we see a lot of catharsis, like on. on stream. So we talk to people, we sort of evoke emotions, we ask important questions, and then people oftentimes have catharsis, which I think is a good word to describe it, where they'll sort of have like this emotional moment. And the other thing, by the way, Will, just in terms of like things that we were taught, like, you know, I remember working with psychoanalytic supervisors and stuff like that and then them talking about therapy

is like a really long-term thing. Like patient had a breakthrough after like two, two and a half years. And then I remember thinking is like a resident, you know, because I'm, I'm the one who's being taught, so I'm not an expert. I'm like, what the fuck were you doing for the first two years? Like, if they had a breakthrough at like three years. And one of the things that I've come to believe is that like I don't think that our paradigms, as well as like medication, I don't think that, you know, psychotherapy needs to be this long and protracted process that, that, you know, lasts years and years, I think that you can use certain tools. So I personally use meditation to evoke a lot of emotion. And like when you empty your mind, like whatever's down there. So you have this suppressive

mechanism, right, that keeps all these emotions down. And then when you empty your mind, it creates a vacuum and whatever's down below comes up on its own. And so that's been sort of my personal experience and also my experience teaching meditation to my patients is that like it accelerates the rate of therapy, which I doubt it accelerates it at the same rate as psilocybin and things like that. But, you know, I mean, I'm aligned with what you're saying. Yeah. So a few things. You know, I, on this anxiety piece, which I've come to, and as a meditator, I think you, I'd be

curious to get your thoughts on this. But I've started essentially grouping, you know, what we call mental illness into two places, anxieties or depressions. Because what we want to be, in theory, is fully present. We want to be in flow, right? I imagine that, you know, when we're engaged, like if we're on a first date and we really like the person, or if you're playing a game and you're really into it,

you're not thinking about stuff, right? You're just in flow where you are. And so I like to think of anxieties as a category, meaning I'm not present because I'm living in the future. I'm worried about something or depression. I'm not present because I'm worried about something in the past that happened. And interestingly, I think with psychedelics, what I give a lot of thought to it is, are certain psychedelics better for certain things?

And we'll get to that. And I'm glad you asked that in the beginning. And, you know, I like that you mentioned meditation. You know, I think the things that psychedelics facilitate, memories, emotions, et cetera, that we need to bring up to heal, they're only doing something that we are completely capable of doing anyway. Like the human body, the psyche, the spirit is completely capable of doing that type of work. It just is facilitated by something like psychedelics, but it can also be facilitated by meditation or it can be facilitated by holotropic breathwork, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, great. I think those are the two points I wanted to make. So first of all, I agree with you completely. So I encompass all mental illness. into future oriented and past oriented, which I call worry and regret, which I mean, no surprise that it's basically exactly what you said.

That, because I even try to, in my language, I found that it's useful to step away from anxiety and depression because they are medicalized terms. So I use worry and regret. So if you look at, like literally,

if, so I teach a lot about this stuff. So if you guys have watched this on stream, like literally the cool thing about anxiety is that like if you, look at any anxious thought. It is when your mind is not in the present. It's in the future. And some people even say, well, I have anxieties about the past. But if you really tunnel down into that, what they're really doing is something happens like, oh, I went to a party yesterday. I looked dumb. So people won't like me and won't invite me next time. And they'll think that

that's like worrying about the past, but it's not really, technically it's not worrying about the past. If you really pay attention to your thoughts, you're worried about the future consequences of a past action. And so all worry is future-oriented mind and all regret is past-oriented mind. And literally, if you can be in the present with your mind, anxiety cannot exist. In order for anxiety to exist,

you must be thinking in the future. And so part of what I think is really powerful is like people don't realize that like they think about anxiety is something that you have to, you know, brapple with and treat and things like that. And my general approach to anxiety is twofold. One is to dig into the underlying, things that make you anxious.

And this kind of goes to what you were talking about about, like, you know, there's a certain amount of personal stuff and there's a certain amount of like environmental stuff that causes mental illness to manifest in a particular way. So in the Eastern system of Vedic psychology, they talk about these things called some scars, which are essentially like unprocessed traumas. And that some scars manifest as particular things. They're like, they're kind of like, you know, subconscious psychological conflicts. I think like the psychoanalysis.

kind of had a sense of this. And so you can kind of work on the root or what you can actually do is change the function of your mind in the moment, which is completely ignoring the root and literally turn off the anxiety by focusing on the present. And when I work with people with like procrastination and things like that, like you can sort of deal with the subconscious origin of your fears, which is a more long-term process. And in the moment, you can learn how to like literally shut off or overcome procrastination by understanding like the mechanism of how mind works.

But anyway, I'm with you 100% in terms of like your formulation. It's like I think. And I also agree with you, by the way. And this is something I'm curious about that, you know, one thing that I realized some time ago is that any substance that we put into our body is only capable, it doesn't create anything. It only activates things. Right.

So if we think about alcohol, like that activates GAVA receptors. like cannabis activates cannabinoid receptors. It doesn't create something new in our brain. It only turns off or on what's already there. And so any experience that you can have through a psychedelic, it's my belief, and this is kind of where I'm curious, that you can attain something similar through meditation. And I know that when I talk to people who have had psychosis,

had like psychedelic experiences, I can relate to them through my personal space. spiritual experiences, which sound very similar in some ways and also very different. I'm kind of curious, do you think that, because this is something that people have sort of asked about and there's been some debate about, do you think that anything that you can attain through meditation, you can attain through psychedelic use and vice versa? Yes. I just want to put a footnote on mentioning something about psychosis because it's something that

it just came back to me that you had mentioned. Yes. So, yeah, I think we, it sounds like we completely agree on that, that, you know, yeah, things are just unlocked by different experiences external to the body or internal to the body, right? So, yeah, we can put things in. Like, we can even think that as basic as sugar and whatever we eat for meals, as you said, alcohol.

I really like that way of looking at it. I haven't quite worded it that way. And yeah, I'm just trying to think of like my mind's at the same time, like, wait, can we add something that wasn't there? Which is interesting, though, right? Just on a quick tangent, because, like, what about sensory stimulation? Like, the vision or touch can add something to us technically, right? That's external, like a trauma. So could a chemical do that?

I don't know. Anyway, it's more of like maybe an intellectual topic. But, you know, the piece about psychosis is that I actually, I do believe that, that, you know, perhaps that at least a good amount of what we call schizophrenia or psychosis could be just an incredibly complex defense mechanism. meaning, you know, I haven't worked at least anyone who was deeply, deeply suffering from schizophrenia who hadn't had a really, really rough set of years in their early life. And, you know, I would think of it as, you know, the unprocessed traumas, again, because of that person's mixture of genetics and upbringing, end up creating a reality because that created reality, as painful as it may appear to someone on the outside, could be more less painful

than having to sit with what actually happened. And I know that that's, you know, kind of what the early psychoanalyst used to believe. So people used to do long-term therapy with schizophrenia. Not that it worked very well. We didn't see, I mean, that it had very good results. But quite honestly, there aren't many studies with psychotherapy that work consistently at a high rate with any mental illness. And, interestingly, Stan Groff, who is someone who...

Can I just jump in for a second? So, like, our Discord seems to be lagging, like, a ton. Oh, there we go. Seems to have fixed itself. Is there anything you can do to improve your, like, Wi-Fi or, like, position or anything like that? I think everything is off except for... Let me see.

The other thing we can try doing is using a different platform. Yeah, everything is off on my end. Okay. I mean, all my devices are off of Wi-Fi except for the computer. Okay. All right. No problem. Let's keep going.

Sorry. So you were saying that schizophrenia could be an incredibly complex defense mechanism. Yeah. And so, you know, Stan Groff, who probably most people here have not heard of, is he's still alive. I think he's nearing 90. He was a, he was like in some ways the. the godfather of psychedelic therapy. And so he, he was, he is a guy from the Czech Republic.

And he was a training psychiatric resident. Sorry, there's a plane flying overhead if you hear some noise. He was training. Good one. Took me a minute. But, you know, so Stan was training as a psychiatrist when, Albert Hoffman, the scientist who discovered LSD, was wanted to put it into practice. And so Stan was one of the first people who actually did legal psychedelic therapy. And he ended up doing between

its estimated three and four thousand LSD sessions with patients completely legally. And half of those were in the United States. And just for anyone that's wondering, that's like unheard of. Like that is a large, large number of people to have had experiences with. Stan, interestingly, his first wife actually had schizoaffective disorder, which is kind of a milder form, I would say, of schizophrenia. And in part of those 3,500 cases, and in Stan's personal experience with his wife and other people, they actually treated numerous people that had what we would nowadays call schizophrenia. And he reports that, and he has reported, that he had a lot of success with people, right? And these were not large-scale, you know, double-blind placebo-controlled trials because those dead, like,

placebo-controlled trials didn't even really start until the 1990s. And so I think there is some evidence from within, you know, the psychedelic research from that time period that actually supports that, that, you know, a lot of schizophrenia at least should be looked at in the future in terms of potentially being treatable by psychilicine. psychedelics. You know, I don't think it's anything that, you know, we'll get into, like, in the next few years, but, you know, maybe in 10 or 15 years, it's worth looking at because what if this group of people who have essentially, in some ways, the capitalistic system has said these people are useless to the capitalistic machine to make money, so they're like the homeless population. Like, what if even

20% of those people could be living a pretty normal life if they had a, you know, a big significant healing experience with a psychedelic. Like what does that mean about us as a culture in our society? Hmm. Yeah, it's interesting. So I think we, so I'm just wondering, like, there were a couple of general threads. So you mentioned kind of this, this thing with your phobia. And we kind of got up, like, we sort of bounced around a little bit. So what ended up happening like with your, like, what's your understanding? of, so you kind of said that, you know, the phobia was sort of a manifestation of like internal emotions that didn't have any other way to come out. And that too sort of makes sense

to me because I'm kind of envisioning like this pile of stuff that, you know, would affect so many different dimensions of your life. So it's almost like your brain kind of like packages it up and just gives you like a very like intense slice of emotion with like one thing. So it kind of packs all that emotion into a particular fear. So what in a sense? ended up happening with you? Are you still afraid of planes? And if not, like, what changed? Not at all. I mean, I, it was gradual. So I started my personal psychotherapy around my dad and that stuff in 20, I guess that was probably 2014, 2013. And I continued it. I took a little break in the beginning of residency because the first year of residency was so challenging. And then I dove back

into therapy, you know, when I had the second mental health crisis. But, you know, this whole thing about catharsis and the body, etc., I had no idea what that was back then, right? I was of a lot of people, you know, the mind of a lot of people where I'm like, you know, illness is only the mind, right? Where I've started thinking that the mind and the voice in the body are actually three different levels of healing that are necessary. and that simply heeding the mind is one step, but it's not the whole step.

And in the beginning, I... What do you mean by the voice? So I believe that we're these physical beings, right? And I guess I'll give you the examples. So there's a book called The Four Agreements. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. But it's like the spiritual wellness. You know, anyway, the guy talks about these four agreements.

fourth agreement, I think, is be impeccable with your word. And I remember thinking about that, and I didn't agree. And I was like, you know, especially this day and age of people posting quotes and memes, et cetera, like in many of them in my, you know, circle of friends and colleagues, or even myself, it seemed hypocritical because some people would post some beautiful quote and then act like an asshole the next week. And I'm like, there's this like, this discrepancy. And so I mentioned those because to me there's one level of understanding. It's like, I know here what I need to do and how I need to, you know, treat my fellow man. But then when I get triggered, I'm going to behave a different way.

So I actually liked, you know, sort of adjusting that agreement with actually being impeccable with your deed. It almost, it felt more powerful to wait and see what people were like. by the way I got to know them and I saw them behave towards me other people over the course of time. And so to me, like, but you need the mind, right? You need the mind to heal because that's like a first level. The voice I add, because I think our voice is how we make ourselves known to the world, how we announce ourselves. It's like, this is who I am. This is what I want. This is how I'm going to engage with you. And there's a level of healing that's a difficulty that that is to like express what we feel. Right.

And there's a whole history and, you know, we can get into psychology, why that can happen. But, you know, if I'm doing, if I'm treating, you know, say a young woman who is in an abusive relationship, right? And through the work together that we do in therapy, she realizes, oh, I don't want to be an abusive relationship before. I want to stand up for myself. But it's another level to go home if she's like living with that person and vocalize that and be like, I'm leaving you. I don't need this anymore. Right. So it's one level to heal here and heal here.

But then we have to actually be able to speak from the heart. And, you know, lastly, it's then to like the body, why I think of that is differently. And it's at two levels. Am I moving literally with integrity and allowing my body to just be? But I also think that, you know, saying that there's a healing level to the body is, am I spending my time moving about the world in a way that I most love? Am I spending that time in a job that I really care about, that I'm passionate about? Am I, you know, going to college just because my parents told me to go and I actually really fucking hate this.

And I would actually rather be doing something else. And so, you know, and it's harder to act and move because I feel like as we heal things in the mind, it's like we're fighting a narrative within our mind. But actually, once we go to the level of the voice and the body, those tests are almost outside of the mind and they're out in the real physical world. And I think there's a different level of difficulty doing that. Yeah, I mean, that once again, words from my own heart. So let me ask you a question, Will.

So let's say that someone is fighting these struggles, right? So like this is you're talking about essentially like Twitch, like this is who we are, where people who are not moving our body in a way that is like aligned with our true values, where people who don't express our emotions and we may even not, like we may not even be clear in the mind.

Like in fact, I mean, I think many people aren't. So how do people start? Sorry, you cut off that last minute. So how do people start? Okay. So this is, no, this is great. We're getting like deep into the philosophy. So if you know,

so the other thing that I like to think about is, so the things that, need to be healed or realigned are the mind, the voice, the body. And I like to use the word alignment because what are we aligning to, right? Or in the psychedelic world, you hear the term psychedelic integration, but I've never heard of a good definition of what that actually means. It's almost like a buzzword now. But because what are we integrating too?

And so I like to think about the heart, right? I think it happened, you know, that, you know, not to, I don't know how many people on here follow chakras, et cetera. But, you know, the heart is the part of me that I think about no, that knows, like, like it cannot get off course. You know, it's kind of like the GPS that's installed in us the moment we're born. And it is like, you know, if we're starting here, this is where you want to be at the end of your life or this is how you want to live your life.

And that part to me, I like to think about it, again, it is it will not veer. and the things that can veer on or off are the mind, the voice, the body. And I actually think of emotions then as not being, like, I don't think of don't get, I want to get rid of sadness or I want to get rid of fear. Because to me, you know, what we call painful emotions are actually the GPS signal. Like if we're driving and we go on the wrong street, the GPS is like, no, turn around, here, make a U-turn, go back. You're going on the wrong direction. And so to me, sadness, fear, shame are emotions that tell us, you're going off course, come back to where you want to be. But we've again learned to judge the emotions. We've learned to want to get rid of them,

where I'm like, I actually want those things because if I didn't have anxiety and fear and sadness, when I was like living this life, I didn't want to live, I would still be doing that. miserable. And so, um, so when I, when I think of the healing, I think of like getting back on on that path. And so I like to think about, you know, when the mind bows to the heart, when the voice bows to the heart, when the body bows to the heart. That is the flow state to me. So, so, so will, like, let's say like, I don't know what my heart says. How do I find out? How do I find that out? Beautiful. And so, and that that is a challenge, right? And, And I would say it's listening to the body.

So the emotions are also not, to me, the body is where we feel emotion. And those signals are also never wrong. A problem can be mixed in there because once we start adding Western medications, right, if we start feeling, again, depressed or sad, and we take antidepressants, it can numb us. So then we can lose connection to our body. or if we take stimulants, right? A lot of people are on riddlin or on Adderall, and Adderall increases anxiety.

So all of a sudden, like the normal signals from our body are getting all these mixed up things from what many of the doctors out there are prescribing people. So I would say step one to reconnecting to our hearts is to when safe as possible to try to build a connection with the body and start trusting it again and being like, my body, there's nothing wrong with my body. It's just trying to tell me something. And that, that in the Western world is a whole, it's a new concept. So I'm going to try to push you a little

bit on this because I'm going to like envision something for a second. Okay. Like we're talking about stories. So I want you to imagine a 24 year old guy who's living at home with his parents in his parents basement, finished two and a half years of college before dropping out, plays video games all day, is overweight, doesn't eat healthy, doesn't know what he wants, and is deeply unsatisfied with his life, but feels absolutely stuck. Any time he tries to go out into the world, it hurts. Anytime he thinks about his life, it hurts. What does that person do? How does that person begin? He doesn't even know what he wants. Okay, so I would start. One of the things that I am big on right now is watching the mind and starting by saying, you are not your mind. So I, I

listen to narratives very closely when I am working with a client. And the reason I mentioned this is because you said, and I believe that many people out there believe I don't know what I want. And this comes from the area of like, I think we create our reality based on our thoughts. And if I approach the world, say, being like, I don't know what I want, that supports what, you know, that basically says my body's not, I don't have a connection to my heart, I don't have a connection to my body. So first, I would start saying, you know, I feel, like, or it's difficult to know what I want, right? Or I'm learning how to how to figure out what I

want. So, you know, I would say that most everybody also has a certain number of things that they do enjoy. Maybe it's a small number of things. But I would start by saying, ah, when I have had these experiences in the past or when I have these experience nowadays, it may only be a lot of the way. It may be 5% of my living day, but these things have brought me joy. You know, why isn't, why doesn't my life look more like this? And so that's trying to just, you know, piece together the puzzle. So one would be like a practical just like, well, can I spend my more of my life, you know, doing these things that I like?

So that's one level. Yeah, it's interesting because it's hard. a little bit, but I like that you're pushing me on this. And, you know, for me, I was actually really overweight. I'm open about this. I have, like, some pictures out there. Or I'm like, I weighed about 100 pounds more than I weighed right now about 15 years ago. You know, and so you mentioned the weight thing.

Because that was in some ways for me a way of ignoring my body, right? I was like feeling discomfort or anxiety and I would eat. So another way of actually trying to make choice points in what, we do and how we spend our time is saying, ah, if I am doing a behavior, and that could be like porn, that could be spending a lot of time, you know, too much time on a game or something. Like there's a level where we usually know, like, this is fun, or I'm doing this to escape. I'm doing this to ignore something. So another thing becomes aware of, ah, when is my behavior shifting towards perhaps

just wanting to ignore what's happening out there? because that could usually be where a choice point was possible. You know, I, I, for instance, how did you lose the weight? By doing the healing, it happened, it was very gradual. You know, I, first, I actually, I was living in England, so I moved to England to start my PhD. And this is, this is an interesting story. So I weighed 235 pounds at my maximum, and I'm like 150, 155 right now. But when I had lived, when I moved to England, I was at 235.

And it's funny because in grad school in England, you have a lot of foreigners coming in. And you have two major categories. You have Americans and you have Europeans. And British food is really unhealthy. And so it's funny, though. So the Europeans that go do grad school in England end up gaining a bunch of weight because the food that's served is really unhealthy. But the Americans end up losing weight because food is portioned at school. And so in order to like keep feeding myself, I would have had to ask for double portions.

And I was like too embarrassed. That happened to correlate with me just doing, you know, getting out of medical school and having people actually respect me intellectually. And so it was a time of just like feeling appreciated. And so it was kind of both of those things happening at the same time. You know, so that in some ways started my healing even before my first, you know, big mental health crisis. But that's to say, it's just like, again, it's building the relationship with the emotions in the body and being like, ah, okay, like, I'm avoiding this by doing this. And then once we can identify some of those, it's like, okay, well, why am I avoiding this? Is it because I'm scared?

Am I afraid of being rejected by friends or a girl or whatever? And then looking at that and being like, is that something I can work on? because I would actually really rather be over here doing this, but it's scary to go from here to there. This is easy, right? Comforting myself with food, I know it works, or comforting myself with, again, porn or comforting myself with this. It works, but in the short term, right?

But where I want to actually have my life be is over here. And to me, that's the healing work. How do I get back to here to trusting myself, to building my confidence, to feeling like, you know, all of us at some age were like, you know, life is a miracle and I can achieve anything. And then the world outside of us starts making ourselves doubt. And so how do we then build that back up as adults and being like, no, I am capable of pretty much living any life I want to live.

Yeah, it's interesting. I'm just remembering actually we had an interview on Wednesday where it was kind of bouncing around for a while, but then the person I was talking to said this one sentence that for some reason just really bothered me. And she said something like, I don't have a voice. Like, people don't listen to me or people don't. And that was something that I, for some reason, it resonated with me and I took issue with it. And I really challenged her on it.

That her words have no meaning. And that, it was weird. It was like kind of a random thing, which usually is like what happens. And when we talk to people on stream is like, we're just kind of bouncing around for an hour. and then like something happens where we catch on something and then some kind of catharsis comes out of it. And that I think was the start of her catharsis a couple of days ago. So it's fascinating to think a little bit about voice. And I really like the way that you frame that, you know, the negative things that we feel,

if someone says, I don't know what I want in life, the negative things that we feel are actually signals that are pointing us in the right direction. right? And it can be something as simple as like, I don't want to be ashamed of the way that I look. And so you can sort of suppress that through video games or medications or other things. Or you can evoke and sort through that and use that as your navigating compass to like get back to where you really want to go and make a positive change. Which is, I think, a beautiful way to put it. So I'm kind of curious. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead.

I was going to say, I think each emotion has a healthy version of it and an unhealthy version. And the, I guess maybe like healthy gamer and unhealthy gamer. Yeah. Maybe it's a boomer joke and no one's going to think that. No, no, no. But Will, just to jump in for a second, that's exactly why we chose the name that we did. Because like everyone is talking about video game addiction and they're talking about it is like

a one unidirectional negative thing. Like a couple months ago, Trump said something like video games are the reason that school shootings happen. And, you know, people demonize video games and stuff like that. And my goal is not to like, I don't think that it's like an abstinence only kind of thing, right? It's like if someone's addicted, like is addicted to sex, like our goal is not to make them sell of it. Our goal is to help them be like a healthy person, like an integrated person, someone who enjoys games and derives pleasure out of them, but also that the games don't get in the way of like all of this other shit. that they don't become exclusionary.

And so, I mean, I'm glad you kind of picked up on that because that's absolutely like that's precisely the inspiration behind what we're trying to do. We're not really even treating video game addiction. We're just trying to help our people. Good. Yeah, because I mean, that's to me what leads to some of the initial stuff anyway. Like, I mean, I've never played video games really

because honestly I suck at them. But I, yeah. What makes you feel like your video game play? playing is inadequate, Will? Why do you feel inadequate? Is this not supposed to be therapy or do we are we going to do therapy on my game addiction? No, on your avoidance of playing video games and why you feel like you're inadequate. I grew up like Nintendo is what I had in elementary, the original one. And like, I just sucked at all the fighting, like everyone would kick my ass and it made myself

esteem just drop. Like I just was horrible. I don't know. All right. God, where were we? Oh, well, so healthy and unhealthy, right? So I would say what is healthy, you know, why would I, you know, I think there's a healthy version of shame and there's an unhealthy version of shame. There's healthy sadness, there's unhealthy sadness.

The healthy and unhealthy for me comes from the choice that we make after experiencing it. It's the part of free will of being a human being that is one of the coolest parts of this large, larger video game that we're in called the human experience. Like if I have shame over something and that shame leads me to go back onto a path that is in the line with my heart, that's healthy shame. If I experience shame over something and I feel worse and then I end up doing behaviors that make me disconnect from people like diving into alcohol or something else, then And it's unhealthy shame because I'm using it to further pull myself away is the way I like to do.

And I like to believe that everyone's trying their best and everyone wants to be in alignment. And I think there's a tremendous amount of judgment from the outside world. So when you were talking about this conversation that you were having earlier in the week, you know, I think of like, again, when I listen to narratives, you know, narratives are usually another beautiful sign of, of where the root of the problem is. Like if someone's like, you know, I remember myself, I used to tell myself, and I still struggle. I'm single and I'm dating and I still like, I think, you know,

ultimately, you're such a catch. Are you trying to hit on me? No, but maybe one day. No, but, you know, one of the things that, you know, I used to tell myself and I'm still working through at some level is like, I, you know, if I go to a party, I would, you know, or a couple years ago, I would be walking into the party being like, oh, this is going to be one of those parties where I'm going to like see someone, a girl I like, and I'm not going to talk to her and then I'm going to go home and feel shitty about myself. Or, oh, I shouldn't even go to that party because, like, these people who were cooler than me are going to be there. And then like, but what I realized is like, I don't know, I like to think of these three positions, right? So years ago, I was in this position. And years ago, I was in this position. of, and then at some point I started talking myself out of it, being like, oh, my career is more important. You know, dating is a waste of time. You know, if it's not helping me towards this goal,

but what I was realizing, there was a narrative I built for myself. That narrative was, I don't want to be in a relationship and I don't want, sorry, I'm not in a relationship and I don't want to be in one. The position I want to be in is I want to be in a relationship and I'm in one. Right. But because that wasn't happening, there's this position of pain in the middle, which is saying, I admit that I want to be in a relationship and I'm not in one. But the less acutely painful position on a daily basis would be to say, tell myself, I don't want that. Like, I'm not capable of that. So then that narrative starts saying, I'm going to hide, I'm going to shrink myself, I'm going to make myself small. So when I think of the healing path, it is necessary to go through this middle experience.

But it's really hard because usually at some point in our life, we built a life around ourselves that supports that narrative of here. Right. At some point, I was surrounding myself friends that were, you know, that were cooler than me or that felt that they were better than me. And then at some point, I was like, as I was doing the healing, I'm like, fuck all these people. Like, if they're not supporting, like, who I am in my heart, goodbye. And that was one of the harder things. As I transitioned through my healing step after step is trusting myself. It was saying, I know what's right for me.

And all these people around me are a lot of them. They're wrong. And that was a big step of trusting myself. And I think as a young man, if I try to think back when I was in my early 20s, I think that would have been a big one, is to just, is to really just, learn, you know, to have emotions to express them because like men especially are, you know, again, if you're sad, if you're crying, if you're scared, you're weak. And I'm like, you know, up until when I started my healing seven, eight years ago, I hadn't cried in like 15 years.

And I will say, I cried most, you know, at least once or twice a week. And I love it. I remember I was living in New York City up until December. And there was many points in the last year that I was living there. I would be on the subway. It's crap. I would see a cute girl or whatever. And if I was going through something and I was sad, I let myself cry. And it felt so good to be like, I don't have to hide anything.

Like I am just who I am. And it maybe seems paradoxical, but through that, I was just more and more free to be who I was. You know what I mean? And I was just like, fuck all this. Like I am this human being. I have emotions and yeah, my life has been only better. You know, but it's step by step.

Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. How are you feeling right now? Really good. Yeah. I really love, like I think about my Dharma and why I'm here. And to me, it's to be a healer. But, you know, kind of like when we started, that's why I love stories because, you know,

I realized after some time, like talking to my patients or after giving a public talk or something that people come up to me. And especially men, and I love it when they do this because they're like, like, oh my God, thank you for saying this. Like, that's me. And I'm like, I started realizing this is everyone. And so that's when I started being much less afraid of being me because I'm like, I'm myself. And this is another thing that I think about is like, you know, some people. So I talk about my traumas or I talk about like, I gave a talk actually last December about how like my penis size. And when I was like younger, I was like super self-conscious about my penis size. And like, I never hear guys talking about this. And,

It was interesting because it's one example where there's two things that happen after I give a public talk and I'm open about something. People or they'll email me and they'll say one, they'll either say thank you for being strong or number two, they will say thank you for being vulnerable. And I realized that depending where I was in my stage of healing something, those at one or the other used to feel true. But once I had my real catharsis, you know, whether it's with my therapist or whether I had, you know, I was in an ayahuasca retreat, is both of those stopped resonating. Because I'm like, I'm not actually being particularly strong. I'm just being who I am. Or number two, I'm not being vulnerable. Like, vulnerable to what? If I tell someone that I had a flying phobia, if I'm on a date, or if I tell a girl like, hey, when I was like, you know, for a lot of my adult male life, I was like self-conscious about my penis size and that girl decides to like not date me.

Like that's not vulnerable. Like I would actually thank you. Like I wouldn't even want to be dating someone who would leave me for that. So I actually think of it as a favor. Like it's not even that I'm being vulnerable. I'm just like, thank you. Like don't wait for my time. Yeah.

I mean, I think it's beautifully put. And I think that's what people, you know, that's where people want to be. Can you tell us a little bit about the ayahuasca retreat? Yeah. So ayahuasca, it's interesting. So, you know, maybe that'll, we can talk a little bit about different, sure, different type of psychedelics. And first of all, you know, I want to say, I like to think about psychedelics. There's five general, like I think legitimate uses of psychedelics.

And legitimate meaning they're distinct uses of them. So I think of healing, which what we're talking about. I think second would be kind of spirituality or enlightenment. third would be recreation and fun. Fourth would be kind of like exploration of human potential or wanting to think of new ideas. And fifth would be abuse or addiction. And I don't, again, I'm not someone who judges anyone, but I just like to tell people, we'll be clear about why you're using it.

That's all we need to do. Like don't say that you're going to go out and just do it at a festival and that equals healing. There is mixes between them, right? If you have a really fun connected experience, that can be healing. Or, you know, spirituality, enlightenment is on the continuum of healing. But I think it's useful to think of them that way. So along the lines of that, so I also like to think of the different categories of psychedelics as being, they're also on a continuum, meaning like the effects are very different. You know, you have something like MDMA, which I like to describe as, I mean, people call it a heart opener, right? It's a connector. There's a trusting feeling when you're

diving into trauma. I also like to say that MDMA stays on the plane of this consensus reality, meaning for the most part, 99.9% of the time, it's going to have some, you know, the experience you have has something to do with this birth to this death, you know, meaning it does not get what we call transpersonal or non-ordinary. On the other end of the spectrum is ayahuasca, where you will have people have experiences and they'll say, oh my God, I relived a past life or I had my death and my rebirth or, you know, I was connecting with spirits that were talking to me about my past, you know, dead relatives or something like that. And so those are kind of on opposite ends of the spectrum. And, and, you know, I just like to have people at least know that. And, you know, I just like to have people

at least know that basic because if I'm someone who just wants to like feel less depressed, feel less anxious, and say I come from a relatively conservative background, like, right, I was, I was Jehovah's Witness. And so even though I had left the church when I was in my teens, the history of that trauma stayed with me. So for me to go straight into something like ayahuasca would be a big deal if I just want to feel less anxious because like to get all sorts of other experiences like spirits and stuff, I wasn't ready for that. And so, you know, we're something like MDMA, which is more gentle. And again, it just stays on the plane of this reality, I think, is, you know, an interesting way to think about it. Okay, so now to actually answer your question.

So ayahuasca, for those who don't know, there's a lot of it in the media. And it's a mixture of a bunch of different plants that comes from Amazonian culture. So the Amazon in Peru or Brazil or Ecuador or Colombia. And it's a psychedelic tea that plant healers used to use or that still use that has been around for like thousands of years at this point. It's thought. And, you know, some Westerners went down. I think it was like in the early 90s and then got connected with the tribes, tried this tea and we're like, oh my God, this helps so much. And so it is an incredibly powerful healing tool. And it is like my personal, like, I don't want to say favorite. favorite. It's just my preferred tool for healing myself right now because now that I've learned to work with it, it is very powerful.

And it's out there a lot. And you just want to be really mindful. Like of all the ayahuasca retreats, because there's all sorts of advertisements and people claiming it's going to do X, Y, Z for you. A lot of them at this point are in it for the money or the people facilitating the experience don't really know what they're doing. they don't emphasize like the preparation of the person in the weeks that come or the, you know, help after. They're just really in there to get people in. You pay us two or three thousand dollars and then you go home. And, you know, there's only one or two in the world that I completely trust because, you know, I really think that all these other things that we're talking about are so important to the healing

process and the psychedelic is like this. It's powerful, but it's still only like a little step in the tool of your own, ability to heal yourself. So can you tell us a little bit about like the other one? So you said that, you know, MDMA is not quite as transpersonal and sort of enhances trust, you know, has very promising uses for like preliminary trials for like PTSD or something like that and kind of enhances the therapeutic relationship. Iwaska is very transpersonal, has more of a spiritual kind of experience.

What about things like ketamine, psilocybin? Ibegain LSD So that would probably literally take another hour but let me at least summarize So ketamine is an interesting one

You know, it's interesting because A, it's the only one that's legally available right now B By the way, half more audiences from the EU About Oh, interesting. Actually, ketamine, I believe, is also legal right now in the EU

I don't know how many actual mental health practitioners are using it. My guess would be very few. And but ketamine is an interesting one, right? It comes from, its historical use has been in anesthesia. And so it's an anesthetic because it dissociates and meaning it dissociates the body from the mind. And if you get complete disconnection, you can cut into the skin because you're not going to feel pain and you can do surgery. About 20 years ago now, there was an orthopedic surgeon who was doing a, a bunch of procedures on his patients and then decided to look at his data and then found just

by chance that the people who are depressed and suicidal, who he used ketamine with, were feeling less depressed and suicidal. And that's how it really entered the knowledge of psychiatry because it was just found that, oh my God, this happens to work. I mentioned that because ketamine is on a gradient, right? Like you would have to use really high doses to do complete anesthesia on someone. And that is not, to me, the area where we want to be for psychedelic healing. I guess maybe I want to introduce this concept of what we call the liminal space.

The word isn't important, but basically, you know, if we think of ourselves as here as a human being with a body with an ego, that's like me and my isolated, again, mind and body. you know, I like to think of also that place that we look at deep in spirituality, religion, or even without those, like, like even people who are, say, often agnostic, or like at least there's something, there could be something greater. So I don't like to make it, you know, denominational. So there's this place that most people believe, you know, is that place that we come from and where we will go after we die.

So there's these two positions. And I like to think about psychedelics can connect you on a continuum from one to the other. And some of them do it very intensely, and some of them do it gently or more gradually. And I happen to think that the powerful healing aspect of psychedelics is when we're on the liminal space, meaning you have some awareness of this

and you have some awareness of this. And if you can ride that, then you can do the healing work there. And so that's a long-winded way of saying like ketamine, and, you know, I think all psychedelics dose matters along that continuum, but ketamine is one where it's very important. And because it's getting more use and it's out and there in the media, like, I'll assure you 99.9% of people, doctors using ketamine don't understand what I'm talking about right now. And they're just like, okay, well, let me just inject this and we'll

charge people $500 or whatever. Like, this, it's a really intimate science of how this works. And so I try to actually help people stay on that limit. space, right? Because it's like how can I, you know, again, have access to both of these things at the same time. On the other end of the spectrum, the smoked version of ayahuasca, which is called DMT, or there's this other compound that people refer to as Toad, because it's 5MEO DMT, which is, if you like, there's this sonoran frog in Mexico where they used to use this frog medicinally, or they still do some indigenous, where you milk the, I think it's, the salivary gland and you can get this compound that's psychedelic out of out of the toad.

And those two, the smoked versions are the most powerful psychedelic that you could ever encounter. You go from here to here. You start going into it intensely within 15, 20 seconds, and you are completely here for about, I don't know, five to eight minutes. But again, it's weird because the five to eight minutes don't matter because up here, time ceases to exist. So I've had people that experience it and they're like, I experienced every single event from the beginning of time to the end of time during that observed outside time that was five minutes. And I'll mention that because I rarely now find a healing usefulness of going

from here to here. Like doing this quick, is it interesting? Is it magnificent? You know, can it remind you of you know the bigger picture sure but you still got to come back and like work with these you know these narratives and these painful things in everyday life and so I'm someone who actually is much more of an advocate for lower doses and it's just you don't see that much out there right now because people part of what pulls people to psychedelics is the stories of like oh my god I went like did ayahuasca and I saw this like panthered and it like converted into my grandmother and you know people tell me those stories and I'm like, well, okay, but how does that help you on a daily basis? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's, it's a great point. I mean, I think it's also interesting to

kind of think a little bit about staying connected to like the person that you have to come back to. And if you have an experience that is completely unrelated to the person that you live most of your life as, like it's going to be hard for that experience to actually help you in some way. You know? Yeah. So where along that continuum is like psilocybin or, I would put those in the middle. So psilocybin and LSD, I think of is kind of right in the middle of the continuum. But again, these are all, these are dose-based, right? And so you can get actually a beautifully ideal LSD or psilocybin space that rides the liminal.

But, you know, I think at most doses that, you know, even if people use like double a normal dose, you're still, you're still writing liminal, like with those two. And so then it becomes more of a time preference, right? LSD, I don't think, is ever going to go down as a consistent psychedelic therapy because it lasts so long. You know, it's like a 10 or 12-hour experience, and it'll never fit into like, you know, the 9-5 work world of a dog. No, doctor doesn't really work 9-to-5, but, you know, it's not going to work for just the healthcare profession. Where something, that's why like MDMA, you know, maybe. You know, maybe.

Primps could potentially, you can get them down to like six-hour sessions. Sure. And that's another place where ketamine is, actually. powerful. If it's injected and it's done in a medical environment, you can be in and out in like 90 minutes to two hours. Okay. So Will, I'm wondering, like I have one or two other questions for you, but like maybe what we can do is hop on Discord and I'll walk you through how to do that in a couple of minutes. I just have one last question for you. So let's say like they're going to be like, so first of all, be prepared for, you know, the flow of people, you know, Googling your name at this point, you may get a bunch of requests. And if you need help with that, you know, we can, I can try to help you with that afterwards, how to deal with thousands of people contacting you per month.

War me after I did it. Thank you. Yeah, of course, because we have to have you on. But so let's say like people are interested in this, right? So like you've been talking about psychedelics and there are people who are watching our stream who are like, yeah, how do I start? Like, how do I do this? This all sounds wonderful. What do I do about it?

So it's interesting. I will honestly say there isn't much that is too helpful out there right now. And honestly, something that we've talked about, what I want to do soon, but again, I'm a boomer, so I don't know how to do it, is I actually want to start putting out educational videos out there for people that just take them step by step in the process. And so hopefully in the next six months or so, right now most of what it's Googlable about me is my clinical website. So I don't really have room for new clients right now. But at some point, I want to link that to, you know, honestly, I want to do this pretty soon in the next two or three months. And I actually want to put out a free series to help people understand psychedelics, how to use them responsibly, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, there's really, yeah, there's not really much I can point to out there. I mean, Maps is an interesting thing to look at, just as an organization.

But, and yeah, I mean, they'll have information on conferences and stuff. But again, if you followed this conversation today, like, honestly, like, it's, it's, this is much deeper than any of the stuff out there that, that, that you can find. And so, um, so what I'm hearing is that there isn't really like a good, clean way for someone to, there's not a phone number that someone can call where they can find a therapist, take MDMA, kind of graduate to ayahuasca over time. And that, that's, that infrastructure hasn't been formed yet. No. You know, but it's like, you know, again, and the reason why I really emphasize, I like to talk the way I talk is because I don't, this isn't, there's a lot of nuance, but it's not so complex. Like I and like Rick Doblin, the founder of Maps, I'm not someone who is like psychedelic healing and therapy should only be done with doctors and psychologists. You know, I think people should be free to explore their own consciousness if they're not heart hurting other people. And so I would say if you're, you know, set and setting is a term that's thrown out there a lot, meaning, you know, the experience of a psychedelic, I think is determined in some ways by set, setting, and dosage. Meaning set is like where the person is, like mentally where they are in their stage of life. You know, is this a huge peak of anxiety right now because maybe I want to wait a week or two before trying it. So if you can manage where you are, setting is like where I am, taking the psychedelic and who I'm with. Am I going to have a sober friend that I really trust?

Can they sit with me for six or eight hours? And are we going to do this at someone's house and it's quiet or out in nature? And you don't want, if you're doing something for healing, don't do that in the middle of a concert or a show because that can turn really bad. And it's so many other people and influences. dose is the third one. Like, you know, don't, don't overdo it, you know. And so if you start gently with all three of those, this is how you learn how to do it, right? At some stage, that's what I did, right?

Because there is still no training process for psychiatrists on how to do this. A lot of this was me just going out and experimenting, finding ketamine doctors who treated me. And the early ones, I'm like, I would never go back and I wouldn't recommend them. and then just learn through the process. I've been to more ayahuasca retreats that I cannot recommend people to go to than ones I can. So what I'm trying to do is just put together my experience out there for people to try to hopefully have them not have to go through as much trial and error as I had to. Sure. So I think unfortunately what I'm hearing is that I know a lot of people out there.

I get questions about psychedelics a lot. And, you know, some people think that because it has this powerful, transformative potential, they kind of think like, oh, if I go to ayahuasca retreat, I'm going to be fixed. And I'm hearing the very opposite, that there's a lot of nuance, there's a lot of growth, there's still a lot of like returning to the person that you are, and that this is not really like a magic bullet. Yeah, definitely not a magic bullet because I actually, I mean, I could, I think I got at least five emails this week that were like, I went to an ayahuasca retreat. I did this and I feel a hell of a lot worse.

Like, and it's really sad because that is only in, my messages that are about that are only increasing in the last six months year. And, yep, you know, we want to be careful,

you know, so I actually think the best thing to do is if you can get, say, a cluster of, again, this is just for educational purposes. If you can get, you know,

three or four people who you really trust friends that you can be open with, that you don't, that you can cry in front of or you can at least be open about, you know, microdosing is a whole topic we haven't talked about. But it's basically taking small amounts of mushrooms, like a 10% dose, a 15% dose.

And so you do, you know, if I were to, you know, maybe take that with a close group of friends and we just get together on a Sunday night. I guarantee you it's less, it's less jarring than the first time we ever got like drunk or passed out. You know, it's just now we're like used to drinking. But that first time where we got really drunk, if you think back, was probably pretty damn scary. Yeah. You know, but it's so accepted in the culture where like, again, a 10, 15% microdose would be so gentle compared to that, you know. And so I think, you know, again, just creating

potentially your own safe setting to do things and explore your consciousness, you know, so over time. Unfortunately, well, I've had similar emails and one thing that I'll let people know, I've actually encountered people who have PTSD from using psychedelics. So they'll develop anxiety disorders or will be actually like crippled and disabled after having some very, very difficult experiences during trips. So I think you guys have to be really, really careful. Absolutely. So Will, if you've got, and I would also, you know, try to not not build the story kind of as you were saying that LSD equaled my suffering, right? It's LSD plus difficult things that came up that I couldn't process led to this suffering, meaning you don't have to

to be terrified of going back to that place if you can set up things for yourself in the future where you know you have more support absolutely man so if you've got time what we're going to do is just hop on our discord and then give other people a chance to ask questions sure all right so i'll walk you through that process okay so let me just we're going to set that up we're going to take like a why don't we take a two or three minute break into us right now or essentially messages in this channel. I think at the bottom says I don't have permission to send messages in this channel.

Hey, hi, I can hear you. Hi, Dr. Will, hi, Dr. Kay. My question is, how do you know if you're in a good space mentally to make use of psychedelics to heal from trauma and maybe even understand yourself better? Stay one more time. Sorry, I was a little thrown off by...

I thought I was going to see something Go ahead. Oh, no problem. My question is, how do you know if you're in a good space mentally to make use of psychedelics to heal from trauma and understand yourself better? You know, I would say it's a great question, first of all. Second, I would say, in terms of a good space, I would say, you know, can I, like, am I in a really bad or do? dangers. And then if you're if that's no, meaning if you're suicidal, for instance, never a or if you're in a really big crime and you have no one to really reach out to not a time to take

psychedelics. Otherwise, I would actually say, you know, can I make changes again? Do I have people in my life that I trust that I can talk to about my experience that you could even be with me during it, it would be more of like, can I, what can I maximize an experience that? That turns out to be good. You know, because I, you know, every time I go into one, I have a pretty good amount of anxiety and fear, you know, but I don't necessarily think that that's an unhealthy thing, you know, to basically be able to go into something and say, I respect it enough because difficult can come up. It is a good thing to have healthy fear, you know, so does that help?

Yeah, that helps. So if I understood you correctly, it's to have a good sense of where you are and in life in terms of like if you're not at any extreme and to go in with a healthy amount of maybe even fear. Is that correct? Oh. Yeah. So, I mean, I also heard him kind of say like having the right support structure.

Right. So like I'm envisioning our 24-year-old who's sitting at home and playing games all day. Like I don't know that that person has the right support structure to help him make that experience like productive. Right. Absolutely. Cool. Thanks for your question. Thank you.

Or is he just like ready for round two. Hey, can people see me or this is voice? Voice only. Okay. Oh, sorry. Hey. Hey. I'm sorry.

I was hearing the stream. Hello. Thanks so much for the whole show. It was amazing. My question is basically this. I'll do a comparison to make it better, to make it feel more like understandable. But it's basically like this. There's healthy choices we can make in the setting of therapy or something in the pursuit of getting better, like healthy dieting, like maybe exercise. And how would the use of psychedelics fit here? And what I mean by that is basically if you do exercise, maybe you have a better like cardio respiratory situation, maybe you can have, or in a case of diet, you can improve your

diet and maybe you can feel better because of the diet. And how would psychedelics do, maybe how they change in the brain or how would they change basically your, either your consciousness or how you see it? It's basically that. Thanks. Yeah, and so, you know, I think of psychedelics as one of the tools, ideally in a toolbox that we have with many different tools of different varieties that we can use at different times of our life, plus through those ups and downs, you know, because I've done a tremendous amount of healing in the last seven or eight years. I still have time from time to time that I struggle. You know, it's much less than it has been before in my life, but it's some,

still come up. And so I think, and just thinking of them as one of the tools in your toolbox, I think is the way to do it. And, and, you know, I think just having a variety of things to go to is, is the ideal place and never feeling that one thing is going to be the answer to all of my problems. Because there's a lot of people that are like psychedelics, like 100%. Everyone should do them. And I actually don't believe that. You know, I think that some people could find their healing tool could be meditation or could be else that that's not psychedelic. Sorry, I don't mean to be like, like super like, oh my God, but I just wanted to ask, I kind of understand that is it true and I agree with that.

I just, my question was more of like how the two works or how. So, Will, I think he's asking what's the mechanism, right? So like running improves our cardiovascular health effects are like insulin, glucagon balance, increases our basic metabolic rate. What's your understanding of the mechanism through which psychedelics affect change? Okay. So I would say that unlike what you'll read out there,

I don't think it is the neurotransmitters. It is not serotonin and fixing serotonin levels. I really love to think of this as the catharsis of stored up emotional trauma. Because, you know, I kind of think about like life is a movie reel. At any one point in our life, we are an accumulation of every single moment that's ever happened to us. I think of like if there's slides in that movie reel that have not been fully expressed emotionally, slides have more of an impact on our everyday life.

As we go back and we can heal these, right? I've never said that this is going to make you forget something that's happened or make it go away. the impact of that past thing on your current life will be much less. And so I think of it, you know, as also, this is a new paradigm of thinking it's molecules and cells. It's actually a psychological way of healing and catharsis. Okay. Thanks so much, man. Now I understand.

Thank you. That was great. You're welcome. Great questions. Awesome, man. Thank you. There is some mis. We're ready for the next.

day. Can you guys hear me? Yes. Okay. Well, I actually have a question about panic disorders and anxiety. Is there a way to do psychedelics safely if you have like panic disorders or are prone to be afraid, basically? I would say, well, I'll share that. I suffered from panic disorders from my flying phobia. So I never had a panic attack until the middle of my flying phobia. And they continued for some time after I started my healing work. And they're gone now. I haven't had a panic attack in years. So I will say, you know, as long as everything is medically safe and it's like a true panic attack. It's not it's not some other, you know, cardiac disorder. Yeah, because, you know, a panic attack is like kind of think about as an elevated level of fear, right?

Something in the past has increased, therefore that part is playing a bigger, you know, a part in our everyday life. So something is legitimately fearful today, if I almost get run over, amplified because of this past thing. And so then it puts the body into fighter, meaning a panic attack. So, you know, I just think that normally when we have these, we're not in a position to really be held or we're not, like, being held emotionally or that we don't have an understanding of this in, say, the original trauma. And so I actually think psychedelics can broad statement, and I'm not recommending this for you, you know, MDMA, you know, for people with PTSD. So the main clinical studies right now for MDMA or molly or ecstasy is what other people more in the non-medical world has been used for PTSD. And so many of the patients in the studies have had panic attacks and have had them healed from MDM. And I want to also emphasize something that I didn't say clearly is that I think about psychedelic.

assisted psychotherapy. I don't think of it as psychedelic therapy, meaning psychedelics are, you know, one part of a comprehensive, long-term therapy relationship. So in the MAPS MDMA trial, for instance, you take, you're doing therapy every week for three times over the course of that four months, you take MDMA. But really the foundation of the healing is this, extended psychotherapy. Right. So, yeah, that's great, actually. So, Will, what I'm hearing you say is that, like, so the short answer is if you have an

anxiety or panic disorder, your personal experience, right? So you're not making a medical, you're not medically advising people, but you're sharing a personal experience that you had a phobia and you used it and you found it was helpful. And secondly, that it can be done. but the cornerstone of psychedelic assisted therapy is the idea is that the psychedelic does not do the therapy in and of itself. You just don't get high and or heal. That there's like a process. I mean,

what I'm hearing you say kind of time and again is that like this kind of expands your consciousness, allows you to experience things in a different way. In order to really facilitate that healing, you have to translate those experiences in a way that like affects your daily life. And that's usually done through the right kind of support. network. And it can be medical, but it also is not exclusive to medical people. Like, you've seen experiences of psychedelic assisted healing with people like shamans or other friends or people that you can trust. Is that a good way to put it? So, I don't know, maybe if we have

one thing I didn't talk about, but maybe I'll mention, I think there's actually an equation to I think that equation is the emotional memory. It's a intellectual memory. You're cutting out a little bit. But yeah, I'm not sure what to do about that. But it's weird because I think it was better on the video call. I'm not sure why this is. Can you try saying that again?

Maybe we'll just wait to next. Okay. Why don't we take one more question? Maybe we can hop back on a video call and you can share that equation with us and then we'll end. Does that sound okay? Okay, we'll take one more question. Thanks, John. Good day.

Ready for the next one. I think we're good. Oh, great. Okay. Perfect. Okay. All right, Will, I'm going to call you again on Discord. Okay.

So you should get a call right now. And then you can tell us your... I clicked the button before explaining it to him. Oh, God. Can he join? Will? I abandoned him in our... Oh, you made it.

Awesome. Will? Can you hear me? There we go. Okay. Can you turn on your camera? Perfect. Tell us this... I feel like this is important, so tell us this equation.

Thank you. No, this is, actually. It's one of... I just actually... Just by read, like, well, I didn't read many of the messages on Twitch, but just based on the questions and the engagement, I mean...

I think this group of people really gets it. So I really, it's been fun to do this. So yeah, I'm happy to actually go into this. And so, you know, I think this catharsis thing is, again, this really came from my experience of my own healing. And so I think of three things that are necessary for emotional catharsis or release is that if we have the emotional memory of something, something that happened with the narrative memory, meaning the body experience of the emotion,

plus the memory of, you know, something that happened early in life that that fits that situation. Plus the third critical thing is an empathic setting. And for me, empathic is very different from sympathy, right? You know, sympathy is like me telling a story about, kind of getting bullied, and someone's like, that must suck, like that you got bullied. I'm sorry, but just like some random person on the street, right? Where I think of empathy is when something,

like when we have an interaction with someone, where we feel that that person understands our experience, really understands our experience, understands our experience. And often, that's not even verbal. So it does, it's like the word sometimes can't even distract, but we're just like, this person gets me. Like, like, they know how hard this was. And when those three things happen, I think that's when tears come, when the body can shake, when the fear leaves the body. And, you know, just in case it isn't clearly connected, that usually is fucked up to begin with because the people who are supposed to be,

empathic to us. Parents, brothers and sisters, friends weren't. So then that release didn't happen. It's stored in the body. And that's where the setting thing is important in the set setting and dose, because if we can recreate an environment where we are with psychedelics helping emotional memory and narrative memory come together, and then we have a setting which is empathic, That's why we get these huge catharsies, and people are like, you know, this thing I was walking around with for 20 years is now gone. And so I actually think it's a very simple equation. And it's why I'm so passionate about education because, you know, I actually think most of the people that are psychedelic therapists and who call themselves a psychedelic therapist out there don't understand what I just said. And I think it's really simple.

And I think, you know, the hard part is that culture. is not empathic right now, right? We don't live in a society that's empathic. And so if we can actually heal society and just become more empathic people, we get rid of the need even for psychedelics, right? Because I think ultimately it's the screwed up culture that we've been living in that caused all of these discrepancies to begin with, inability to express emotion. Well, well, so first of all, dude, I'm with you 100%. Let me just make sure I understand. So it's sort of like having kind of a mental sort of experience of emotion,

the bodily experience of emotion, and then having empathy, which I think you're right, the people here get it because I think, so the funny thing is that our tag for healthy gamer, like our tagline is AOE healing. And AOE means area of effect. And so there's this idea in video games.

Can you hear me? I lost you. You said area of effect. healing. So there's this idea in video games that when a character takes damage, like there are some characters that are healers and some characters that take damage. And so what you do is you target a particular character and then you cast like a healing spell and then you heal that person if they're like being attacked by a monster. And there are some things, there are some spells that are area of effect. So anyone within a particular radius gets the benefit of the healing spell.

And the interesting thing about us is that like we're about AEO healing because I think think the reason people find this helpful is because they feel empathy for the people that come on stream. So when I am talking with an individual, somehow people feel they resonate with what they see. They resonate with like the experiences of another human being. And they themselves, I was really skeptical about this. And some people post about this kind of stuff on Reddit and the internet. And they kind of say that, oh, like the stream is like really changing me and it's helping me. And I'm confused because I've never really thought that.

You know, I just find it hard to believe that you can watch something on the internet and be changed. And the really fascinating thing is if you like tunnel down into it, I think they're feeling that empathic connection. And so it makes a lot of sense to me. And it's a big part of, I think, what we try to do here and what we're sort of fumbling our way through. And the last thing, Will, I just want to say, because I know you've got to get going and I want to be respectfully every time is thank you so much for coming, man. I think it's been awesome having you. I think you're able to really talk about this stuff in a way that very few people can, sort of from a scientific expert as well as personal experience,

as well as kind of clinical practice about like implementing it with actual people and trying to see change and healing. And one of the things that I've come to realize is so many people that I talk to who claim to be analytical and logical are so, how can I say this, so blunt with their their beliefs about psychedelics, right? It's not nuanced at all. Like, people haven't tried to tease apart the equation of how healing works. People don't really think about the liminal space and dosing and why is dosing important. What does dosing do the different spectrums of different psychedelics? So, like, I mean, you've really blown my mind in terms of

the depth of your knowledge and just how complicated this stuff is. And it makes sense to me that this is complicated. And if we understand this equation, then like, that's really what brings about transformative healing. It's like really understanding like how this whole equation works. So thank you so much. You're very welcome. I do want to say something back to actually both the things that you sort of said right now. So meaning yes, I totally think that experiences as long as they're interpersonal can be empathic and healing. And, you know, I think that. I think of our current mental health system was born out of a culture that was already bad at empathizing.

And so therefore, the system that we created within it, the system of suppression mimicked the culture. And so we're not getting the healing because the people who built the system didn't get it. And so I think, you know, especially, you know, I learned to trust myself, right? And I can say I know my body, I know my emotions. But at some level, I always knew that, right? And so I would say anyone I'm listening right now that this resonates with is trust yourself at its deepest, deepest level. You know, just because someone has a medical degree or a PhD, if it's really not resonating with you, like, they could be completely wrong, you know?

And so really the healing is an ultimate trust of yourself. And, you know, and just, just, and the other thing I just think about in general, whether it's with psychedelics or not, is that the healer that you're working with can only take you as far as he or she has done their healing. And so, you know, and there's a lot of what we call wounded healers out there, meaning people usually go into the healing fields because they're wounded. And many of those have not put in the time and the energy into their own work. And so I think, yeah, you'll find people with or without the degrees in the training that can be healers in your life. The last thing I wanted to say at least was like, it's interesting, this idea of the healer within the video game because it almost makes me think maybe I should re-explore video games. If there's a healing avatar, maybe I can go in there and if someone makes me an avatar. We're going to do, we're going to do gaming stream with Will in his 56K connection.

and he's going to get crushed because he lags so hard. Done. But Will, on a very practical note, yeah, so like I think, I'm sure everyone would love to see you play video games. But, you know, just in terms of spreading your message, if there's any way we can practically this for you, I'll shoot you a quick email. But in terms of if you want to make videos and things like that, you know, we figured a little bit about how to do that. I'm not saying they're great. But, you know, they seem to have a, you know, we have a lot of views and stuff on YouTube. But in terms of infrastructure and stuff like that, we're happy to support you because I think, you know, Will, I've always respected you. But I think even with our like last conversation that we had sort of about reconnecting, I mean, it's just so much of what you're saying. I want to like really, really actively support because it's so fascinating to hear someone come to all of the same conclusions. Like you'd be surprised. Like I basically say all, I mean, I feel like I say a lot of the things that you've said on stream about. So when people ask me, I talk a lot about Alexa Thyme.

and and sort of people not recognizing where their emotions are and like what they're feeling and especially for men like I start with the body first and foremost because men understand emotions very easily like they don't understand a feeling of being rejected ashamed and unlovable but they do feel yeah man she like I asked her out and she kicked me in the nuts like that's what it felt like and even our language as men in terms of expressing emotions is very very physical and then all of the other men that you're talking to know exactly what you're feeling. And so your emphasis on sort of the body and we do more meditation than yoga on stream, but sometimes we'll do yoga and stuff like that.

So I just want to support your message. And thank you so much for coming on. Awesome. Thanks a lot. It was a lot of fun. Take care. Do you have like social stuff that you want people to subscribe to or anything like that, like a Twitter or YouTube or any of that shit?

All I have so far is an Instagram. Maybe that's a boomer thing, but maybe more to come in the future. I did make a Twitch account, but I have zero followers. I don't even know what I'm doing with it. Yeah. So let's, I mean, if you are active on your Instagram and you want to grow your Instagram, you can tell us what your Instagram is. And then we can, people can join it.

It's at W-S-U-M-D. So just my name, M-D. So W-I-L-S-I-U-M-D. Okay, great. Awesome, man. All right. Take care. Thanks for coming on.

Okay. Twitter chat. Oh, there we go. Thanks, Moses. Okay, so that was Will. Will's awesome. I'm a big fan. Yeah, so, you know, you guys tell us,

like, do you guys want to do a little bit more of that, less of that? You know, if you guys want, like, more people, we have more. Right, so... Okay. Yeah, Will is awesome, dude. So, you know, it's interesting.

I think he has a different impression of when I knew him. So I knew Will in his final form, which is his current form. I didn't really know him. So he's finished residency, I think, in 2014, which is the year that I started. So I'm pretty sure he had relatively long hair and some of those piercings. Maybe not quite that many piercings when I met him. So we'll kind of see. Yeah.

So thank you guys very much for coming. You know, there are a lot of other guests that we can think about having on in terms of offering their expertise on mental health and stuff like that. And yeah, so let's just think about a couple of fascinating things that we can do, right? Like, so, oh, my God. So I'm learning more about psychedelics, and I think it would be cool. I would love to see a clinical trial where people take gamers and then give them psychedelic-assisted treatment and just see what happens, like in terms of their ability to re-engage in. life. Like, that would be a very cool interview. I mean, sorry, a very cool trial. Because I think a big part of, you know, what I believe is that like, you know, an SSRI is

not going to fix your problem. Like an antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication is not going to fix your problem. It'll help if you have depression or anxiety. But you really have to do this like formative grounding kind of work, right? You have to like get through this stuff and talk about your some scars, talk about your past traumas, come to terms with them, learn how to grieve, learn how to face shame. This is a big part of Dharma. And I know we get a lot of questions about how do I find my Dharma? How do I find my Dharma? And I think the fascinating thing from Will is that like you guys already know your Dharma. Like you've taught yourself, you've come to believe because you have taught yourself that you don't know what your Dharma is. Because you've, the narrative is that you

we're directionless. And if we really think about it, what Will was saying, I think, is really spot on that, like, what we can actually do is, like, stop and think about, you know, when you have a particular emotion or when you try to do something and you feel something, like, when you try to leave the house and you feel ashamed about yourself, what is that shame? Like, where does that shame come from? Like, why do you want to leave the house? Like, explore those things.

And in that, I think you will find your Dharma. Yeah. I also really liked his point about like good emotions and bad emotions, right? Like it's not shame has become something that we avoid, but like whether it makes it good or bad, and this is also a big point behind Dharma is that like those emotions are there, right? Fear is there. It's just about whether you face it and whether it pushes you in the right direction or the wrong direction. So, you know, I think it's like so much stuff. And it's fascinating to me personally to hear that Will has come to so many of the conclusions that like I felt like I came to myself. One is that I never really thought of myself as a wounded healer, right?

But like if we think about it, like that actually makes a lot of sense because for, you know, like a decade of my life or more, I was a fucking just sucked at life. Like this game was a game that I was not winning. And I think that like we underestimate the value and this is we underestimate the value of what that can lead to. And just the idea that like I'm almost beginning to think that when we think about a successful person and a person who struggles, we place more value on the successful person. The person who's had always had a 4.0 GPA like in high school, college, med school, whatever. Right. And we say that that life is better than my life because I'm failing. but hearing will it's been fascinating to think that because I've kind of always thought this about myself that the reason that I can help people is because I've gone through it and and I've never

really realized until today that like actually the best people to be potentially psychiatrists or medical doctors or whatever right are the people who have struggled and that they have an advantage over the people who are always perfect and when I see you guys struggling like it's so hard for me to try to convey this. I'd love to transplant this thought from my mind to your mind. But you see your struggle as a failure and I see it as like part of making you who you're supposed to be. And it just has to happen that way. That's what karma is all about. This is your life and this is what's been given to you. And you're going to live through it and you're going to be stronger because of it. Like you can't be the person that life needs you to be the person that you are.

And it's hard to describe, but like, you know, when you struggle with all of the shame, if let's say you have emotionally neglectful parents or tiger parents or whatever, like, you have to understand that like unless you had those experiences, you're not able to be the parent that your child, your future child who has yet, who is yet to be born. And you have to have sex in order to do that at some point. But, you know, cross that bridge when we come to it. But understand that like your experiences turn you into the person that the world needs you to be. turns you into the people that your child needs you to be.

And whether it's like a friend or your child or, you know, a random person on the internet who you're esteemed friends with. And the one reason they don't kill themselves today is because when they like message you, you respond when no one else in their life responds. Like, just recognize that, right? It's not about your GPA. It's not about your income. It's not about any of that shit.

It's about the person that you are, your true self, which no one can take you away from. And it was so fascinating to hear like, will say like, oh, it's so awesome that you're vulnerable. And he's like vulnerable to what? Like, what is that even? Like, he abandons that entire premise of weakness because it's true. It's false. And I try to abandon that premise too.

You guys like look at me and you say, I'm different from you. But my whole point is that I'm not, right? Like, there's no difference between me and you. Like, it's abandoning the premise that I am successful and you are a failure. Like, I don't think you guys get it. Like, I'm. still the failure that I used to be, like, and nothing has changed. And you're, that failure is kind of born out of, like, the fertilizer. Success is born out of the fertilizer of failure. And you guys are

just earlier along. I'm 37. And for those of you feel old, like, we have to be careful about comparison. But, you know, people say, like, oh, I'm 21 and I'm not going anywhere in life. It's like, yeah, man, like, that's fine. That's okay. That's just part of your journey. And you'll get there. You'll get there. Just keep trying. And listen to what will say. said and listen to that inner voice. And when you feel shame, recognize that it belongs there, that you have every right to be ashamed. And like Will says, you have a choice between whether you make that shame healthy or unhealthy. Shame isn't bad. Right. Shame is what tells you, like, oh, if I, if I was supposed to stream today and I, like, overslept and was like 45 minutes late,

and then you guys only got an hour and 15 minutes because Will has a patient right now or client. like I should feel shame absolutely and I should use that shame to correct my behavior and I used to be late to crap and I know everyone jokes about me being like three minutes later five minutes later whatever but like that punctuality came out of shame of being like not respecting people's time and so make it into healthy shame if you feel a certain way like recognize you feel that way for reason. Recognize that that's your internal compass, like telling you that something needs to change. And then listen to it. And then make the smallest possible change that you can. Don't get confused about like turning it into a grand transformation that you're going to fix yourself today.

Because Will says that too. He says, it's not like you take LSD and you're healed. He's like, people work over the course of one month or four months or three months or whatever, and they use psychedelics like three times. and every week they're in therapy. It's a gradual process. And so make one tiny step today. Like, I don't know what time it is where you guys are, but like do something for yourself today.

Like the tiniest little thing. So someone says, human panda says, what if I have a shitty compass? That is exactly what Will is saying. That is a false narrative that you construct for yourself. You don't have a shitty compass. You have a good compass.

You just think it's shitty. pay attention to it and you'll realize like, oh, it's like, it's not that like it points, it, it always points the direction that it's supposed to go. It's just, you just don't realize that it's always pointing east instead of pointing north. The compass works fine. It's just not doing exactly what you think it's doing. You can navigate just as well with a compass that always points east. But if you think that a compass should always point north and you don't recognize your compass for what it is, then you're going to have a lot of problems. But all you need to do, do is calibrate and recognize, oh, my compass always points east. So if I want to go north, I can still go north. If I want to go east, I can go east. If I want to go south or west, it works just as well. It's just different, right? So you, so start, start with the idea that you're not fucked up. Just like, entertain that notion for a moment. Oh, like, what if I actually know what I do want to do? What if I know exactly what I want to do? But because of society's values, right? Like, so I forget exactly what we'll call them, like true values and like inherited values or something like that.

Instead of like believing that you know what you want, you just what you want is different from what your inherited values are. It's different from what your parents want you to be. It's different from what everyone at school was so impressed with some people and you were not that thing. And so you decided, oh, like I don't know what I want because I don't want that. No, you know what you want. And like this person who says, what if my compass is busted? No, this is exactly what Will was saying. There's the part over here where you believe that your compass is busted and it hurts.

And then over here, your compass is right and you're killing it. And then in the middle is the idea that, oh, my compass is actually completely normal, but I'm fucking it up anyway. Do you guys see that? Because if you believe that your compass is busted, you've got an excuse. You can retreat from the pain. It's lydicane. Oh, my compass.

is busted. It's not my fault. It's so much harder to admit to yourself that I know exactly what I want and I'm just too weak to get it. I haven't been able to do it yet. That's exactly where you need to go. Is to say, I know what I want. I've always known what I've want, but I haven't been able to accomplish me. And also that weakness is not like, oh, I'm weak. Don't use that as an excuse to like get over here where like you're not capable of doing anything. understand that weakness is something that you can own and that you can change. It's not an attribute on your character sheet. It's like an action that you can take.

Right? If I roll a D20 and I hit or I miss, it's not like I'm a hit or a misser. That's just on that role. It's not an attribute on your character sheet. It's just a particular result of a particular moment in time. Weakness is not something that you are. It's something that you are in a moment.

It's an outcome. It's not a natural. So don't have the courage to think for a moment that your compass is not busted. Have the courage to think for a moment that you're not broken. And you're thinking, oh, but like, I don't want to be broken. No, what you want to be is like unbroken and successful. What you can't tolerate, it's beautiful. What you can't tolerate is that middle state of I am not broken and I'm a failure.

I have no excuse. because that's where you like you have to understand you can't make a change in your life unless you fundamentally believe that you have agency to make change

and if you have agency to make change that makes you responsible if you're responsible you can't hide behind anything the problem is that you're fucking hiding you're hiding from your power

you don't want your power because if you have power then it's your fault yeah so like take your power admit it's your fault and then do better forgive yourself a long way. That goes a long way. Right? Okay. So, thank you guys for coming. I don't, I guess I should meditate. I don't really feel like

meditating. I'm riled out. But maybe I should anyway. Okay. So let's, let's make a choice right now. Let's choose to not give in to our feelings of being riled up and not wanting to meditate. And let's exercise our agency and do it anyway, even if we don't feel like it. No, no, no. We're not going to give in to that, right? That's exactly what we want to do. So our meditation today is going to be different, though. I want you to, don't close your eyes. I want you to, in this state, think about where your agency lies. Think about what you're capable of. Think about the thing that you are not doing that you were capable of, that you can absolutely do. Just take a moment and do it with your eyes open. Take a moment to think.

what is it that I'm actually, what is it that I like avoid responsibility for that I actually completely am responsible for? And I want you guys, if you guys have, you can open up notepad or grab a pen and a paper. And I want you to like physically write it down. Okay. So I wrote something down. Now I want you to close your eyes. Set up straight and try to see that thing. try to see your agency, try to see your capability, and then try to see your judgment that you blame yourself for not doing that thing.

And try to see your resistance as you intend to do something, what gets in the way. And now notice how hard it is. Notice that when you close your eyes and breathe in and out again and out and in and out,

more time. Notice how ethereal the judgment and the resistance are in this moment. Maybe even the goal is ethereal. If it feels real to you, if it feels heavy, if it feels present, then sit with that. And give it the respect that it deserves. Give your weakness, your fear, your shame, the respect that it deserves. That these are powerful things within you. But I find my not feeling those things. I find myself feeling that my resistance and judgment is like a shadow on a wall and projected to be much larger than it actually is, like a tiny figurine with a light shining on it, casting a gigantic shadow, that when we stop and we look at the things that hold us back, they're far smaller than they appear. Or, as you look, you recognize that.

that it is gigantic. Either one is fine. And now prepare yourself to move forward. If your fears and shames and the things that hold you back are in reality far smaller to laugh. Because it's fucking hilarious. You're held back by that thing? It's fucking hilarious.

Look at how much of a noob you are. Being held back by a figment of your imagination. And then prepare your... yourself to take action. And if you're held back by something that is gigantic, gargantuan, massive, if the shame or trauma or fear is very real and very powerful, then respect it. And in that respect, find forgiveness for yourself. Because if it is a raid boss, you're going to what? Respect that the challenges and struggles that you face are real and monumentous. And it doesn't make you weak to not be able to climb Mount Everest. It's just hard to climb Mount Everest.

So find some forgiveness for yourself. Because not everyone, climbing Everest isn't easy. Doesn't mean that you're going to give up. It just means that you need to be prepared. It's the final boss. And so that little thing that you think is so easy for you to do that everyone else does so effortlessly, whether it's eat a piece of fruit a day or wake up on time or start that work that you're procrastinating on, recognize that that is Mount Everest and that that is the final boss and that what you need to overcome it is not judgment towards yourself, not berating yourself for being a piece of shit, but that you need to mentally prepare the way that you do for a final boss.

Check your inventory. Make sure you're well-stocked on potions. Make sure you're not lagging. And then get ready to zone in. When you zone in, play your final boss music. And try to do that task. Eat a fucking apple. While you listen to your final boss music.

Because that's all there is, is moments in time. There's only the boss that you face now. And give that final boss everything that you've got. Give this moment everything that you have and see what you can accomplish. Recognize that failure is a possibility

and success is a possibility. But the real failure is not zoning in. That most of your life, your problem is that you don't zone in. You don't even try. So try to find the smallest nugget of courage and zone in. Come on back. And think concretely for a moment.

Now we return to the conscious mind. Think concretely about what are you going to do today in the time that you have. Do one thing. One thing. Zone in. And recognize that every minute that goes past from this moment until when you zone in, your chances of success decrease. So we're going to raid H.A. Chubby.

Send it. Oh. Oh, okay. And try to do that thing, the smallest thing, whatever it is. If you guys feel like procrastinating, procrastinate with HHB. Take care, guys. Once again, this is Mental Health Awareness Month. We're going to be trying to raise some money.

So if you guys can donate, we'd really appreciate it. We're trying to raise $75,000 to support our coaching program, which hopes to go live in about 10 days to two weeks. And we're going to try to help people. Like, we're actually trying to create that connection that Will is talking about. So Will says, like, if you want someone, you need someone in your life who's, like, non-judgmental, doesn't have to be like a trained professional.

And that's exactly what the, that's the spirit behind the coaching program. It's so fascinating to hear him say that. So we're trying to train people to do something like what I do. And it turns out that that's expensive to do. So if you guys can support us, we'd really appreciate it. And, yeah, we have a bunch of people. We've had 500 people apply to become trained coaches. So thank you very much.

Wait, I can't raid because there's an icon that's covering my stream chat. What? No, I can't raid. What happened?