Julian Dorey Podcast - 🫢 #109 - I'm An Alcoholic And Psilocybin Saved My Life | Jon Kostakopoulos

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

(***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Jon Kostakopoulos is a Psychedelics Lobbyist & Former Alcoholic. In 2015, Jon took part in one of the groundbreaking NYU Psilocybin Studies to treat his decade-long addiction to alcohol. The therapy worked and he has never drank since. In 2019, Kostakopoulos Co-Founded Apollo Pact –– a 501(c)(3) Organization that lobbies for Federal Funding grants for all different Psychedelic treatments of various afflictions (addiction, depression, PTSD, etc). ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Intro; How Jon became an alcoholic 25:58 - Jon’s stories of addiction & trying to get clean; “People, places, and things” 44:21 - How Jon got into NYU’s Psilocybin trial study; the pre-study process 1:06:03 - The first psychedelic trip in the study; Jon’s unforgettable experience; MK Ultra 1:28:14 - What imagery Jon remembers from the trip; Lucid Dreams and Amplifying emotions; 1:49:39 - Why Jon was certain he’d never drink again after second session; Psychedelic history and the ancient Greeks; Other patients’ outcomes from the study; The lack of temptation Jon has today 2:07:32 - Microdosing; Psychedelic visions vs dreams; The differences between a brain on psychedelics and a normal brain; Some things can’t be described in words 2:20:55 - The different medical use cases for psychedelics; Societal views on Psilocybin and psychedelics 2:38:30 - Navy SEALS, Special Operators, PTSD & Psychedelics; The corruption of the alcohol industry 3:09:00 - The power of music in the psychedelic process; Julian has an idea for music integration in future studies ~ YouTube EPISODES & CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “TRENDIFIER”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier PRIVADO VPN FOR $4.99/Month: https://privadovpn.com/trendifier/#a_aid=Julian Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey ~ Beat provided by: https://freebeats.io Music Produced by White Hot Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For a split second I got genuinely upset like you guys know I like to drink. Like I just can't control it. I love to control it. Ideally I'd have a couple of drinks and be you know be fine. And you're telling me that's a possibility? But then this was in between the second and third? Yeah the second and third. And it didn't change your viewpoint though? No it didn't because at that point what's cooking everybody i am joined in the bunker today by mr john costacopolis and

man oh man was this a wild story so john John was featured on 60 Minutes a few years back where he discussed how his alcoholism was completely healed by psychedelics. And no, it's not what you think. He wasn't in some basement somewhere with a shaman tripping balls. Instead, he was over at NYU taking part in one of the initial studies where they were measuring how psychedelics could properly treat things like addiction. And obviously it worked for John. So you're going to hear all about that today. And you're going to hear all about this whole space with psychedelics and some of the bad education we have in America about it

and how it actually really can be used for a lot of people. Because John ended up co-founding Apollo Pact, which works to lobby Congress to get federal funding for psychedelic treatment for all different types of people. So it's not just for addiction and the things that John is familiar with. It's also for things like veterans and guys coming back with PTSD who currently have to go to places like Mexico and Costa Rica to get their own psychedelic treatment on their own dime because we don't do it here. We don't do much of it here. So I learned a lot in this conversation.

I really, really enjoyed it, and I think you guys will too. If you're on YouTube right now, please hit that subscribe button. Please hit that like button on the video. And as always, would love to hear from you down in the comment section below. To everyone who is on Apple or Spotify, thank you for checking out the show over there. If you haven't already, please be sure to leave a five-star review on either one of those platforms, as that is a huge, huge help for the show. And thank you to everyone who already has. That said, you know what it is. I'm Julian Dory, and this is Trendifier. Giving opinions and calling them facts. You feel me? Everyone understands this, but few seem to do it. If you don't like the status quo, start asking questions. Your story, man.

I was really happy Mark hooked this up because one of the things that I really don't know nearly enough about I'm so uneducated when I talk with people is the whole psychedelics is a treatment and I would say I would even extend that and say psychedelics in general it's very interesting to me and your story being that you were an alcoholic for what was it like a decade close to it yeah and you were cured totally cured which is nuts because insane i mean there's no treatment you know from my understanding the best treatment outside of psychedelics for addiction and substance use is that you're you're able to live with your disease so you're going to a a meetings or you're going to see a therapist so the cravings are always there some days are easier than others but it's it's always lingering and people like when i was going to aaa there were guys in there that would tell stories that they were sober for

20 or 30 years and then they'd relapse and i'm like and i'm in there for like 20 days and i'm like you know this is gonna be tough yeah maybe the best way to do this would be to start from the top though would like when you got first exposed to alcohol because you were really young right you were like 15 ish something like that yeah like a little younger like 13 we're sneaking beers wow yeah like 13 14 now who was do it did you have like an older brother or something or no friends friends like older brothers so my older sister was like on a roll valedictorian so my parents yeah my parents had you know old taste of of both worlds there right right the straight a student and then the uh the not so well i mean that's when you're like 12 or 13 that that's such a – I mean, Jesus Christ.

I can't even picture myself when I was that age, what's going through my head. If someone had put alcohol in front of me, God knows what would have happened. It's tough. Yeah. I saw a 12-year-old the other day or a 13-year-old the other day, and I'm like, this is crazy how I was what I was doing at that kids oh yeah yeah you know and it's not like I grew up in a broken home or like my parents were great loving like they were always it was all like we would just sneak off and and do it wasn't like my parents weren't there and

you know I raised myself or something. They were very present in my life. But kids are smart. Kids are going to find ways to game the system and figure out how they're going to get their hands on things that they want to do or do what they want to do. What was the first thing you ever drank oh that's a good question probably beer you liked it right away not no i didn't it took a while to really get used to the taste but i liked how it made me feel so like you know my friends and i would force a couple of beers i remember one time we even put sugar in it.

We tried it because we were like, this is awful. I don't know. That definitely didn't make it better, though. It actually did not. I thought it would. Okay, it would be a little sweet, but I was like, no, I'd rather drink drink the other stuff like the regular yeah i don't even like what are some of those like the summer shandy stuff like the things now that have like all the sugar in them like they taste weird to me even though they're literally making it from scratch

like that are they yeah yeah it's like i i think when people are thinking of beer they think like a lime and a corona you know know, and that's sour. It's a totally different vibe. Yeah. You know? That is strange. I never, whenever like a new product comes out, I'm just like, I'm just happy I'm out of the game. It won't take long to tell you Neutral's ingredients.

Vodka, soda, natural flavors. So, what should we talk about? No sugar added? Neutral. Refreshingly simple. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill.

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There's a lot. They'll get creative with it, man. I mean, why not? People are buying it. If they can sell it, that's it. 100%. 100%. Oh, yeah.

So you get into it when you're like 13, and then you said you went to boarding school. So away at boarding school, I would imagine you're pilfering a lot of beers in the rooms there, right? Yeah. Well, I would. So that's the thing with boarding school. It's I Don't know if we had a one-strike policy or not, but they were pretty strict on Anything any substances so I would just go home or go back to New York every weekend You know with with a bunch of our other friends

and Go nuts in New York for probably less than 24 hours because we had Saturday classes, and then we'd usually have sports. We'd have a game that night. So I'd get into Manhattan probably at like 10 or 11. And then you got to catch a train at 3 PM at a Grand Central the next day. So you don't, you don't have that much time. Um, so, but you were making it count. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's your one, you know, that's 15 hours or whatever it is out of,

out of your whole week to go back there and no chaperones or anything really and so yeah you do your thing but like i'm just trying to think of like a high schooler i mean i guess it makes sense because you're getting that done on the weekend but at some point like maybe after high school the thing I'm always curious about is when people will tell me after the fact that like, oh yeah, I was an alcoholic for X number of years or whatever it was. And yet they had a great job and they were functional and people around them didn't know about it, but they're drinking all the time. So like what, maybe the better question is you went to college, like did that start to become like you're showing up to class drunk, too

Or how did it go? Yeah, I mean I was Really in college. I would I would drink to do like any task that I didn't that I needed to do that I didn't really need to be present for Yeah, I mean mentally, mentally present, physically present. But so there were times for college that I'd be, you know, drinking during class for sure. Just to get through these, you know, two or three hour lectures. But I mean, that and and yeah, back to your point about functioning alcoholics, there are a ton of a lot of

alcoholics are functioning alcoholics. And it's everyone's different. For me, I couldn are guys and and a lot of my friends that um can drink a ton so first of all there are a lot of my friends that drink a lot and i don't think they're alcoholics they just drink um i mean they're not drinking a lot all the time and but i you know i'm not concerned about them they're not they're not constantly drinking they'll have you know i was at a wedding with one of these guys and um he wasn't even black out drunk or anything but it didn't cross my mind like maybe he should be pumping the brakes but he's 30 and not it wasn't too bad i just wasn't worried about it there are other people that

i see them drinking they could even be drinking less and i'm like okay man this guy is not gonna be going to work for the next few days or something can so so everyone's got a different relationship with alcohol for me i would i would drink so much that it would take a couple of days to recover so i'd have like the physical hangover and then it would also come with a moral what i call a moral hangover a moral moral hangover never heard that it's like it's the anxiety and you know um or, I've heard mental hangover. It's just like, and it happens mainly when you black out, at least for me. But even when I didn't black out, because I knew I shouldn't be drinking. And I was constantly trying to stop drinking. But it, like, I just, I had so much guilt that I'd wake up and I think that's why it was easier for me to

give up alcohol for the next few weeks because I'd feel so terrible and I'd carry that with me the next you know few days or weeks and I wouldn't even want to drink and then after some point i'd be bored enough or something would happen i'd just say screw it all right you know i would talk it down like i'm i wasn't that bad i could right i could have a couple and get by or you know if things are good if i'm doing well at work or doing well personally whatever whatever it is. I'm like, I could, you know, I've been good enough and things are going well. I could sneak one in here. But it never is just one. So it was more streaky for you, it sounds like.

Yeah. I'd go on like some of these benders or what they call binge binge drinking just because I wouldn't be able to I really had to chew you know pick my battles because I would not be able to hold the job if drinking every night it just would not be possible that's so interesting though because the more normal one you hear about is like of course people binge drink yeah but then there's also they need some every day you know what i mean and it's not that's not all alcoholics so you're someone where that was not the case yeah so it's not like you're showing up sloppy drunk to work hence why a lot of people are like when you tell them you're an alcoholic they're like like, what? Yeah. You know? I mean, there are a couple of times that did happen where I was so drunk or not drunk.

I got drunk like the night before or even the, you know, two days prior where I'd still have a hangover and I'd need a little alcohol in the morning just to stop the, you know the hangover and the what they call dt's delirium tremens um delirium tremens yeah it's so you get like what they call the shakes so people can get the shakes some hallucinations um and that that's actually a good segue because that's how this research got started with psychedelics treating alcoholics. In the 1950s, doctors thought, because there were some people out there, some alcoholics that had experienced DTs. Which is that term you just saidirium tremens they stopped drinking right all together um and kind of like a wake-up call it was so brutal and painful that they just didn't want to deal with that anymore and that was enough to stop so when people got it like really bad you're saying oh yeah full-blown hallucination they feel like they're on a trip not necessarily someone who's just like hung over and they have a little bit of the well they have

the shakes and it's bad some people seize some people have seizures i mean alcohol is i think it's only there are only two drugs out there that if you stop cold turkey you can die and that's alcohol and benzos so like Xanax or other I mean look that out we could later but heroin what's his face Jordan Peterson I city had that okay yeah so you can't stop these things cold turkey because you could there's a chance that you could have a seizure and die um heroin heroin's not not there i think you could it's going to be a miserable withdrawal you're going to be in a lot of pain um but i don't i don't think you could have a seizure when you just stop cold turkey interesting yeah i think people just they start they get like hallucinations yeah

it's it's miserable from what i hear but um so the the doctors thought okay this this might be able to replicate the dts if we give these alcoholics lsd and so they gave these you know these study participants LSD and then they realized um that yeah a lot of them stopped drinking but it wasn't because you know they got scared straight or something it was they were like just more enlightened and they they had a different perspective on their drinking or on life and they came to the conclusion that alcohol wasn't working for them so just give it a similar to my experience where i was just like it was kind of that simple like that you know you're trying you've been trying to stop for almost 10 years now. Just give it up already.

So for one sec, let's back up. Yeah, yeah. You get out of college. Where did you go work? So I was a journalist over at The Street. Like Jim Cramer's place? Yeah, it's a financial news company right um and so i started out there in i don't know 2014 20 around there um and it was great i loved it always wanda i was a news junkie always wanted to

Do something in news whether was right or Whatever it was so I got to um, I got to do that and I really Cared about work. I wanted to be good at my job. I'd I was like, all right, I'm in the industry. I want to be in Better not screw this up um so i was i was going to a i was doing you know oh you were oh yeah yeah when did when did that start for you like i mean my first a meeting was at 16 that's when i so did you tell anyone about this yeah my doctor my doctor was like you should, because I told him I was drinking, but not, it wasn't really out of control at that age. But he was still. Your doctor said go to an AA meeting.

He said you should check one out just to see if, you know, things, if you could relate to any of the speakers. Now, what's that? I've never even heard of that before. A 16-year-old walking into an Alcoholics Anonymous. What's that like? Yeah, it was a little strange. I think I, I mean, I didn't make a regular thing out of it until, I don't know, a couple years later, but I would go periodically after that just to like, okay, maybe I gotta, and I felt, you know what it was too?

It was, I felt that if I were going and at least making an effort, even if I wasn't genuine about it, subconsciously I'd feel better about myself. It's like you're paying the piper. Yeah, it's like, all right, at least I'm going through the motions here. I have no intention to stop drinking now.

And I'd always, because I was so young with all this, so I'd always say I'll stop when i'm like 30 or i'll stop when i'm 40. um i think 30 was the number and well and then the doctors they're like if you keep this up you'll you know be dead by 30. so really i'm like well what were they seeing like because you obviously admitted good for you you admitted to them like when you were young like oh yeah yes i am drinking but then like were they seeing things in tests that they're like holy shit no no thank god i mean but um and and it was because i was so young it wasn't decades and decades of so my blood tests liver counts all that were um were okay um but no they were just like this is not your drink out so when i checked into this nyu trial they we had to fill out the psychedelics

thing the psychedelics yeah the psilocybin trial and i was like weaning down my drinking this is when i was you know working non-stop and so my drinking was cut down but it was still a lot um what's a lot so they said the 95th percentile so i was i was averaging i think the number was 22.7 drinks. And that was me cutting down. A week or a day? A day, yeah. Like an easy in and out. And you said you'd be doing binges, though, too.

So that means you're having nights where it's like 45. Because some days you're not drinking. Right? Oh, well, no, I think this was for a sitting like like a so like when you do it okay whenever i am drinking i'm sitting here going like 45 yeah i know you're not dead like 40 wasn't i mean if i'm drinking you know the whole like afternoon tonight or even if i start earlier than that yeah like i could i could do a handle like a whole like something that you'd bring to a party how tall are you like five six i was gonna say you're not that tall no holy shit man yeah you're doing numbers that the offensive lineman friends of mine were doing now i'm putting up uh i'm getting my weight

up yeah all right so bottom line i misunderstood that when you said it sorry but like when you would sit you were you guys were you and the medical professionals were able to calculate that's about what you were doing every time yeah they would have they would ask us so this was so long ago that, yeah, they would, so I'd come in there and they would say, okay, let's, I think they wanted me to keep track during it or sometimes when I'd come in after or like later that week into the hospital they'd say okay what what did you drink or did you drink last week if so what days okay how many days or how many drinks friday night saturday night tuesday night so then and i just remember like being on the couch or like sitting there and telling one of the nurses who's filling out my you know stuff um i was like it was pretty low key i only had this and then i forgot i was like maybe you know four beers or something and then i had

forgot i was like oh but then i did this and then i had you know and then it ended up being 18 or something when i i thought i was like i was actually pretty good that day it wasn't and I was like oh man no she's sitting there calling the red alarm yeah she was like and that's it I was like I did actually get a call from a friend who was at a bar and then you know added on 15 drinks there but casual yeah holy shit so so you the bottom line is you come out you have a regular job you're able to function in the sense that you would go on binges when you did it and all the while even during college where you were saying you were drinking during class sometimes you're periodically going to these aa meetings too yeah yeah and it wasn't it wasn't like forced on me by anyone you know no one was even the doctor

at 16 they were like you should check it out or i'd encourage you to check it out did your parents know anything about this yeah yeah and they were like and it was tough on them because i mean obviously just not me being their child going through this and they couldn't do anything about it they didn't know what to how to do anything but alcoholism isn't in our family at all so it's not like this kind of came out of left field for everyone so they didn't know how to handle this when did they get a feel that you had an issue during college probably Probably during college. Did you tell them, or did they, like, have to wake you up one day off the floor? No, I mean, they've certainly, they caught me on some bad days and saw me, you know, pretty out of it.

But, you know, we were all, I was always pretty honest with my parents about the drinking and, um, and they, they had known my intention of, I didn't see myself drinking as an adult. And so this was like me drinking as like, you know, a college kid, a high school kid, or like a young guy, right? So that's how you would write it off to them, so to speak. Well, I mean, that's what I truly believed. I was like, I knew I wasn't going to be able to drink or have a normal relationship with alcohol when, you know, I'm an adult or I got a job like I'm doing you know grown-up stuff I got like you know bills to pay all that I got other people relying on me I can't there's no way I'd be able to do if I want to be a functioning you know contributing citizen to society I I can't do this so i knew at a young age that i was like all right i gotta

figure out how i'm gonna i know i'm gonna stop drinking or i'm it's just gonna kill me so i gotta figure out how i'm gonna stop drinking going forward so you've been beating around this a little bit with like how it went down but the full process because the way i understood this when we talked on the phone is that it had been a decade and you found this study yeah how did you find it like what was and how long did it take after finding it to getting in contact with them where was it and then like how much was done before it you've talked about like the number of drinks and measuring but like how long was that part of the process as well so great question this was total luck how i found it my mom changed doctors and she I started to see this new doctor and confided in this new doctor that, you know, I, there was something, maybe I had just gone back from rehab or something, but I was, like, we had tried everything.

Oh, you went to rehab, too? Oh, yeah. I didn't know that. I mean, I checked myself into rehab when I was, six months after i turned 21 oh shit like i was legally allowed to drink for months and i was already looking for i'm like i can't you know so you told your parents about that yeah yeah all right so they knew this part as well yeah they were like in the summer or during the school year no during the summer okay um advantageous yeah it was that that definitely like i i had a couple of friends go to uh rehab during covid and no one it was great now you're checking out you know, you didn't, everyone's working remotely.

So they're, they were still zooming from the rehab and no one really knew. Yeah. That's kind of cool. So yeah, yeah. But, but that's not the usual, right? That's not the norm. Like you have to usually throw out your phone, not throw it out, but you know, you can't bring your phone or you can't use it for the majority of it. No bringing laptop, no outside communications. You have to come in here and just focus on it.

That's called impatient, right? Yeah. When you decide. No, impatient is when you're physically in, like staying there overnight and stuff. But there's also one more like when you you don't get to decide right court ordered is that yeah is that a different facility no there were some people i think that were court ordered here and it was kind of you know i don't know if it because a lot of those people did not they were there against

their own will right and they didn't like if you want to get better like you got it you're not going to get better for anyone else for a judge for your wife or your you know husband whoever your kids like you got to get better because you want to get better yourself right um and they could be like another reason like i want to get better so i could be there for you know the people i love but ultimately you got to get better because like no one's going to tell you to sober up and that's not going to work for the majority of of people so it was kind of you know mixing the court ordered court-ordered and, like, or, like, just not even court-ordered, like where you check in and it's like, no, no, you literally can't leave for 90 days? So I think psych wards, you can't.

If you're a risk to either yourself or someone else, I think that's where they could keep you. If you checked yourself in where they could keep you. If you checked yourself in, they can do that. Yeah, even if you checked yourself, if you're like, I'm suicidal, I'm really angry, I think I'm going to hurt myself or other people, you go in there, I think they could,

I think that's when they can hold you again, even if you want to leave. But no, I think I could have left whenever I wanted. But I genuinely wanted to be there and get better. I mean, there were days I wanted to leave, but overall, I wanted to get better and stop drinking. But when I went in there, the guy was like, like the director of this rehab told all of us, kind of like tough love.

It's like, look around you. Only 3% of you are going to succeed at this and be sober. 3%? They have a whole business on this. 3%. If you and me did 3% of anything, we'd be fired. It's crazy. You're dealing with people's lives here, too. It's not like you're not playing patty cakes.

This is life and death for a lot of these people. And that's the best outcome That's the best outcome they have. I mean, hey, guys, if you're enjoying this episode, please be sure to share it on social media and with your friends. Spreading the word about the show is the best possible thing we can do to grow the audience and allow the podcast to get better and better. So thank you to each and every one of you who have done that already. Three. It's crazy. Now, were you with a bunch of different types of addicts, like drugs as well?

Or did they keep it kind of separate? I think at this one, yeah, no, I think at this one there were some opiate addicts. And because I remember some folks were taking methadone. Some people it's like, or it was methadone or it was either methadone or maybe suboxone, but I think it was methadone. And yeah, that was, so it was, no, it was a big, you know, mix of people. That's another thing though, because the way these different things are treating obviously there's are treated there's similar psychological impacts of any form of addiction obviously yeah we can back that scientifically but still there's a difference in behavior patterns with someone who's addicted to heroin versus someone who's got an addiction to

alcohol you know what i mean so like the idea to me that they're all running through a lot of the same programs like in the same space that almost seems like a little and i don't know it's a totally uneducated take but from the outside you know armchair quarterback take it's like that seems a little bit counterintuitive yeah like it should be more specialized yes and catered to to each and you know i'd agree with that and there's um because i mean na i think it is like na narcotics anonymous it's like a spin-off of alcoholics anonymous aa they're both like step programs and right. And weirdly enough, though, some AA people don't want the NA people there. But I think for any NA group, alcoholics are always welcome

because and also alcohol is a drug. Funny how we do that. Right. so it I don't know it's strange I've heard you know I have heard that it works for like you know the same treatment for alcoholics like

AA or something could work for heroin addicts or you know drug users. This stuff, as you said, I mean the rehab guy put it bluntly in there with the rehab system, which then follows a lot of this aftercare where it's like AA and things like that. It's such a low percentage. And when I've looked at it and what I really want to do is like read a full book on this. I haven't done that yet.

I just read a lot of different research reports and stuff. Yeah, yeah. When you look at the genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm not saying that the motives weren't great. Terrific motives. And they work in religion as well and stuff like that. But it's not – it was like a religious program. It wasn't scientifically backed. So a lot of these people like – here's a good question. How do you feel about the whole concept of people having to constantly repeat and remind themselves and everyone around them that they're an addict or that they're this, they that and that they're they can't be like everyone else You know

It's interesting it does work for a lot of people like that that vibe of it I mean overall It's still the vast majority of people going to a a Aren't unfortunately gonna get get sober. It takes multiple tries. It's, I mean, but that being said, if I can't get someone into a clinical trial for like psilocybin or something, that's looking to treat alcohol use disorder. I'll even go to a meeting with these guys. Cause it's right now it's the best free resource and one of the even like the best resource that it's got better results than some of these other treatments that you have to pay for um so it like overall i think it's one of the better things that we have but

that's still i mean i don't know what it is maybe like it's low percentage 15 and that's that's high like yeah it just like i've talked with some people i there's a couple different friends in particular who come to mind who to their credit are completely clean from serious things one of them heroin actually right it took a long time yeah it took years but he he did the whole system which i guess is like in that case narcotics anonymous or whatever afterwards and he finally reached a point where he was like his his sponsor would just always be reminding him and making him say all these things and he's like wait this is getting culty i have moved on with my life i don't doubt that like if i ever made a decision to touch that again i'm fucked i know this you don't need to tell me this again what

what he felt like was that his agency was being taken away because any time he wanted to do shit that had nothing to do with that, not, you know, just shit for work, the guy would be like, well, you need to think about doing that deal because what if you get high off the money? And he's like, what are you talking about? So he finally, like, and this was like four years ago now, he was like, no. Stopped it. Doesn't go to the guy. And I guess a piece of information I should add to this is that I don't know how people coming off of heroin work. I would imagine everyone's all different. But for him, he said quitting it was like it felt impossible.

Oh, yeah. Oh, he failed like a million times. He said once he made it, and by made it, he's like, you need to be a year. Got over it, yeah. He's like, now the thought of taking heroin. It's frightening. He feels like the devil comes inside. He's not even a religious guy.

He's like, I can't be near it because I feel like someone's going to come prick me with it. Like, I don't want it. Oh, yeah. I believe it. In fairness to like other people out there who may hear an explanation like that and be like, well, that's not how it works. There may be other people where it's not like that, where they like, they feel the, oh, what if I just took a little? So, you know, to keep it at least balanced. Yeah.

And I was, so I was like that with drinking. So I'd, if things were going well or I hadn't drank, you know, drank anything for a few months or whatever it was, I would, I would forget, you know, or I wouldn't, you know, it's not that I'd forget, but I'd think it was okay to drink a little now because I was kind of under the radar. I wasn't causing any issues. I could drink a little. So I do get the constant reminding.

And remember, and they say people, places, and things. That's what they, you know, in the AA or a lot of these other groups. And that, you know, it is true for a lot of. Can you explain to people what that means? Absolutely. Who aren't familiar? So people, places, and things. People they're referring to about, you know, the usual suspects, whether it's your friends that you hang out, that you use drugs together, drink together, right, that bad crowd, or at least bad crowd for you. So that's, you got to stay away from those. You got to stay, the places, right, don't go to bars.

Don't go to, you know, sketchy places where you buy drugs or like sketchy neighborhoods where, you know, that happens or, you know, parties that, that have a ton of booze and alcohol and drugs there, right? If you're not trying to drink or use drugs, stay away from those physical locations. Um, and then things like, don't, don't do things that like if you always you know drink when you're playing golf they're going to tell you you know maybe take it easy off the golf for a little bit until you get or right things that that trigger you to drink and kind of get you going again and and get you craving that that taste of whatever it is so essentially the habits of your surroundings exactly pretty much yeah and that makes sense um agreed but then it's like what do you want me to do move you know to the monastery and and i mean real like in new york i'm walking by three liquor stores and you know

four bars every block that you used tough task to, I mean, how are you really gonna, and especially for a young kid too, right? When all our friends, even, even if they're not, you know, if they don't have a problem, a lot of my friends are going out and drinking and hanging out and they're not doing they're doing it in a safe way they're not drinking too much but so i'm like what am i supposed to do i can't like it's who am i gonna hang out with you know it is um well they're saying don't even go to that they're saying don't you you can't even if you you're gonna drink seltzers you shouldn't be there so

which is awkward you know because then yeah you're turning off your relationships that's a little yeah i can't but i can it's tough man no it is yeah um but you know and then so when i when i did this trial and after i left yeah now we're there right I didn't I didn't even I didn't really change I mean I organically stopped hanging out with guys that I was only calling you know because I knew they were they drank as much as I did and they wouldn't judge me or like try to you know so there were a couple of guys that that you know once I drinking again, I'd start hanging out with. Um, so some of those like gradually fell off cause I, I'd only hang out with people that I was drinking with. There were a few of those, but a lot of my friends, they're still drinking, they don't have problems.

And I drink a lot with them. I would, I mean, I drank more, drank more but um but i still hang out with them and i see them drink and that uh you know i go to bars i go to restaurants that are today like like you do this now yeah yeah no problem like i'm gonna if you are not sleeping on an eight sleep pod pro cover you are missing out on days weeks weeks, months, years of your life. Because every night that you sleep on an 8 Sleep Pod Pro cover, you are getting the deepest sleep possible. And that is because the 8 Sleep Pod Pro cover, which comes in queen or king sizes, is wired directly into the same company, 8 Sleep's proprietary app, which measures your sleep stages, your body temperature, your heart rate, and all these different scientific things throughout the night to make sure that you get the deepest

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I usually, and I prefer to meet people at bars because you're in and out. You know, you stay for a drink or two, and then you're gone, right? Wow. You don't have to, like, sit down. I'd rather have drinks with people than, like, a full-on meal sometimes

like okay i gotta like because i want you know i just want to get home unwind i'm working all day i don't yeah i'll see someone for like one or two drinks and then be out of there you're not it's not not as much of a commitment so i'd actually prefer going to bars wow so i think where i got you sidetracked just because i didn't have the context before it was the whole rehab thing so you had been explaining that but now back to the actual trial yeah so you said your mom changed doctors yeah and then you found out about it but then what happened so they weren't doing this yet. They were getting ready to launch. This is NYU. They were getting ready to launch this trial.

So I saw. What year is this? Probably 2014. Okay. So I saw the doctor's names in there. I tracked them down and ended up seeing one of them, like his private practice because they didn't they didn't have anything open yet they weren't they were getting ready to do the clinical trial but they weren't enrolling yet so i was basically like waiting at the gates when waiting for them to

open it up first customer baby yeah i was like i was just like okay what like what are we doing here you didn't have a lack of effort i gotta tell you like you really for years and years you were all about it no yeah yeah and i was and i i went to go see him and i mean ironically he not ironically but it was like he you know he was the best doctor that I saw because he, a lot of the doctors I saw, not, not all of them, but a lot of them would,

you know, judge me or make me feel bad about myself. I'm like, I already feel like, you know, I already, yeah, that's kind of fucked.

Yeah. They're like, you really shouldn't do the like tough law. I don't know what it was, but, but you shouldn't drink. Put it down. Yeah. It's like, or like, what but shouldn't drink put it down yeah it's like

they're like what are you doing like again it's like what what do you think i'm seeing you for like what do you think i'm here for like of course this is an issue this is a problem that's why i'm coming to see you what was this doctor's name this one you liked this is steve ross so and why you guys still are you for this day yeah yeah he's still there so he's he did the uh cancer anxiety uh so patients that yeah for for uh psilocybin assisted therapy so cancer patients that had anxiety um like end-of-life fear and anxiety, rightfully so, they'd enroll in this. And a lot of them, I think 80%, didn't have any anxiety related to the cancer so they still had anxiety from like everyday life like okay are my kids gonna be getting into a good school or something or is my job gonna be secure you know and they're dying though and they're dying but that they didn't my job gonna be secure

yeah right like so like you know every day we're all human we still have problems but they weren't they weren't worried about am i gonna die or not um so it was and i've heard this from a and and i had myself had a death experience in one of my psilocybin sessions so i'm so it's a common theme uh with with the study participants i'm gonna let you get through it because I if I touch that we're gonna go on a big side okay we'll come back to that but but this guy had done that those types of trials so he yeah he had done that at NYU I think they published it in 2014 so they had published it that year that I did I meet I might have met him in 2013 or 2014 but around there so he published that around that time and then where so I was seeing him for a

little bit and then finally they started enrolling so you would just heard about it was gonna be a possibility and so you then started to see Steven Ross and you're like when are you doing it yeah basically okay but thank God he was like he was a really good doctor so it made it easier I'm like okay this guy is like he knows what he's talking about he's giving good advice he's like you know he's a needin judge you didn't judge me like nice guy approachable you could confide in him i mean great guy all around that's awesome yeah and so i got lucky there um

and then so they started enrolling and then i went and he put me in touch with one of the you know people figuring out all the enrollment logistics so did he tell you like anything about what you could expect with this or like how many people were gonna be open to doing it did you know any of that uh no but he was he was kind of like I don't know if you'll be able to get in or not, like not, don't get your hopes up. And, and I was also, so they were, I think the age limit was, it was 25 to like 65. Um, and I was 25, so I had just made it. Wow. Yeah. So I was very, I was 25, so I had just made it. Wow.

Yeah. So I was very lucky. That probably also helped you too because they want people from the ends of the spectrum, I'm guessing. Yeah. I mean, that's a total guess. I might be an idiot. But there aren't, I mean, for the most part, the majority of people getting sober too or trying to get sober aren't that young, right? Yeah. of people getting sober too or trying to get sober aren't that young right a lot yeah yeah so it so maybe that was a because um yeah that that could have given them another data point there uh for

that demographic for sure so you got accepted into it? Got accepted in. And what was the runway from there? Is it like show up tomorrow or is it like six months from now? Like what's the, what was the story? So it was kind of, I mean, we met regularly, I think like weekly. So it was like the doctors and I are like the team at NYU Langone. That he was a part of, Steve Ross. So I didn't see Steve Ross. I saw another doctor.

This guy was his co-lead investigator, I think is what they call it. So Steve Ross and Bogan Schutz, they're both medical doctors doing this research. And because I saw Dr. Ross in his private practice i couldn't see him throughout this trial so i saw um michael bogan shoots so dr bogan shoots this guy was also i mean these two guys are i credit them with saving my life obviously um plus the rest of the team at myu too it wasn't just the doctors it was like the whole whole team they were top notch but like the nurses and all the nurses the you know their therapists their social workers phds doing the you know psychotherapy because you two two therapists for one um patient or study participant so I had Ross or sorry I had

bogan shoots and another person who was I think she was a social worker like her so not a doctor not a doctor but um like a therapist so and she went through the training of this therapy and so you'd have like two-on-one psychotherapy pretty much weekly for how long before the actual event just a few times i mean it was it was it was still you know hours and hours right together for a while. Yeah Yeah, it wasn't like you're just checking in and see you're hiding waiting leaving. Yeah, you did that like the first time They take the vitals all that But Yeah, they you know, maybe like a month into it. I did the first psilocybin session Okay, so did you know I I assume as soon as you enrolled and they

said okay we're gonna see a few times you knew when when d-day was like they told you like okay we're gonna do it like a month from now i don't know about i knew it that early on but after like a couple i think a couple of like psychotherapy sessions and they call this uh preparation so you have the preparation sessions and then you have the psilocybin session itself and then you have integration the integration sessions it's like the after yeah and you're integrating your experiences into you know figuring out what it all means how you're gonna bring it with you going forward incorporate it integrate it into everyday life were you doing i'm sure obviously you're asking the doctors all kinds of questions because you're with them but like were you doing a lot of your

own research because this was something I assume you previously didn't know much about I was I was doing a decent amount of research but I was if I you know if I did the research I did wasn't really gonna change anything because this was my last resort mm-hmm I had already tried everything so I was already at my main concern was if this was gonna be safe so I was all I was asking the doctors I'm like okay am i what happens if I don't know who I am or if I lose you know I was asking the doctors I'm like okay am I what happens if I don't know who I am or if I lose you know I was asking them am I gonna go crazy am I going to be stuck in a bad trip permanently or you know just all this wacky stuff and they were like no that no you're you'll be

fine this is actually take a mushroom kit yeah right and i was like am i gonna am i gonna become addicted to this stuff and they were like no it's actually not addictive um so isn't that that's something it's like that's got to be a wild concept for someone thinking about trying to get rid of a never-ending addiction with another substance and being told no you you're gonna like it but you're never gonna do it yeah like i didn't after i did this trial i had no and i don't have any you know uh desire to look for mushrooms or anything on the street or do any psychedelics have you ever done one since no and before and i no and i never did it before either because i was too scared um i was and that's that's the whole point of you know of really what we're doing now too because there a lot of the reason i was scared was

now i'm not telling my kids to go do this recreationally, but a lot of my fears were irrational where I thought they were, you know, science backed. Um, cause it was being into you the wrong way. Yeah. Essentially. Right. Yeah. And I thought, I mean, I was like, this is going to be unsafe. This is, you know, this is, I'm going i'm gonna go crazy um but it's not addictive it's you know fairly safe to do under in a controlled setting and if you're properly screened like if you know i think they screen mainly for a family history of schizophrenia so but for the most part other than that um you should be good to go uh so you do these sessions with them ahead of it and then you go in to do it what i mean how long is it what take me through

what happened uh-huh um so i probably got in at like 8 a.m maybe so they they're like just block out the whole day you're not going back you. You're not going back to work at 1. You're not doing this at a lunch break. Because sometimes I would see them at a lunch break for the psychotherapy stuff. That's why this was the easiest thing I did. I mean, treatment-wise. Yeah, I'll bet.

I still have to show up. You can't half-ass it. But, I mean, compared to everything else, I mean, this was, you know, a cakewalk. Did you show up sober? Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. And so, you know, back to the D-Day part, though, they had asked me, they said, okay, don don't drink I think it was 11 days prior to your first session so there as a moment they asked now obviously you

didn't but they asked an alcoholic no not to drink yeah not to drink yeah I mean leading for 11 days yeah I mean they that on their own devices not in a rehab chilling at home you're you're a lifelong out well long time alcohol yeah yeah just don't drink for 11 days would you that seems a little i i could see how people would think that's difficult but strangely enough at least for me because when i would drink i'd have like a good at least few weeks to a month or two where i was where i did not want to drink again because it was still so fresh in my mind like i do not want to go down that road ever again um so that it wasn't too difficult really for you for me i could see it being difficult for

other folks that don't get as you know the people who are drinking every day yeah no sure you know you were a different as you've described you were a different type of it then there are different types yeah so i was definitely i was lucky in that way too you were a great patient you walked in there they're like look at him sober as sober as hell. I mean, great, right? But I had counted backwards in my calendar 11 days from October something. Because I stopped drinking October 9th was my last drink. Was it like an event? No, I wanted to do it by myself. I'm like, this is a night

for me um this could be my last night of drinking and i wanted to spend this time you know doing this solo and going out like this how'd you go out i you know i can't even remember, but I had a bunch of, was it scotch or maybe bourbon? And also some beers. I think I got some. I'd say you worked your way around the family class of alcohol. Yeah. I mean, I was dabbling in a little bit of everything that night. A nice little variety.

This is so unique. You don't hear stories like this like how you went to do it and then you have to like count down okay well i medically can't take it ahead of this yeah no that because i'm like this this might work yeah like a part of me was afraid that it was gonna work right because i'm like because i love to drink even though it was a love-hate relationship yes but like you know i love to drink that's why i did it um i mean to start and then it just got out i was like okay this is taking over now i gotta stop but you know i i was afraid that i was gonna miss part parts of that um what was it what what were you afraid you were gonna miss like the

actual alcohol or the experiences that come with it or both you know probably both but i just i loved how it just like numbed everything you don't have to worry about you're just like but it wasn't it wasn't really numbing and or it was numbing but it wasn't really it was just delaying the anxiety or the stress it was just kicking it down the road because i'd be stressed or you know anxious or something and then i drank and then i wouldn't have a care in the world but then the next day you know i'm i'm feeling that and I'm like oh man this is awful what kinds of things will get you stressed and anxious I mean it's so irrelevant but just like like worrying about stuff either whether it was with school or work or like any tasks or something or um and it was like looking back on all of that like it was so relevant i couldn't even tell you what what i was anxious or stressed out about or

you know and i think a lot of it was the um was the alcohol i was mainly stressed out about my future self not knowing what that guy's gonna do because i could be fine right now but i am scared that you know me and next week or next year in ten years Wow you know just gonna slip because I've heard so many stories like that and I've done it you know I've I've had you know weeks where I'm like oh yeah I'm never gonna drink again I'm great this is leading up to that and I had a great support system I'd like great routines and stuff and then you know you just get one bad day or something and you know you're back to square one square yeah so that you said

you had a good just being clear you had a really good relationship with your parents yeah yeah childhood exactly yeah so it wasn't like you were rebelling against that that happened to you or anything no i just i loved how alcohol made me feel and I think it was Steve Ross that said I he thinks that's why because a lot of alcoholism is genetic too yes because we couldn't find any in my family he He thinks it was because I started drinking at a young age, and I never learned how to drink responsibly. I mean, I never, you know, every time I drank, and I, you know, kind of to this day, too,

I'm like, why are you just sipping on that drink? If I see someone just, I'm like, i don't really get like do it because i don't you know that part of me too like whether it's with work or like you know other things i'm working on but um i'm like all or nothing when it comes to just like with my drink like there's no moderation for for a lot of this stuff. I'm like, if I need to get something done or I'm working on something, I'm going to be doing that until it's finished. Yeah. I kind of wonder if some of that, and it's not relevant for you because of how young you got into it, but I wonder about like age with that. Cause now, you know, I'm not 21 anymore. Yeah.

And you know, when people would be like oh let's go get a drink or two i'm like what the fuck am i gonna do with a drink or two right like when we did it i i was not i didn't like partying during the week i did it very occasionally in college i was really like all right let's do it on the weekend kind of deal that's good but like when i as i got a little older i was suddenly like yeah i like one this is fine you know what i mean so it worked for me but when i was younger like i'd be like what's fucking rage man like it's just not you're not thinking like that well i think most people think like that like how you think because you don't have a problem and like and most people don't don't have a problem or an issue with alcohol.

But, like, to me, I'm just like, what do you, like, why even do just one or two? You know, it's either all or none. Like, I'm drinking until the wheels fall off. And that's farther. That's like. And that's also why I had to stop drinking when I was 25. Because, you know, you burn out fast doing that. Yeah.

But, no, it makes sense. To me, it was just like, what do you do? Like, why? It's like taking a bite out of something. It's like you're really just going to have a bite. You're like having one chip. Like you open a bag of chips. Yeah. That's all you're really just going to have a bite. You're like having one chip. Like you open a bag of chips. That's all you wanted, really.

Yeah. With other things, I absolutely think that way. Like any of those examples you just gave. And then sometimes if you go to start a basic task, I'm like, Julian, you're not going to finish this? What are you doing? You know what I mean? So it's a normal. It doesn't have to be like alcohol. is a normal yeah human emotion with that we don't like you know like you'll see someone walk in like if I had that picture tilted which I'm OCD so it never

would be but like someone might be like no no like it needs to be set right and they'll without saying anything they'll fix it like there's little things like that that we we can't look at unless it's done or like right you know yeah no i'm with you there it's wild but you there was a question i had on something you were saying about the treatment it had to do with the 11 days thing and then like counting down to it because then you're like, well, this might work and then I'll never do it again. But I'll think of it later. So bottom line is you walk in there. Walked in, yeah. 8 a.m.

Yeah. So they drug test you. Well, first they're like, okay, are you – they want to make sure that you're like mentally in a good spot too. Like you can't come in and then you know if you're in like in a bad place and they give you psychedelics not good it could make it worse but i mean as long as they know that you're in a bad point like okay at least we're gonna know how to prepare for this and um but i i went in there i was like no i'm like i'm scared i'm nervous um because i don't know like i i thought i was gonna have trouble differentiating reality and that's what

i'm like i'm gonna you know i'm gonna be stuck in like some 3D movie that is going to be frightening, and I'm not going to know that it's just the psilocybin. I can't remember if you told me this on the podcast or right before, but am I correct when you said you hadn't ever done psychedelics before? Yeah, correct. Okay. So I didn't know also but other drugs what was there ever other stuff besides alcohol that you would do yeah there was some

but not really not hallucinogens like blow and shit like that yeah yeah okay uh so this was a totally new territory for you which you know and by the, you could overdose from blow. You can't overdose from eating mushrooms. I didn't know that until some doctor from Yale, she was doing an OCD study and cluster headaches. Cluster headaches? Yeah, apparently they're these like bad migraines. But apparently psilocybin um helps a lot of these folks so it's i mean the potential of what else is to treat um but she had said she said like you can overdose on tylenol i've just heard someone saying that right a friend of mine was

talking about that like you it's not even, I forget the number of pills they said. It's not even that insane or what. It's not crazy. It's not like 50. No, yeah. It's a lot lower. That's crazy. But she said your stomach physically can't contain the amount of mushrooms it would take,

psilocybin mushrooms it would take to overdose. And when I heard that, I was like, we're going to be good. I'm like, that's interesting. Well, I heard that recently. So with this, they didn't even give me mushrooms. They gave me pharmaceutical grade psilocybin. So it was a pill. And so right after they're doing the uh screening and they're they drug test you make sure like nothing else is in your system um and then you you talk to the two therapists there and you go around the room saying okay what do you want to get at what's your intention out of this today the other people are in there with you the two yeah the the medical doctor and the like in this case i think it was

a licensed social worker right but that's it so it the way you said that i thought you were saying like other patients were in there too no no no no so when you go around the room there you're saying the doctors are also saying what they want to get out of it yeah yeah no no they i mean it's really intensive because it's two of them and they're supervising you for those whatever six eight hours and they're not tripping they're completely sober yeah so but they they're saying what they want to get out of it like i mean it's a ritual or it i think it helps kind of like set the intentions so for me it calmed me down because they're like i just want you to get you know i want to be supportive and help you get wherever you need to be you know and i'll be there for you if you need anything if you have any difficulty or and i'm like all right this is

like i'm not on my own here they're gonna be watching me they got the equipment and stuff we're in a hospital imagine if they just like turn to you like yeah we're gonna be right there with you man well there there are some people that do that like these underground facilitators yeah i'll bet which i get a lot of bad calls from people telling me that uh you know these facilitate like these guys aren't they have no medical backgrounds or anything and they're telling these desperate people you got to stop all your meds cold turkey and you got you know and i'm like and some of these people call me and they're like i've been depressed for 10 20 years i've never been suicidal until i stopped all my meds and i'm like this is because it totally it fucks their well i'm gonna mess up the words but

it fucks up all their passages in their brain. Yeah, this is just stopping your prescribed medication cold turkey without a doctor. So if you're going to stop it, if your doctor tells you to stop it, they'll put you usually on some regimen where you're weaning off it and lowering the dosage. But these people tell you, I mean, that's crazy. But I've heard stories where they're trying to do this, like, at retreats or something. And then the guide or whatever they call it, the practitioner, does it with them. And I'm like, who's – it's not like we're watching the same movie here. No. I mean, I kind of want someone to to be to be around i'm like what are

we what's going on yeah i'm just imagining if they had actually done that and been like yeah we're gonna be right there with you let's pop it and you're just like what the fuck like that's not what i signed up for no that would and i don't know if i would have done that no you don't study if they were like if they're like by the way we're gonna the doctors are gonna be doing this with you i'm like no no i'd rather just have like tell me i'm gonna be good yeah yeah like something but no it's a wacky wild ride with all that and then and basically you take the pill and then you're there for like a half hour 40 minutes and then it kicks in um where are you so you're now lying down on the couch you're still in the same room they have like a couch set up you're at the hospital yeah at nyu yeah at uh bellevue

they were doing this at bellevue which is on right there 20 kips bay yeah first avenue that's it yep gotcha i'll put a map in the corner for people to see and yeah um so and i think there was some history there with it being like some sort of psych ward back in the day it had been a if I remember correctly Bellevue was at least some sort of site for some quote unquote abuses if I'm getting that wrong let me know in the comments but I think it was like it had some controversial stuff there with a couple doctors and like some mental patients that yeah were sent there i think so it's got some like spooky history yeah um is that where they shot that's not where they shot the godfather scene where michael's in the hospital with his

father i don't think it was about oh what i don't think so yeah a belt oh what I don't think so yeah I think it was I don't know why it had those steps right yeah that wasn't it I I don't know why like something in the photographic memories putting the two together but I don't think that's where it was okay but that's where you were basically that's right yeah you're on a couch and you got an eye mask on you got headphones like this on with like classical music oh yeah they're playing you i read about this yeah they do they choose the playlist i'm assuming yeah yeah okay and that actually had a lot of impact too um on what you know the music could change and then like so could your experience um it was

it was why unlike the you know the shit if you're seeing shapes and stuff it could be changing with the music um like that's how it started i i started it was like i was looking through a kaleidoscope. And I'm like, but it didn't really hit me yet. I'm like, oh, these are just the shapes. I wonder when the drugs are going to kick in. And I'm like, thinking to myself, I'm like, but you don't usually see these every day. But I didn't want to, it was a double blind too.

So meaning half the patients got a placebo. And the other half got the psilocybin. Are they all doing it in other rooms at the same time or is this? No. Yeah, they're all different days. All different days. Because there's not many doctors. Yeah, yeah. And it's like an all day thing too. I think all day, they might be able to squeeze in like two in a day but um i i doubt it uh

and i mean this took like seven years this was seven years ago um but yeah they you know you start seeing so half the patients get the placebo, which I mean sucks But You know at least the last Session they get an open label is what they call it. So everyone gets The psilocybin the last time so at least the people that got the placebo the first two times get experience at the last time which is nice Because that might be enough like I stopped drinking after my first session after this one

Crazy, which is not when I'm trying literally everything else that's available I have tried and multiple times Manly I mean, um, nothing worked. And then I do this thing. Like I saw, there was a visual that it was like the, you know, um, monumental vision of that session. And it was a glass bottle, a glass liquor bottle in the desert, just alone in the desert. And then all of a sudden, the liquor bottle disintegrates into the sand. And I was just like, oh, wow, this is, I was like, this is kind of corny.

But I was like, this is my, you know, addiction leaving me. And I felt, and it was weird because after that i was like okay this is like i felt good about that i'm like all right this reassuring like and that's you know almost what it took like just something like that which is crazy um all right wow there's there's a lot on the bone from that that's a hell of an. That took like a second for that to settle in for me with the liquor bottle in the desert and your addiction leaving you. That's fucking powerful, man. But at the beginning of it, just like how did we get there? You mentioned that you sat down.

They gave you – it was a pill, right? Yeah. Okay. So this is 9 a.m. or something something they've done all the pre-checks around that yep you're in there you went around in the circle the doctor the therapist and you what you all wanted to get out of it you're on this couch they give you the pill you swallow it now what does the process look like so you lay down on the couch with the mask on they put classical music in your ears how long did it take before you started like oh consciously yeah I'm

trying yeah so so they give you the pill they're like and and you don't have to lay down right away because it takes 30 40 minutes maybe for it to for you to start feeling anything um so you're just hanging out making like small talk if you want for the next 10, 15 minutes. And then they'll be like, I remember Dr. Bogenschutz was like, okay, I think we're getting to that time where it's going to start kicking in or something. So maybe, or it could start kicking in because it's a double blind. So why aren't you, And the doctors don't know. I think the only person that knows is the pharmacist giving it all out.

So he is trained, obviously, for the placebo actual experiment here where some people are going to get that. He's trained to be able to be like, all right, well, we're this far in, so I need to say that it could be close and then see how they react. Yeah, and I remember talking to another one of the participants, but he had the placebo. So he was just there the whole day.

He was like, I took a nap. I mean, what else am I going to do on that couch? Yeah, who would... I took a nap. Like, I mean, what else am I going to do on that couch? And. Yeah, who would. You know, I'm just trying to think, like, what would I do? Right. This is such a powerful. Experience like people you were educated on at this point, like you lose reality necessarily, like, right in front of you,

and you're hallucinating things. So I'm kind of wondering, like, is this the kind of thing where people actually would believe they're hallucinating things? Like, I could see a placebo with, like, alcohol, like, when they do that, and they tell you, like, oh, you're drinking something, but you're not really drinking something. You're in a social environment. You start feeling like, oh, maybe I am loosening up, but you're not really drinking something. You're in a social environment. You start feeling like, oh, maybe I am loosening up, but you're not.

Whereas with this, it's like, yeah, if you're not going to another fucking world somewhere, you probably know. Right. Right? Yeah, for the most part. And then the doctors were like, there are still, like for me, the doctors knew I got it the first time.

For me, I wrote down, because we had to do these questionnaires after too. I think I wrote down I'm like 95% sure that I got it. I was pretty sure I got it. I saw that liquor bottle in the deck. I was seeing stuff. But also a part of me was just trying to not jinx anything i'm like do not don't don't rush to conclusions let's you know let's just try to get this and go forward so he says to you it's about that time and what like do you remember everything or is it more just like moments and images you know moments and images um

but and this was back in 2015 yeah so it's tough um but when i when i hear other people talk about their experiences uh and you know whether it's johns hopkins or or I'm like wow I felt the same way or wow I which is fascinating because I was watching like an interview with someone who did this back in the 1950s and they were recording the person the CIA MK ultra and yeah right that's also I think this was, yeah, this was probably around the same time as MKUltra. But I don't know, weren't they just putting it in, like, spiking the punch? I forget. There was a lot of things they did.

Right? Yeah. But that started from all that research they were like okay this could cure this is curing a lot of alcoholism in these patients this is you know so they saw the potential there and rightfully so and why wouldn't you know why wouldn't the cia want to research that and see what else they could do with it sure if they get some side things like that why not you got it right i mean it's a powerful compound that's making these positive impacts let's see if if there are any negative impacts or any you know other altercation they wanted to see if they could control minds

that was their goal with that and that was the dark goal of it but they realized they couldn't with it and i would imagine that because i'm sure they had a lot of bright people in there studying what was going on i would imagine they probably had a lot of answers that the american people still to this day haven't been educated on where they're like oh well maybe maybe there shouldn't be a schedule one subset maybe there's something here you know and then you go through something like this where we're, and we'll talk about why this is loosening up, but you see like, oh, wait a second.

There's a real medical value to this. Yeah, right. And I think the two main definitions for being classified or categorized as a schedule one drug there's you know it's a harmful drug and there are no medical benefits to it so like opiates right there they're harmful but there are some medical benefits to it yeah um but with this not only is it safer to to do then it kills less people it's safer to do than alcohol you know any tobacco product um and it does have medical benefits so it's i mean and a lot of the doctors that we're working with, they're not

asking for decriminalization or anything or legalization, and they just want to get it rescheduled so they could do, you know, loosen the barriers to more research. The big problems that come with it are like people who like believe they can fly when they're on it and then they can't fly, you know, things like that. Yeah. You know, they can, because they're not in reality, they can accidentally harm themselves in another like that yeah you know they they can because they're not in reality they can accidentally harm themselves in another way that has nothing to do with the drug in there someone out you know it's right you're driving a car you're i mean and that's that's why i'm always like do not some you know because people reach out to me regularly and they're like what do you think if i and i never condone they're like do you have any underground spot i'm like listen even if i did i wouldn't feel comfortable you know

sending people anywhere it's you got to do this in a clinical setting um and granted you know i've heard a lot of stories where people have done this by themselves at home, and they've had great experiences where it cured their mental illness or whatever it is. I personally do not feel comfortable telling people that's okay to do. I think that's very smart, man. I'd rather have people doing this with doctors in hospitals or clinical settings um so that's you know but it is it's a real interesting um right you got the opioid epidemic at an all-time high um and hopefully it's it's about that time where we're looking at these different schedules of drugs and reconsidering some of them yeah it's crazy some of the

grades they have on that stuff and it's also dated and yeah the thing I worry about is that so much of traditional institutions and the ideology that backs the legal decisions that are made or it's funny we're saying this right now after roe v wade but um they're they are so stamped right so when when better information comes out, the battle to unravel what has already been beat into the system is very, very difficult, right? Which was not an issue with Roe v. Wade. That was totally different in that case. I'm just making a joke about precedent. But like with this kind of stuff, I mean I think – I had Jewish Sauce Boss in here.

He was – I think he was saying weed is still a Schedule 1 drug, for example. Yeah. Or it was coming off it, but it was at the time last year when he was here, it was still on there. I haven't even looked at that, but like that's fucking crazy. No, I think it's still, it's not federally legal right now. It's, and I think it's legal in like, what, 39 states or 37? It's up there. Meanwhile, 317 of the 450 congressmen and senators in there got a joint sitting in their desk.

You know, like that's the world we're living in. Very well could be, right? It's like prohibition happened, right? And there was definitely not everyone stopped drinking yeah right now they all stopped out of nowhere right i mean nuts so it it it's all and that it's it's really the wild west out there because we're seeing right i i mean i talk to veterans probably daily trying to get into trials that have done this, either through clinical trials or they had to leave the country to do this.

And a lot of them go to Mexico, right? Mexico, I think, Costa Rica, Peru. I want to come back to that. I just want to finish your full thing because you know all this other stuff based on your foundation that you have now. I want to get to all that. Oh, yeah. But your actual trip. Where were we on that?

Yeah, you were saying that you remember moments and images. It's not like you remember every second. That's right. But at some point, you dropped into it. So what happened? Do you remember what you first saw when you were like oh wow and did you consciously say to yourself this is a hallucination or were you still like you know like have you ever gotten surgery for something yeah yeah okay so you know when they

put the thing in your system before the drug and knocks you out yeah what's going on and they're like you you'll usually from 10 or what before that i'm saying they put in like a thing that soothes you it's like it's like no sorry no pun intended here but it's like you had an amazing drink kind of right so getting you like a little tipsy little light you're like okay and you're in the moment you feel good yeah but you're like i'm gonna remember all this but then you don't and what you do remember is when the doctor's like, oh, yeah, he's getting there. And then they stick the thing in your system where they say countdown from 10 and you remember nothing. Yeah.

Is it kind of like the way I'm picturing in my head is the psychedelic experience is more or less something like that thing before the thing that knocks you out. Like as far as like you don't you remember a little bit but it's hazy not so that's what i thought too i thought i was kind of just gonna black out for some of it or like wake up um you know in a totally different world. For the most part, I pretty much knew where I was the whole time, even at the peaks of this. So that was, and I remember, I think during the first session or maybe the second, but I looked at myself because I was also a journalist at this point. I was like, I knew, first of all, how crazy this whole clinical trial was, like just this whole story was. Because this is when the opioid epidemic was, I think it had hit all time highs.

And there were like more deaths this year from overdoses alone than the whole Vietnam War. And which, right, you're like're like okay that's just one year and this is you know so I'm thinking you know this is just wild research being a schedule one psychedelic can cure an addiction to drugs I mean i thought that was insane and so far-fetched that okay i mean it's so crazy maybe this could work and so i was looking at myself as a research subject so with the doctors in the room i'm trying to like it was like i was an astronaut on the moon or something or like on some different planet reporting back to nasa like what i'm seeing in real time and i remember i think it was bogan shoots again i think he was just like okay you know why don't like we appreciate all that info

you don't have to tell like why don't why don't you just focus and be present in in this time right now and work on get get whatever you want out of it and then you could tell us all about it later and i'm like remember some of the back and forth you had yeah oh yeah and then i remember i remember he also so i i was afraid of the bad trip, right? And what a bad trip is, it's just an uncomfortable experience. And when I was concerned about that, the doctor said, believe it or not, the study participants that had these bad experiences or challenging experiences actually got more out of it than if they just enjoyed the whole thing because with those challenging things coming up and they're coming up for a reason you want to work on it you you know there's something there that it subconsciously or consciously it's coming up for a reason so once you address all of that and if you don't fight it you can't run away from this stuff

so if there's an uncomfortable experience like for me it was just like oh man would i put my parents through would i put my you know family friends through that were worried about me how does that manifest and during this it just it's amplified so and that's that's the thing with this tree i thought i'd be watching like a 3d movie yeah but and i think it was because i had the eye mask on too i didn't see as many visuals as i thought i would but it was really just amplifying all of my emotions so when i'm happy i'm really happy when i'm you know sad or scared or frightened like i'm i'm really it exacerbates those feelings and emotions too so it really just amplifies it's a roller coaster so when i was feeling, like the tough stuff for me was realizing like your parents are doing every,

like you were so lucky to have like be born to the best parents, best family, they've done everything for you and you're putting them through hell doing this. And that's when I was just like, it's totally not worth it. Like, I feel terrible. My parents feel terrible. Like, this could all get solved if I just stopped drinking.

It was basically just that simple. What makes it so different? Because I've never done a trip myself, and it's something that over the last couple of years I've really, really been interested in doing at some point. Obviously, you can do it only medical, whatever. So let's edge with that. Well, look for clinical trials. They're doing it for healthy normals. Really?

Yeah. My co-founders, he was a study participant at Johns Hopkins, did it for healthy normals is what they called it. So they just wanted to see the effects of psilocybin on a healthy person. Sign me up, dog. I'll go take it with Doc Ross over here. He and I will have a ton. Yeah, but the point is it's something I've thought about a lot, but because I've never done it, I understand that the people who are in it, they can explain so much, but it's not... You can't really understand until you do.

So when you're talking about the visuals, I'm trying to think of the times where I've been really baked on great weed, and there's small, wonderful hallucinations and whatever. But it's not like you're still very present. It's more like I'm here in the room, and I'm seeing it in my mind. And it doesn't feel like it's right there. With this stuff, when you actually see that visual, and you have the mask on so you're like you're blinded but when you're seeing that visual of the liquor bottle in the desert just i can't get that out of my head it's like an amazing visual just exploding and you realizing in the moment that's my addiction leaving me and it's almost like this summary of all these other things you said like what i put

my parents through and oh my god it's simple the way to end this is to stop alcohol oh my god there it goes out the bottle yeah it's like easy is it is it that same thing where like therapist and doc are right here even if you're not seeing them but you are literally just seeing the mask in front of you but in the back of your mind you can see that full visual like how would you oh yeah i'm saying yeah yeah so it's almost it's almost like a lucid dream like you know you're dreaming or even just daydreaming like you're you're visualizing something um It wasn't, I didn't think I was literally in the desert. Like I knew I was on the couch and, but, but I was seeing it and I thought, you know, it was, it was, it was still so impactful

that, that it, you know, stopped my drinking or stopped my cravings or that was the moment where i'm like okay i think i think this will work um so it was almost like that it was all and i told the doctor that um during it and he said i was like it's almost like watching a movie or something or being in a lucid dream and he's like yeah you're it's almost like you're in a you're in your own movie and you know you're an actor in this own movie and you can you could you know steer it wherever you want and i was i was like oh that's kind of cool okay But that concept you're talking about, about feeling the emotion, I'm saying it different than you did. So I'm putting some words in your mouth. Like amplifying the different emotions? Yes. You said it way better. So like the amplifying sadness, happiness, fear, all these different things. someone who hasn't done this is listening let's say as a cynic and they're going okay so you took

a drug and you were at least aware it was happening while i was going on yeah your emotions were a little amplified yeah you got a cute little vision i'm talking like a cynic right now you got a cute little vision and suddenly now you're just like i guess i'm not gonna drink anymore they may say well why the fuck couldn't you just do that when you're not taking a drug? Which is a total asinine question, but not to other people. No, I think that's a fair question. And I probably asked that going into it. Like, why can't I just do this without, right?

But what the doctors refer to the psilocybin as, they it psilocybin assisted therapy so i thought you were gonna say suicide first oh no no that would you know the fda would shut that down yesterday i mean um so the assisted part it's just psilocybin assisted therapy meaning that you know the psilocybin's what they they refer this as a tool in their tool kit so it's just another thing and it and i'm a total believer in this after i did it it really just expedited this whole process and uh a lot of i've heard a lot of people say and i I'd agree with this too, that it feels like decades of psychotherapy crammed in an afternoon. And I just went through all of this. It was like a crash course.

And I remember leaving, and I'm just like, wow, I'm going to be fine. I'm going to be fine. Like I'm going to be okay to the point where it's been right. Seven years since 2015, I left 2016, but I, my first session was late 2015. And so you did multiple sessions. Yeah. Yeah. So I did three sessions over the course of a year. The clinical trial was about a year long and And it was the same thing every time? Yeah, I think they upped the milligrams on the second session. So you never got a placebo?

No. Wow. So if you're in the psilocybin group, you're going to get that the second time too. So if you get it the first time, if you get the placebo the first time, you're getting the that the second time too. So if you get it the first time, if you get the placebo the first time, you're getting the placebo the second time. And the last session,

out of three, that's the open label where everyone gets the psilocybin. Oh, so once you hit the jackpot on number one, you're good. You're getting it every time. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. So,

and they asked me if i wanted to do and by that time i knew i was done drinking and this is the first session oh no this is so like this the third session but the first set oh what we're talking about now with yeah glad yeah yeah this is the first right so that's the first session. You see that glass. Like you started, you got in there at eight. Let's say they gave it to you at nine. Okay. How long is the trip? So I was probably done around like, like it started wearing off at like 3 p.m.

I think it only really peaked for like, it was intense for a few hours, like two to three hours. It was. Did it feel a lot longer than that? I think like parts of it. Okay. So it starts to... Because you do lose concept of time with a lot of this.

Sure. But yeah, now it's... So it starts to fade at three, but then it takes a little while to fade. So how long are you... When did they say, okay, you can walk out of the room now? Someone had to pick you up. So for me, it was my dad.

He came by because we all live in the city. So he came by, picked me up, and that was it. They can't, you know, I remember I was just like, do I really have to be here for like the next like two hours? And I think I had to fill out more form, like more sheet. I mean, that's how they get a lot of the data too. They ask you questions right away yeah all these like questionnaires did you you know um like what kinds of things

i think on that one it was like where would you rank this experience as like the most important like for for importance of your life and i was like probably the most important experience of my life it's this saved my life right away you're thinking this I I think I said that for the first one so while you're in there still coming down off the drug yeah I mean like this is I know I'm cured I was I was so I was pretty sure I was it wasn't definitive but I was like 85% sure that I was and the very next day when I went in for the debrief is what they call it where you tell the doctors what you saw what you know what I was trying to do during it and the doctor told me he's like come back like let's go over it

tomorrow or you know for the debrief So when I came back for that, I told the doctors, I said, if I left this clinical trial early and I didn't finish it, and I left it today and walked out that door and never saw you guys again, I really, I wouldn't be surprised if I never drank again so I've I mean after the first time which is crazy because of like the amount of struggling I was you know trying to find all of this when your dad picked you up did he take you back to your apartment or his place I was with my parents they brought me back there and then the next day they you go the next day, you go to the debrief.

You go to the debrief. So they say you should, at least when I was there, they were like, you should take the morning off. Or the whole day if you can. So I took the whole day off. I was like, I'm never using vacation days anyway. I'm like oh you were still yeah you're still in the middle of work yeah yeah it's not like wow so i took you're working at the street still yeah for this i was yeah wow and and no one knew they didn't know what you were doing no i mean it wasn't interfering with work or anything and i kept like getting promoted during all this and the doctors are like you think there

might be a correlation that i'm like things are great yeah wow um so you go here's what i'm trying to get at yeah you because there's three sessions you said it's over about a year yeah 54 weeks, I think. Okay, so roughly every 18 weeks or so. No, every 26, 27 weeks. Well, they took about six months off. Okay. So that was for the, I think that was for the double blind. They want to see who out of the placebo group is going to relapse at what rates and who out of the psilocybin group is going to relapse at what rates and who out of the psilocybin

group is going to relapse so you do the first two sessions right and they're expecting honesty with that too obviously yeah um which you're incentivized it's it's a pri yeah you're incentivized yeah it's all anonymous and i don you know, and I was pretty honest with them because before that, like during the trial with, you know, the weeks leading up to my first session, I slipped up a couple of times, and I told them, and they're, you know, they're very easy to talk to. So it's not, they're not going to scold you or anything. If anything, they're supportive. So it's, and I think that's the right way or else you're going to get people lying. I don't want to get – Yeah, you want good – they need good data for this to be a thing.

Everyone should be incentivized to do that. As a patient, I know I would want to be, but I also – I understand if some people are embarrassed of some stuff. Well, I want it to work or I want them to think it worked. I always think like that. But you go to this debrief though like when did you go back to your apartment for the first time after that oh no at this time at this time i was still at my parents place oh so you were living with them yeah so thank god i would have been okay all right that changes my question, no, no, no. So when you went back that night, I'm thinking of people, places, and things right now, right?

Yeah. Your parents' apartments where you've been drinking and stuff. So the night of your trip, you go back there. You're coming down off these drugs. You didn't think like the liquor cabinets over there? Yeah, no. you didn't think like the liquor cabinets over there yeah no I I mean I didn't want to drink pretty much ever after that point which is crazy when you say pretty much so there were there were times where I think Oh a drink might be

good here like what kinds of things? But like, I could be at work or something like, oh, like maybe I, like, I'll go to this thing after work with, you know, some of my friends or something and a drink might be good there, but I don't really want one. Like, it's not enough for me to act on it. So the cravings didn't just go away overnight, but they significantly reduced to where I wasn't acting on these cravings didn't just go away overnight but they significantly reduced to where i wasn't acting on these cravings and then after the second session i was that that really did it like permanently i was like i will never drink again like i know it wholeheartedly um right after that second session so those six months though in between,

this is when those thoughts would come in where like, oh, I could go to that thing, but it wasn't strong enough for you to act on it. No, sorry. So the first session and the second session, I think were separated by about a month. Oh, it wasn't six months. No, so the six month break

was between the second and the third session so you really did this over like because it was three sessions right it was three sessions so you did it over 30 weeks as opposed to like or 35 weeks as opposed to 54. yeah right um you're subtracting those 24 weeks yeah yeah and they for that break with no contact with the doctors they want to see who's relapsing and who's not the the six months after the second one yeah because the third session the third and final session is not the double blind anymore that's the open label where they give everyone psilocybin if they want it right and every time they were like you don't have to take this if you don't want to you don't they were never pressuring anyone into taking this um and at that point i was like

this already cured my alcoholism for that third and final one but you said after the second one you felt like oh oh because you're saying going in yeah going into the third got it i was like i was like what else could i work on maybe like stress or something work related stress or just like so i wasn't even like at this time i was playing with like house money and i was free trip yeah i was like like what else could i fix i'm like um but why why was it so you whatever happened in between those first and second for that month you didn't give into any of these urges and you clearly felt like damn i think this might work yeah but then it's still only a month yeah i still you know the the good devil's advocate to play is like well your head might be

telling you oh i want this to work because you were a guy again who had been able to go weeks without drinking before oh yeah that could have been right so then the second time what makes you say it was definitive so we upped the milligrams too a little bit and it was and that that made it more challenging so like right more bad trips quote unquote um and i i don't like to refer to i don't even like to refer to these sessions as trips because that's a whole point of you know destigmatizing all this too yeah um but that you know it was more challenging so it's more powerful and I remember that that's where I had the death experience too oh yeah what happened there so it was a I mean it's strange but um it was like in like real real time i'm watching myself on that lying down on that couch um like bird of like a sword just going through my neck like

i'm lying down on the couch and like just died right there and i love everything yeah i don't know how graphic it was but i just remember like me just dying and me watching it in real time um which is a weird like this is all strange but this wasn't a bad trip i would know that's a part of a bad trip ironically that was or strangely enough that was the most peaceful part of the trip and I think that's like me starting a new chapter like cleaning you know killing off my old self or killing off my problems and this is like a new you so the first time you kill the alcohol itself the second time you kill you I guess yeah right it was kind of like a rebirth of sorts um not to get you know biblical but um but it was almost like a something like that um and well they say that's what the

burning bush was the burning bush was most likely a psilocybin trip So that's in that's in a biblical vein right there Yeah, I saw that They think psychedelics had right an impact on Greek Greek mythology and religion. I don't know much about the Greek mythology aspect of it. With the gods and the Zeus. Yeah, keep talking. I'm going to Google that while you're talking.

Google the illusion mysteries. The illusion. E-L-E-U-S. Oh, it's like Elysian? Oh, there it is. That right there? Where the... Yeah, yeah.

Okay. I'm just going to read the top of Wikipedia for people, but it's E-L-E-U-S-I-N-I-A-N Mysteries. Were initiations held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone? Alright, we're going to skip down.

The rites, ceremonies, and beliefs were kept secret and consistently preserved the antiquity for the initiated, the rebirth All right, we're going to skip down. Since the mysteries involve visions and conjuring of the afterlife, some scholars believe that the power and longevity of the illusion mysteries, a consistent set of rites, ceremonies, and experiences that spawned two millennia came from psychedelic drugs. And what was the thing? were initiated this is what i was starting to read initiations held every year for the cult of demeter and persepony based at the panhelic sanctuary of elusius my fucking friend nico is gonna kill me for these pronunciations in asian in asian greeks malaka it's elusius as i can hear him right now yeah they're yeah i read that part of the most secret famous secret so read up more on it because there's a lot here i don't want to like bore people just reading the whole thing but essentially i guess what they're getting at is that the basis of this had to do with some sort of mushroom then no yeah i think it was ergot which is what's that i don't i think it's a grain or a um it's like a barley or something, but it's, ergot is similar. I think that's what LSD is derived from.

So it's, they found it in the like chalices or the pots that they would drink out. They found some like residue of that. And also they, you you know going into that they think it had some influence on early christianity too so it's right philosophy like socrates plato aristotle they all went to the illusion mystery they all did that yeah what if socrates came up with all this shit he's just fucking tripping balls i mean mushrooms like yo what right how well the guy the guy that like discovered dna he credits that to psychedelics um steve jobs right yeah right there

steve jobs said that was really um it was a really profound experience and so that iphone is never in your hand without psychedelics yeah right won't be in your hand so i mean a lot of uh a lot of things were created or discovered from from that um which is interesting so you you kill off i i love that visual it's like also so perfect you kill off alcohol in round one you kill off your old self in round two yeah and you come down so when you're coming down off the trip this time was it a similar time frame as the last one or did it take longer it was a little more intense so but i think the time frame was similar um and same thing like shell shock too but i was a little like going into it i was a little less anxious or nervous about it because i had already experienced

that first right uh session so i was like all right at least i kind of get a sense of this did they do everything the same like go around in a circle and say before or was it? Yeah, like yeah. Yeah It was just like what do you want to get out of this? And and for me, it was just like I need an inner peace because I'm because I'm not happy when I'm not trying like I'm miserable when I'm not drinking a miserable when I am I'm anxious when I am it's like I gotta Stop this And those were the only two worlds I knew so I was like if I get an inner peace and calm down Internally, I think the drinking will stop. I'm not gonna need a drink

I think that'll gradually go away and it did and and i'm not you know i'm still a new yorker despite many people thinking i come from chicago dude that was the most shocking thing we found out today um you're a lifelong new yorker yeah damn crazy right i i was fine i was so excited i've never been to chicago i got you never been i've never even been you sound like you spent your whole life there like i just flew in right from o'hare is that the that's the airport i think that's right i was like so excited i'm like we finally got a chicago guy in here that's great and then you're like i am from new york i'm like fuck we've had 60 of those fucking wow it's tough but um where were we before that? Sorry, I got you off that. What the death thing?

And when I had that death experience, I was like, I hope the cancer patients in that study before me that were dealing with the anxiety of death, I was like, man, I just hope these guys got to experience that because like you're it's not that you're you have uh you're carefree about death it's not like i'm i'm doing very dangerous things and living on the edge and right making risky decisions but um for the most part you're just not you don't upset and i never obsessed over death or anything or had had you know i wouldn't obsess over death or constantly think

of it but i'm like oh man what's that's gonna suck one day that when you're gone or like forever and you know what do you yeah right what's what's going to happen there what happens after after all that so after this after experiencing this you're a little more comfortable with it um and i mean i'm speaking for myself obviously but i've heard this it's pretty common for for a lot of the study participants that they're not they're not more they're not fearful of death as much as they are curious. OK, what you know, is there an afterlife or what you know what happens when you die and all that stuff? it's it's an interesting take I remember hearing a study participant that did this for anxiety and end-of-life cancer and he said basically that he this made it look you know made made him look at life just being forever grateful as

opposed to having a fear of death anymore about it and how lucky he was that he was just given an opportunity to live and experience this world and how beautiful it is and so you know it's all about perspective too with a lot of things and and what's your attitude going into it which again you had the best boxes checked ever for that because you were so you had such a long demonstrated history of genuinely like trying everything yourself you weren't yeah you didn't it sounds like it wasn't like this was intervention city left and right you're literally like no i want to do this no yeah that's awesome. And I don't, honestly, I don't know if these clinical trials would take people if, like, their parents are dragging the kid, or like a spouse is dragging, you know, their significant other to the hospital.

Like, hey, can you take care of this person? Can this person join your clinical trial? And the researchers are, you know, I wouldn't blame them if they said, unless that person really wants to stop, we're going to give this spot to someone who really wants to make a change. So. I wonder if that's a little bit of a correlation matrix, though, too. Not to speak against it, clearly like people a lot of people want to stop and they never can just like you like it never was oh yeah did yeah yeah I wonder if another the other piece of it even for something as quote-unquote powerful as this is that someone genuinely has to want to like if

they don't want to yeah they may have the greatest trip ever and they may have the ability to but they're probably gonna walk out of there and be like all right take me to the pub they could so i've also heard a lot of people decrease their drinking to where they're drinking like only on holidays at family like when they see extended family and can have one or two drinks oh so they're controlled yeah and that might even be more impressive yo that's really impressive yeah then so so and and I remember the doctors telling me so this was I think this was in between the second and third and I was like how are the other patients doing like what you know and they're, some of them, some of them like heavily decreased their drinking, significantly decreased it.

And I just, I was like, wait, that was an option. I was like, I thought this was. Wait, I thought we were supposed to quit. Yeah, I was like, I thought this was was i didn't see that on the menu um and i like for for a split second i got genuinely upset like you guys know i like to drink like i just can't control i'd love to control it i'd love ideally i'd have a couple of drinks and be you know be fine and you're telling me that's a possibility? But then this was in between the second and third? Yeah, the second and third.

And it didn't change your viewpoint, though? No, it didn't, because at that point, it was already done. And also, I do think I could have a drink or two right now and be totally fine. But you never have. Never have. And it's a moot point,

because there's no desire to drink on my end and i think that's because there's no desire i could just have one and it's not going to do much for me but you don't take chances with it no i mean i so i was at a yankee game with a buddy of mine and i ordered i think i got like a ginger ale and he got like a whiskey and soda or something so there was the same color and I picked up his and took a quick sip out of it accidentally and I swallowed it I'm like what the is it you know and I put it down and I'm like gee you know this is but I didn't go anymore now i i it tasted disgusting to me um and then i was just like wow i just drank a sip of that could have like 20

this might have been like a year out two years out wow yeah that did not that didn't do anything that's actually yeah um that didn't do anything for me which was and that i think that was one of the milestones where i was just like okay wow like other real yeah other milestones i'm right with my fiance she she drinks like socially so someone gave her a bottle of wine and it's in our fridge and so she had to go away for a week for work and what does she do uh she's in like business development sales um and so she had to she went away for like a week and the bottle of wine was in the fridge the whole time. And I was just like thinking to myself how crazy it is that this does, it was almost like, you know, have, she had kombucha in there too, that has no appeal to me either.

And it was just like having a second bottle of that and I was just like This is crazy. How I'm litter. I'm living in it with all these what used to be temptations and that was my top priority of Always figuring out when I'm gonna drink drink I mean when I'm working I was looking at looking forward at the next three-day weekend because that's how long I'd I'd need to recover from drinking and so I'm like this is all you know um predetermined stuff and i was looking that far ahead in the calendar figuring out like marking my calendar this is when i can correct it can sit right there and you know yeah like that thing used

to control my life and i used to you know i'd schedule everything around it and now it's not even on my radar which is nuts now did, I don't know if you said this or I heard someone else say this a couple days ago. I can't remember now because there's been a lot today. But did you say that people need to come back in like a few years later and do it again to like reset the system? Was that you saying that? I might have heard that from someone else. I don't know. I think i said that okay um is that a thing though so i've heard that as a

thing for like people doing this on their own like going to these retreats and doing it legally and like like a shot in netherlands yeah or down there uh so i've heard that um you wouldn't be able to do it in in a clinical trial unless it was part of the protocol but so like i couldn't you don't have any of that on the schedule you don't need to no yeah no not at all um and that's the thing, like a lot of people like think, um, like I know a lot about mushrooms or know a lot about psychedelics or no, no about microdosing because microdosing is a big thing now. Like that. Can you explain that to people?

Yeah, this is a, so microdosing is when you take a small amount of, uh, usually psilocybin some people I think do it with LSD um and it's small enough where you're not hallucinating or anything and you just get you know the I guess subliminal effects of this um so in theory you could take it and be functional and like go to work or something because it's such a small amount. And I've heard of people microdosing their family members. And I'm like, okay, I don't know about that. You know, I think everyone should be on board here before doing something like that. But that's how small these amounts are that you don't even notice it.

But a lot of people have said this cured their depression. And when people ask me about it, I'm like, I don't know. I've heard a lot of people saying it's good. I've heard people saying it did nothing for them, and there really isn't any clinical data on it right now. So I really couldn't tell you about any of this. But yeah, no, that's a thing that's blown up,

and it should be worth exploring. Why not? I mean, we know. But most of these trials trials they're giving you what they call a heroic dose so it's enough yeah and i think and uh ollie said it puts you on like a that's my co-founder puts you on a hero's journey so like ups and downs and you need to like overcome certain obstacles and so so i like, you know, that makes sense, because after getting through one of those sessions,

you do feel like you've accomplished something. And you're like, okay, that was tough to get through, but that was a win. Like, that was, like, I left everything out there. That was good. Left it all in the field. Left it all in the field left it all on the field so that's and that's why that six month period after the second one makes so much sense to me

because just in my head that's a long enough time for the no pun intended but like the hero's effect of it to potentially wear off or someone's just trying to believe it worked but it didn't really work yeah so they can see like oh it's long enough to be like this was legit or this was bullshit yeah so for you you close like the second one you're like i'm done and then you went about you were getting promotions during the whole next six months doing your thing and then the third one you were saying you're like well i'm going to focus on something else for me so like did they tell did they say you don't need to do this one or no we have to finish this for the study because we need all the data the same like what's the what's the deal there no they never like even the first

two they were like are you like you can back out any moment you do not need to do this if you don't feel like it you know they were very supportive in that way um never pressured me into doing anything uh and yeah i was kind of like i know i'm not gonna drink ever again which is crazy because that was six months out but i just i knew it i knew it where it just took away and i was going out i was going to bars with friends and um so how much did you didn't change much in your life you just stopped drinking no i'm still you know social and stuff i just go to bed i'm home a lot earlier like i'm not listening i'm not going to be out that late when people start telling the same stories again and you know people are are too drunk i gotta that's just not appealing to me was it weird was it weird seeing the other side like because now i'm just thinking about all the

times you had been in those situations before you're plastered so you don't know you know you're just enjoying it but now you're there you're sober you get to see almost like an exoskeleton what it looks like i mean i was seeing some of that when i was still doing the aa thing and doing other things to stop drinking because i would still hang out with my friends and go to these bars and not i wouldn't drink all the time there but I'd be there and it would be tempting so there is definitely truth in the people places and things part of of AA and just getting sober because I was just like okay they're all I didn't want to miss the party but then I'm not really like everyone's having fun or so i think and i mean it still looked fun but but then when i did this with psilocybin it was

it was like people are uh like fly fishing or something and i don't really fly fish so i'm like i'm not really missing much um that's so different yeah it's something that's just kind of like you know if like think of like some hobby or something that some people do that it's not really for you and you don't really care that you're missing it it's very cool that that's something so because that's why you said it yourself right there but that's what i was thinking in my head i'm like this basically took the people places and things thing and said don't worry about it like maybe not all the way as you said said, but you got to go do things that would literally give anyone in AA a heart attack if you told them that you were doing them. Like, oh, yeah, I'm in that environment.

I'm cool because of the effect this had. And it's just, again, like if you haven't done it before, like me, it's hard to understand completely, but you've done a really good job, like explaining the mental reset. I think, you know, like, like how that re it's almost like it, it rewires your brain.

You come out, it's like, you need it to like knock something in there. And now it's like, Oh, there we go. Oh, we're good now.

Yeah. I mean, rewiring sounds scary but I don't know if you want to pull up the photo of like psilocybin and brain or psychedelics and then brain on psychedelics or brain on psilocybin and then there it is. This one right there? Yeah, that works too.

I'll put this in the corner of the screen for people. So the brain on the left, right? That's your brain right now. Not on psychedelics or psilocybin. The brain on the right... That looks a lot more fun. Yeah, is your brain on psilocybin and what it's doing there is you see how there are different parts of the brain like red blue green those are different sections

and they're parts of the brain that usually don't that's look that's compartmentalized a lot of it and parts of the brain that usually don't interact or starting to communicate with each other and so I think that's why there's a lot of like out-of-the-box ideas or you know thinking when hence these Nobel Prize winners and these new inventions and so I want to do it. I'm looking at it right now. There definitely could be potential for, you don't need to have a mental health disorder to get a benefit out of this.

And so with me, I think it just gave me a different perspective during that. And it's fascinating because where other drugs drugs you can experience these different emotions or feelings or you know thoughts or ideas would come to you and then the next morning it usually wears off it's like you get really drunk and you have a great idea you I got a billion-dollar idea or I got you know I'm you know I this this idea is great and then you wake up and you read notes from the night before you're like that was the dumbest ever that's kind of embarrassing like you're burning that and discarding of that but with psychedelics if like for therapeutic uses

you you'd have you know these experiences and then you take them with you even when the drugs were off so it's it's really interesting how that works a question I've always wanted to answer for myself is what parallels are and you've you've talked about this a bit today, but like how real it is. The disconnect, it's not the right word, but it's going to work. The disconnect parallels of like a good psychedelic trip versus a very dense dream with a lot of unrealistic things that happen in it. It's funny, like we'll sleep most most i forget what the exact date is but most nights we sleep when you think about it like you don't dream but then a lot of nights or not a lot of nights with the nights you do you're like whoa and then you can forget it quickly too because you weren't really there yeah what was that and they say write it down as soon as you wake up yeah uh-huh because you'll forget it yeah so like is there is that a real legitimate

type parallel feeling if I I wouldn't be surprised um for me for me this was more of a lucid dream is how I explained it. Because, so like going into the first session, the doctors, I would ask, okay, how do other study participants feel? What, you know, can they talk about what the experience is like? Can you talk about what their experiences were like? And so they were like, this is, it's tough for people to put this into words right and as a journalist when i'm writing my own you know stories and stuff and i'm like how do you like how how can you not put something in words how can't you uh describe something and explain it that that happened firsthand to you you had a first-hand account of this and you cannot explain this until I did it and that's what they call explaining the ineffable it's you it's very difficult

to put some of these experiences into words I'd say it's probably for some of it actually impossible could be yeah how far oh sure cuz like look at the brain right there look at this picture you had me right yeah me pull have you ever seen it yet I've never seen this this is great I think it was Carhartt Harris that did this one he's a UCSF British guy but But you can see on it. Like, all the little intricacies of that are the difference between a sketch and a masterpiece. You know, between the regular brain and the full brain. And I forget how many words are in, for example, the English language,

but it's not sufficient to look at all the possible nooks and crannies and combinations that you're seeing right there. That's part, I think, is a literal, if I'm guessing out loud here on the podcast, is probably actually related to some sort of literal mathematical representation of the fact that words only have so much, so many of them. Yeah. of the fact that words only have so much so many of them yeah and you can't adequately be able to express even with the most descriptive beautiful words is the best writer in the world you can't adequately express those feelings so guys like creatives not just writers but like people who

come up with wild shit and they came up with it like steve jobs did through like crazy trips on stuff the manifestation of how they explain these things occurs in the thing they create right so like Steve Jobs holds the iPhone and he wants he can explain this part he wants the screen to feel like an Infinity pool yeah but like where is that Infinity pool what's it a part of who swam in it what's what does he see actually when he's looking at the blank screen when the phone's on lock because he's not just seeing a blank screen yeah that part you never heard him explain that because he can't yeah and that that i'm guessing i don't know didn't know steve jobs but that could be tied to like this lack of description on it you know what i mean absolutely nuts man it's yeah so you but the bottom line is after your own story here this is what i

really like you got into the medical research side of this for like everything it sounds like as far as like treating other things like depression ptsd oh yeah so can you tell people about your organization and what it what it's called first of all and like when you formed it and what you guys specifically work on yeah sure um we so it all started so the doctors and i was given interviews anonymously um because i was still at my job at that point and um the doctors would say this reporter with this newspaper publication or the you know so i'd give them an interview as a study participant doing this did you do it in person or over the phone i don't know i might have i think i did some in person

um but but even over the phone they knew like michael pollan wrote that famous book how to change your mind yeah which a lot of people it came to the mainstream through that um somebody just told me about that on a podcast i think oh yeah or maybe it was off podcast someone who's coming on well they they have uh there's a docuseries on it now, too. The book was so popular. It was you. You told me about that. Yes.

Duh. Makes sense then. That makes sense. So it just came out. And so I was doing these interviews, and then they said, okay, there's 60 Minutes wants to do a story. Anderson Cooper is doing it. can you do it and i you know i looked at them i'm like are you nuts um like go on national television and say and i was more concerned about the psychedelics part i wasn't concerned about the alcoholism part because

i think also at that point i wasn't insecure about being a former alcohol. I'm like, I handled it. I'm done. You told a lot of people about it. What? Like people in your life, like friends and casual friends. Casual friends. Like, and people who now, I wasn't shouting it from the rooftops.

I was telling people that might need it or, you know. But you're also going out to places and not drinking too right yeah yeah so they kind of know they kind of know but i mean people and this is what i also realize people don't really care about you know anyone else like people are right all our insecurities you know like most people don't care about our own personal insecurities. So the drinking part, like some people notice like, oh, you know, he's taking it easy. But for the most part, no one really cared that, I mean, people were rooting for me, like my close friends, like, yeah, thank God.

Let me grab this whiskey. Yeah, but no, you know, what I do, I'm yeah but no you know what i do i'm irrelevant for you know everyone else so um but you know after that after the 60 minutes thing i asked that i'm like if you can't find anyone else i'll do it and then i you know i i had some survivor's guilt too because right i got it was a double blind i got the psilocybin that means someone else didn't get it and i felt like i was taking it from another patient and that oh yeah i had some guilt there but they all get it on the third they get it on the third time but they only get one they only get one and what if it doesn't work there and you know so i felt bad

about that and that's where wow i made this promise to like to myself and get like i made a deal with god i'm like if i get the psilocybin and this works for me i'm going to do everything i can to make this accessible for other people because i knew the fda the DEA all that there were a lot of obstacles and hurdles these doctors had to go through and over and around um to make this accessible and you know just the stigma itself of it and the misinformation out there that we are not only do we have a veteran suicide epidemic, an opioid epidemic, an addiction epidemic. I mean, alcoholism went up during the pandemic. No. Mental illness.

Really? Right? Mental illness overall went up during the pandemic. I mean, this is the silver lining. This could save millions of lives as soon as it's approved. Fucking crazy that people didn't't like there are some people who who thought like oh yeah everything will be fine we'll lock everyone inside and they'll be fucking fine they won't touch drugs or alcohol like of course it skyrocketed it's just what else are

you gonna do exactly like that was so wild to me thinking about it i was like i i drink myself to death i mean you can't go out like you got nothing else going on i mean that's got to be difficult for for people living alone or like struggling with other stuff prior or during so um at least this is the silver lining. This could help. Like the research suggests anorexia, OCD, PTSD, depression, anxiety. What else? I think they're looking. This guy that I met, his business partner, his son, saw the 60 Minutes episode that I was in and then Headed in his mind to go check it out to see if this could maybe help with Autism and the kids like maybe in his early 20s. I think psychedelics help autism

so and I've talked to a few other people, you know, that are on the spectrum. And they, you know, they credit this with turning their lives around, they can be social, they know how to interact with people. And even if you don't, you know, have autism or Asperger's, like, it's tough interacting with especially after the pandemic, when you're not talking to people or doing that every day. That could be anxious. So, I mean... Are they saying it can cure it? So, I think, well, at least for these folks, it helps them in social settings. So, social anxiety, social, you know, it helps them relate, make conversation. conversation um and that i mean that's a big

big step um the main difference to me like in my gorilla brain right now trying to process this is like when people are freaking out about stuff jokingly but also like half seriously i'll be like just smoke a little weed you know relax yeah and calm down right but like you know then they do and they're relaxed while they do it if they're not someone who like you know has like a poor weed trip if if that's what you want to say but like once it's off like you know the effects are over and they may still have the same problems the next day yeah whereas with this that change stays it's weird yeah isn't it so it's so hard to wrap your head around well i think so and that's a big misconception that a lot of people think you just take the psilocybin or the psychedelic and then you're fine that's not the case it's the integration so that psychotherapy after your psychedelic session

that's really where the change comes from now were you doing that in the one month and six months between the two yeah i was not not between the second and third sessions when you have nothing so you don't no contact with the doctors no nothing um and but after the you know i think two or three weeks after the first and after the second you do that you do maybe a couple of sessions psychotherapy yeah and then yeah and then you're done you're done and that's going back to what we're doing now one of the things we launched is because a lot of the folks coming out of these trials are still kind of confused on you know what they just experienced and how you know what it right if you can't even explain it in, it could be confusing for a lot of people. So we launched a group integration program where we have folks from clinical trials all over the country and we're meeting once a month.

And it's been helping a lot of those folks with the integration going forward. When did you launch this again? Like what year? Like how long after the trip also as well? I think it was 2020. So after the trip, I was pretty much doing most of what we're doing now, but behind the scenes. So I was getting, I'll go to clinical trials that gov look at any clinical trials near the person see if there are any for PTSD if that's

what they're looking to treat or anything else and I'm not even just strictly do if there are no clinical trials for psychedelics I'll look at if there are any clinical trials for anything else um because I'm not I'm not I'm try whatever it is if if it gets you better it gets you better it saves a life I don't I'm not you know preaching the this is what worked for me and it could work for a lot more people what other kinds of things are in clinical trials a lot now um so it's a lot of it's like drug discovery too so right it's like pharmaceuticals patenting or they're creating a new drug that they could patent their ip that's where the real money and that's the interesting thing this is

isn't that more dangerous though too usually a natural compound it could i mean it depends what team like who who's behind it right like there are synthetic things that are safer than natural compound that's why a lot of people are with the the whole i like it because it's natural i'm like i get that but so are a lot of lethal substances. Sure. Yeah, like if you really think about it. Yeah. Like they're poisonous mushrooms.

I mean, if someone picks a wrong mushroom thinking they could go out and pick some. And so, but yeah the the clinical trials part and then we launched it and we launched it right after that 60 minutes thing another study participant and i got um linked up from a mutual friend you left your job you do this full-time now oh this is full-time yeah um and so he was at johns hopkins and this guy is one of the best you know government affairs guys out there it's like watching like michael jordan playing pickup basketball when you say when you say government affairs like so like lobby it so this guy worked on the hill for like worked in the house and the senate um oh he's one of the years one of those one of those like real real smart guy like knows

knows everything inside out um on that level and um and so he's been along with uh we we launched this with a former member of Congress. Who's that? Mimi Walters. So she's out in Laguna Beach. And she's a Republican. So that's great because that's... Really?

Yeah. And that's who you really need to... Yeah, you get them on board. Yeah, it's the Republicans. You really need to show that this is saving lives and they've been very receptive. Wow. Yeah. Well, you know why?

Well, I'm guessing. Let's hear it. You correct me if I'm wrong here. You're the pro. And this is something we've started to talk about that I do want to talk about today like there has apparently been a lot of success like a fuck ton of success with veterans who are using psychedelics to treat usually ptsd and let's call it what it is the more veterans than not also happen to be conservatives so republicans they're hearing about this from their literal constituents who voted for him like hey i fought for your ass over overseas there and

this shit's helping me and now they have to be like huh oh yeah i mean once you see i you know it's crazy to think that someone who's served our country and we've put them in these awful situations that have ruined many lives ruin their lives ruin their right and and then we just expect them to come home and drop everything and let you know go back to normal somehow I mean and we can't even treat them here they have to they're going to Mexico they're going to Costa Rica right and why why do they have to do that why aren't they getting because I don't think it access to these trials. Well, some of them do okay, that's the thing there aren't there's

Very little government funding for these trials. So that's what we're advocating for too So once there's more government funding and more clinical trials then more people can get into them and i mean it's it's a win-win i you know what's crazy too i'm actually surprised that in when this was first being talked about for you like 2013 2014 just thinking about my own personal history map here of like where we were in society i'm almost surprised it had any funding back then like at all it's crazy i'm glad it did i'm just like our society seemed it seems like finally now some people are warming up to this but like back then i don't think like that was that was what us kids did rolling molly at concerts you know that was

psychedelics it wasn't like it wasn't medical yeah you know like in society at all not that it is now but at least there there are people listening today who are very aware of the time yeah yeah yeah 10 years ago i'm not so sure about that no no and and even like i talked to a guy yesterday i think still most medical professionals don't know about this. So and that's also what we're doing is with the education part. So we're educating members of Congress, senators, right, all the policy and decision makers at the federal level to tell them about this, that this is going to save a lot of lives and it's going to save a lot of wasted tax dollars. Are you going down to D.C. to teach classes? No, we go to D.C. and talk to members of Congress, talk to their staff, talk to...

Got it. So that's who we're educating because if your average doctor doesn't know about this what do you think an average you know politician no so and that's you know and and then now i mean it's just a lot of different moving parts too um and i'm just afraid that someone's gonna have like fentanyl laced with mushrooms or something and then the headline is right kid overdoses on magic mushrooms or something or gets behind a car and kill and that I mean that's a real risk because in the 1950s and 60s, this research was really good. And then it got politicized. Because of the hippie movement. over there anymore and and it was a bipartisan effort um i'm pretty sure because right nixon

as a republican but i think there was a democratic house and senate so it was you know it was a bipartisan effort to to shut it down um and that and i was talking to the doctors a few doctors um a month ago and they said that's a real risk and and that's why what we're advocating for it's we're study participants who've done this legally in clinical settings so what we've done is all legal and we credit this with saving our lives most of us do and right that's that's a little different than someone saying, I did magic mushrooms in my basement, and I think it worked, and it saved my life. Yes.

You know, because if you're doing this at a reputable institution with real doctors, it's harder to ignore that. And also with the veteran stories, I i mean a lot of these guys um like a lot of navy seals too a lot of right special operators and i was shocked to hear that because these are like the top of the top right all these special operators um i'm like they how do they have ptsd like these guys are like The meanest baddest like guys out there like best at their jobs but You know

They they have it for good reason because they're doing a lot of you know crazy stuff and it's really intense and then they come back home and you know, how How are we gonna heal them? They're also really good obviously i wasn't a navy seal but from how i hear them describe it the guys who are in that level of our overseas forces they are really really good for the most part at compartmentalizing while they're there yeah when they are no when it's no longer a job yeah it's like anyone else when like you see on a way less serious scale you see professional athletes they retire and some of them have a lot of trouble the first especially first five years because they lose their purpose yeah right i was doing this shit every day full speed now i don't

have it uh-huh it's the same thing with these guys and i had andy andy bustamante in here who was a covert cia spy probably still is but he was he was undercover in a serious place for a long time and there's a line he said i'll probably fuck up the phrasing but it sticks with me where he was talking about the things that people see in certain seats based on their job and he's like you can't you can't un-download that hard drive it's there yeah you know permanently right seared in your yeah so it doesn't at first glance of course it's surprising to hear like oh my god navy seals are doing this left and right i thought they were they're the toughest right but then you think about it and you're like no they're a human being and they

did the wildest it doesn't surprise me one bit no yeah it's crazy man it really is but it's i mean it's compelling see i mean i hopefully this federal funding initiative happens more federal funds go to this um and then and they figure out what else this can treat uh because why why just stop at addiction and depression and all i mean that's still plenty of stuff to look at right now that we know of is worth looking at i mean a lot of the mental and behavioral health so uh it's exciting times. Now, how does it work, though, with like the actual treatment for the veterans? Because you've talked about yours with alcoholics, and I guess like addiction. I don't know if it's the same with people addicted to different things, but is there a similar process? Or like, what do they do, for example, when these seals are going to Mexico and doing trips?

So it's a little different if you're leaving the country and doing it down there. With that, I think they mainly. I mean, there's psilocybin that they use and ayahuasca, which is another psychedelic compound. I think it's a root and maybe like a certain leaf that they boil together and then it has psychedelic properties. So you drink that and then you hallucinate. So that's one. And how does it solve PTSD? So similar, like the stories I've heard are,

you know, you address these different issues that are bothering you so if it's something that happened overseas um when that veteran was deployed they they could look back at it and live through it and you know have a different perspective on it like this isn't you know, have a different perspective on it. Like, this isn't, you know, this was a bad experience, but it doesn't have to ruin the rest of my life. Or, you know, there's nothing else I could have really done differently. And you come to that conclusion.

Or, you know, things like that so it is kind of similar with in that respect where you have these different perspectives and different ways of looking at what's bothering you and it's extremely difficult and then once you get through that it's you know you made a lot of progress in the clinical trials what we're sending folks to it's usually MDMA which is ecstasy right yeah yeah so that's that's on I think that's on phase three. They're thinking that's going to get FDA approved by the end of next year. So for everyone who's been educated by a wrong system as far as how we create these things, there's people out there hearing this going, they're giving them fucking MDMA out there who are thinking to themselves certain things that probably aren't true.

But this is what we talk about when we say we're rolling or we're on molly, stuff like that. So, like, to those people, why are they choosing to use that, and what is that from as opposed to, like, psilocybin, which we obviously understand is a mushroom? Yeah. So it's different, right? This is MDMA.

It's a different drug. And the protocol is similar, where you have two therapists looking at you, right? They do the preparation before, they do the integration after, but during the psychedelic session itself, instead of listening to music, like the psilocybin clinical trials, they have an active psychotherapy session when you're under the influence of the MDMA so once that kicks in what do you mean like so the study participant takes the MDMA after it kicks in they have an actual psychotherapy session so you know you walk through the trauma you walk through all of these experiences that are really tough. But you can talk about it like after the drugs kick in and you're feeling good and you're not really afraid of much, right? And because that's what it does, that how it acts uh in your brain and i'm i'm not really doing it justice by you know saying describing it this this eloquently um but it basically uh you know the the fear part in your brain and anxiety that's not that's calmed down so you could talk about these scary experiences that have traumatized you and are affecting your your life negatively and you could talk about them not

you know not feeling that scared anymore you can be present without the pain. And you can be present, yeah. Yeah. And then you bring that with you, you know, even after the MDMA wears off, you realize, hey, I kind of, you know, that wasn't that difficult going through this. Or, you know, it didn't really paralyze me. So it's really interesting. And that's had really promising, I think, I think around two thirds or 70% of the folks living with PTSD are no longer qualified as having PTSD, which is crazy. Because there isn't anything out there right now that's above 50%. I don't even think there's anything above 25%. Yeah, 50 sounds ridiculous. 50, that's a great number.

If you're saving half these people, that's a great number if you're saving half these people that's you basically you know it's wild that like you know the kind of drug that's taken when you go into marquee for a good night at the club is the same thing they're giving people who did crazy shit and it's working it's isn't that nuts wow it's like that's why this is all that's also what piqued my interest about this too i was just like this is just such a cool story and it like it almost sounds made up that right this research was happening it looked really good the government shut it down and now it's resurfacing but a lot of people still think there are no medical benefits or this is you know there are extreme risks to it it's all in the hierarchy of how we frame it though in society which we've talked about today a bit but like

bringing it back around towards where we're going here like we live in a world where doctors will give out ssris like they're going out of fucking business and it's no problem you know prozac all that stuff as if like oh no it's perfectly fine right it's an accepted thing yeah even like lithium which is a stronger one but like they'll do this and then the same world's like oh no you can't do mdma and again it's not like you should be doing this recreationally that's not what i'm saying but it's like we live in that oh that's what that's what rebels do when they're partying and they have a bad trip and they die right but that's not we have demonized and i'm

not by the way i'm not saying sRIs can't help people they do they're given out far too much yeah far too easily but they absolutely can help yeah but we've fully accepted that no matter who gets it and yet we've demonized as a society attitudes towards these other things it's I mean it's not a hell of a lot different than when you talk to like a fossil about weed you know if they're like 80 years old and you talk to them about weed they, it's not a hell of a lot different than when you talk to like a fossil about weed. If they're like 80 years old and you talk to them about weed, they think it's like the devil's elixir. And I'm like, okay, well, that's just the world they grew up in. Yeah. But that's not reality.

So the point is like deprogramming this in society, which is what you're working on, that is a really difficult battle because you can show people all these successes, but like you were saying maybe 20 minutes ago, it's like the first kid that does something stupid and gets behind a wheel and kills somebody, you have to fight back against that now even though it has nothing to do with what you're advocating for. Yeah, I mean there are real risks on all of and and about the misinformation part uh it's writing back your point of the prescription drugs and the i think that's also that really helped um fuel the opioid epidemic too with the prescriptions thinking you know there was was a fallacy that these aren't that harmful if the doctor is prescribing them, right? So it's a wacky world we're living in with, you know, some of these drugs that are legal and prescribable. I mean, alcohol is a class one carcinogen. In English, can you explain that to people along i think it's the american cancer association or something they it's it's all the known things that can give you cancer

and asbestos is on that list and so just alcohol um you know alcohol itself any alcoholic beverage it could give you a ton of different cancers not just liver cancer or uh right um and it could attack your whole body knowingly giving people cancer but uh you know look at that industry and it kills, I think it kills a hundred plus people a year, a hundred something thousand people a year. Opiates are coming up on that if they haven't already surpassed that. And I think cigarettes is, I think that's a half a million Americans a year. You see what you did there though? What's that?

Industry. Oh, yeah. What's that? Industry. That's the key problem. Who's spending money on all the lobbyists in D.C.? All these huge alcohol conglomerates because that's what makes their world go round, and so they buy politicians, and that's why it took so long for weed to get there.

Weed started getting there when the alcohol companies started buying into dispensaries and now they can actually profit off of it oh now suddenly legislation's happening a little bit you know it's still not off schedule one there's still a lot up but like oh now if i'm remembering some correctly i think maybe molson core's constellation brands like you know now suddenly they own these they're getting into the game yeah suddenly you know they're buying real estate in canada to do this and now it's changing

so like cynically in me i'm going this will start to change when these companies figure out how they can profit off people recovering with psilocybin or shit like that. Well, that, so that's also the thing, right? There's no IP in the natural compounds of this, even if it's synthetic. So there are some companies out there trying to tweak the compounds just enough where they can get IP around it. And, you know, it's a great treatment and a terrible business model.

I'm like rehab, right? You do, I did this, you know, I stopped drinking after the first time I did this three times seven years ago and I'm done. I don't have to go to any therapy. I don't have, I just go to do an annual checkup with my physician every year. That's it. I don't do anything else. No pills, no drugs that I've substituted with this.

So, right, that's... Not good money in it. Not good money for, you know, compared to something like a rehab where it takes, I think it's seven or eight times on average before it works. Right. And the guy saying 3% success rate. I mean, don't get it up to five. It's great. Yeah. Right. It costs us money. Right. Don't get cute now. Right. So yeah, it's all, I mean, but I, as a as a society too we've everyone's addicted by some sort of mental health disorder and even you know even if you don't know someone personally your tax

dollars are affected by it with all these you know wasted treatments and lost economic productivity so everyone is affected by all this um so i think you know optimistically i think we'll we'll have this in the next couple of years um the fda approval and folks can do this in a clinical setting yeah what there's a good question like what do we need to get there like you talk about funding and the limited funding that's gone into this which is why for example and this is a while ago now but like you're the study you did could only have a few people or several people whatever it was do it it couldn't have thousands of people doing it because they didn't have the money to be able to support it like what are the hurdles that we need to get over and like are you asking for any specific bills to be passed right

now that that would allocate a certain amount of federal or state funding in certain places to this type of thing like what's the cadence here yes so Ali has proposed it that's your partner yeah he's proposed a center of excellence so he's the um government affairs uh guy and uh he he did this before um or a few times i think but he proposed a center of excellence nih national institutes of health center of Excellence to fund this research what's the center of excellence so basically you know have federal funding allocated for universities and to study its multidisciplinary studies of this so clinical trials do the phase twos and the phase threes for alcohol and depression,

do some phase ones if there aren't any on, you know, autism or something else that no one's heard of. So just a range of different studies. And also, unfortunately, but that's the reality of this. This is really only on the coasts, right? You hear about the coastal elites This is New York California you got Hopkins doing this in Yale but towards the coast right? Yeah, I mean The rest of the states in the middle of the country, which is hurting pretty bad and could use clinical trials, too Doesn't have much. Ohio State is doing some research.

They're starting up. And I think Wisconsin, Madison is doing some. But, you know, we just need different locations too. We need it broadened out throughout the whole country because I get a lot of calls in the middle of the country and I'm like there just aren't any near you right now so I'm kind of wondering in my head without any scientific facts on this because god knows I'm not a doctor nor an expert on any of this stuff but cynically in me i'm wondering if

someone will fuck with that compound and find a way just like technology to make it fade off meaning like whatever you took and i don't even know if this is positive i'm talking out of my ass right now but whatever you took in 2014 okay that won't be what's available in 2035 they'll have that thing but it will wane so people need to come and get the treatment again a year later or something like that okay this is again without any scientific fact i don't even know if that's possible but i mean shit they've done some crazy shit before like my head goes to molson kors will figure that out right like and that would suck because sometimes i feel like in society we legitimately can't have nice things because we find something but and this is a downside of capitalism and i am a capitalism supporter through and through i

always gotta say that but like you know people they'll they'll find a way to make the business out of it and bastardize it uh-huh so you know for the alcohol industry I think this might help them too because think about it if you could get people that you know before this treatment comes out it's either you give it up completely or you die right but if I could give you this treatment

that could help you control your drinking and you don't have to give it up I think a lot more people would be interested in doing that than playing the zero sum game where it's all or nothing i can see the advertising campaign already right i mean i have 10 when you can have two suicide by most of course yeah like every night of the week oh man so it's gonna be it's

the wild west right now and it's gonna be interesting i mean if anyone could predict this they're you know they're psychic but who knows how this is going to turn out i mean there there are a lot of different ways it could go um well you're one of the guys steering the ship and and i mean in a good way you know you're trying oh no yeah you're trying to move the the word around and and i i love that this is now the thing you've gone to because like as you said your background was journalism and dealing like in financial markets in your case specifically and like this is a totally different thing that you're passionate about now you've put all your energy behind doing it full time. And like, I got to think from the outside, it's,

it's an extremely fulfilling thing because it, it is your lived experience. And now you get to help other people either navigate how to go about doing that or get more access to a lot of people. Yeah. And I also like, I'll add this to it. They're like,

you're open-minded to looking into all avenues as well. You're not just like, this is the only way. No, not at all. If something makes sense, you're like, well, how can we help there? It's really cool. Yeah, no. Because I didn't look at this clinical trial going in thinking, this is psychedelics, I got to do it. It was, this might be able to help me, let me try it.

And I'm with that. If another clinical trial comes up that that's doing something else and looks promising, go for it. I mean, if that could help save your life and you're looking for help, do it. Absolutely. And who else, you mentioned, what was the Congresswoman's name? Former Congresswoman? Mimi Walters. Mimi Walters. So what other types of prominent people or organizations do you have either behind you or do you have like a board of directors? Yeah, we got a great board. Oh, wow. So like who's on that? We got a great advisory board too. We got really impressive people I mean I am extremely lucky to I

mean really to have a lot of these aren't your stereotypical psychedelic advocates so we got Mimi Walters Susan Dunn is just a phenomenal advocate. Who's she? So she's actually a friend of my buddy's, and she's just done a lot of work for veterans and mental health care. And so she sees the potential. She saw this firsthand in me and then read up on the research with the veterans and got really excited about that as well

what's her official like profession is she is she a psychiatrist or oh no no she's just you know someone interested in this with a great platform and got it um helping us out and We got Kara Zimmerman who's a great doctor. She's um Addiction specialist to mental and behavioral health so MD She is at Brown so she's I mean really smart she's awesome and She's leading our the trial participants coming back to us for for the group integration she's leading that and she's been great um and then ollie's on the board as well amir hushmond and then the advisory board we got we got very lucky got this uh navy captain uh chuck connor he was the former president of um he was up there in the red cross and then he was the president and ceo of the american lung association oh wow so yeah he was high up there in the navy and then had a great professional career in the private sector as well so that's both military and yeah and also

having the aspect of like a traditional form of medicine background yeah and i don't like the word traditional there but you know what i mean yeah like something totally different yeah he's you know he's great um and then who holly anderson she's really impressive she's on she's also on the board of the michael j fox foundation oh wow she's yeah she's really sharp she's you know one of the top cardiologists in the country in the world yeah that's another total other side of medicine yeah it's great so i mean we got very lucky this guy lenny barshak he um great tech entrepreneur and like you know created and sold i think three or four companies um how'd you get these people like it hasn't been that long yeah friends of friends just but they're like you got to talk to this person or you know this person would be interested in this or uh and so just got very lucky because it is pretty niche right and

not too many people are talking about it yet or at least back then more so now um so it has piqued a lot of interest in places where you might not think like a lot of these, you know, really successful folks in their professional lives that, you know, arguably have a lot to risk, right? being associated with but I think it also helps that we're and also we partnered with the Hefter research universe uh institution which these guys were behind my clinical trial so it's pretty cool that we're working with the guys that saved my life what was that called the Hefter hefter research institute is that like out of nyu no that so they used nyu's a site so this was their um they were behind this research they funded this and nyu teamed up with them so i mean a lot of credit all around for doing this clinical trial um so right and the reason they partnered with us on a lot of this is they saw that we're not getting involved in these political movements and we're solely based on the research and promoting and advocating on that what do you mean political movements like the decriminalization or legalization movements um ballot initiatives um so we're not going although i have and we have

testified on some state research bills uh where they want to you know do this research for veterans with ptsd or mental health care uh we'll testify for that but we're focused on the federal because like we mentioned earlier with pot right cannabis is what i think 39 states it's legal in something high 30s something like that yeah and it's still fret federally illegal and it's still schedule one and right and this is a slightly different road than that but you know there hasn't been I don't think many clinical trials going past phase one for marijuana and with psilocybin and MDMA psilocybin and MDMA it already surpassed that they're already on phase three or approaching phase three for these same things for totally different things so for mdma the um what they're looking at is ptsd that's what it's on phase three for psilocybin what's farthest along in the phases it's major depressive disorder so

depression mmm so my trial was a phase two and they're hopefully doing a phase three in the coming months or starting to enroll for that but your trial was also like nine years seven years ago whatever it was yeah they take a while holy yeah god damn i mean think about that right and that's why you know we're really focused on the federal funding part of it obama was in office when he did to make yeah 2014 2015. yeah that's crazy we don't think we see you think of this world because you're in it you understand what it is but like the average schmo like me we hear phase one phase two phase three it's just words on a page we don't realize how long i mean by the time they get from one phase to the other they've come up with something different it's yeah right for some things obviously no yeah it could

could be um but yeah so it's and think about how many people are dying yeah that could be saved that's the saddest part yeah so um but i think we're heading in the right direction and at least i'd hope so yeah man dude i, I'm really blown away by it. And like I was telling you off camera, I'm really going to be going down the rabbit hole on this now, especially after this conversation because there's so much in there.

But one thing I did forget earlier when you were going through your experience to build upon was the music thing. So I wanted to come back to that real quick. So you had said, you did explain it was predetermined music that they chose they put classical music in your earphones yeah right but you were also you were talking with them while this stuff was going on so like would you take your earphones

off to say something or yeah i i think i would um like i would lift and you know one of them up because they were headphones like this yeah yeah oh shit like in a right like in one of those rave things yeah silent raves yeah and with but the eye mask too something that you'd get on a flight like an overnight flight to you know sleep um so it was and that's when they were like yeah why aren't you and for people that are curious there's a I think it's still on there that Johns Hopkins uploaded their playlist on Spotify oh yeah so if you search like Johns Hopkins psilocybin playlist I'm going to do that yeah they'll they'll have that uh on there do you remember the songs i remember yeah i remember because it's one of my favorites it's adagio for strings and it's like a

sad it's really dramatic but it's also sad and um and i just remembered that coming on and I was just like this is This is really crazy stuff. Um, I wonder if we can play that like does anyone own the copyright on adagio for strings? I Don't know. I don't know but just google it people and I don't want to take that chance. It was all it was in that scene in Platoon, I think that scene where I don't want no spoiler alerts but it was that famous helicopter scene when they left one of the people behind oh yeah and i'm trying to think of that tune i know it's yeah i'm not though uh-huh wow so that's like such a nerdy passion of mine with music i love music and how it makes you feel and like what it does to the system like what did you find yourself more in tune with another thing that's hard to describe in words but with i'll keep it simple with like the rhythmic patterns that were happening

in conjunction with what you were seeing and feeling like you know how when you're like a screensaver or something with apple back to apple yeah like the shapes you remember the slideshow not the slideshow but the when you played itunes or something and then you could have the graphics and it kind of moved with the music yes yes it was similar to that so you do and it's almost like so maybe the better way to put it would be like the sounds become a visual themselves without you necessarily seeing anything yeah yeah yeah i mean it it really had an impact on your session. It was very instrumental on it, no pun intended, but it was really very impactful. And I don't know if it would have been as successful of an experience or impactful without that music. And especially especially like curate curated music too it's not

they tended to stay away from songs with words because they didn't want that to really yeah um you know influence the the session so they kept it with like some indigenous music with like windpipes and that was kind of cool um and then classical and um and i heard recently i think this was from ollie too that they they do it scientifically in a way where they put they change the music or they have like when the psilocybin is peaking and getting at its most powerful point they change the music to make it very you know dramatic or so to really get that extra mile out of it so there's definitely mean there are companies out there curating music for specifically

for psychedelic sessions. So it's, I mean, it's a real thing. I will maintain this till the day I die. Music is a drug. It's a beautiful drug, but it has elements of a drug. And I think that what you're saying right there is a great piece of evidence in the confirmation direction for it. I think it's a great combo, yeah. And I want to be people, have they done brain scans after listening to some people's favorite music after they listen to, that would be an interesting thing, right?

Totally, man. And like, you know, it's interesting that they use i like that they use songs without words i wonder if they would be open to working with exist like newer songs that are mainstream songs and using the instrumentals because oh that's interesting in what i do you know when i make my shorts i use great songs I use songs from all different eras I use new songs I use old songs but I use all kinds of pop culture songs so I may use I may use the instrumental of sunshine of your love by cream or I may use mask off by future like it I'll go all over I've used

artists that some people would like be like wow you use that one just because it's it has nothing to do with what it is as long as it's something that could be culturally relevant and the sound that works i use it so i have that type of audio visual mind like that is how i'm wired and i don't know how other people think about this like people who don't have that or maybe aren't or less of a creative person but i am so in tune with where songs are really like not to take away from the artist but really made by the instrumental versus holy the artist made the song because the instrumental has nothing to it yeah like you ever hear the song i feel it coming by the weekend i feel it coming i think so yeah i feel it good instrumental on that or no the respect i had for the and i've i've been a day one i was a fan of the weekend when no one knew who who he was but like the respect i had for him after first hearing

that instrumental i'm like it's not that it's bad it's just like there's nothing here yeah he brought his voice doing all the work brought this to life wow and then other songs like even till I collapse by Eminem okay I don't want to take a damn thing away from Eminem because he's incredible on that song but you listen that thing without him on it not a you're like whoa wow you know so i feel this and like i'll sit in here you can picture me i do it right here uh-huh with the speakers on like 60 or like 70 and i'm bumping it because i want to feel it on every single beat and like that becomes sometimes i'll be like i need to go work out now you know what i mean so i'm curious to know like if they would work in

existing songs without those words and see if people even responded to it more because it may be things that they recognize or know in passing that would be interesting to look at write that one down i'll bring it up to the doctors um that would be interesting to look at. That's a different world, man. I'm telling you. It changes how you look at the music, for sure. There's a classical orchestra out there that plays, and they're famous, too. I'm blanking on the name,

but they play like Beatles to anywhere to, I don't know. I stopped listening to music after it's like 1970. like me old 80s too but i know i'm really bad with the right and they like these pop music the these pop songs but it's all you know orchestra yeah i can't think of the name but i know what you're talking about yeah sometimes i'll use like like with the lose yourself with raj we we used lose yourself but i used a uh what the hell is his name i think it's ludovico the ukulele what is it it's a guitar rendition where he's also using his hands and doing dun dun and like hitting it oh and i was like oh this is flames and we put it back there like it changed what it was but people still know right away they know that they know the lose yourself sound oh wow you know i gotta listen i'll listen to that one with mark on the way back

shit's wild man but listen i i would have you here all night if we kept going at some point like i'm gonna want to bring you back to talk about you like hey you let me know but this was great man and and your journey is um it's awesome to hear that something like it almost sounds like a magic pill like in a way but it kind of was for me which was it's crazy that it has a lot of people don't like that yeah you know um yeah no this is going to save millions of lives the first year it'll be approved i mean this is going to save a lot of lives well thank you for sharing it and keep doing what you're doing thanks for having me right back at you of course i'm happy to give like this a platform and learn some more you know i'm so uneducated on this so this was very enlightening for me but i want to know what you're doing doing. And let's keep the people updated over the years here.

You got it. And keep it rolling. All right. Well, thank you, John. Thank you. Appreciate it, bro. Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought.

Get back to it. Peace.