Mark Bell's Power Project - A New Kratom Warning Everyone Needs To Hear

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

There's a new form of kratom flooding the market that's as potent as morphine, and you need to hear this warning. Many don't know the risks associated with these new unregulated products.On this episode of Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast, hosts Mark Bell and Nsima Inyang speak with Justin Wolf, the creator of New Brew. Justin shares his personal journey of overcoming alcohol and his mission to create a true alcohol alternative. He explains the massive difference between traditional kratom and the dangerous new extracts, the benefits of kava, and how to safely use these powerful plants for focus, energy, and even better workouts. Follow New Brew: https://www.instagram.com/drinknewbrew/Special perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast➢ https://www.PowerProject.live➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerprojectFOLLOW Mark Bell➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybellFollow Nsima Inyang➢ Ropes and equipment : https://thestrongerhuman.store➢ Community & Courses: https://www.skool.com/thestrongerhuman➢ YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=enFollow Andrew Zaragoza➢ Podcast Courses and Free Guides: https://pursuepodcasting.com/iamandrewz➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz/➢ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamandrewzChapters:0:00 - New Kratom Warning 0:38 - New Brew's Origin 1:02 - Quitting Alcohol 2:41 - Alcohol Alternatives 3:55 - "Functional" Drinks 5:24 - Discovering Kava & Kratom 6:24 - Kava & Kratom Effects 6:52 - Ayahuasca Truth 7:45 - Feel Good, Not High 9:31 - The New Brew Idea 10:27 - Beyond Alcohol 12:09 - Why Bars Don't Adapt 13:07 - Red Bull's Success 14:28 - The Right Caffeine Dose 14:50 - Kratom Addiction? 15:46 - A Must-Read Warning 17:34 - Know Your Dose 18:07 - Kratom's Reputation 19:15 - "Supersized" Kratom 21:30 - How Kratom Saves Lives 23:33 - New Kratom Laws 25:13 - New Brew's Mission 26:23 - A New Standard 27:26 - Doritos Warning Label? 28:13 - Mindful Use 29:42 - Methylene Blue 33:04 - Caffeine-Free Version? 34:07 - Kava's Downsides 35:26 - Individual Effects 36:24 - Reverse Tolerance 38:23 - Kava vs. Alcohol 40:36 - A Better Social Scene 42:44 - Cannabis Drinks 45:10 - Intermittent Sobriety 48:08 - Mixing with Alcohol? 49:27 - Long-Term Effects 50:44 - FDA on Kratom 52:17 - Kratom Deaths? 56:55 - How to Start 57:30 - DANGEROUS Kratom 59:50 - Mark's Scary Story 1:03:00 - Family Business 1:05:22 - Fighting Depression 1:09:36 - Replacing Addiction 1:11:30 - Get Your Protein 1:13:27 - The Best Diet Tool 1:16:12 - One Can is Enough 1:17:01 - Max Holloway 1:19:13 - The Feeling of Love 1:19:48 - Why Mix Kava & Kratom 1:20:50 - Kava for Workouts 1:22:05 - Where to Buy 1:22:52 - Business Challenges 1:24:01 - New Podcast Idea? 1:25:28 - Kratom Documentary 1:27:46 - The Connection 1:29:02 - Mark Invests

I think there's some cratum out there that's like 200 or maybe 300 milligrams. And then now there's this 70H, which maybe you can educate us on a little bit as well. People refer to it as 70H are now just kind of seven. It is the most potent component of the plant. There's a whole wave of 70H isolate products that have flooded smoke shops all over the country. It's terrifying. 70H on its own is similar to like a morphine. Have you ever tried it?

Stop. No, I just... I unfortunately have. Yeah, and it would scare the shit out of me. All right, Justin. Why don't you just kick it off by telling us how you got into this? How did you end up making such an awesome product? This product, New Brew, my wife and I found out about it maybe about a year and a half ago or so. And I just picked some up down the street here in Davis at a place called Allusions.

And it's a Kratum Kava product that has a little bit of caffeine in as well. And I was like, shit, this is pretty awesome. So how did you get into this? Yeah. The story of New Brew is really rooted in my personal journey away from alcohol. I developed an issue with alcohol through my teens, through my 20s. I grew up in a home with quite a bit of alcohol too up in Napa Valley, a lot of wine flowing around. So it was just kind of around.

And yeah, I mean, I became kind of a party kid for sure. at a very young age, like early, early teens. And that continued through my 20s, and it became less of a fun thing and more, you know, I came to the realization that I was self-medicating with it without really knowing it. You know, I was attempting to stuff down feelings, really. And I was struggling with depression all the while. I didn't really know what to call it yet, but in retrospect, I see that that's really how I was consuming alcohol. It felt like a fun thing, but it really wasn't, especially by the time I let it go. And that was when I was 31 years old, so that's almost four years ago now.

That's a whole story in itself, of course. It's not the most simple thing. It had become a really big part of my identity and certainly a focus of my social life, and just it felt like a part of me. So unwinding that and leaving it behind was a huge endeavor for me. And that process involved a lot of work was psychedelic medicines, other plant medicines, you know, ayahuasca, psilocybin.

And through that process, I think I really came to appreciate the power of plants and plant medicines, botanical ingredients. So when I left alcohol behind in the months after that, you know, I became very interested in the non-alcoholic beverage market naturally, right? Because I was still going out. I was still trying to have a social life. And I wanted to still feel kind of loose. So I live in L.A. and there's a whole, I'd say L.A. is kind of the mecca of the functional beverage. You know, there's a lot of innovation. If you go to a grocery store, I guess it's true most places now, at least in coastal cities, but L.A. was the first one where, you know, you hit a certain aisle at the Whole Foods, and there's an entire section

dedicated to these kind of functional alternative beverages. And a lot of them are clearly positioned to, you know, be an alternative to alcohol. So I was stoked about that, right? I wanted to try all these drinks out. And I obviously found a lot of things that did a good job of mimicking the taste of alcohol, like a non-alcoholic beer, which I love, right? Like I always have athletic brewing in my fridge.

There are things that look like alcohol, even like a liquid death, right? Which is, you know, it looks like you're drinking a tall boy. There's utility in that, right? Like you don't feel left out and you're just drinking a sparkling water. And that's amazing. But when it came to the products that were built to replace the effects of alcohol, right?

And they make these functional claims like this one's mood boosting, this one's relaxing, this or that. Most of them just don't do anything, right? It's kind of placebo-driven. And they're leveraging ingredients that are amazing. They're healthy ingredients like adaptogens, you know, lions mane, cordyceps, aschwaganda, other neutropics, right? These are ingredients that I believe in. But to get a real impact from those kind of ingredients, you have to consume them daily for, you know, a couple months. And then they really can help with cognitive function.

They can help with immunity, right? But the idea that those, even in a high dose, can create an experience, that was kind of just marketing jargon. You don't really, yeah, you don't really necessarily feel, or I guess in my own experience, I'll just say I've never felt those products. No, no, definitely not. So that's what those beverages, that whole set of beverages were leveraging. TBD is another one, right? And I was trying these out, you know, feeling really hopeful about it and just kind of getting let down over and over. Like, I don't feel anything.

So, you know, and I would sometimes have my own, like, psilocybin capsule in my pocket that I would, you know, pop in there if I'm at a party or something. But whatever I was drinking was benign at the end of the day, right? There was nothing coming from that beverage. So I had this kind of spinning around my mind and I was thinking more and more about it. then probably four or five months after that was down in Mexico in Tulum. And there's a big kind of sober curious, California sober is the other term people use, right? Community down in Tulum. A lot of them are just, you know, fucking Americans who live down there. And I came in contact with a few people who were like, you've got to go check out this Kava bar, which is on

the main kind of strip in Tulum. So I did. I didn't know any. about Kava, nor did I know anything about the other plant that they were serving up at this bar, which is Kratom. Some people call it Kratom. It's actually pronounced something more like Kratom. And I walked into this bar and it's just, you know, set up like a bar, but there's no alcohol and they're serving these two plants. And the first thing I ordered was a mixture of the two. It was Kava and Kratom, kind of served traditionally in a coconut shell. And I tried it and I was just, totally taken aback it was that the light bulb kind of went off immediately did it taste like shit yeah yeah and they had a little like rough yeah yeah the raw plants are challenging for sure yeah they're both very bitter um there was some lemon in it i think they put some syrup in it so it was like it wasn't that bad and i actually like well certainly after having ayahuasca experiences nothing taste that bad because man that shit is on a different level do you vomit during that during iwaska yeah i just i've heard of so many people that vomit during that most people do

okay uh i did not i never have with iawaska which is weird it finds it's way out of you one way or another let's just say that but i don't vomit the purging can happen through yawning obviously diarrhea is a big part of it okay yeah wasn't expecting to say that word on this podcast today but Hey. It happens. Yeah. It finds its way out. And certainly that's one of the core components of working with ayahuasca.

It's a purgative medicine. Gotcha. But yeah, once you go through that and you have consumed multiple cups of that nasty brew throughout a night, you know, other things just don't taste as bad, really. But anyway, I sat at this bar. I had that mixture of Croutam and Kava. And the set of effects that I felt pretty much immediately upon consuming it, it was so pleasurable. It was so enjoyable. I felt a mood lift almost instantaneously.

I felt relaxed like my nerves were kind of calm, but I felt energized and focused at the same time. I was really dialed in. And most importantly, I wasn't intoxicated. I didn't feel high or drunk or any of the things. things I was used to feeling with, you know, cannabis or alcohol. I felt really engaged. Like, I wanted to talk to the people around me, but I wasn't slurring my words or anything. I was, like, in. And it was a revelatory kind of experience, one, because I had never heard of these plants, and I just couldn't believe I had never heard of them. And they weren't really widely available,

you know, back in L.A. And two, because I couldn't believe they hadn't found their way into the non-alcoholic kind of renaissance that's happening, you know, not just in L.A., but around the country. And at this point, all over the world, right? People are moving away from alcohol. I've heard, like, in certain areas, there's, like, more Kaba bars than there are regular bars. Yeah. Not here in the U.S., but, like, in places like Fiji and in places like that, tropical areas. Yeah. In Polynesia, Fiji, Vanuatu, even in Hawaii, it's a big part of those cultures and they've been consuming kava in ceremony you know commuting around it for thousands of years sort of the way we do with alcohol right um their their crime rates are much lower as a result

as you can imagine but that's where the light bulb went off and i realized like if i can get this feeling which by the way like i went and got a workout in right after like a better workout than normal oh we know how this should yeah yeah yeah i'm preaching to the choir i know but for the audience like man something that can make you feel that good but also be hyper functional right you most likely never went anywhere and had a couple beers and a couple slices of pizza and then went and trained

no I definitely did do that but it wasn't a good idea yeah so you know I realize if I can get this feeling into a can right ready to drink beverage not a coconut shell like at a bar

nothing wrong with that right but something that's widely available that's sold right next to a high noon or a white claw right at a liquor store or served at a bar next to a can of beer right that could have a real impact that could serve as another option for people even after having the struggles i had with alcohol i'm not anti-alcohol by any means like i don't think that this movement away from it means it's going away it's delusional right alcohol will always be a part of our culture and it it should be available in my opinion but what's wrong is the idea that that should be the only substance available within the social ritual of drinking,

which is something we all partaken, right? Yeah. It's deeply rooted in human culture. I think as long as humans have been on Earth, we've been sharing drinks with each other, something about that. Yeah, it makes you wonder, I mean, even at a bar, like, I guess probably more so at like a club than just like a regular bar. But there probably are a lot of other options at that bar, but they're just not behind the counter. True. Yeah. You know, the patrons have them all here, right? And people are enjoying, you know, other types of drugs.

Yeah. I have always found it really interesting that there's nothing alongside, you know, there's nothing at the moment in the grocery stores and some convenience stores and stuff like that. Now, we do have Nuburu. We do have some things that are alongside alcohol. We do have things that are potential alternatives. But I think as far as the actual restaurants and the bar scene, we really don't see that. Because, like, if I'm going to go out with some friends to,

you know, have, they're going to have some drinks or something like that. I mean, occasionally I'll just drink whatever they're drinking. Um, but I'd rather have this, you know, and then you might feel, you know, you can't really bring this into like a restaurant. I mean, it's not appropriate to bring it to a place that they're trying to sell other stuff, right? And you're, you're walking in. Yeah. Drinking, drinking this thing type type thing. So it's our job to get it on the menu. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. I hope at some point, um, why do you think that's the case. Why do you think in our society that's still this

way? Do you think it, do you think there's potential, is there any negative side of, there's any negative to a restaurant or bar having something like this as an alternative? No, I don't think there's any negative at all. I think

the reason that that is the case is that alcohol is just so normalized in our culture, right? And it has been for such a long time. The truth is alcohol, and again, I'm not anti-alcohol, but the truth of alcohol is there are not many substances on earth that are worse for human beings to consume. Especially in excess.

Yeah, especially in excess. And it is obviously very addictive, but it's neurotoxic, it's cancer-causing, all the things that we all kind of know, but just try not to think about, right? And it's crazy that that is the one we've selected, right? That's the one that's on every menu at every restaurant, every bar, the one that, you know, your parents drink growing up. I guess if you think about it, you know, Red Bull, they did kind of crack the code because I think,

I can't really think of, I mean, I haven't spent a lot of time like looking at menus of bars and stuff like that, but I can't think of another beverage that really came along. Obviously, you have soda and you have water, right? And maybe some juice or something like that. But a bar just typically has various types of alcohol, right? And then it has. But, yeah, Red Bull, I guess, is a brand that sort of,

crack the code bringing an energy drink and then people would have that mixed with alcohol as well yeah absolutely that was a highly disruptive products and and uh forged a whole new category of beverage definitely um but yeah caffeine is really the other widely available psychoactive substance which it is right like caffeine is a drug don't ever talk bad about something's cat alcohol that's that's an absolute sin that's the thing though i'm not talking bad about it because I think people should have access to these things. But yeah, you're right. No, that's and when I was talking about like the functional beverages, right, that you find at a grocery store, that is the one ingredient that you feel. Caffeine is very predictable. It's, it confers

the same effect every single time, basically. And I love caffeine. We got a little bit of caffeine in Uber too, as you know. I like how you guys don't pump it though. It's just 30 milligrams. You You know what I mean? It's not like fucking 100 or 200. Exactly. Yeah, it comes from an organic green tea. And it's about the amount of caffeine you would get from consuming a cup of green tea, 30 milligrams. I'm curious about this man and I want to address the elephant in the room because a lot of times when we talk about creatum on this show, you know, there are going to be so many comments of people who are like, oh, you know, I started using a little bit of creative. I got massively addicted. Cratum's bad. There are people that are on the other side of that too where it's like I've used Mark's creatum products before. I've used different creative products. But I've never felt a level of even remote addiction. I've always been able to have it and then just stop using it. right but there are people who just have these different draws to it so with your experience first off with this drink what what are your thoughts on that because like i again i cannot have i do not have the experience of being like oh this is this is addictive in any sense but just like people become alcoholics right do you think that somebody could become a i don't know what you would call

a cratim addict with this drink do you think that there are things people need to be careful of? I do. Yeah, I think it's possible. Nice warning on the can itself, by the way. Oh, really? Yeah. No, we, so, so cratum, I say cratum, by the way, but, you know, cratum, cratum, whatever. Cradam is, can I read this real quick? The warning you have on your, yeah, please do. Let me read this, because I've never seen this so far. Anything that feels good can be habit forming, including new brew, consume mindfully, and don't drink it every day. Avoid if you are sober or in recovery from substance abuse. Do not drink more than two at a time. Do not drink if you are pregnant or breastfeeding. There's more, but like, I like that. Yeah. That's that's dope. I should also mention

too, I mean, there's people, you know, I went on a Danny Jones podcast and I talked a little bit about Kratum and Danny had like a white rabbit. He was having a white rabbit. I told him about new ruin, stuff like that. So got a chance to plug your product. But, you know, I was just talking about, you know, there are people that have gotten very addicted to Kratum. So I just, I always urge people to be careful. Whenever anybody calls our customer service and they're asking about mind bullet, they say, hey, I heard it can be addictive. And we say, yes, it can be.

So please proceed with caution. If you're someone that thinks you're going to be addicted to something, then our product is probably not for you. So I think just education, making people aware. And I even have some people close to me, some close friends, even my brother, my brother got addicted to it. He was just consuming way too much. And he came off of it.

And it took him a long time and it was actually a painful and stressful experience for him to come off of it. Now he still uses it, but he uses it in way lower dosages. And if he was to come off of it, like he can pop in and out of it now without having withdrawals because he's not blasting a lot of it. So people need to be very careful. And please, everyone, do not consume any of the products unless it tells you how much is in there. Yeah. There's some products out there. There's not much on the label in your life.

like, I don't even know what's in here. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, yeah, I have a lot to say on this topic. And it's something that is brought up, you know, everywhere we look, right? When we talk to retailers or customers, distributors, manufacturers, and so we do a lot of talking about this. It's a nuanced point. Cradum can definitely be addictive.

There's no question about that. I think that what has given it the... the stigma that you hear and those kind of reactions that you get, that is a response to less the plant itself and more the market that's developed around the plant in the U.S., right? Kratom is a tropical evergreen tree native to Southeast Asia, right? And it grows naturally in, you know, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand. And the leaves have been picked and brewed into its tea for thousands of years. just like in, you know, Fiji, Kava has been consumed for thousands of years.

It's a part of the culture over there. More as a productivity tool with some mood boosting components. But when you pick the leaves and you brew them into a tea, you get a very small serving, right? That's what we've mimicked in Newbrew, is that small serving. It does have some light, euphoric components, but it's more of like an energizer, more of a stimulant. um when that plant arrived in the u.s this is like in the early aughts maybe late 90s around then we kind of did what americans would do right we supersized it we were like okay wait and you know it's not a coincidence either it's not just because we're americans it's because that was really

the beginning of the opioid crisis in america and people discovered that this is a natural alternative, if consumed in extremely high doses, it can mimic the effects of an opioid, even though it's not a true opioid in itself. It's like an opiate or something like that? So it does act on opiate receptors. It interacts with them. It doesn't fully bind to them like a true opiate does, but it's, you know, it acts on opiate receptors. It tickles them. Yeah, it kind of gives them like a little high five. And, you know, it's also adrenergic and, you know, it's also adrenergic and doponergic and you know it has a a whole slew of effects right but that is one of them if you consume it's a very dose dependent plant so like i said if you consume like a cup of cratum tea or a new brew you're

getting the mild stimulant effect and a little bit of mild euphoria if you take 10 20 times that serving then it becomes more of a sedative it has more of an analgesic effect like a painkiller right and the market that developed in the U.S. starting around that time in the early 2000s, it's a smoke shop market. This thing has been relegated to the smoke shop environment since then, until recently. And what the products that you find are about 10 times stronger than a new brew. They're very, very potent. To your point, Mark, they're poorly labeled, right? There's no standard, this is an unregulated market federally that we're talking about, right? So there's no standard for labeling uh there's no education on the packaging or any kind of like hey learn about this first

before you consume it um a lot of those products are made in people's garages you know what i mean they're not well manufactured either so there can be contamination there can be other ingredients in there that you just they're not on the label you have no idea right so on one hand this has served as a natural to synthetic opioids, and in that way, it's actually saved millions of lives. Because even when you totally abuse and overconsume cratom, like an opioid addict would, if they're trying to get off of oxycotton, for example, it is a much safer alternative. Cradom, even in high doses, does not lead to respiratory depression like an opioid does. And that's how people die.

Yeah, exactly. I think Heath Ledger, right? that way i don't know yeah did he think he did yeah yeah yeah many people have unfortunately in this country especially um so it's been this amazing harm reduction tool in that way it's helped people not end up in inpatient rehab and getting into the system and getting on methadone or suboxone right they can kind of wean themselves down uh with a natural alternative that they can consume at home and keep living their lives so that's a beautiful thing but of course these really potent products, which many of them are not trustworthy, are available to the general public. And so

people discover, oh, I can get high off of this, right? Because you do feel high if you take that kind of serving. And naturally, you know, there have been many negative health outcomes as a result. You walk into a smoke shop, maybe the guy recommends it to you like, oh, this makes you feel really good. And all of a sudden, you're going back every day, you're having two a day, and so on and so on, and it can become a really unhealthy relationship that you build to this thing. To me, that experience is completely disconnected from the plant itself and the traditional consumption of the plant, which is a very mild kind of effect. Right. So the stigma over the last like 20 years has built as a result. It starts with the lack of regulation, right? And now we see

regulations coming into place at the state level at least there are now i think as of this week like 15 states that have passed the crowd and consumer protection act the kcpa it's it varies a little bit state to state but basically it puts an age restriction on on the ingredient so it's overwhelmingly now 21 and up some states are still 18 uh it puts labeling standards in place which to your point means you have to list the amount of the primary alkaloid within cratum, which is metragonin. There are serving size restrictions. There are GMP manufacturing standards required, right? So you've got to make this in a real facility.

So things are moving in that direction at the state level, and that helps kind of weed out some of the shady actors in the space. And it creates a lane for brands like New Brewers and several others. that are a little bit newer, to put a more responsible version of this ingredient out on the market, which is an awesome thing. Everything I just said, it's quite a bit, right? So trying to distill that into messaging on the real estate we have here on the can or even on our website, it's a lot, right? There's a conversation that needs to be had.

And that's why I like going out and having full-length conversations like this. it's hard for me to like feel right about a 15 second you know Instagram ad that I'm in right that's why I haven't done a lot of that kind of stuff but everything that we've done with our packaging with the way we talk about our product is inviting people to come learn about these plants it's not sell sell sell it's not hey everybody try new brew which is a normal thing to do if you're selling a product right it's come learn and then as an informed adult make the decision for yourself whether you think this is something that would fit into your lifestyle that might actually be able to help you or not right and that's why you know what you read off is our best attempt right

it's like if you're in substance abuse recovery maybe avoid this thing right don't have more than a couple a day uh these are at the end of the day kind of like loose recommendations because it varies so much person to person right everybody's biochemistry is different like depends on what food you have in your stomach that day right it depends on what other sort of relationship you've built with other substances. Certainly, if you have a history of opioid abuse, this will mean something very different to you than someone who doesn't.

But we do our best to guide people in the direction of having a healthy relationship to our product. And I think in doing so, we're not just trying to set a new standard for cradam products, but we're really trying to set a new standard for any kind of product that has a psychoactive effect, right? You don't see alcohol brands doing any version of that. Part of that is that it's just

assumed everybody knows alcohol is bad and you should try to drink less of it, right? But with more cannabis beverages and cannabis products hitting the market, psilocybin hopefully one day soon will become widely available and legal, we think that's how it should be done, right? None of these things are good or bad. And that's how you see the argument play out, like in the comments or you know whatever it's very polarized that's what i do i do think you know the alcohol companies and they're probably forced to but you know they do talk about drink responsibly sometimes they'll have uh ads about you know buckling up you know buckle up your seat belt or like different safe you know don't drink and drive you know uh they've had ads like that before but you know

i think in this country it would be nice if there was more if there was more of that you know it'd be great if big food had to be responsible for that so these big food companies you know, they're making Doritos and shit like that. It's like, why don't they have commercials that are, you know, that talk about eating responsibly. Yeah. You know, and even like a warning on a bag of Doritos. Absolutely. And again, I think like the way you're thinking, we should have access to Doritos because

Doritos are fucking awesome. Yes. They're so good. And I don't, like, that's very un-American to rip Doritos off the shelves. 100%. So let's not do that. But why don't we just have a warning of like, you know, try to eat these responsibly. this can cause heart disease it can cause you know all these down stream effects if you over

consume it and kind of similar thing here like let's not over consume let's enjoy this product this thing's fucking awesome exactly you want to be able to keep enjoying it right so be mindful in your consumption that's i think the best word we can use be mindful right that means something different to everybody right but don't just drink them in a way where you lose track of how many you're drinking it's like I had one earlier and I have one later that felt like a little too much tomorrow I'm just going to have maybe one I'm going to take the weekend with none of it right we all know what it means to have a healthy relationship with someone so don't deceive yourself right just be honest because it does make you feel good and life is hard right so we often feel you know

like we want to reach for something that will just be a quick fix to that right but we implore people to, uh, reach for a new brew for specific reasons, right? It's, it's not just like, yeah, fuck it. I'm going to have a new brew. It's like, hey, I got a lot of work to do this afternoon. I have like, I'm behind 100 emails, right? You use, uh, you know, you consume a new brew as a sort of like super power, right? It's like, I'm going to be able to knock that out like three times faster and I'll kind of enjoy doing it. It's like a neotropic. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Exactly. Or in my case, like, you know, I'm going to this big party. I don't drink alcohol. Like, I get a little social anxiety, right? I'm going to have a new rule before that. That kind of thing. I think that's part of the mindful sort of relationship you can build with it. I first started hearing about transcriptions from Thomas to Lauer. And, you know, Thomas is somebody that's an animal with working out. You got a chance to work out with him. I worked out with him. And he's kind of always on the front lines of like, you know, finding out. about these new companies that have cool things.

But I didn't really realize that Transcriptions was the first company to put out Methylene Blue. Now look at Methylene Blue. It's so popular. It's everywhere. It's one of those things. If you guys listen to this podcast, you know I'm very iffy with the supplements that I take. Because there's a lot of shady stuff out there.

You've got to be careful. The great thing about Transcriptions is that when people want to get Methany Blue, usually they'll go on Amazon, they're going on there, these other sites. It's not third-party testing. It's not dosed. A lot of people end up with toxicity from, the blue that they get because there's no testing of it.

Transcriptions, they have third-party testing for their products. It's a dose so you know easily what exact dose of methylene blue you're getting in each troki. So you're not making some type of mistake. There's not going to be anything in it. It's safe. You can have it dissolve and you can turn your whole world blue if you want or you can just swallow it. They have two different types of methylene blue. They have one that is, I believe, dosed at 16 milligrams.

And they have another one that's dosed at 50 milligrams. So make sure you check. the milligrams. I don't recommend anybody start at 50 milligrams, but the 16, I feel, is very safe. You can also score the trokies and you can break them up into smaller bits. Yeah, so I do. And in addition to that, on top of the methylene blue, they have a lot of other great products of stuff as well. They got stuff for sleep. They got stuff for calming down, all kinds of things. I got to say, I use it about two or three times a week. I use it before Jiu-Jitsu. And the cool thing that I've noticed, and I've paid attention to this over the past few months,

is that after sessions, I don't feel as tired. So it's almost like I've become more efficient with just the way I use my body in these hard sessions of grappling. And it's like, cool. That means that, I mean, I could go for longer if I wanted to and my recovery is better affected. It's pretty great. I know Dr. Scott, sure, we had him on the podcast and he talked quite a bit about how

he recommends Methylene Blue to a lot of the athletes that he works with. Yeah. And they're seeing some profound impacts. And one of the things I've heard about it is that it can enhance red light. So those are you doing red light therapy or those of you that have some opportunities to get out into some good sunlight. It might be a good idea to try some methylene blue before you go out on your walk or run outside or whatever activity is that you're going to do outside. And this stuff is great. But please, like first off, they have stuff for staying calm.

They have stuff for sleep. But remember, this stuff isn't a substitution for sleep. is this in a substitution for taking care of nutrition. This is supposed to be an add-on to all the things that we already should be doing, and it's going to make things so much better if you're doing everything else too. And I think this is just a little different, too, than just adding some magnesium to your diet. I think this is a little different than, you know, treat these things appropriately. Make sure you do some of your own research, but.

Oh, if you're taking medications. Yeah. You better talk to your doctor first. Don't, don't be popping these things. And if you're taking any medications at all, it would be good to double triple, quadruple. check and make sure that you're safe. Transcriptions has a lot of great things that you need. So go and check out their website when you have the opportunity.

Strength is never a weakness, weakness, weakness, never strength. Catch you guys later. Have you guys thought of making a non-alcoholic newbie or do you already have one? It is non-alcoholic. I'm not non-caffeinated Uber. My bad.

Not caffeinated. Just because like, you know, I wonder, like I wouldn't unfortunately be as a how like caffeine would affect me. I wouldn't drink it at night. Yeah. Right. So do you guys already have that? Would you make that?

We formulated it. it. Formulator. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We haven't released it, obviously. We've kept the same stack and all the products we've created so far. We formulated quite a few things.

We have a lot of ideas. That is the most requested product. It's just a decaf version of New Group for sure. And for the exact reason you said. That's awesome. That's a good problem to have. You created a product that people are enjoying, but now they're like having a request, and that helps you make another product.

Which gives you a lot more skews and everything else, but hey, it's not a bad problem now. Exactly. Yeah, I think that's something that we will put out eventually. I don't know when, but it's a great idea. Let's talk about some of the downsides of Kratum, Kava that you've seen or heard of. I've heard some people saying that they have had maybe some poor readings on their blood work with their kidneys. but I don't know, like, I don't, I don't, I never noticed that for myself in getting my blood work done. I get my blood work done at least once a year, sometimes twice a year. I haven't, I haven't noticed that for myself. But yeah, what are some negative side effects?

What's something somebody might notice? Like, if somebody drinks, you know, two of these in the afternoon, you know, four hours late, like an hour later, they're probably feeling really good. Four hours later, are they getting a headache or what are some feedback that you've heard? now that you've had the product out for a while and maybe some things you've experienced. Yeah. For myself, I've never really experienced any negative kind of side effects from Nuburu. Certainly with some of the more potent Kratom products that I've kind of tried out from a smoke shop, which I almost never do anymore. I've had a little bit of like nausea just like didn't feel great if I consumed too high of a serving.

It is, it's kind of a boring answer, but it is so different person to person. It really is. Even the sort of tolerance for a new brew is very different person to person. We tried to formulate this in a way where we use basically the lowest threshold dose or serving of each. plant so it's just enough that most people are going to feel it but it's not going to overwhelm anyone there will be a person every once in a while who does feel overwhelmed by it and that's why we kind of tell people sip slowly assess your tolerance just in case people usually say to me they say what was that like about an hour after they have it or 15 20 minutes after they have it's

like what was in there totally it's because it's different experience I think it's new to your system you know your your body is like whoa I've never felt this before Or, like, I know the caffeine, I know the alcohol, but some people actually, like, don't feel it the first time they consume it because their body doesn't know what to look for. I heard that every once in a while, too. Well, and Kava has some sort of weird, I don't know if it's true or not, but Kava, like, the first time you consume it, like, a lot of people don't feel it because it has some sort of... Reverse tolerance. There you go. That's what I was looking for?

Yeah. What the hell is reverse tolerance means? Sounds made up. Sounds made up. Yeah. I can't explain it on a chemical, scientific level, but, yeah, the more... you drink Kava, the more potent it feels in your system. So you need less of it.

And it doesn't like downregulate the way that, whatever that other word is for caffeine. Like caffeine, if you consume like 200 milligrams of caffeine every morning, in a lot of cases, somebody might need 300. Oh, you build a tolerance. Yeah. You build a tolerance for it. But this has a reverse tolerance where you actually can consume less of it. It's very strange.

Yeah. I should probably learn more about that, honestly. I don't know how that could be. Brian could probably look something up about it. Yeah. The way I think about it is that your body, like, it knows exactly what it's looking for. So it just goes and grabs it. Yeah, the first couple times I tried it just at the Kava Bar here in Davis. I was like, this, you know, just sipping it was like rough because it numbs like your lips and your face and everything.

I was like, this is brutal. I just, you know, I didn't know what the hell was doing. So I just went right to the highest one, which probably wasn't a good start anyway. I don't know why my brain goes to that all the time. I get that, yeah. I tried the cloud breaker. And, yeah, it was just, it was like, it was gross. And then I finished it, and I didn't really feel anything.

So I was like, well, what's the point in drinking something that, like, taste disgusting, but yet does nothing. But then I went there a couple more times and then kind of learned, like, oh, I should have a drink that's actually a little bit more passive. And then maybe I can have, like, one or two of those and kind of see how that feels. And then it just, just one day. I mean, it took me, like, two weeks to get used. to being able to even understand what I was looking for. And I was just sitting there one day, and I just felt amazing. I just felt really, like, relaxed.

It was just straight Kava. There was nothing else in it. And I was like, wow, I'm like, okay, this is really cool. And, you know, alcohol, you know, I'll just stand up for alcohol. I think alcohol's awesome. And alcohol, like, there's nothing like alcohol. However, Kava, like, seems to be, like, a little bit similar for me in the way I was feeling it. But then again, you don't end up with the slurred speech.

Yeah. It doesn't feel like you're impaired at all, which I'm sure you're probably, you know, you could have some impairment if you blast a ton of it. Probably not going to black out. Right. Right. Yeah. And it just, it's a, it was a different experience for me. So I really liked it a lot.

If you really push yourself with Kava, like in Fiji and Vanuatu and nations like that, they drink a lot of Kav. Like every night. And they do get some version. It's not the same as being drunk, but they are maybe like slurring their words. little bit you know what i mean and they have that reverse tolerance at play too so if you it is like just like cradam it is kind of dose dependent if if you really push it but it's hard to get to that level with kava it is i would say certainly in the form we serve it in and most widely available kava it's non-intoxicating like you don't feel fucked up in any way it's it's just a different

kind of feeling and that's why like when you try it for the first time like you were saying if you're someone who's like most people who are used to the feeling of alcohol and being drunk or even cannabis right where you are intoxicated like you're kind of disconnecting from yourself a little bit right uh you're going somewhere then this uh weird new experience might just it's you don't know how to look for it and you're like it's like we were talking about earlier when we were throwing the ropes around right you have to sit and be mindful and kind of like have an unaware of what you're feeling. Oh, yeah, I was explaining to Justin

that people do the rope and they're like, this isn't doing anything. It's like, well, you're, you just started it five seconds ago and when you do thousands of reps over the, you know, and it's kind of same here. It's like you're going to enjoy this

as you start to get a little bit more used to it and being mindful. Exactly. And that's, to me, that's my favorite thing about Nuburu and these plants and having left alcohol behind is,

I was obviously, you know, consuming alcohol in social situations and wanting to connect with people, right? But I was so disconnected from myself that you don't really connect with other people in any meaningful way when that happens, right? People are kind of talking over each other. They're talking really loud. They're boisterous. They're not listening. They're thinking about what they're going to say next. There's like alcohol kind of brings the ego out a little bit, right?

with new brew you don't have that you are very kind of tapped into yourself you sink in a little bit deeper even and you are genuinely like wanting to listen to people and connect with people on a i think a more meaningful level um we've done a lot of parties with new brew we don't throw a lot of parties but we've sponsored parties or we just donate product to parties and there's even been somewhere there's no alcohol served right it's just new brew and the kind of environment that that Fosters is pretty cool. It's more mellow, obviously, but it's very lively still. Like, people are chatting a lot. They're, like, really connecting with each other, just not in a super abrasive kind of drunk way. Right. Yeah. So that's, like, what gets me really excited about the future

and the vision with New Brew. And again, like, I love the idea of New Roob being served right alongside alcohol. I don't think it's going to replace alcohol. I'm not that kind of delusion founder, right? But it can be this other option for people like me who know for themselves, alcohol is not a good idea, right? You don't have to kind of compromise. You can go out and feel loose, feel engaged, like really feel a part of things. And, you know, some people can do that with nothing, right?

Just dead, sober, right? Which is also awesome. But I think most people want to feel a little something when they're not. out partying, right? So this is really that first option. I don't want to glance over cannabis, by the way, because there's a whole wave

of hemp-derived THC beverages that have hit the market. Some of them are awesome, too. Any brands you know? Because I've heard of them. I just never tried one. Yeah. Breeze is an amazing one. B-R-E-Z.

They're doing very, very well. Mostly sell online. And they've done an excellent job of leveraging really small servings of not just hemp-derived cannabis, but also little functional mushrooms. Oh, cool. They use these really good extracts. And yeah, you feel it at a really small serving size and it's very pleasant. You don't feel super stoned or anything. It's really good for social use cases. Can is another one, C-A-N-Tahas Tonic is another excellent brand. So there's a, actually, there's a lot of those brands out there now.

I mean, too many. It's a very saturated market, but there's some that really stand out to me. The thing for me is, I don't like to be stoned in a group of people. I just don't. That's like an at-home thing, maybe with like one or two people.

Privacy. Ideally by myself, it'll enhance the experience of like watching a movie or listening to really good music. Or movement. Yeah, or definitely. Yeah, yeah. it took me a while to discover that but that's very true yeah yeah it's crazy really can feel into

your body um i'm very pro cannabis but i don't see it as a social tool some people love to be you know high and go out and be around a bunch of people but i i guess i could do that when i was like 23 but just not anymore i'm like i got to go home i got to go get in bed so yeah i mean But I think that category is also really exciting. And what we see in liquor stores and convenience stores around the country now is they're carving out this new section of the cooler that is 21 and up non-alc beverages, right? Non-alc, but you're going to feel it. And it really is cannabis beverages and then new brew. And there's a few other, you know, cradam or cova beverages that are starting to do well.

Kids these days, they don't drink alcohol anymore. Good for them, man. That's great. I know, I think it is great. I mean, and yeah, they're, you know, exploring, they're exploring some different stuff because who wants to go through life totally sober? I think people should also explore sobriety.

It's just like, it's something that you should work on. I think, like if you're someone that's drinking a lot of caffeine, you're taking a lot of pre-workout, you're utilizing energy drinks, you're, you know, you got a Zen, and you're doing like all this stuff which is which hey like to eat your own like get through the day whatever way you can god bless you i think it's awesome but also i think some practice you know at least have some maybe we can just call it intermittent sobriety you know can you

can you make it through a day or a couple days here and there just just as like a check and again being mindful you know like hey man maybe i am like and it might not feel like anything's too to your detriment and it might not be but why not just kind of maybe test it out one day and see like if you find yourself you know always pop and create them for every workout for every run or every time you're trying to do something that needs initiative or something that needs some dopamine i don't think it's great just to lean everything and stack all your cards yeah just on the drugs themselves which you know i i do it i do it way too much i can admit i could put my hand up and say hey i do it too often but i also will explore like hey let me just do a workout

out today without doing that oh i have 100% agree it's a beautiful thing to know that you're comfortable at your baseline with nothing in you right it's just you and then from there you can have those kind of mindful relationships with different inputs that you want to put in your body but you got to be able to take a weekend off take a week off whatever and so every once in a while it's good to do a little test like that. The same is true with like sugar, by the way, or, you know, anything else we put in our bodies, even when you're, I mean, you would know better than me, but when you're on a supplement regimen, like you want to cycle on and off of stuff most of the time, right?

Because otherwise you build a tolerance or it stops being as effective or you sort of lose a sense of what you're like without it, right? Yeah, even particular diets. Like, you might be good to switch from one diet to another here and there. Yeah, absolutely. So I definitely recommend that. I mean, that's on the can, too. Don't trick it every day.

Like, if you are someone who becomes a regular consumer of Nubaru and you really love it, it's doing great things for you, still, you know, take a week off here and there, right? Like, challenge yourself and make sure that you still feel good. And if you don't, like, if you go a week and you're, you know, feeling like you really, really want one, maybe take a longer break. You know what I mean? Just be honest with yourself at the end of the day. I think that's the best way to kind of approach it.

Let me ask you this, because on the opposite side of it, let's say that there is a party, there is a, you know, beverage box, whatever, cooler, and there's a bunch of new brews, there's some alcohol. There's going to be people that want to drink both. Are there any interactions that will happen if you have Kratum Kava, Kratum Kava, then alcohol and alcohol? Because, you know, we already know what happens to you drink a bunch of alcohol. Not good, but it happens when you have both. Because, you know, this stuff, because coming more normal and both options being there, people are going to have some of this and then some wine, you know? So anything there? We tell people on the can itself to not mix new brew with alcohol consumption. I've never had that even be a consideration because I quit drinking before new brew was a thing. I'll say that I've never heard anyone having a problem with it. But I do know that it is to be avoided. Like, it's, you know, you could end up being nauseous. It could have some, like, really bad interaction in your system.

You're also just putting multiple things into your system to go through your liver and just have to be processed at the same time. So I don't recommend it. Don't do it, guys. Just don't do it. Don't do it. Yeah. That's my official response.

Yes. Any idea if there's been any research. over the years on Kava or Kratom in terms of their safety, in terms of like any long-term studies of studying some of these people, maybe from Fiji or in these areas where they've used it for a long time. Is there any cognitive decline? Because sometimes it seems like some of these things that may enhance us for now can actually maybe mess with us later on.

Have you heard or seen anything like that or heard anything of that nature? Yeah. I don't know that there's really a body of data when it comes to long-term usage of either of these. Yeah, I haven't heard anything like that at all. But it's just something that comes in mind, something that's so powerful from a dopamine perspective and so forth. No, I would imagine it has some kind of impact that I guess we don't totally know yet. there have there are ongoing many studies ongoing on cratum in particular uh there's a lot of research being done at the university of florida and johns hopkins and some amazing clinical researchers like really going deep on this it takes time for those studies to be conducted properly and for the results to be analyzed um the fda not a big fan of cratum unsurprisingly right refuses to regular

it. They ran their own study on Kratom, starting, I think, a few years ago. And I think they were trying to show that it's bad for you, basically. And they showed the opposite. The results came out last year. They sort of tried to bury the results a little bit, but they got out. It was Bloomberg article about it, and it was in the press. And it showed that Kratom, when consumed at a dosage that's, I think, four or five times what we have in a NUBUR, consistently. I had no, like, meaningful, negative health outcomes. Nice. I think maybe a couple people had nausea.

Yeah, these plants, these plants are here for something. Yeah, yeah, they are. They're here for some reason. Absolutely. But, yeah, they're not benign either, you know? Like, there is risk involved with putting anything that has effect into your body, right? But the point is, like, you really got to push it or you got to consume products that are poorly made or just way too strong to get to that level. It is relatively safe when consumed

in a moderate dose. But then again, every once in a while, there will be someone who has a little bit of cratum and they're just that one in a thousand person who their system just doesn't like it, right? They get nauseous or they get a headache. That's usually as far as it goes, though. And we should also address, like, when people look, crate them up, they could see, like, a laundry list of negative things. And, hey, you know, read that stuff. Like, it's good to learn about it. But sometimes, and I don't want to dismiss, you know, when something big happens, I don't want to dismiss it. And we're talking about people's lives here, so it's a very sensitive thing. But you may read that some people have died from Kratum. But at least it's my understanding, which is not, I don't, I'm not a researcher of any kind, that some people that have died. from cratom it was back a few years ago when people like dry scooping they were like dry scooping cratum and cratim is like cinnamon like cratim doesn't it's uh you know it's gonna float on top of water and so if you were to eat it or if you try to consume it as a powder you're gonna choke on it and so i believe that's what happened in some of these cases and i would imagine there's probably

some people who have also just died from cratom because they just took like some crazy dosage because, again, people were buying powders and this stuff is not regulated. And they were putting them in blenders with water and something that was fat soluble to kind of mix it together. But these people are consuming like 30, 40, 50 grams. They're consuming like these really insane amounts.

Yeah, no, they are. That might be some of the stuff that you might see when you try to look it up. Yeah. There are a number of deaths that have been associated with cratim and there are some powerful interests in painting it in that light, right? So when someone does have a negative health outcome,

their family is generally approached by a law firm very soon thereafter, wanting to tell their story on the biggest stage possible, right? We're talking about, I think, like, less than 100 events like this. Often they are portrayed in the media as a cratum overdose, and that is what you'll see if you Google the plant, right? it's not a coincidence that'll show up first right almost every single one of those was a poly drug overdose meaning this person could have been taking a ton of xanax maybe even heroin um on SSRIs and then they also started going into the smoke shop and consuming cratum when that happens

the family of the deceased cannot sue their doctor in a white coat, right, for prescribing their loved one, those drugs, they can't go find the heroin dealer and sue them. They're going to go after the Cradham Company, right? And again, there are many law firms that are kind of referred to as ambulance chasers. Like, they will follow those stories because it's an easy target, right? They know that they can get some money out of that. I think there are maybe a handful of reported overdoses that were actually just cratim in insanely high doses. I don't know. I think those are still kind of being looked into, but if you think about those numbers and compare them to alcohol or even caffeine, people dying

from caffeine drinks at Panera bread or whatever, I mean, there are tens of millions of Americans regularly consuming cratum at this point and I think that's underreported probably because it's self-reported those numbers are minuscule right and that's in an environment where still most of the products that are available are really not well made there's no regulation right imagine if this was cleaned up if people were properly educated right they really understood the plant like even before ever trying it they understood that there might be some risk associated with it they understand the effects that they can expect upon consuming it it could be a you know a mainstream thing that

people really get a lot of utility out of right and not some dangerous scary thing which is what you see if you google it it's what you would have seen googling psilocybin eight years ago right and now it's like vc's invest billions of dollars into this wonder drug whatever cannabis was the same way you're going to get like CDC Mayo Clinic like dangerous drug no medical benefit those things are starting to change for these other plant medicines and I think the same will happen with cratum the more the light is able to shine on the full picture right which is a balanced picture it's not that it is you know some panacea and everybody should go consume it's just it you know it can it's neither good or bad right start low and slow too if you're going to try anything like even if you're

you're just going to try a new brew and you've never experienced cratum before, drink like quarter the can and just sit there and wait a minute, you know, stuff like that. Like, um, that's a really good point actually. Because you can't, you can't get it out of your system once it's in your system. So if you just go to one of these smoke shops and just drill one of these, uh, you know, one of these shots, there's no turning back at that point and you might not feel very good because there are, again, there's some that are dosed. I think there's some cratum out there that's like 200 or maybe 300 milligrams in a shot, which is just that's absolutely insane.

And then now there's this 70H, which maybe you can educate us on a little bit as well. Yeah. So Cradam, the plant, has a whole array of alkaloids, right, of active compounds within it. Like many plant medicines, it's not just one thing, right? Matragenine is the primary alkaloid, and that's the one that's usually measured and listed on a label. There is a, I don't know, it's not even a subalcoloid. It's actually a metabolite when cratom is consumed in the body. This, this is produced. And it's called 7 hydroxy matragenine. People refer to it as 7.O.H are now just kind of 7. It's become known as. So that exists in trace, trace amounts in the natural plant. The regulations that have gone in place at the state level require you to list the amount of it. So in NUBrew, we have like, you know, under 1% of that, right? Which is what you would get from the plant.

It is the most potent component of the plant, right? This metabolite that's produced. Oh, let's load it up with that. So that's what's happened. Naturally, there's a whole wave of 70H isolate products that have flooded smoke shops all over the country. It's terrifying. Honestly, it is terrifying. And I'm somebody who's, you know, anti-prone.

prohibition, right? I'm pro access. But man, 7-0-H on its own is similar to like a morphine. Yo. And it is, again, they're taking that, isolating it and serving it in really, really high servings in tablet form, shop form. And that's, when you go into a smoke shop now and you ask for a recommendation, that's where they're going to point you, which is the scariest thing. The A smoke shop owner doesn't know shit about it either. We're trying to make sure that that's not the case anymore. I think there is a medical use for that as a legitimate pharmaceutical product, right? And maybe an opioid alternative.

Yeah, maybe somebody doing that under someone's care, right? Yeah. Like at the very least. Exactly. But the fact that that is over the counter, not even over the counter, just at a smoke shop available and being recommended to people, I would say stay away from that shit just have you ever tried it stop no I just I unfortunately have

and it scared the shit out of me it made me just feel like shit I didn't know much about it my brother was telling me about it and I was like well I sell crate them I should probably know about these products a little bit more so I bought a shot down here at the local smoke shop and you down the whole thing

no no no I was like you know my brother told me it's potent and I took like I took a quarter of you know a quarter of the whole thing I took a quarter of it and I just felt like shit I was trying to put my shoes on and I just started like kind of shaking and I was like what in the

hell is going on like I'm you're a big dude first off like I all the years I've known you you're someone who can handle like fly drives as everything right yeah wow and then I drove here and I when I was driving I was like should I even be driving like sweating not feeling good but the only thing I could think of was

like I think I actually should exercise a little bit because I think I should like move around I didn't feel ill I didn't feel like I was going to throw up or anything and my speech and stuff was still good and my cognition was still good but I was shaky and just felt really really uncomfortable yeah and maybe like about 20 minutes went by and luckily but but see like if I was to down that whole thing yeah and you had no idea you know about crowd I mean you know it's a trip to the emergency room oh absolutely or worse and that's happening you know it is yeah it's it's really dangerous to have that out in the market the way that it currently is and you know just speaking as a you know someone who is a representative of the world of cradham and

the plant itself right it is a threat to cratim right it is yeah the access of cratom because it'll naturally it's going to be conflated with the plant right because it's derived from the plant. And it's already an uphill battle trying to protect access to cratum and educate and put forth really common sense regulation, educating lawmakers and lobbying and doing all these efforts that we're now a part of through the two trade organizations we work with, which is the American Cradam Association and the global Cradam Coalition. They're the ones trying to clean up the market and protect the future of the plan. But then you have this 7-0-H thing thrown into it.

And it's, I mean, it's not cratum, right? And sometimes they call themselves cratom products. Yeah, I think that we need to find a way to get that off the market for now. And again, it should probably just be studied and used in a medical context, because it could be life-saving and an amazing tool in that way, right? But, man, someone going to buy a vape and they just see these tablets and the guy's like, yeah, these are my top seller, you know, that could send you down a really bad path pretty quickly. So definitely warning to not do that. What's it like owning this company with your brothers?

I think you own it with your two other brothers, right? Correct. Yeah. It's amazing. You guys fight? Yeah, oh, absolutely. Yeah. We argue all the time.

That's part of it. Yeah, no, like I said, the company was kind of born out of my journey away from alcohol. And when I went to Mexico and tried these plants and brought some samples of them home, my brothers and I were, like, messing around with them together. And this idea kind of just came to be after brotherly sort of conversations, right? I think in large part they were getting on board initially in support. of me because they're great brothers, right? They were so proud of me for leaving alcohol behind and they wanted to be a part of this sort of next step in my life. But then, of course, it quickly

became a thing of their own, right? And we got really excited about the business potential. Once we made a thousand cans of this pilot run and started showing it to people and getting their reactions, it was like, we really got something here. This is wild. Everybody wants to know more about it. The brotherly connection, I mean, there's a foundation of trust, mutual understanding that is really hard to build with someone who's not family, right? Or like a really, really, really, really close friend, I guess. But man, we know each other through and through. We know, excuse me, we know what the other people are going to say, what they're going to think, right? we can kind of get down the field a lot faster than we otherwise would and a lot of that is through arguing by the way right like if you have an argument and you really lay it out there and you just like say some things that cut deep and like i don't know it's not always a good thing but sometimes like you just work more efficiently as a result because you're not hiding things from each other you're not thinking things and not saying them right so yeah there's been arguing but i think

it's like on balance actually really helped us quite a bit and it's just fun uh to do something with family um it's just as challenging as it is fun but i think knowing that we're always going to be able to look back and have this shared experience is a beautiful thing too what are some things that you did um you know because you know taking a supplement or taking something is having something done to you or for you rather than you doing something for yourself? What are some things that you've done for yourself to help you deal with depression, help you, especially like, yeah, help your get away from, like, alcohol? Because you must have had to go inward.

You did mention some of the psychedelic medicines and stuff like that. Did you go through some sort of therapy or just kind of your own journey? Like, what are some things you did to get yourself out of that situation? Yeah. A lot of therapy, certainly. I'm a big believer in therapy. If you really put a lot into it, right? And you find the right therapist, too. That's important. If you're going to therapy and just going through the motions and like, well, I'm in therapy. I hope this works. You're hoping they're going to fix you, but you're not telling them anything. No. It comes down to you, right? They're mostly a sounding board. Maybe they can give you some good advice here and there. But if you really go and share yourself and are fully, fully open, you can get a ton out of therapy. Journaling is the same way. It's been a while since I was consistently journaling. I'll be honest. But I certainly, around the time that I was quitting drinking, I was journaling quite a bit. The work that I did with psychedelics, in my opinion, is by far the most powerful. healing that I've done. It's not just the experiences themselves, but it's the doors that they open within you, right? And then you can journal and meditate and just think differently

after and it sends you, it opens up new pathways within you, right? So there's no shortcut to anything, right? But I think that those experiences, I guess they are kind of a shortcut. It's like you're doing like 25 years of therapy in one ayahuasca experience, right? You still have to do all the integration work after and make sense of it and try to understand it. And there are people who go back to ayahuasca like, you know, five times a year and they're just chasing something. It's like, that is not what you're supposed to do. Well, hey, you're supposed to get, I think it was Terrence McKenna or maybe Ram Dass or someone said, like, once you get the message, you can hang up the phone. that's exactly how it is right if if you're just going back and chasing those experiences you're not really getting anything out of them so allow them to kind of open updoors uh forge new neural pathways in your brain and then walk down those pathways explore them right so that's been incredibly powerful for me i'm still on that journey i'm still healing you know i probably always will be that's kind of how i view it

I still struggle with depression, like comes in waves. Like a couple months ago, I was in a deep pit of depression, right? And for me, when that hits, it feels like there's very little I can do, and I sort of have gotten better and better at managing it. By far, the most important tool for me is exercise. It's not even close. I was going to say, it helped to be, like, busy and exercise and just doing stuff, Or is that almost like filling in too much stuff sometimes?

It can be overload sometimes. Certainly running a beverage company is a little too much here and there. But being busy is great. Yeah, just sitting around and stewing in your own emotions is not good for anyone. Certainly not for me. I don't do well when I'm like bored or I'm lacking direction or purpose. So NUBrew itself has been like an amazing healing journey for me. Definitely. Being out there and feeling really passionate about something and meeting new people and being exposed to new ideas, it's amazing. But moving my body, I mean, that is that is the foundation for sure. And I was an athlete growing up, but I slipped away from that in all the years of like really hard drinking. I was not really athletic. I was not taking care of myself at all. It's hard to do both of those things that wants.

And when I left alcohol behind, that's when I really got back into a strict sort of exercised regimen. And I think it was almost like a one-to-one replacement for alcohol for me. Like I would, on Friday nights, I would do really, really hard workouts. Like right at the same time, my body was expecting alcohol Saturday nights. And by the way, for the first like six months after I quit drinking, I was dead, dead sober. like I didn't put, I didn't even drink coffee, no caffeine, nothing. I wanted to fully discover that baseline. I did work, I didn't go to rehab, but I did an intensive outpatient program, an IOP, which was really helpful. Basically, like, a lot of group therapy throughout the week. I kept working full time. I was working at Google at the time, but I would spend nights doing that. So it was pretty intensive kind of therapy. And then building in the workouts and the journaling. and certainly doing my own individual therapy as well.

That was the recipe that worked for me. And it was only after I got through a period of that where I felt comfortable like, okay, I'm going to have a little psilocybin capsule or something like Kava is, you know, I feel comfortable bringing that into the fold. Right. I wouldn't, it's different for everyone, I guess,

but I wouldn't recommend that somebody who's like a hardcore drinker just immediately switched to Nuburu. I mean, you could. Maybe that would be helpful to something. people, but I would recommend finding a way to just remove that from your life first and see where you're at and then build from there. All right, Mark, you're getting leaner and leaner, but you always enjoy the food you're eating. So how are you doing it? I got a secret, man. It's called

Good Life Protein. Okay, tell me about that. I've been doing some Good Life Protein. We've been talking on the show for a really long time of certified Piedmontese beef, and you can get that under the umbrella of Good Life Proteins, which also has chicken breast, chicken thighs. sausage, shrimp, scallops, all kinds of different fish, salmon, tilapia. The website has nearly any kind of meat that you can think of lamb. There's another one that comes in mind. And so I've been utilizing and kind of using some different strategy, kind of depending on the way that I'm eating.

So if I'm doing a keto diet, I'll eat more fat, and that's where I might get the sausage and I might get their 80-20, grass-fed, grass-finished, ground beef. I might get bacon. And there's other days where I kind of do a little bit more. bodybuilder style where the fat is, you know, might be like 40 grams or something like that. And then I'll have some of the leaner cuts of the certified Piedmontese beef. This is one of the reasons why like neither of us find it hard to stay in shape because we're always enjoying the food we're eating. And protein, you talk about protein leverage it all the time.

It's satiating and helps you feel full. I look forward to every meal and I can surf and turf, you know? I could cook up some, you know, chicken thighs or something like that and have some shrimp with it or I could have some steak. I would say, you know, the steak, it keeps going back and forth for me on my favorite, so it's hard for me to lock one down, but I really love the bovette steaks. Yeah. And then I also love the rib-eyes as well. You can't go wrong with the rib-eyes. So, guys, if you guys, if you guys want to get your hands on some really good meat, you can have to Good Life Proteins.com and use code power for 20% off any purchases made on the website, or you can use code Power Project to get an extra 5% percent.

sent off if you subscribe and save to any meats that are a recurring purchase. This is the best meat in the world. I think it's worth mentioning, you know, we did mention a little bit about how this could be utilized as a pre-workout. Yeah. But I also think that it has some utility. And in Seema,

maybe you noticed this too with your experience with Kratum. To me, it makes like dieting a little bit easier. It's another thing to do that like doesn't go against a lot of things that I'm trying to progress forward with.

And I'm not saying that like a little bit of alcohol would, would like throw my diet off so crazy that I can't recover from it or anything like that. But I really don't, I don't usually want to drink alcohol. I don't, you know, I don't want to go off my diet type thing. So I don't even usually want to eat when I use creative. That's what I'm saying. It's not like you hardcore feel a suppressed appetite, but I don't feel like if I was hungry, for some reason

I don't really feel hungry after I think because it changes your mood I think that's a big reason on why you're not as hungry because you get that same well maybe it's not the same but it seems like you get a good dopamine hit after you eat food

because you're hungry you eat the food and then you're like you have this kind of euphoric feeling and this kind of puts you there so I think this is like the ultimate fitness hack in some ways like for people that like to do intermittent and fasting or for people that want to just get together with some friends and have something that's not necessarily, I'm not saying that this has no negative impact and no negative cost

at all. But for fitness people, it seems like this is like more productive perhaps than having alcohol. We did mention that you could drink this and then go work out. So if it was a Saturday and you spent some time with some friends at a barbecue and you had, you know, two or three of these at the barbecue, maybe you had a little bit more than you should have, but you're still going to be totally okay to work out later at 5 p.m. if you wanted to train and stuff like that. So that's one of the, like one of my favorite things about this product is that it seems to go along with everything else I'm doing. And again, for like fasting and stuff, I think it can have some really big benefits just to kind of, I guess, keep your mind occupied. Yeah. It fits into a

healthy lifestyle. It fits into whatever you're already doing. You might just like enjoy doing it a little bit more or, you know, be a little more efficient with it, right? I think it is a mild appetite suppressant as a mild stimulant. I think that's natural, right? But to your point, it is, Nuburu kind of gets you to a place of satisfaction where you're not really wanting for anything, including more Nubu in my experience. Like, people when they first have one or maybe they buy like you know a four pack or something because they're wired with the consumption habits of alcohol they're like well i had one i'm going to have my second one like and then i'm going to have my third one it's like this isn't beer it's just different with alcohol one begets another right with new brew you you feel maybe it's two cans for

you maybe it's one or even a half a can but it gets you to a place where you're not really wanting for more of that or other stuff like eating right you're just kind of like a lot of the time food is it's less because you're hungry it's more of like a craving right like you just want something like yeah you want that dopamine or whatever it is that you get from that and it does kind of like fill that gap for you max holloway is an is an investor and you showed me a commercial can we show a little bit of that here absolutely let's go for it yeah pretty cool this is ahead of the big fight coming up here with Dustin Poirier. So we had our team fly out to Hawaii and film this with Max.

He's just been an amazing, you know, part of the brand ambassador for us and sort of our celebrity athlete dude. The fights that these guys have had, Holloway and Poirier have been just like unbelievable. I think it's Dustin's last fight ever, I believe. I think he's retiring. So this is a big deal. And they have a ton of respect for each other. We were so lucky to get Max involved with New Brue. I mean, he's Hawaiian.

So Kava has been in his family for generations. Wow. He doesn't drink alcohol. Nice. He's obviously just like a really fit, healthy, like family guy. And so he's the perfect, again, representative of our brand. And just feel really fortunate that we were able to get him involved as a really like young company. He just loved New Brue.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah. All right. Let's check this clip out. Max Huckaway. That's a real worry. In the octagon, everything moves fast. Reactions, pressure, chaos.

You gotta stay short. Every move, every second. But finding balance, that's where the real power is. It's in the moments between, where curiosity starts and stillness lives. When you re-scentred a mind, your strength flows from within. Very cool, very well done.

Yeah, thank you. Not that I had any part in it, but yeah, our friend who's a director, Zizi Satriani, he's an incredibly talented, creative down in L.A. He went out and shot that, along with one of Max's friends, Arvi, also an amazing videographer so they came together and made something real special i think it's like one of my favorite pieces of content we've ever made as a brand we've mentioned it before on

the show but like cratum has this ability to kind of make you feel like you just got a hug yeah or like you or you know someone hugged you or you hugged somebody or whatever the situation is it makes you feel like loved yeah or makes you feel love it's uh and it can keep you uh very talkative sometimes yeah so you find yourself hyped up and sometimes I'm like talking to my life and I'm like oh my god I'm probably way over like talking about the podcast or talking about something I did today because I'm all fired up because I had a new brew yeah the kava helps curb that a little bit I think because it makes you a little more chill by the way what made you want to mix these two because I know you said you've had

the experiences of trying them but then what made you be like let's put this together in a drink yeah well I did try them together for the first time so that was my first experience with it. But I later tried them separately, and I just think there's something really special about the combination of the two, especially because, you know, we created New Brew really as another option in the social use case, right, like for people who are moving away from alcohol or want to take a night off or whatever. And Cradham by itself, it gets you that kind of stimulating effect, right? It gets you a little bit of like a euphoric kind of feeling going on. But the Kava The Kava acts on GABA receptors, which is the same as alcohol, right?

And it really kind of does make you feel calm. So that's like the other component that rounds this out to make it a really good social beverage above anything else. And also, I wasn't expecting this, but Kava is like when used in, you know, these moderate serving sizes, it's an amazing workout tool. Like I think that makes NUBrew a better workout tool than just taking Kratum on its own. um it's sort of counterintuitive you i think you guys would understand this like what can get you to do that extra set or push a little bit harder it's not just more energy it's actually to be relaxed and kind of like just sink into it feel your body a little bit more because what stops us from from going a little bit further is it's all mental right it's like you've convinced yourself that you can't do more your body can do way more than you think you can right and so i think that The Kava component really helps with that. I've noticed that. It's also great for, you know, yoga or more mindful type of exercise or, you know, even boxing.

Definitely, like, I don't golf, but people who golf, man, they're like Nibru is, like, a PED, truly. Anything where you're really putting your mind to work, too, along with your body. Very cool. Thank you so much. And I know I think Ryan pulled up some stuff on your website. It shows in the country, like, where you guys. have the new brew available. Obviously, you can just go to your website, which is drinknewbrew.com. And yeah, you can order it off the website. We ship it to you unless you're in one of the six

dates where Croutam has banned, unfortunately. Ooh, there's a Yuzu flavor. Yeah, Yuzu's become my favorite recently. It's so good. But yeah, we have variety packs, so you can try them all out. And then, yeah, there's a store locator on there where you can, you know, it'll locate. you right and you can see if there are stores near you that carry new brew it's really prevalent in southern california uh new york texas and colorado now but even by the time this this uh episode comes out probably adds some more there so it's it's expanding pretty quickly is it tough keeping up with the demand it is it's very tough man any beverage founder will tell you that's like well when you have a successful brand if you're lucky enough to have you know

that sort of like one in 500 that really catches on and gets traction, that's the challenge. It's making enough product, not too much, and bringing in the capital to do so because it's very capital intensive. Making drinks is not, it's not cheap. And the margins, even with a high margin product like ours, are still pretty thin comparatively, right? So you've got to grow mindfully, actually. That is the word. And so that's what we're trying to do. And take it one step at a time. And I think that we're also growing at a rate where the acceptance or awareness around Crowdom is kind of growing with us, right? And we're a part of that, too. We're doing everything we can to educate and work with these trade organizations to help put forth

regulations and clean up the market. But I think by the time we're ready to go national, like there will just be that much more awareness and understanding of what this plant is and how to responsibly consume it. Have you and your brothers ever talked about potentially having your own podcast? No, we haven't. That's a cool idea, though. That would be awesome. Yeah, I just think, like, in terms of, this may be a lot of content can be created for it.

Yeah. Because, like, you know, we were trying to look you up, you know, before we did the show to do research on you. And there's not a ton of information. No, I haven't done a lot. You just done a couple podcasts. And I think that's cool, though, too. I think it's cool that, because, you know, the owner being associated directly with

the brand. You know, that can be great in some cases, but I also think that kind of being behind the scenes is kind of neat too. But I think for you guys to have somewhere long format where you guys can communicate, you know, what new brew is, what it's about. And then maybe with some of the different influential people that you guys have in your circle, maybe a formulator or a researcher or something like that. And it probably doesn't even have to be done like super frequently. because I know it's probably be difficult for the three of you to get together and do something like that all the time,

but it could just help create a ton of content for your people that are trying to make content for you, you know? That's an awesome idea. I will be bringing that back to the brothers so we can do. But yeah, I'm very grateful that you had me on and awesome chatting with you guys. I love having like the full conversation, like I said.

I think it's really important. So I hope I get to do more of this. Yeah, my brother's movie. We didn't even really mention my brother's movie, Leif of Faith. Oh, yeah. That he did years ago, had a huge impact. So that is, like, the Kratum documentary.

I mean, there's not a lot out there. My brother did that movie, by the way, completely hammered the entire time, just drunk out of his mind the whole time. Really? Yeah. Are you serious? I'm dead serious. Yeah, he was really struggling at the time, and he was, yeah, he was,

what was crazy was my brother ended up being on a TV show. My brother was part of some sort of content. within a TV show. I wish I can remember what the hell that was called. But my brother, my brother won the contest. And he's on this, he's in a movie,

within a movie, and he's talking about, you can kind of tell. It's not that he said, yeah. Yeah, it was crazy because, yeah, my brother was still able to, like, perform really well. And then it wasn't too long after this.

I think he went to rehab. And then the Kratom, because he was using Kratom for pain, Kratom ended up saving his life like twice. You know, it helped him a lot with his pain. And it helped him with some issues of depression. And then when he got addicted to alcohol, he was able to come off the alcohol and come off some of the other drugs, I think he was messing with at the time via using Kratom.

Right. It's an amazing documentary. It's, I think I mentioned to Chris, like we got to do an updated version of it because it's probably eight years old now around that. So there's a lot has happened. But that was, you know, when I went to Mexico, tried Cradham for the first time, came back, was doing research. It was the first thing I came across in the first, like, really the only long form content that I found that gave that education

and a more balanced picture of the plant, which is not available through a simple Google search. So that was an inspiration for NewBrew. And then I think I, yeah. I was probably a year after we launched, I tried to DM Chris. I was like, you have no idea how much this documentary. Help me,

blah, blah, blah. And then, you know, he gets a lot of DM, so he didn't open it. But then a year later, he responded, and he's like, my brother and I've been drinking new brew.

It was such a cool moment for me. Yeah, I remember, I was actually talking with my brother and I was like, man, I really love that company. Because my wife,

Andy, she was drinking wine very frequently. And she was like, I want to, just, I want to do something new. I want to do something different. I just, I think it'd be a good idea for me to, she actually just came to me one day. She's like, I'm just going to ditch alcohol for like a year. And I was like, whoa. I was like, okay, cool. Well, I'm behind you on that. That sounds great. I won't drink either, since I don't care that much about drinking, so it wasn't

hard for me. And she started to explore some different things. And I remember she was like looking up stuff and she was like, new brew. She's like, oh, yeah, new brew. Like, an alternative. You know, and we bought it and we liked it. And we did try a couple other brands. We tried some things that had Kava in them. We tried some things that had Kratum in them. We didn't always love the flavor and we didn't love the combo and the amounts and so forth were sometimes they were too much and so forth. And so, yeah, we just stumbled upon a new brew.

And I was talking with my brother on a walk one day. And he's like, I think that guy hit me up. He's like, I should put you in contact with him. And that's how you and I got in contact. And I am an investor in the company, and I'm very proud to say that because I think it's awesome. What you and your brothers have done, I think is absolutely incredible. And I think that this product, you know, I don't even think it necessarily just has potential. I think it's going to be huge.

Like, it doesn't necessarily just have potential to be huge. I think it is going to be huge. It's going to continue to have exponential growth. Thanks, man. I happen to agree. very very grateful to have you involved too and andy you guys are both awesome and uh yeah i mean just having your voices be a part of this and you have you each have your own personal stories with this plant right right and with other substances and um we have such like kind of a diversity of

backgrounds within the new brew family now um and you guys are really an amazing part of it so appreciate you getting involved i'm glad you liked the drink to begin with i mean that's how this all started yeah yeah thanks for having me on again man um really cool talking to you guys appreciate it strength is never a week this week this never strength catch you guys later bye