Pablo Torre Finds Out - The Ayahuasca Era: How Neal Brennan Finally Found Joy (and God)

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

For all of the Aaron Rodgers-ization of psychedelics, they remain revolutionary, and the co-creator of Chapelle's Show turned standup comic has the ultimate endorsement: Sure, Amazonian plant tea might make you cry for two hours after drinking it with Chris Rock. But ayahuasca is a mental-health medicine that will also help you fall in love and, you know, feel the presence of God. So relax about the throwing up. Fear not the toad venom, and embrace the white void before the Big Bang. Ignore the football players yammering about "ego death," and consider the possibilities of a road-to-Damascus experience. Or not. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. I only use these broad terms because I was in a white void before the Big Bang. Excuse me. Right after this ad. You're listening to Draft King's Network. I see a little Pablo, but he's in the corner. Oh.

You know what he is? There's my guy. This is full around the horn. Make me big. Yes. Am I centered? Or isish? Is my eye like it? Neil looks fantastic is what...

Thank you. Is what people here are saying. Many are saying that Neil looks fantastic. What else is now? Am I right, ladies? What are the people who bother Neil Brennan for interviews mostly want to talk to you about? Well, for a long time, it was Chappelle Show,

and then people said I talked about that too much, and then it was mental health. People said I talked about that too much, and now we're into the ayahuasca era. So pretty great. That should be the first comment, not this again. So Neil Brennan did co-create and co-write one of the greatest television shows of all time. We should reaffirm this.

You might actually remember him from his role alongside Dave Chappelle in their sketch about the blind black dude who did not know he was a white supremacist. Neil is also responsible, by the way, for one of my favorite Netflix stand-up specials, three mics, which I saw him perform live in New York in. 2016. Yeah, I was lucky enough to have dropped out. Because I realized early on that these student loans are basically small business loans and the business is you and you're maybe not such a great business. Look, if they call them small business loans, no 18 year old kid would ever get the loan because it's a bad idea for a business. If you had to go to the bank to the small business desk and ask me like, yeah, I'm going to need $150,000. They'd be like, all right, what's your business idea? All right, here's the idea.

For the next four years, I'm going to get blackout drunk. But also, I'm going to get a degree in sociology. But what Neil is here to discuss today is, in fact, his plant-based psychedelic era. Because the way sports always talks about ayahuasca is through Jets' quarterback and casual internet conspiracist, Aaron Rogers. As Rogers just informed Pat McAfee earlier this month. speak from my own experience. It was life-changing, has been life-changing, and it's going to be something that I look forward to doing in some form of fashion in soft-seating as well.

And so I figured it was time to commune with the person that I know who is most passionate and most experienced about this very subject. Pablo, you said something to me a long time ago that stuck with me. Well, it didn't stick with me then. Came back around. You needed a quote for like a LeBron article or something? or maybe deep background sometimes i do deep background

Neil Brennan the king of deep background and we did the phone call and you go all right just go back to the Neil Brennan lifestyle of comedy and sketches and great all a great life and I was like he doesn't know anything about my life and then I've recently come around to your your point of view on my life which is way a way better point of view on it Then you shouldn't often think about people's perception of you. But if it's better than your own, maybe there's something to it.

Yeah, you want to be the Neil Brennan that I've always imagined you to be. I finally accepted that. You are on the ayahuasca subject, by the way. The person I now know and genuinely like am curious about because you testify to the profundity of the, the change that it wrought upon your life in a real way? I testified about it in the court of Joe Rogan, the highest court in the land, of course. Imagine if God was real and you could get in front of God, but the only way to do it is to eat

mushrooms. He'd be like, wait, what? I would argue that's true. It might be. It sounds so crazy. But it might be. It's the only way. Now, the good thing is, it's in me now.

I have credibility in that I was a smug atheist. And now I'm not only, look, the smugness hasn't changed one bit, guys. But now I believe in a God based on my experiences with ayahuasca, which is like pretty significant. It's about the greatest endorsement one could give about profundity. That's possible. I agree. and now I would like to say before I say anything about it because you were you you I think you're

couching this in the in the Aaron Rogers under the Aaron Rogers umbrella and now we are. Yes but there's a thing in 12 step programs in AA and all the other ones that you don't say you're in them because if you say publicly I'm in AA and then you're people see you drunk they go well A doesn't work. A lot of this, don't listen to any of the spokespeople. Will Smith's been a spokes, you know, it's like people that have come out and said they did it. And then everything they do,

you go, well, that clearly doesn't work. So Aaron Rogers goes after Kimmel and you go, well, clearly this ayahuasca is not working. Don't credit or blame ayahuasca for anything, including my own conversion, my own road to Damascus experience. That's just mine. There are eight billion, people on Earth and there's going to be 8 billion different experiences around what we call the medicine. There it is. Yeah. I hope that you would start calling it the medicine.

Aya, yes, I call it Aya. You can't not once you've done it. You've been on a quest for something that long predates this specific medicine. So for people unfamiliar with your quest, with your Uvra, How would you have described your relationship with the concept of joy? So I have a type of depression or had a type of depression. Wink. Don't want to spoil it. Ponsal.

The called dysdiamia, which means you don't experience a lot of joy, if any. So I'm depressed and not the way you normally hear that. Like, I'm so depressed. Kobe retired. I mean, like I have clinical depression, the mood disorder, and I've had it for as long as I can remember. I think my brain, whereas most people have, you know, oxytocin and dopamine and serotonin,

I had a shortage of that. I had a lot of cortisol, so I, meaning I'm very harsh, I'm obsessed with justice and fairness, and I think it's a thing. thing you see in a good amount of people. So I would take SSRIs, which is a serotonin selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, which means serotonin, the little I have, get shot onto my brain plate, and the SSRI, Zoloft in this case, would leave it on the field longer before it would re-uptake it, right?

So that'll get you a slightly improved mood. But I just wasn't, I was like, there's got to be. something better, there's got to be something better. Did a thing called TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation, where I was, it's firing magnets, basically MRI magnets at a portion of your brain, did it in LA

seven years ago, did it in China right before COVID. Again, all slight improvements, but I felt like there was something better. And then somebody texted me an article about ayahuasca and was like, we should do this and we did it. and it has it's been transformational in terms of my overall mood and my kind of perception of most things I just have better values and I don't take things so literally and I'm just it's a better experience for me day to day.

We're talking about pandemic era. Yes. Experimentation. A lot of people bake bread. I drank an Amazonian plant medicine. With who, Neil? I want to be specific and transparent. I don't want to say with who.

You've said it before. Why are you not saying? I don't know, because it just seems, it just seems fishy. But can I say it? You got to say it, I can't stop you. But a comedian friend of mine sent me the thing. It was like, we should do this and we did it. Correct.

Correct. So it was Chris Rock. So listen, what I wanted to figure out, out with you, Neil, is that first time, okay? How immediately obvious was it that this was the thing that was the skeleton key that would somehow unlock whatever image you had, the vault behind which joy was kept from you? The first time I did it was like a private, like just at somebody's house and What I got felt like a sampler of the, of ayahuasca in general, meaning I got, I saw the speed with which my thoughts could go.

With mushrooms, you'll have like a 10 hilarious thoughts in a minute. Yes. And this was like 50. And I actually went like, wow, because it was like, rah, rah, rah. Then I cried for two hours. about groups of people. I'm not the most social guy, not more of an introvert,

something about like groups, people, it just felt like something tribal and it was really nice. And the cry was like pretty thick. It was like one of those things where like, how was this still happening? And then it was kind of over. It didn't feel like I had much of a spiritual breakthrough,

but it was very pleasant. I told somebody it's like, when you check it. to a hotel and there's an ad for the hotel on the monitor, like, welcome to the Bayside Hilton or whatever. It was like that but for ayahuasca. Like, welcome to ayahuasca. Here you're going to have a sense of tribalism and a thing that you've never felt in terms of connection to all of humanity. That's right.

Mario Lopez, by the way, still selling movies. No, he comes on after. Yeah, he comes on after. And by the way, always louder than you want it to be. When extras, playing, it's always louder than you want it to be and you can't find the remote. And when you do, you have some questions about why it's sticky. Now, that was the first time. So then did it another, then found somebody, found a ceremony in L.A. went, did it, you know, 30 people, more official, you know, more ceremony.

And didn't feel anything. drank it didn't feel anything on the first night so i said to the guy on the second night i'm like hey i could we need to kind of recalibrate because it's worked for me before and dida and then i drank i think a little more and bull's eye was like right there and i was experiencing a lot of joy like unbridled joy like grinning joy grinning hot face joy that you might experience on other medicines. Cops call them drugs. I call them medicine. And then I opened my eyes

at one point and I was like, oh, I'm in the presence of a God right now. It felt like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark when they opened the Ark, open the ark and the stuff flying around, it's not evil yet. It gets evil. Once it gets to the Nazis, I don't want to ruin a Redis of the Lost

art for people. Spoiler alert. The Nazis didn't get a connection to God. If you're, I'm spoiling it. I'm not going to say how they did. Neil Brennan got the connection. I actually got and I felt like, oh, I'm in the presence of a god right now. And pretty much since then, it hasn't, my belief hasn't wavered.

And again, it's not religious. It's not, I don't need you to not eat certain meats. You can sleep with whoever you want. You know, whatever you need to do, you go ahead and do it. But I personally believe that there's a central creation force based on the experience I had drinking ayahuasca, but it's carried itself through. I imagine it's incredibly difficult to fully articulate or intellectualize what it is that was the stimulus that sparked that specific central cosmic force that you now actually have conviction in. But what do you want people to know about that feeling?

such that we others may benefit from feeling it. I'm approaching it kind of from a place of self-interest, which is I would, it's given me not even the God part per se. I kind of believe my nervous system has been rerouted, which scientifically, ayahuasca, the studies, there haven't been a ton of studies, but the ones they have done, it is something called neurogenic, where it creates new brain cells, which is kind of the only substance that does that on earth other than this podcast.

And so I can't very well say you're a sucker if you don't believe it or you should or any of that stuff. And I don't need anyone to confirm it or deny it. It's like that's what happened. So I don't, it's a bit of a UFO thing. I don't need to like I know I was on a UFO. Like whether you believe it or the government, I don't care. Is it comforting? Like the feeling of this knowledge, this conviction, is that a comfort to you as the notion of joy or whatever you're requesting for is concerned?

It is. And it's really, it can be very scary. And which is kind of an unexpected thing. Like there's a, I feel like sometimes in movies when like a deity or whatever, a force, a person. peers or is experienced, people throw up. I get it. I get it because I'm like, boy, this is a lot. This is a lot to sort of think you think.

Because I can't say I know it. It's a lot. It's just that sometimes it's like, it's a lot. How much for you was their actual throwing up? Oh, yeah. People are always very concerned about throwing up. How many people threw up from alcohol last night? Just ballpark.

ballpark ballpark and just do america how people never say alcohol is that that stuff that makes you throw up but that's people's first question iwaska so i'm always like no you're thinking of alcohol that's the stuff that makes you throw up iwaska you my i've thrown up once in 15 times and that's because i drank too much you drank too much of the of the medicine yeah i drank too much iiwaska yeah yeah so i can't i but any other time i've never You crap your pants? No, I've never seen anyone do it. I've never, I've seen people throw up. It's not uncommon, but it's not guaranteed.

No judgment on the barf. Great. I am, though, curious about how you go from trip number two to three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, 15. So how does your quest continue such that you're like, this is a thing that I want as part of my actual upkeep. Yeah, because I was sort of the mind that I needed to solidify it, the sort of thing that had been revealed to me or opened up in me or however you want to say it. So that's kind of why I was doing it so much. And it was COVID.

I have nothing else going on. And it's a beauty. It's like somebody asked me, why do you do it so much? I'm like, because I get to meet God. Sorry. A lot of people go to Florida that much during COVID. Sorry, I got to meet God, you suckers. Antidepressants and SSRIs.

Where are you on that regimen after your ayahuasca journeys? You can't do them if you drink ayahuasca. So I've been off them for... Two years? Well, how in your brain do you distinguish between the mental health benefits and the existential sense you have of what you're here to do? So because I believe in God, is that affecting my mood? Or, or what is it?

What is my, my existential purpose? I don't think it's changed because I had a friend, my friend Bejanan and I, when he did it with me. He was like, are we going to be able to be capitalist after this? And like, I know what he meant. But yeah, I'm still a capitalist. Neil, are we about to be poor? No, I mean, that's, he was kind of, he was just kind of like, are we going to believe in

Western values? But the weird thing is, you do believe in them less. I do believe in them less as a guiding light. Like I think I'm I'm apt to want to grow every quarter less than I was before I was. I mean, it's like capitalism tells you like if you're not, did you make more money this quarter than the last quarter than you're a failure? Like I'm less on that. I still have a lot of it in me though.

But in terms of like my purpose, I don't think my purpose has changed other than ironically, I think one of my purposes is to have fun and be and have joy. That's one that I feel like I can actually accomplish a little bit. it. As in you now can believe with conviction that you're put on this planet to actually enjoy it. Yeah, I think that that's what my, a lot of my professional goals now are emotional, meaning I would like to just be pleasant and in a good mood most of the time. And like, well, what are you going to do for work? I don't know. Like if I, if it's like I could run a juice shop and be, obviously I'm invested in this competition I'm a part of. But I also am

I'm more concerned with and then how is it how am I going to feel right the competition is where I wanted to go next because this notion that again there is a mental processing speed at least during the experience of taking ayahuasca that was that was I guess mind blowing in all of the senses to what extent do you consider this a performance enhancing medicine let's call it iwaska didn't necessarily make me funny or DMT did but that's a whole other issue. That may be the next chapter or something. That's the thing called Bufo that I did once in New York.

Am I wrong when I say this is the toad-related thing? Yes, this is the toad. I believe this is the one that Mike Tyson talks about. It takes you to another level. There's nothing compared to this. The toad in the Sonora Desert and it has the venom in it. You smoke it. Once I tried it, boom.

My brain was still functioning. My thoughts. I could still talk to myself. I can hear my mind. And I was saying, I f f faked up. And I killed myself. I'm dying. It's really mind-blowing.

Five MEOD-M-O-D-M-T, Bufo-A-Ras, is what it's called, or just DMT. And so... Like a natural... It's a toad secretion, they dry it out, and you smoke it. It always seemed too severe to me.

It sounds severe, Neil. Yeah, it was too severe. So I didn't know that, though. I did know it, and then I forgot. I don't want to say it destroyed my brain. It was crazy. It was very crazy. And the experience was crazy.

And then I had a reactivation a week later. And that was the craziest thing I've ever experienced by a factor of a thousand. As in you were just going about your day and then you were back in it. It's like what they call it, what they used call an acid flashback. Right. This was like a DMT flashback or reactivation. So now I'm in life. And half of me is on DMT a little bit.

And the thing that they don't tell you, and I found out later, is that 7070% of people that smoke DMT, 5MEO DMT have a reactivation at some point. Some are short. Some are. Mine was not short. It opened something up in my mind. Again, it was like a God central creation force. What I believe is caveat, caveat caveat. It opened that up too much.

What did you see, though, Neil? What did you sort of encounter if you could verbalize what too much was? The actual experience, the 25 minutes or so, was I was in a white void. And it was what Michael Pollan, who wrote How to Change Her Mind. Yes, it's a great book. Yep. He spoke 5MEO DMT, and he described the place that he went to. And it was a perfect description when I read it afterward.

He went to Before the Big Bang. How's that? How's that sound? Does that sound comfortable? So I was there and I didn't know anything. I wasn't I. It was a first person experience,

but I didn't know breathing, sight, direction. I didn't know anything. It was a blank slate of my own comprehension of consciousness. Again, these are all very big. It was, I only use these broad terms because I was in a white void before the Big Bang.

Excuse me. That was like manageable, the 25 minutes. The reactivation is where it started to get crazy because I'm in my life. I'm walking around in the village. Yeah, where were you? I was in New York. I was doing blocks in New York. Yeah, your show, your last one man show.

Yes. my award-winning that place. Is your life going smoothly? Are you just floating from event to event feeling good about yourself? Because I'm not. So I'm there doing it, and I'd be walking down the stage to the show

going, why are steps? Like, just stuff that you're, it's like things that I would take for granted, I had to remind myself, like, no, you're a person in life. It was like real, back to basics. Fundamental chess pass,

bounce past life stuff. And yeah, and I at one point I thought am I in God's imagination? Just stuff that's not real helpful. But, but yeah, and it was hard. And it took me, what I thought it took

about seven or eight months to get through. And then it turned out, it didn't really end until an ayahuasca ceremony last March where I felt the door close that had been opened by DMT, like in my mind, sort of like a door closed. And I was like, I was in that, that whole time.

Like, I didn't realize. I thought it was over like a year and a half ago. And it turns out it was over like eight months ago. So it was, but now here's the upside. Funnier, more loving, sharper, honestly. Because the door got closed, you now have residual. No, once the door was open. I was better the whole time.

Oh. I was better the whole. Like I didn't, yeah, I thought the door was closed and I was better, but the door was still open and I was better. So I was better. Audiences like me more, just all intangibles. And somehow I was freer as a person. Something that I want to probe a bit is just the difference between your perception of something. and the actual thing you are perceiving.

Because what you're describing are seemingly benefits that you have noticed. And I'm wondering, how are you pressure testing these notions? How do you square that circle for yourself? Fallen in love more often, like literally, statistically. Fell in love twice the last year and a half. And the year and a half before that didn't fall in love at all. Maybe we blame the ladies. I'd like to blame me, my spirit.

The Big Bang. I get bigger laughs from crowds. I can tell. I never in my life ever felt like Bill Burr on stage before. And there were a few moments where I was on DMT and I was like, oh, this is what Burr must feel like on stage. The other way, though, to feel whether this is working in the way that you're imagining, of course, is to hear it from the people whose relationships you are now more open to or nurturing or how do the people around you, Neil, whether it's friends, family, your girlfriend, what do they say about you now?

They say, I mean, I had people that didn't know anything. They were like, what did you do? Like, that would just come off to me like, what did you do? Like, almost like I got surgery or something. I'm also just less angry in general, just less argumentative, just stuff that, again, I can't quantify per se. but I can tell you firsthand that people that know me well have been like, hmm.

What is different about you as a person in a relationship, a person in love? I don't want to win as badly. It's the thing of like, what am I trying to get to? And it's, I'm trying to get to like understanding and a piece and less recrimination and less

what am I guilty of? What are you guilty of? Because I'm Catholic. I'm Irish Catholic, you know, 10 kids, whatever. It's all combat. I don't know if you know anything about me, but I'm the youngest of 10 kids.

And I don't know if you know much about math or kids, but 10 kids is too many kids. Everything's combat. So this is, Scarce resources, conflict. Yeah, yeah. So and retribution and blame and self-pity and like all of these things that are like my currency are less, I just don't feel the need to do them.

The notion of how this intersects with therapy is something that I'm curious about too. Because I think a criticism from afar from people who have not dabbled in psychedelics or certainly done. I waska 15 times or the toad venom once. I think there is this suspicion that this feels like an attempt to get a shortcut. There is some shoots and laddersing past the work. Yes. And you are somebody, of course, who has gone to therapy. I don't know where you are in your therapy now, but how does this all fit together?

I used to hear that about medication. Right. And again, so what I would say is, all right, how? How's that Ozempic treating you? Like, you know what I mean? Like, I don't, why make, why the Judeo or the Protestant work ethic of like, you got to earn this? I didn't earn the problem.

Meaning the problem was either like abused into me. My parents were old when I got here. I'm the youngest. So they were in their 40s when I got here. They were from the, they were born in the 1930s. So they were from the, we did the best we could generation. If you criticize their parenting. anyway, they would just go, oh, we did the best we could.

And I felt like, really, that was the best you could? So, Dad, you'd get drunk, hit your kids and think to yourself, no, this is me and my best. Or humanity has real, just walking around issues from jump. You come out the shoot, you're conscious and you're like, why am I, why do I have a tick? It's not, so then it's you got to work to get rid of it. You didn't work to get it. It was just given to you.

So, and I went to therapy for 20 years. It was, and I used to yell at my therapist. I can't keep talking about this. It's in my body. I've done a lot of different kinds of therapy, and this is the one that's worked the best. It's not going to work for everybody. Some people are, it can also, it should be noted, have severely negative effects. So what, what do you know about those?

Do you know about those because they've happened to friends of your? because you've read about the negative effects. I've read about them significantly more than I haven't. I mean, my own DMT experience. Sounds pretty scary. You know, as much as everybody wants to open up the floodgates of like, it's a revolution and then there's certain MDMA studies, another thing that I've gotten a lot of benefit from, MDMA,

where like some of them are a little fishy. You know, some of the studies are a little, the cook in the books or the therapists aren't being appropriate and or with ayahuasca or mushrooms like some people have short-term bad experiences whether it's just it's too much they they're incredibly disoriented uh and then i think some people can you know quote lose their mind iwaska's not the most pleasant experience you're ever going to have meaning on the medicine it can be nauseating, it can be overwhelming, it can be psychologically difficult in terms of what you're experiencing, just in terms of even dealing with a central creation force in my own experience,

it's a lot to go inside the fabric of humanity and consciousness. It's not the easiest thing you can do on a weekend. Now, I don't think it makes me a hero for doing it because there's a ton of upside and I am kind of pre-as-posed to be interested in it. But it's not easy. It's not a party. What does the concept of ego death mean here, Neil?

Because I've heard that term. Aaron Rogers has said it. And I'm curious because ego, of course, when it comes to anybody who works in the spotlight in public, you know, I remember hearing you say this, or reading about you saying it, but the notion that, like, reviews of, you co-wrote half-baked with Dave Chappelle.

And reviews were so scathing that that helped push you towards antidepressants. I don't know if that's the Western, crucible in terms of what someone in any business has to deal with, of, like, I don't want any external. I don't need any external validation. We're social animals.

I don't think you're honest if you say you don't need external validation. You don't want your mom to love you? That's external validation. You don't want your husband. It's like it's all your brother, sisters, community, respect. I think it's dishonest to say that we don't, a person doesn't need external validation. In terms of ego death, that's not something I've experienced. I've gotten, DMT flattened me to the point where.

where I was like, I don't know what's happening, that's pretty close to, I mean, it, it, I don't know if it's ego death, but it makes ego totally irrelevant because your priorities change to like, I would just like to kind of understand what steps are intuitively. And so I haven't experienced ego death. I have experienced a reorientation in terms of values. But again, that's just me. I also think it's a lot of it's just people talking, meaning ego death.

One person says ego death and then everyone wants to say it. It's like a new term. It's like trauma or toxic or anything. It just becomes a cool thing. Any of it. So like, ego, I don't know. It sounds cool. If you say I had an ego death, you're kind of saying like,

So I'm pretty much set in terms of personal behavior because it's not comfortable of a ego because it died. So I'm going to do everything I want from here on out. And it's going to be justifiable to me. And it's going to make you doubt, doubt. When you think I'm wrong, you're going to be like, but he had an ego debt. So I almost don't trust anything people say, including myself about it. I wonder about the placebo effect.

I think it's one of those fascinating concepts that exists. Yep. This notion that we don't fully understand how this works. The black box. But somehow our brain, if persuaded of something, can actually enact that something in the absence of actually the literal something that is imagined.

I suppose what's so encouraging, listening to you, sort through your own self-scouting report, is you have a conviction that this is making your life better. And in the end, whether this is the venom of a toad or the sacred substance that is drawn from... It's a vine that they basically just make tea.

Yeah, that's ayahuasca. Or a sugar pill. Yeah. I would like everybody to feel better if it actually means you're better. Yes. I would like that as well. I'm of the mind that if there's a revolution coming with

psilocybin and ayahuasca and all that stuff that a lot, a lot, a lot of people are going to get help. And some people are going to get very harmed. Now, for, for, For mushrooms, for example, a couple months ago, guys on mushrooms rushes the cockpit. Following breaking news, I know you're following this on an off-duty pilot accused of trying to turn off the engines mid-flight during an Alaska Airlines flight over the weekend. I know we have new documents.

What have we learned? This story just took a bizarre turn, Kate. A new federal complaint says that this off-duty pilot, Joseph Emerson, may have been taking psychedelic mushrooms. Right. If that plane crashes, this revolution's over. It's over. It's a hard thing to spin for the mushroom lobby.

Yes. And but also the fact the guy hadn't slept in two days. No one's going to say we need to mandate sleep. They're going to say we need to mandate an absolute prohibition on mushrooms. So I'm, I'm with you. And as someone who's done it a number of times, I don't know if it would help you. I can't guarantee any. outcome.

It's just a thing that I felt, and again, they say like, felt called to do. I don't know. Chris sends me the text. I'm like, all right. Like, I can figure this out. But in terms of like, was it divine and was it, that stuff, I have no idea. Like, I think to even think you know is your line or so. It's ego death.

So it's an ego. It's from the, from the people who brought you ego death. I was called. I do think it's funny, though, how preemptive all of us who are in favor of people getting help and the science and really the law catching up to the science and the science catching up to the spirituality. Whoever's in favor of all of that, we must be, I consider myself in that population is why I'm having you on the show. I like how preemptive we all are about the ways that this politically can just crash into a ditch. Because you started this whole conversation by pointing out, you may be aware, listener, that Chris Rock and Will Smith have both enjoyed ayahuasca.

You may remember them from such scenes as the time one of them slapped the other in a way that felt like the ego is very much alive. Yeah. And with the Aaron Rogers thing, Aaron Rogers now the face of this. Yes. I wonder what you, Neil Brennan, if I were to appoint, point you, political strategist for the thing that we're here to talk about, ayahuasca, more than any of the other psychedelics. Yes.

Who would you want in the commercial? Which person do you think is most persuasive to a larger population of people as to the very notions that you're describing? Of course, it's the rock. But in some ways, there is something so private and person. about it even with in terms of Chris Will and Aaron Rogers like I don't I don't even know if I should talk about it meaning like I don't know if I'm a good spokesman or if I'm painting a picture or if I should paint any picture whatsoever like I don't know

because in some ways it is as personal as a religion like meaning who am I to tell you about it Right. My Catholicism is not yours. We can practice. Eat at the buffet of spirituality quite differently under the same restaurant name. Yeah. And people don't even read the Bible the same way. You know, like there are, there is no book and there is no, like, read. There's no, there's nothing. There's just like you just try it. And it might, it might change your life significantly. you would though like the rock to be sent to a time before the big bang well i feel like he's there most of the time anyway um a time before summer slam um the uh the yeah no i again the rock's the or kevin heart one of the one of the other what i am marveling at is that there is a certain clarity i'm not going to psychoanalyze you through the zoom screen um but i do notice that there's a certain clarity that makes me wonder about the stuff that you used to say about your,

I won't call them previous with knowledge, but at the very least, your pre-existing anxieties and neuroses. I remember in one of your specials, in three mics, you talk about how you used to carry an index card around so that you could feel better about yourself. To say I have low self-esteem is not true. I have no self-esteem. I don't have the architecture for good feelings. you give me a trophy, it'll just slide right down.

Like, I just don't have the shelving. In fact, I used to have to carry around an index card of funny things I'd written or said or directed just to try to remind myself that I was okay. I'm still doing that, but it's totally different. Now I do it. You want to know why? And I do this.

I started doing this like a month ago. I do a fact check of my life out of gratitude. to the thing that you said earlier, like go back to the Neil Brown. I have to remind myself because my brain will still try to tell me despite all the I-A-WASC I've drank that things are,

people are out to get me or people don't respect me or did it all the stuff, all just in the negative, the negative feedback loop. So I'm, I still do that. I do it four times a day. I just check in like a reality check of like, no this is what's happening that was it was really touch and go back then in terms of um uh self-esteem now it's the thing i do now is more just to like sweep just to sweep any sort

of lingering like nope get out no no no no get out of here get out no no no no no no my girlfriend said it's like cats in a deli like where i'm just like cats in i'm like no no no no no go That's basically what I'm doing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's part of the thing when I do my reality checks where I go like, you have this. Stop it. Stop.

I'm like hallucinating enemies and hardships. I have no problems. I have no real problems. Did you watch that Beyond Utopia, North Korea documentary? No. It's about people escaping North Korea kind of in a real problem. real time on and they have a handheld video it's like you i don't have a real problem i don't have problems there's a world war two thing on netflix and you go i think this i have problems

the russians are eating their own horses i don't have problems someone not responding to my text is not a problem so so i don't know if that's iwaska gave me that or i came to it on my own We'll never know, guys. It's all far too late. Neil Brennan, I just want to say thank you for being the Neil Brennan finally that I've always imagined. I'm finally living your dream. That's right. Pablo's American dream right after this.

So as I sit here at my keyboard wondering what it is that I found out today, I realize that I have fallen short of my mission here. Because I'm supposed to find out all I can about ayahuasca. And I could have done ayahuasca. I could have done DMT. I could have better explained all of this to you. But I didn't, and I'm sorry. Because for all of the Aaron Rogersization of psychedelics,

I do believe they are actually revolutionary. Ayahuasca is legitimately on my to-do list at some point. Neil even said that he would consider joining me. But in the meantime, in an attempt to just better convey what the experience might actually feel like, which is hard to describe, what Neil did instead was text me a link to a song. A song that is incredibly difficult to categorize itself. But it is a song that to him resembles how ayahuasca feels. And so at the end here, I just hope that you can join me in closing your eyes

and sitting down somewhere and enjoying the song playing inside Neil Brennan's head. This has been Pablo Torre finds out, a Metal Arc Media production and I'll talk to you next time.