TrueLife - Anders Beatty - Iboga: Escape the Healing Industrial Complex
Episode Date: June 12, 2025One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psych...edelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Anders BeattyTonight, we tear back the curtain and torch the altar of the false gods.Because the sacred has been sold.The medicine commodified.The healing — haggled like cheap incense in a back-alley bazaar of white coats and stock options.But not here. Not now.If Alan Watts were here, high as heaven and laughing through eternity,he’d be standing next to Blake, eyes aflame with angels and anarchy,and Alfred North Whitehead, nodding solemnly,watching reality bend and pulse beneath the weight of unspoken truths.They’d speak of a man like Anders Beatty.Not a practitioner.A myth in motion.A survivor of the abyss who returned not to lecture —but to liberate.He didn’t read about healing.He bled for it.He took the poison, met the ghosts,and came back with fire in his chest.Anders doesn’t speak the language of pharma boardrooms or TED Talks.He speaks in stories, in scars, in the tremble of soul before rebirth.He is what happens when integrity survives the inferno.And now — the same forces that peddle wellness like toothpasteare circling the last true sacraments.Ibogaine — fierce, ancient, untamed —is being dragged toward the chopping block of scalability.But Anders stands as a living shield,saying: Not this one. Not this time.He’s here to remind us:healing was never meant to be scalable.The sacred was never meant to be safe.And medicine was never meant to kneel to margin calls.So tonight —Forget the guidelines. Burn the frameworks.This isn’t a podcast.This is a war chant for the soul.This is prophecy with blood on its hands.Welcome to the fire.Welcome Anders Beatty.Anders Beatty ibogaine coach talks about preparing for a monomythic ...https://awake.net › rsvp One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg
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Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft.
I roar at the void.
This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate.
The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel.
Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights.
The scars my key, hermetic and stark.
To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear.
Fearist through ruins maze lights my war cry born from the blaze.
The poem is Angels with Rifles.
The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini.
Check out the entire song at the end of the cast.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast.
I hope everybody's having a beautiful day, a beautiful morning, an afternoon.
It tends to be evening where I am right now.
So I hope the birds are singing, hope the sun is shining, hope the wind is at your back.
A remembrance for those finding their way back.
A remembrance of who we were before the world got its hands on us.
Before shame grew roots in our chests.
Before we learned that being ourselves was somehow too much and never enough all at once.
We were wild then, wide-eyed and whole, dreaming and
color, singing without knowing how to hide the sound. But slowly, we were taught to dim to fold
ourselves into shapes that didn't fit, to wear masks heavy with expectation and tradition,
to call pain, strength, and silence grace. And so we disappeared bit by bit, trading freedom for approval,
trading joy for the numb ache of belonging until the ache became too loud. So we
We reached for pills, for powder, for bottles, for blades, for anything that could hold us when no one else knew how to.
And we did not know how to softly hold ourselves.
They called it addiction and lack, but they didn't see the root.
They didn't see the small child who learned that crying made others leave,
who learned that truth was dangerous and softness, a threat.
We weren't trying to escape life.
We were trying to survive it,
trying to quiet the thoughts that screamed too loud in the dark,
trying to forget the people we became to please everyone but ourselves.
We lost years to the fog, forgot our own names in the mirror.
We learned how to function while falling apart,
how to smile while dying slowly inside.
But still, somehow, a flicker, a spark,
a whisper, burning like an ember in the depths.
This is not who you are.
And so we began the hardest thing.
The turning inward.
The facing of shadows with compassion.
The peeling back of pain with curiosity, layer by tender layer.
Recovery is not clean, but still an embrace.
It is bloody and beautiful and must be reverential.
It is mourning who we could have been,
while fighting for who we still can be.
It is relearning softness, re-learning trust, reclaiming a body we tried to abandon, forgiving
a mind that only wanted peace.
It is remembering who we were before the world got its hand on us, before we learned to hate
ourselves for what was done to us, before we made all their pain, our pain.
We are unbecoming to become not just healing but rising, not just surviving, but living,
We are not broken.
We are excavating, uncovering, peeling back each hide that covers the soul.
Breath by painful breath, we take ourselves back.
This is not rebellion.
This is resurrection.
This is the holy act of remembering that we were always worthy, even in the dark, even in the mess, even when we forgot.
And now we remember.
Ladies and gentlemen, Anders Beattie.
home, my friend. I had to take a knee the first time I read it, man. I'm so thankful you shared it
with me. Thank you for that. My pleasure. And what a pleasure it is to be here and shoot the
breeze and talk all things, plant medicines and I begin and resurrections. Yeah, it truly is.
You and I had a really cool discussion, like the first sort of check-in. And, you know, we got this
event coming up called Iboga Saves. And thanks for, thanks to Lakshmi for putting it on. And the Iboga Saves
the event is going to be huge. There's a lot of great speakers there, but let me just jump in this,
man, and Bogga, what do you got, man? How did you get involved in this place, man?
Well, I mean, my origin story around that, I found myself in a really desperate place by the time
that's 45, where two decades and a half of using an addiction to stimulants, Coke, followed by
crack had created a paradigm where I no longer knew who I was. And I was a bubbling, snotty mess of
emotions lying on a bedroom floor, not knowing who I was and hating every part of me.
You know, my addiction had really taken me to a place where I no longer recognized myself.
And I'd been through every detox and every rehab and every geographic.
you could imagine in order to try and find myself or to return to myself. And nothing had worked.
And somehow Ibe game came into my vision and in desperation. And it was truly desperation.
And I went and did Ibe game with this incredible provider called Paul Featherstone.
And I did the Ibegame and it gave me authority.
and sovereignty and ownership of not only my recovery,
but for the reasons why I entered into addiction.
And it gave me the opportunity to kind of forgive myself
and see that, you know, it wasn't a moral failing of some type or another.
It was that I had been conditioned into shapes that I didn't feel comfortable in.
And, you know, the reality is, George, that, you know, addiction is,
if you really want to define addiction into a really, really, really simple term,
addiction is self-medicating against a profound sense of inauthenticity.
People who use, they are using because they don't know who the fuck they are.
They feel uncomfortable within their own skins.
So for me, I think the whole point of, you know, a good addiction.
Yeah.
Recovery is finding out who you are and finding.
out why you're in pain and actually tending and caring and parenting for that part of your
psyche that is in profound pain not denying it not subjugating it not burying it and not
medicating it which is what we are taught to do in traditional rehabs essentially you know
we need to turn you into this shape that shape will stick you down here and you'll be fine just do
what we fucking well tell you to do.
And so, you know, I think it's, I began as extraordinary.
It gives you the opportunity to find out who you were before the world got its hands on.
Yeah, it's so, it's so well put.
You know, I, so often, and so often to me, I think we suffer from a lack of humility.
You know what I mean?
There's this whole system around us that just that just tries to shape us into this idea.
And it starts at such a young age.
Like we're given these labels and these ideas of what we can be.
But most of us don't fit in those labels.
Most of us don't fit in that area.
And we begin to think there's something wrong with us because we don't fit into a society that is sick.
Like the society around us is ill, man.
That has to be, at least for me, that has to be the roots of so much despair out there.
is the society that tells us all these things.
What are your thoughts on that?
Well, absolutely.
I mean, I'm going to go straight to an amazing quote by Francis Wheeler.
Love it.
And this is what said.
We were not meant to live shallow lives pocked by meaningless routines
and the secondary satisfactions of happy hour.
We are the inheritors of an amazing lineage,
rippling with memories of life lived intimately with bison and good.
Razzle, Raven at Night Sky. We are designed to encounter this life with amazement and wonder,
not resignation and endurance. This is at the very heart of our grief and sorrow. The dream of
full-throated living woven into our very being has often been forgotten, neglected, replaced by
a societal fiction of productivity and material gain. No wonder we seek distractions. Every sorrow
we carry extends from the absence of what we require to stay engaged in this one wild and precious
life. I suppose at the end of the day, a good Ibegain treatment is about deconditioning you
from your cultural, societal, familial, religious and educational ties in many ways,
those narratives that have been placed upon you, the expectations, the traditions, is to decon
construct them. And in doing so, what you're doing is creating space. And the space that you create
allows your actualizing self to emerge. You've taken it out of prison. You've removed the
bondages. And you've opened the door. And I think, you know, for me,
finding out who you are on your terms, deconstructing those cultural and societal narratives,
finding out who you are on your terms is the most profound act of healthy rebellion out there.
And what it does, it gives you an emotional, spiritual freedom just allows you to be.
And you know, as we said before, you know, people are self-medicating against a profound sense of inauthenticity.
Well, if you deconstruct all of those things and find out who you are underneath it all,
life can be and is just extraordinary.
But it requires the balls to have sovereignty and take ownership and look at those narratives and face your fears and deconstruct the ego.
And yeah, I mean, I began.
I think it not only takes you out of active addiction very, very quickly,
but it also kind of gives you a roadmap as to find, as to how to find your soul.
You know, many people talk about I began being the equivalent of 10 years of therapy and one night.
I actually don't know a therapeutic practice or anybody as a therapist, and that's what I am by training,
who could do
who could open somebody up
to their potential
in such a profound way
as Ibe game does
yeah
the act of courage it takes
you know
I think it takes
sometimes it takes 40 years
it did for me
for me it took 47 years
to get to a point
where I finally had the balls
to say not now
I'm fucking done with it
this is bullshit
I'm not doing it anymore
and you got to put
everything wrong in time. You know, and maybe that's why we have such addiction is that like,
it's, it's a scary process. It's an initiation. It's an ordeal. And you can't get to who you are
unless you go through that ordeal for some of it. What do you thoughts? I think, yeah,
and I think there's this thing that we're expected to play roles in order to defund ourselves.
And, you know, me, I played, you know, several roles before I got to a place where I could recover.
you know i put on the i put on the costume of a professional soldier yeah okay all right crazy and then i i played the
role of somebody who worked within journalism because i thought that was cool and then i played this role
and i played that role and i i played this role and you know eventually at the age of 45 46
i went to the dressing up box in order to redefine myself again and it was fucking into
and it's kind of like,
I shit, now I'm
going to have to do the work, now I'm going to
have to look at myself, I'm naked
on stage with an arc like
shining on me. And I think
you know, some people are very, very,
very, very lucky. They get
that looking for
external
approval. And that's
the problem. I mean,
I want to go back. Young Pueblo
came out with this amazing quote.
I can't say it.
verbatim, but I'll give you a necessary support.
Yeah.
The only thing I've ever been truly addicted to is filling the void I feel in my chest with anything other than self-love.
And so for me, when clients come in and they're talking about addiction, I am not interested in their drug use because that's not the problem.
That's the symptom of the problem.
The problem is the void.
And so I'm more interested in why the void, why the emptiness.
And what happens invariably is as children, if we're growing up in an environment that is somehow difficult or tough.
And I'm not just talking about, you know, parental coldness or, you know, helicopter parents or the divorce.
This could be at a cultural societal and educational level, yeah, very nuanced and very subtle.
But what we do is go, well, I'm not going to be loved if I behave like this.
Or I can't show that I'm frightened and vulnerable and sensitive.
So I'm going to pretend to be something else.
It's an adaptive response for children to do that.
They are able to play a role in order to fit into the environment they're in.
And if you are playing a role, we're going back to the dressing up box at such an early age,
you have to deny a part of yourself in order to play that role.
I can't be sensitive.
I can't be vulnerable.
So you deny that part.
And that's what creates the void.
Yeah.
And then as you get older, you think, oh, I'm feeling just, I don't know who I am.
I'm lost.
I'm feeling a bit inauthentic.
Yeah.
If I go out with that girl, I'll feel better.
Yeah.
If I buy this car, I'll feel better.
If I take on this job, I'll feel better.
Oh, if I have a line of Charlie, I'll feel better.
Can't eat.
Yeah.
If I break the skin with a needle, I'll feel better.
So what we're doing on the whole time is looking externally for the fix.
We're looking externally for the fix to fill the void.
And the beauty of doing something like I began is that you stop looking externally for the fix.
And you start to look internally.
And the internal journey is about seeing.
and hearing and acknowledging and respecting that part of you that you hid many years before
because that part of you is the part that is sending up the signal saying I'm not being seen
I'm not being heard I'm not being acknowledged well fuck you I need to survive I need nourishment
I'm going to get it from those external things and that's what drives the addiction
but the reality is we're still not seeing them we're still not hearing them
we're still not acknowledging them.
So this is why I feel that addiction, you know,
progresses in the way it does,
because every time we try to fix that part of us,
which is in pain,
actually what we're doing is adding fuel to the fire
because we're still not really seeing it.
The damage, the pain body or the inner traumatized child,
what it wants, it needs to be parented,
and it needs to be loved.
That's how you mend yourself
is to be available for the part of you that's in pain,
to understand the part of you that's in pain,
to be compassionate to the part of you that's in pain.
So when you act up and you behave appallingly somehow
and you've embodied that pain,
if we can get to a stage and go,
oh, well, rather than go,
oh, no, I've behaved like this or whatever,
But if we can get to a stage where, oh, well, that part of me got triggered and why.
And well, of course it would.
You know, of course it would be upset.
To have that compassion to yourself, to that part of your psychic, that's where the real healing begins.
And I think that's what I Begain does in a very, very, very special way.
It presents you with a truth, but a compassionate truth.
I hope I'm making sense here.
Man, hitting home right.
right there you know and i i want i want to talk about your experience with ibo gain in the experience
of it when i spoke i've spoken to some really cool people i've spoken to uh dr deborah mash uh
patrick and michelle fishley of course lachshmi and some really cool individuals out there and one of
the things that i hang on to that they say is that ibo gain shows you you shows you you but the
way they've explained it to me anders is that sometimes you always you always you always you always
have visions that aren't visions, they're visceral people being there. Maybe the trauma that you
had with your mom, your dad, someone that abused you, you get to see them in real time and have a
conversation with them. Is that sound like I'm sounding like you really? What are your thoughts?
Yeah, I mean, we've got to be very careful about that. I think I think I Began gives you
what you need rather than what you want. Well said. We've noticed that 70% of people get full
visions, 20% get partial visions and 10% get no visions at all.
Sometimes my belief is that the IBE gain has to work on the addiction in such a
powerful way.
It's just getting it out and it doesn't give you that visionary aspect.
It's working too hard in other areas.
But certainly, I can give you an extraordinary story and I hope I don't cry when I tell you.
But I mean, this is my my eye beginning saying, you know, at the end of my using, as I said before, you know, I got to a place where I didn't recognize myself.
And the despair and the shame and the self-hate was beyond anything.
I mean, it was horror.
And I'm in a room using and the walls are coming in on me and the ceiling's coming down on me.
and I'm smoking crack and I'm in a horrible, horrible place.
And the more I look at my situation, the more painful it becomes.
And the more painful it becomes the only way that I know to take the pain away temporary
is to go back on the very thing that is causing that.
And I was able to kind of hide my using from my loved ones as much as I possibly could.
So I'd gone into that kind of latter stage isolation that was.
addicts too. But the thing
really disturbed me was that I kept having this idea that my
grandparents were looking down from heaven at me going, oh my God,
what has happened to our bloodline? This is appalling.
And that shame kind of was just so visceral
and so horrible. And so I take I
Ibogaine and one of the first visions I see are my grandparents.
and it's both sets from my mother's side and my father's side.
And they're dressed up in their Sunday best.
They've got little Trilby hats on and their gold watches.
They're looking elegant.
They're looking beautiful.
And I'm the observer of this.
And I'm thinking, ah, that's my grandparents.
And they look amazing.
I wonder who they're going to meet.
They must be on a way to a wedding or meet the Lord Mayor.
And actually, they've come to meet me.
and I can feel it now.
And I'm in front of my grandfather
and that whole shame and guilt
about who I'd become becomes really full on with me.
They're standing in front of me.
And I'm thinking of myself,
oh my God, I just have to apologize.
I have to just plead for their forgiveness
for what I've become.
And I fell to my knees.
and I'm just about to say I am so sorry and my grandfather's hand comes out.
It ruffles my hair and he goes, you've done nothing wrong.
Don't worry. Thank you for doing the work in your lifetime which we weren't able to do in ours.
And yeah, at that moment I was able to put down a rucksack of shame that I'd been carrying from a very, very, very, very
early age for the first time. And it helped me understand that maybe a lot of the trauma that I had
been carrying was not my trauma, but was my father's trauma and my grandfather's trauma and my great
grandfather's trauma. And I had this idea that suddenly I was the chosen one in the line and I was
doing the work and it made me feel really good about myself. And it also helped me realign what my
addiction was. But maybe my addiction was the vehicle that brought me to a place where I could do
this work. And so for me, that that was extraordinarily powerful, but, you know, my grandparents
came into my Ibegain journey, not only forgave me, but encouraged me to continue the work
that I was doing. And that was extraordinary. And I don't think there's, you know, that's kind of like,
that's really 25 years of therapy.
P in in 30 seconds. I mean, it was extraordinary, George.
So that that was another and I suppose another very, very, very powerful I begin journey I had was I went and did Iboga.
Now, that's an amazing medicine. You know, that's something beyond Ibegain. And I'm a great believer.
I began as fantastic for getting people out of addiction.
And I-Boga is just nothing quite like it
from when you're going to do the psychospiritual work,
the further work, the depth psychology.
And I did I-Boga, and I lay down,
and suddenly this voice came on.
And he said, you know, what the fuck are you doing you?
You thought, why are you a piece of shit?
You shouldn't be doing I-Boger.
And why are you doing therapy with people?
You're no good.
You're five seconds away from relapse.
You're a piece of shit.
And I'm thinking, oh, my God.
I began presents you with truth.
It tells you the truth.
And it's attacking me.
Oh, my God, I must be a massive piece of shit.
I must be horrible.
And this voice kept attacking me.
And it kept bringing me down.
And I'm there thinking, my God, you know, the Iboga, actually,
it's made an exception to me.
I am such an awful person, such a horrible person, but it's made an exception.
And this voice went on and it derailed me and it castigated me and it criticized me.
And it brought me down in such an incredible level that actually at one point during the ceremony,
I could feel when the voice was about to attack me.
And I was putting myself into a little ball in order to protect myself.
and when the voice started attacking me, I was literally just shaking.
It was just horrific.
And then I made the epiphany.
It wasn't the Ibegain talking to me or the Iboga talking to me.
The Iboga was showing me how I talk to myself.
And, you know, it became so deeply inured me and so normalized that I actually didn't
recognize how negative I was towards myself.
And I made that epiphany.
And in the moment, and I made that epiphany, the I bogus said, oh, fantastic, I'm going to take you on a joyride of the universe.
And I was going down wormholes and I was doing this and I was doing that.
And then it said to me, kind of, do you want to see the cradle?
Do you want to see God?
Do you want to understand everything?
I was kind of like, oh, my God, I've done all the work.
And my ego got in there.
And I went down this wormhole and there's the light at the end.
end of it, there's all knowledge, there's no all understanding, there is God on the other side of
that veil. And just as I get to the veil, a field comes into vision like the A team did. You know,
when the 18, when they changed screen? Yeah, totally. A big slide. Yeah. And every time,
and this happened about 10 times, I'm just about to meet God in this fucking field comes into
vision. And I'm just really, really disappointed by the whole thing. I'm thinking I,
Bogas being tricking me.
And I suppose about five or six years later, about six o'clock in the morning, I'm driving
to my parents. And I look to my left and it's a July morning and the sun is coming up and I
see a field with mist and crows flying over and it is the field from my vision.
Wow.
And so I stopped the car and I got out.
I looked over this field and in that moment, I understood what is.
I began was saying to me, saying if you want to feel spirituality, if you want to feel God,
open your eyes, it's all around you. Look at this field. And in that moment, then, you know,
that that was extraordinarily powerful that not only, you know, I'd never seen this field in my
life before, but it was the field from my vision. And so, you know, that that was a kind of
an epiphany that came together five or six years later after the ibegain journey so this this medicine is
extraordinarily powerful but these are my trips george they're not anybody else's everybody's
everybody's relationship to ibegain or iboga is completely unique to them and i want to say that
ibegain never ever ever really gives you what you want to
want, it will always give you what you need.
And often we don't know what we want or know what we need.
We get too confused.
So, yeah, so, and you know, I think, yeah, those are a couple of the visions I've had, personally.
I don't think it would be appropriate for me to talk about other people's visions.
But, yeah, I Bogor and Ibegain.
It is the most extraordinary powerful medicine you could ever imagine.
Many people believe it actually to be the tree of knowledge from the parable of Adam and Eve.
I'm almost at a loss for words.
Like so much of what you have explained in those visions, I think speaks to the heart of, you know,
the difference between want and need.
And we don't know what we want or what we need.
and we find ourselves fumbling through this life just trying to make sense of it all.
And I think it's because, yeah, go ahead.
And I think that's a really valid thing.
Maybe what our wants are are more often based on our conditioning.
And our conditioning is more than not false.
It's not what we want.
It's what we think we want.
And our needs just tend to be more natural, more simple.
You know, I'm big on talking about something I called the minutiae in recovery.
And the minutiae is the glue that holds all healing and recovery together.
And the minutiae is just getting up early in the morning and buying flowers for your apartment
and making fresh coffee and exchanging bad ritual for good ritual
and doing the simple things really well, remembering to hold your wife's hands
when you're walking, remembering to give your children a kiss before they go to school.
That's the minutiae, keeping your car clean.
It's doing those simple things really well.
It's not about holotropic breathing and meditation and yoga.
They are all fantastic.
But if you're not doing the minutiaeigh properly, yeah, they're meaningless.
And this brings us back to the dressing up box.
Okay.
We were talking about earlier.
Yeah. There is a threat with people who do IBM and IBOGA, but they take the medicine and then you're kind of phoning them up and two months later and how's it going?
Everything's great, man. I'm running three kilometers a day. I've been two hours of meditation. I'm doing yoga. I'm doing Tai Chi. And you're thinking, shit, this is going to be a train crash. They've gone to the dressing up box and they've taken out the costume of a spiritual Leviathan.
this is inauthentic you know the authentic recovery is about doing the simple things really well
the yoga the meditation the holotropic breathing are all add-ons to the minutiae does that make sense
to you yeah without a doubt without a doubt i mean actually we were talking about this because this is very
much the southern californian mindset is to play the role of a you know a
spiritual leviathan, you know, I, I've got, I read goop.
So yeah, I mean, for me, it's, it's, you know, the healing comes in having your friends
over for dinner, cooking from scratch, buying flowers for the house, going for walks,
having a great cup of coffee, making love. That's what, that's really where the healing is,
because what then you're doing is embracing life again.
You're not playing a role within life.
You're actually available for it.
And I think this is the big secret to good recovery.
If you look at the NAAAA 12-step paradigm where you go in and they say to you,
well, George, you're an addict.
And you're going to be an addict for the rest of your life.
You have to label yourself that until you're dying breath.
And by the way, you're diseased.
And by the way, you are not trusted by any.
by culture, by society, by your friends, by your family, you are not trusted.
And we don't trust you.
And we don't trust you to the extent, but we're going to give you a sponsor.
And this sponsor is going to help modulate your thinking.
And your thinking is going to be based on our 12 steps and our 12 traditions,
which if you don't attach to, you're going to end up in jail, institution or dead.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
And by the way, you better be fucking grateful for what we're giving you.
Double bind.
Yeah.
Well, surely this is the same type of trauma, fear-led trauma that led us into addiction in the first place.
It's the same narratives that turned us into something inauthentic to begin with.
Okay.
So for me, the real healing is about embracing life, not being in fear of life, not being in fear of yourself,
but actually being available for yourself and being available for life.
And so, you know, the great thing about Ibigen, it allows you to start eating off the smorgasbord of life again to embrace it, to be available for it.
That is where healing is. Healing doesn't occur in a pool of fear. Healing occurs in a pool of embracing, of compassion, of love, of being available, of just being, not seeking.
Just being.
And so, you know, that's what worries me about, you know, the paradigm and the commercialization of Ibegain and, you know, big farmer getting involved and psychologists and psychiatrists and putting it through governmental institutions and things like that.
It's still, it's going to be fear-based.
I can guarantee it.
it's going to be people feeling pathologized and prodded and poked and being put through the mill,
put through the sausage factory in some way, where people who have never been an addiction
are taking control of your recovery in some way.
Yeah. So that kind of worries me and that's why I'm more attracted to the underground and
working in the grey areas because, you know, at some level I think that the people who were working there are working
there for the right reasons. They're working there because they want to see people heal.
Yeah. You know, we spoke earlier before this conversation about how much of the seeking is part
of the medicine, like looking for the answer, looking for the right people, you know, looking for
something that there's that old quote that says what you're seeking is seeking you, but maybe you could
speak to the idea of seeking as part of the journey, maybe the most important part. Yeah, I think that, you know,
the Joseph Campbell-esque monomithic journey, I think it's really important to understand that.
The first thing I want to say is Ibegain and Iboga does not heal you.
It doesn't do that.
It is tall in healing yourself.
And I think that's the most important mindset that we need to end up within a client,
is that they are not going to go to Ibegan and then suddenly wake up with George Clooney
and their life is going to be fine and wonderful.
and thinking about they're going to wake up as themselves they have to make a choice as
whether they want to heal themselves yep and if they want to heal themselves then people like me
and talking to you and getting involved with a wake which is laxonies gig and all of that thing
that's about taking authorship and sovereignty and ownership of your healing and ibegain and other
things within that are part of that process now within a
cultural paradigm, people just kind of like, oh, I'm bit fucked up. I'm going to go to the doctor and he's
going to give me some medicine and that's going to heal me. Right. It's not, that's looking for
a fix. Yeah. Yeah. I begin it's not about a quick fix. It's about doing the work. And it's
about seeking. And so for me, you know, if I get clients from Europe, I'd like to send them to
Costa Rica or Mexico and if I get clients from North America, I like to send them to South Africa or to
Central America because what I want to do is I want them to work for their recovery. I want them to
travel for their recovery. I want it to become a right. I want them to understand that you have to
walk through certain fires in order to add meaning and purpose to this journey.
you know ibegain is not a bottle of hair shampoo or hair conditioner that you buy and you put into your
hair and you walk out with shiny hair and it works immediately that's not how ibegan works
it requires intentionality it requires curiosity it requires respect it requires reverence for the
process and if the client can put respect reverence integrity and curiosity
and intentionality into that process,
well, by dint, they're putting it into themselves,
maybe for the first time in their lives.
And so the seeking and the preparation for Ivy Gang
is actually creating a template
on how you can treat yourself as you move forward.
So this is why I'm so big on pre-treatment.
I mean, if we were working in an indigenous or Aboriginal society,
you work with the village elders before you're allowed to imbibe the medicine.
We're living in a paradigm now where you imbib the medicine and you do integration.
And I don't like that.
I think if you're doing the work beforehand and you're preparing yourself and you're
developing a relationship with that part of your psyche that's in pain, beginning to understand that,
and you're preparing for this experience in a profound way, maybe authors, maybe music playlists,
what are you going to wash away the past with?
There's a whole load of little rituals that you can put into place before you do the IB game,
which means you're taking ownership of it.
It means you're putting respect and reverence and intentionality and integrity into the process of taking IB gang.
Now, this is a game changer for an awful lot of addicts because it might be the first time in their life they've ever put any respect, reverence, intentionality and integrity into anything.
And by dint, if they're doing it, they're showing self-compassion.
they're being available for themselves.
They're not just turning up and expecting a miracle.
They're doing the fucking work.
That's where the magnet is.
Yeah.
And so, you know, for me, and I like this line,
pre-treatment, if you want to call it that,
or the preparation informs whether you are going to integrate your Ibegain experience
proactively or reactively.
If we look at what's going on in the world of psychedelics at the moment, all integration is invariably reactive because people are not pregnant.
What a waste of a, what a waste of a psychedelic experience.
Yeah, Leary warned us years ago.
Let me see Leary Warner, set and setting.
Get yourself into set.
Get yourself into the right mental space, headspace.
you go and do these medicines.
See it for what it is.
Yeah.
And I go on to Facebook now
and people are offering, you know, in Oregon,
$6,000 one day
mushroom trips
with two
sessions of integration included
in the price after.
Aren't we wonderful? No, you're not.
You're doing
a disservice to the individual.
You're doing a disservice to the medicine.
You're doing a disservice
to mankind
behaving like this
because it's all corporate and transactional
and
you know so you know
it's an interesting paradigm
you know I worked for a while
where
I was setting up something in the Bahamas
which was going to be government-backed
and Board of Ethics approved
and then the money people came in
and transactionality
and corporatism, we want our slice of the cake,
can we afford to charge this much,
and we need to cut corners here
to increase the profit lines and the profit margins,
and it became really toxic and horrible.
And it wasn't about,
it started off about trying to heal the individual.
But actually, at the end of the day,
it all came down to margins,
and we lost sight of the individual person suffering.
They were suddenly revolving,
or cash cow wallets basically for some people.
So we've got to be really, really careful around this latest Renaissance and psychedelia.
Actually, we could be doing an awful lot of people and an awful lot of disservice actually at the end of the day.
I love that.
I think it speaks a good quote that I like to use sometimes in these areas is that when the instrument becomes an institution, it loses its ability to be affected.
And I see so much industry being built up around these medicines.
I can't help but think,
and maybe it's the divine tricks.
They're like, watch this.
Watch these guys try to fucking build an industry around.
It's going to be hilarious.
When we were talking yesterday,
we were talking about this, you know,
and I came out with that sort of imagery
that certainly with Ibegan,
I've come across that whenever you try to do something
from a corporate or transactional point of view,
the spirit of Ibogaine has got this great big, huge bag,
of metaphorical spanners.
And just as you're about to get somewhere,
it throws a spanner into the works and it all falls apart.
Nobody's really being successful at upscaling Ibergain.
And there are one or two clinics out there who are doing quite a good job now.
But, you know, on the inside, the staff are unhappy.
I'm taking on a lot of their clients in crisis management because they're,
don't feel that they've been held or seen or, you know, we're coming back to being seen,
being heard, being acknowledged, being respected.
People are an addiction because they don't see themselves, they don't hear themselves,
they don't acknowledge themselves, and they don't respect themselves.
They got into that state of mind because the institutions around them didn't see them, hear them,
acknowledge them or respect them.
And then they're going into an Ibergain treatment where they're not really,
really seen, they're not really heard, they're really, not really acknowledged and they're not really
respected. And that's why I work with only four or five clinics now. You know, people like
Garretz Motsie and Blair Bromley. You know them? Yeah, I don't get it. Yeah. Oh, Garrett,
Garas is, you know, he's one of the ultimate, but, you know, Patrick and Michel, um,
Tom Leonard, you know, actually I kind of like Ambio.
They're great as well to a certain extent.
You know, there are people out there who are doing the job well.
They care about the individual.
In my time working in this game, George,
I have worked with around about 20 clinics,
and now I only work with four.
And I'm the one who's fired 16 people.
I had one clinic where the guy turns up, he's going into active withdrawal, which is part of the process.
That's what we want.
And he gets put down a corridor for three and a half hours in an ante room at this clinic.
And the first person he meets is the secretary with the credit card machine inactive withdrawal.
how can I work with a clinic like that?
That is appalling behaviour.
And that happens a lot within the IBA industry.
We've got, you know, Jeffrey Kamler, he said,
what happens when you get a narcissistic, sociopathic heroin addict?
What do they do after they've done Ibegain?
They open a clinic.
So when you get the Patrick's and the Michelle's and you get the Garrison of Les and you get the Paul Featherstones and the Mark Winkles and people like that and Ambio or whatever.
You know, these people are providing a fresh breath out, Tom Leonard as well.
You know, they're doing it for the right reasons.
You know, I think that's so, so important.
So you know, you know Garris do you?
I do. I've had him on the podcast a couple of times.
And that's pretty much the gist of it.
Like I've never met him in person.
But I've had some really long conversations, much like this one where you get to know someone.
You know, you can talk.
There's a, you can bullshit for 20 minutes or 30 minutes, but it's really hard to bullshit someone for an hour or two hours or three hours.
You know what I mean?
And so we had some in-depth stuff.
And I couldn't help but walk away from that conversation, both those conversations with Gareth.
Like, this guy's legit, man.
This guy actually cares about every person he's helping.
You know, he's developed the slow protocol, the incremental protocol.
He's able to put more ibign in people and therefore they walk away more nor ibogaine.
It's safer.
It deals with post-acute withdrawal syndrome.
And people feel hailed and they feel parented.
And so, you know, for me, the perfect kind of Ibegain provision is not a, it is, you know, a few weeks of pre-treatment, setting yourself up, working with somebody like me or Adam Penkel or something like that, doing the work beforehand, getting yourself set up, going in, doing the Ibergain experience.
And then what I like is the soft landing.
the 10 days post IBEG where you go to an environment where you just immerse yourself in nature
and you immerse yourself in play.
You give yourself permission to find yourself again.
And it's not about going back to work and showing how clever and inventive you are,
but actually just embracing being alive again, being available again, being in your body.
and then we're talking about after that it's about continuing with the integration,
continuing with the therapy or the infamil therapy or shooting the breeze, as I like to call it.
Yeah.
And then it's the clients who say three months down the line, well, you know, I want to do an Ibigo,
Iboga microdosing protocol now.
And then six months down the line, they want to walk 50 miles of the Appalachian Trail.
And then nine months down the line, they want to do some mushrooms.
And then 12 months down the line, they want to go and see the northern lights in northern Sweden.
These are the clients who do well.
These are the clients who put an intentionality and a respect.
And they keep pushing themselves and they keep working on themselves.
You know, look, let's put it this way.
Let's say you've got a 40-year-old male coming in and doing Ibegain.
We can safely say that it's probably been an addiction for 20 years.
Yeah.
Would you agree with that?
Yeah, without a doubt.
So let's do the math.
Okay.
240 months.
Yeah?
So if I turn around to anybody who'd been using for 240 months, and I say to them,
how about investing one or two percent of the time you invested into your addiction into your healing?
Does that sound like a fair deal?
Yeah?
Well, I don't know.
So you're talking three, four, five, six, seven, eight months of putting yourself on the top of the hierarchy of needs, healing yourself, being available for yourself, being compassionate to yourself.
Yep.
That is what that is what the healing is about.
It's not a quick fix, I begin.
It's not that you turn up and a week later you're George cleaning.
You know, it's actually investing into yourself with compassion, with kindness, with curiosity, embracing life, getting out there, doing it properly.
It's a misnomer to believe that a successful Ibegame treatment can be done in two weeks.
It is an extended protocol.
personally I feel that the healing protocol is what we are here to do anyway and if if you do ibe gain
properly you should be uncovering the hides that covered the soul until you're dying breath that's
the privilege yeah that's the job and i think ibe gaining allows us to get into that headspace
where we can start embracing life and we can start being curious about ourselves and we can start
being curious about our traumas and society's traumas and move from introspection to
outrospection into envirisection where we start to really give a ship from a multi-dimensional
perspective yeah and for me this is why I love I love this I see addiction my using as no more
than the taxi that brought me to a place where I could attach to
this type of living. That's it. I never had a, you know, in many ways, my, my addiction was the best
thing that ever happened to me because it brought me to a place where I could work on myself.
And most people never get that privilege, George, and they're addicted to making money and they're
addicted to where they stand in their society, in their culture and what cars they're driving. And,
you know you have the paradigm of the good American male father oh isn't he wonderful he works all
the hours god gives to provide for his family bullshit he's not available for his family he's not
available for his wife not available for his children he's available for his business and he's
available for his bank account and he's available for his social standing but he's not available
for the people that he should be available for and that that's part of our cultural societal
Western mindset is that we're not seeing the truth.
We're not seeing what's really, really important.
You know, we can go back to that Francis Wheeler quote.
Yeah.
Where, you know, a societal fiction of productivity and material gain.
You know, that's where the sickness really is.
People in addiction haven't got a problem.
If anything, they're understanding.
Right.
actually and culture and sick.
And they're just trying to medicate themselves away from that sickness.
Yeah.
See, the thing is, let's put it this way, George,
sticking a needle in your arm and injecting fentanyl into yourself,
in my opinion,
is perhaps one of the most profound acts of self-love out there.
And it's a really weird thing to say.
But anybody who's using trying to take
the pain away. They're doing it because they love themselves. Does that make sense to you when I
put it that way? It does, but can you unpack that a little bit more for people who might be like,
what the hell? What do you mean? If you are finding life so extraordinarily difficult and painful
and you find a door that opens you up to feeling better and feeling okay and being able to cope,
Surely it's a perfectly intelligent and acceptable adaptive response to the pain you're in.
It will work for a short while, but it won't work long term.
But I'm saying when people first pick up and they're using, it is actually a form of self-love.
They're just trying to make themselves feel better.
They're trying to survive.
Yeah.
You know, and we don't look at it that way.
We see it as a failing.
And I think the other thing about addiction is, you know, people like to say, well, you know, oh, they're an addict.
They're so out of control.
Well, actually, have a look at it this way.
When you're racking out that line of Charlie and you're rolling up that note, that might be the first time in the day where you go, oh, thank God I own a narrative.
I'm sovereign of this.
Everything else in my life I have no control over, but this I have control over.
And so it's not about being out of control.
it's about the temporary relief of being in control
and having authorship and sovereignty of a narrative
irrespective of whether that narrative is going to fuck you up
and harm you in the long run,
in that moment it does its job.
It makes you feel like you have some control over your life.
It's beautifully said.
I think there's a ritual aspect to it too.
You're having your own ritual, right?
And we're devoid of rituals.
Yeah, and then, you know, that's the whole point.
I mean, you know, of, you know, pre-treatment and integration
and all the things we're talking about is exchanging bad ritual for good ritual.
Yes.
So one of the ways I get my clients to prepare for their Ibe game experience,
and we can go through that very quickly.
Yeah.
It's really ritualistic.
Hey, man, you know, why don't you create a playlist on Spotify of music which seems to yourself?
Take your time out before you go to your eye.
Ibe game provision, spend a few hours creating that playlist of beautiful music that can connect
to your soul on the other side of the IBE game.
So when the client is doing that before they go into treatment, they are with the Ibe game.
They are doing a ritual to be there.
They are preparing themselves.
They're putting respect and reverence into the process.
But I say to my clients, well, you're going to wash away the past after your Ivey game.
Are you going to do it for $1.99 target hair and body shampoo?
No, you're not. Go out and buy yourself some nice products. Buy yourself a five-bladed razor blade. Buy yourself some decent. So the client who goes out before they go to Gareth or Tom or something like that and spends an hour picking those products to wash their past away with, they're with the medicine. They're putting respect and reverence into it. Then you get the client and say, bring an altar with you. Who do you? Do you want photos of your children? Is that special pebble? You, you're going to. You? You
you picked up on a beach in Costa Rica.
Is that favourite, bring that with you, create an altar.
Get into the room.
When you get to the place where you're doing Ibegain, create that altar.
I, every time before I go and do Ivigant, I go and pick wildflowers,
and I make an offering to I begin.
I have wildflowers in the room that I pick.
And if I'm in the middle of the winter, I will go and buy cut flowers,
which I will bring into the rooms and offering to the medicine.
Maybe writing a letter to your past or to your,
future or to your persecutors.
People like Gareth and Blair do letter burning ceremonies.
What are you going to wear post-I-be-gat?
What are you going to wear for the ceremony?
Right.
You know, pick your clothes.
You know, if you're getting married, you think about everything.
You put so much intentionality and integrity, respect and reverence into the process of getting
married.
Let's try and replicate that for the most important ceremony of your life, the one that will
get you out of addiction and stop you dying.
Yeah.
And so when you've got the client,
he does the altar,
does the letter, picks their clothes,
picks their toiletries,
creates the music, playlist.
Well, actually, what they're doing is putting ritual,
they're putting respect,
they're putting reverence,
they're putting intentionality
into the process of taking Ibigen.
And Ibogaine does work this way,
and Iboga does work this way.
It's a two,
way street with ibegain if it feels that you are putting respect and reverence into the process of
meeting it it will meet you where you meet it yeah so if you turn up as an entitled little twat
who's just expecting give me ibnain i've given you the shit the chances are the ibegan's going to
give you a bit of the kicking it's going to show you what a twat you are okay so i think this is
really, really important. The other thing is, is when a client does that, are they really doing it
for the IBE game? Perhaps not, but they are certainly doing it for themselves. And so Gabon Matta is right.
Self-compassion is not some high emotional, gooey feeling and some self-regard for self,
is actually just turning up and doing the work. That's self-compassion. Just,
getting on with it, rolling up your sleeves and doing it.
There's an off chance that this might help me.
I might as well have a go.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Without a doubt.
And that's the difference between somebody turning up and doing Ibegain and expecting
to be healed or actually saying, yeah, you know what,
I'm willing to heal myself and I'm using Ibegain as a tool within that process.
And this is what I'm doing to help that process.
process. That's where the magic is. Yeah. And that is all about ritual. Yeah. It's well said. I got some
questions that are stacking up over here in the chat. Anders. Let me start throwing some your way over
here. The first one comes to us. This one comes to us from Desiree. Desiree, you are an amazing
woman. Thank you so much for being here. I think the world of you. She says, what do people
misunderstand most about healing, especially addicts and their families?
Oh, that's a great question.
What do they misunderstand?
I think they kind of see that the institutions out there have got the answers.
And they clearly don't.
You know, we look at the rehab industry, which is an industry that is growing at, I don't know,
something between 4% and 8% a year based on abject failure.
You know, the success rates of kind of.
coming out of a rehab are next to none,
and especially as we're still attached to this 12-step paradigm
of what healing should be,
from addiction we're talking about here,
from substance use.
You know, clearly I don't believe that the 12-step philosophy
long-term will work with the modern,
a mythic story where you're taking authorship and ownership and sovereignty of who you are.
You know, healing is about choosing to heal yourself.
It's not about using institutions to heal you because they don't heal you.
They just cover up and they just mask in my opinion.
That's invariably what happens most of the time.
I hope that kind of answers that.
The problem with DeZeri's question is that she's opening.
up a massive can of worms.
It's such a good question.
I don't want to spend an hour going down there and dissecting.
But yeah, I think decent healing is about taking ownership of your recovery.
Whether it's from addiction, whether it's from psychospiritual malaise, whether it's from
depression, you know, the gig is we've got 80 years on this amazing blue planet.
healing starts when you are grateful for that and you're open to that and you appreciate life
and you embrace life rather than running away from it or turning from it or being in fear of it.
And the reason that we're in fear of life is that we've been conditioned to be in fear of life.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it comes down to the deconditioning.
I love it.
I love it too.
I want to bring on Crystal Phoenix Rising.
Crystal, you are an amazing.
being. I'm so thankful that we got to work on a bunch of projects together. And Crystal,
I know, I want you, Crystal, listen to this right now. When we're done with this, I want you to
reach out to Anders. He's, he's an amazing human being who probably love to talk to you. He does
incredible work. And she's, she got all these cool comments in here. She says, I'm so sending this
live to my brother who has a outpatient rehab. He is on the same way like as you. Crystal, you're
an amazing. I'm, I can't say it enough. Thank you so much for being here. I want you to make a
connection with Anders, Crystal.
So go down to the show notes and do that.
She's got so many great comments in here.
Well, you know, look, please, please, I'm always open on our WhatsApp.
Yes.
Yeah.
So if anyone's out there and they want to make contact with me, my number is plus
4-4, because I'm in the UK, 7873-331-8-8-2.
So that's plus 4-4-7-3.
Yeah, plus 4-4-7-8-73-33-331-882.
Nice.
I'd be delighted to, you know, point people in the right direction, shoot the breeze.
You know, this is what I do for a living.
This is not my living.
This is my vocation.
This is my calling.
So don't be shy.
Yeah.
It's the nourishment that keeps me alive.
Nice.
Do it, Crystal.
Who else we got over here?
We have Ranga.
First off, Ranga coming from Canada.
You're an amazing human being.
Reach out to me, Ranga.
We've got to hook up this weekend.
I got some things I want to tell you.
He says, do you believe some wounds are sacred and should never fully close?
You know, I would like that in context, to be honest.
I mean, it's such an abstract thing to ask.
Right.
It would be really, you know, what is it that Randas says?
it's where the wounds are is where the light comes in.
Isn't that something along those lines?
Yeah.
You know, I like wounds, you know.
You know, I'd like to put it this way.
I like the Gary Zuckoff idea of Earth school.
And I did this with Greg yesterday,
and I'm going to do it with him again now.
How old are you, Greg?
what did I say
George
George how old are you George
I don't know why I said Greg there
how old are you George
49 I'll be 50 in October
okay so maybe 50 years ago
a voice comes out the ether and says
hey hey man it's your turn
down to go down to Earth School again
what
what lessons what curriculum
would you like to attach to
and you go
tell me about your traumas
tell me it about your traumas, George.
Maybe what less than you decided to affect?
Well, my dad was bipolar and, you know, and not minor bipolar.
Like, we moved once a year.
Cops would show up at our door and be like, you guys haven't paid rent.
You got to leave.
Had the whole experience with my parents not being able to hold the relationship together.
My sister tried to commit suicide.
My dad tried to commit suicide.
died. My son died. My niece died of a fentanyl overdose. I lost everything at the age of 45,
moved in with my in-laws, was sort of excommunicated from my family. My wife got stage three cancer.
And now I'm here. I got that going for me. That's a hell of a curriculum you chose there.
You know, and the thing is, why would I choose that? Yeah, you know, and why would you choose that? Because it's
the thing you can learn the most from. It's the opportunity to grow. It's the opportunity to
become. Within crisis is an opportunity to grow. So maybe the whole point of Earth School is
actually we pick the curriculum we're going to attach to. You know, George has picked a triple
PhD. But I think, you know, that's the point is when we make a decision to become fully,
conscious students at Earth school, we move out of trauma into healing.
Curiosity is so important.
You know, it's, you know, for me, you know, going through addiction, going through a very
kind of middle class English education where I'm at boarding school, the expectations of
culture and tradition placed upon me.
You know, I found that very, very, very tough.
But actually, you know, in many ways, they, you know, they brought me into addiction.
And from addiction, I went to somewhere else and I'm able to embrace life in a full way.
I'm very, very, very grateful for the wounds I received.
That's well said.
I hope that answers your question.
Yeah.
Yeah, he's got me thinking again there.
I mean, you know, these are kind of the wonderful sort of questions that if we, if we were shooting the breeze over a pre-treatment session, there would be some real magic within us.
There'd be some real nuggets.
It's worth talking about.
But I think at an extended kind of way.
Yeah, I love it.
Crystal comes back on and she says, George, you are going to love my chapter for the anthology.
We chose not to be our diagnosis.
I already love it, Crystal.
It sounds like a beautiful, beautiful part.
Thank you for putting it out there.
Let's see.
Who do we got coming over here?
This is a great question.
This one comes to us from Matt.
He says,
why do people trust lab coats more than lived experience?
Because we've been conditioned to.
The whole point of education.
You know, Alan Watts does an amazing lecture.
If you look it up on YouTube, Alan Watts
and I think it's called dance.
No, it's not.
That's, oh, let me have a look up.
Basically, Alan Watts talks about this idea that we're put into the corridor age four with this
here, kitty kitty.
That's his very words.
And we go through, we go through primary school and we have to hit a target.
And then we go through middle school.
And that's great.
We're doing everything we're supposed to do.
And then we finish.
We finish school and we go to college and we get our degree or our qualification or our job.
And oh, that's fantastic too.
And then you answer some racket, some game.
Yeah.
And you hit your targets and you're doing really well.
And then by the time you get to the age of 40, you've arrived.
And you don't feel any difference.
And you've been conned the whole way along.
And that's what I feel that's happened is that we're conned.
by the institutions to have complete and utter deference to them.
And, you know, in many ways, I think it comes back to this idea that the institutions,
whether they're academic or religious or governmental, the one thing they don't want you to do
is have authority and autonomy and sovereignty of your own emotional or spiritual life.
because when you do,
they can't control you in the way that they want to.
So people who trust the guys in the white coats and the stethoscopes,
especially around Ibogaine,
you know, unfortunately it's just been conditioned to be that way.
And, you know, this is part of the work we do is that deconstruction.
I would rather go and do Ibogaine with a gnarly old timer like Gareth.
Yep.
who really gets it, he's been at the cold face,
he's been through addiction,
who's done the work,
and he's an auto-diadectic,
he's really studied his craft.
He knows what he's doing.
I'd much rather go to him than some P-Sycd and MD
who's never been an addiction,
telling you how to recover.
Yep.
You know, if you were a soldier and you went to a lecture on how to survive in the trenches,
and it was given to you from a captain who studied it at West Point,
or you had the chance to actually talk to a gnarly old regimental sergeant major
who'd been in the trenches in Vietnam, well, give me the latter any day.
Yep, yeah.
Yeah.
the language of experience speaks louder than any book ever could.
Coldface experience.
Yeah.
That's everything as far as.
Yeah.
It's well said.
It's well said.
Thank you, Matt, for dropping in there.
This one comes to us.
Who is this coming from?
Betsy, Betsy says, when did comfort become the new religion?
Oh, that's such a great question.
I mean, I mean, I mean,
I'm really, you know, I've got a slight problem with all the people on this podcast because they're just asking questions which are just...
The best audience in the world.
Wow.
Okay.
And I have to really think about it.
I mean, it is comfort over autonomy?
Comfort over sovereignty.
Comfort means that you perhaps don't have to do the work.
you know comfort is and you know what what is comfort as well i mean you know let's break down really
what comfort is is it convenience is that what you mean by comfort or is comfort
embracing your children and having your friends over for dinner and walking through a forest
you know what is comfort really i mean that that's kind of yeah um
Yeah, again, this comes down to conditioning.
We're taught to take the easy route.
When you go to a doctor, he doesn't really look at the symptomology.
He doesn't really look at the causality of your problems.
He looks at the symptomology and he deals with the symptoms.
He doesn't deal with the causes invariably.
Oh, I'm feeling depressed.
Oh, great.
Here, have these pills.
They'll mask your depression.
Yeah?
Yeah.
That's comfort, isn't it?
Yeah.
But it becomes really painful and really difficult at the end of the day
because it's so fucking inauthentic.
He's just not doing the work.
You know, if you're a collection of 14.8 billion-year-old atoms
that have taken conscious form for 80 years
and you want to be comfortable,
well, you haven't got the idea of what the gift of being alive is then.
you know embrace embrace this opportunity you know for for for ourselves at atomic level we are
eternal we are made 100% of the stardust which is ever expanding we are the universe we have the
universe has come down for 80 odd years to live the human existence connect to that human
existence with all that it brings with the joy the pain the heartache the disease the illness
the love that's that's the gift the whole fucking smorgasbord yep but what we do is we come down here
and we deny it and we medicate ourselves from it and we subjugate it and we you know that to me
is just be here be available be available be
available for everything that comes your way for within it there is a lesson there is an opportunity
to grow there is an opportunity to become beautiful answer beautiful answer
this one comes to us who is this is Tracy Tracy says why is rebellion labeled mental
illness because it's dangerous and you know I think yeah again this comes back to
you know what the institutions want to do is they want to they want to control us they don't want you
i i think you know the act of taking i be going on the act of going down a psychedelic route where you
are making yourself available to have your own relationship with a higher power with with nature
you're deconstructing all of those cultural societal and familial narratives
that's the greatest form of healthy rebellion out there
is to find out who the fuck you are on your terms,
not on their terms.
I love rebellion,
but I don't like rebellion where you're an anarchist
and you're picking up a petrol,
throwing it.
That's not the rebellion I'm talking about.
The rebellion I'm talking about
is finding out who the hell you are on your terms.
And the big institutions out there do not want you to do that.
It's true.
Very true.
So this one comes, when you talk about rebellion, you know what comes up for me sometimes
is the difference between revenge and justice.
And sometimes when I'm coming out of, I find myself in this like revenge mode.
And I got to pull myself back and be like, okay, what's justice?
versus how much of what I'm saying is vengeful.
What do you do in that when you're walking that line between the,
between,
you know,
for me,
I would say,
yeah,
I would say what part of you,
what part of your psyche is coming out with the revenge narrative?
Yep.
Because I think your higher self will always want,
one,
want to come from a place of,
of justice.
Yeah.
And your lower self will be,
looking to her and to looking to, looking to whatever. So my first question would be, well,
why wouldn't that part of you feel like that? Why wouldn't it be revenge for? And that's,
that's coming from a place of compassion. Yeah. There's a part of me that's feeling revenge for.
Well, let's take an interest in that part of me. Let's be compassionate to that part of me,
because then that revenge might turn into something more soft, something nice and something kinder
at the end of the day. So my belief is that that type of negative narrative or that type of
negative emotion, sure, we own it. Fantastic. There's nothing wrong with that. It's,
understanding whether it's coming from your pain body or not. Yeah? As I probably would call it.
Yeah. Back to some Eckert. And then this all comes back to is not about denying your pain
body or subjugating your pain body or medicating your pain body is about having a relationship
with that understanding it understanding why it's in so much pain understanding why it's seeking
revenge because when you when you come from a place of understanding you're giving it the nourishment
it needs yep yeah that makes sense i mean for me i would i always used to talk about this idea
you know, I used to feel such profound change that I was such so angry and irritable and arrogant
at times and that when I get triggered and when I get frightened, my defence method is about
anger and irritability and arrogance. And I really couldn't accept that about myself.
He's like, oh, God, I'm just such a fucking asshole. And then one day I kind of just made the
decision, well, that's who I am. I do get angry and I do get irritable and I do get arrogant.
and why shouldn't I with trauma that I went through?
Why shouldn't I have that reaction?
Of course I should.
And that's then coming in from a place,
well, why wouldn't I be like that?
And if you're coming in from a place of that type of curiosity,
you're coming in from a place of compassion.
And so the day that I accepted
that I am an irritable, angry, arrogant article
was the day that I became less irritable,
less angry, and less of an unsolved.
it's within me it's there and occasionally it comes up but so what at least i i know who i am i'm
being authentic with myself it's about knowing who you are waltz and all and if you know who you are
you admit to your failings and your foibles and your emotions and your anger and your irritability and
you accept them then you're not turning your back on yourself you are being available for yourself and if
you are being available for yourself, you are healing.
But if you turn your back on your emotions and your feelings, then you're not being
available for yourself. So how can you heal?
Yeah, you're running from the very thing that would free you.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, what's that expression?
The work that you are fearful of doing is the work that will free you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Something along those lines.
I didn't quite get that right.
No, it's there.
But that's okay.
Now, now,
I think there's something really important to say here.
And this is something I say to every single client in every single session,
if I remember.
And it is,
the perfect human being is imperfect.
They're crazy.
They're chaotic.
They're all over the shop.
And thank God we're like that.
Thank God. We're not all everyday robots.
The imperfect human being is the person is the human being who chose its perfection,
because perfection is a cultural, societal, familial, educational, religious paradigm of control.
George, we will only love you if you behave like this.
And it's like chasing a crock of shit at the bottom of an ever-moving rainbow.
Yeah.
You know, don't try and be perfect.
celebrate your imperfections because that's what makes you human and that's what makes you
amazing and wonderful and you know i've seen this i've got a client at the moment where the perfect
brother is castigating his imperfect brother the whole time and actually the person that i see
is the much damaged out two is the one who's trying to be perfect the whole time is trying to hold it
together is putting on a show for external approval is not showing their vulnerabilities or fragilities
and in a way that is somebody who is so wrapped up and tightened and you know and you know that
inside that external expression of perfection there are some deep and gnarly and painful
emotions going on get imperfect get in perfect get in perfect getting vulnerable get vulnerable get
vulnerable, get fragile, you know, be honest, be authentic. That's where the healing is. And this idea
that somehow we should be perfect, my God, you know, all the pain that is attached to that
trying to be perfect. How horrible. Celebrate your gnarliness. So celebrate your addiction,
celebrate your pain, celebrate, be available for it because then you are being authentic.
then you can do something about it.
Then you're not going to the dressing up box and playing a role.
You're getting in touch with who you are.
And we are all deeply and profoundly and beautifully
imperfect.
Man, that,
are you doing on time?
I know you might have a heart,
do you have an out here in about six minutes?
I've got about another, yeah,
I'm going to wake the kids up.
about 10 or 15 minutes.
So, yeah, we can, we can start.
Yeah.
Start bringing it back into.
Yeah.
That was a perfect.
I couldn't have asked for a better closing sort of for ending there.
Like that was really well said.
And I'm grateful for our time.
I can't wait to meet you in person, man.
And keep shaking your hand, give you a hug, man.
It's going to be amazing.
We're all going to be at the Bogus saves event, June 17th at the Canyon Theater in Denver.
If you can't make it,
they're personally, go to the links
and get a free Zoom down. It's going to be a free
event. You can listen to Anders. You can see
Gereux going to be, I think, coming in
via Zoom, and there's going to be so many
great speakers. Dr. Mash.
Patrick and Michelle.
Tom Leonard.
Yep. I mean, basically,
Lakshmi is brought together,
and I'll be really honest here,
all the people that I
respect and have time for
within the IB game world.
You know, the people who are there are the people who give a shit.
Yes.
They're the people who are doing the work.
They're rolling up their sleeves and they're at the cold face
and they're healing individuals on an individual level,
helping them heal themselves.
They're doing it for the right reasons.
They're not doing it to create some revolving door cookie cutter,
sausage factory.
Let's push an addict through one end and out the other end.
these people actually give a proper shit for the individual and they give a shit about the spirit of ibegain
and they're coming in from a place of humility and knowledge and wisdom so there's a great crew of
people there uh because actually at the end of the day the people who are there are decent and kind
decent and kind
they're doing the work
for the right reasons
they're providing Ibegain for the right
reasons is because they want
to see people find themselves
so that's a good crew
yeah it's phenomenal
it's phenomenal I um
let's say someone's listening to this right now
and where can people find you
what do you got coming up what are you excited about
um you know look I mean
I just kind of like
you know, I haven't got any big master plans anymore.
I found that when I do, that's kind of ego-led.
You know, it took me a long time to get here.
I'm just happy to be doing the work I'm doing,
and that's working with people,
setting them up for our Ibegain,
and supporting them through their integration,
and watching them heal and become their own people,
taking authorship and sovereignty of who they are.
And I have the privilege of walking with people within that journey for a certain amount of time.
My website is www.Ibegaincoaching.com.
My phone number is plus 4-4-7873-331-882.
Get hold of me on WhatsApp.
It's the only platform I work off.
And yeah, I've just got to a stage where I've got a very, very simple little gig going,
but it's the best gig in the world.
I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
So if anybody would like to get in contact and shoot the breeze and ask some questions
or want to do some coaching with me, I'm completely open to that.
Fantastic.
Ladies and gentlemen, go down to the show notes.
It's right here on the on screen.
I will gaincoaching.com.
Reach out to Anders.
I hope everybody has a beautiful day.
Thank you so much to everybody who took time to participate with us today.
Got the best audience in the world.
Anders, hang on briefly afterwards with everybody else.
I hope we have a beautiful day.
That's all we got.
Aloha.
