TrueLife - Asha Caravelli - The Gospel According to Iboga

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

One 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 psychedelics? 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/Asha Caravelli: The Flame Before the AlgorithmsWhile the West holds its ceremonies in PowerPoints,and titrates trauma like a spreadsheet balancing the soul,there are still those who remember—not from books,but from bone.Asha Caravelli is not the psychedelic circus.She is not the TED Talk trip report,not the neon-lit ego death sold for $999 with a weekend certification.No.She is older than the algorithms.Wiser than the wellness branding.A living prayer whispered across lifetimes.For over 14 years, she has sat at the feet of Iboga—not as a technician,but as a servant.Not as a biohacker,but as a torchbearer.In a lineage where silence is sacred and ceremony is not content,Asha holds space like the earth holds grief:with gravity, stillness, and infinite patience.She is a Life, Death and Transition Doula—formally trained, yes,but forged by fire—the kind of fire that only the liminal brings.She doesn’t guide you to “optimize” yourself—She walks you to the edgewhere you must lay your false self downand greet the holy terror of who you really are.Daughter of Ross and Paula.Mother to Delani and Roco.Grandmother to Leon Emiliano.This is not a résumé.This is a lineage of Love.And while the psychedelic renaissance obsesses over protocols,Asha cooks.She listens.She prays with her hands in the soiland heals not through dogma,but through dinner.Because the most sacred thingis not found in a quantified molecule.It’s in the way she prepares fresh food with Love—like a Eucharist only the initiated can taste.So, if you came for dopamine,keep scrolling.If you came for Truth,stay seated.Because what Asha carries cannot be tweeted,cannot be taught in a three-day course—It can only be transmittedfrom the heart of someonewho has walked through the fireand come back with silence. 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

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. 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 Seraphini. 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. I hope the sun is shining, the birds are singing. I hope that the dogs are barking right there with us. You know what? It's so nice to have you to have here.

And so I want to tell everybody, before I start this, that I have a little bit of housekeeping. The first part is there's an incredible event on June 17, 2025, at the Boulder Canyon Theater. It's called Iboga Saves Ending Addiction. It's going to be a phenomenal event. The guest I'm talking to now will definitely be there. And so will so many incredible people like,

Gareth Moxie, so many great people. And it's a free concert. It's a free event, ladies and gentlemen. Go and get your tickets. They'll be in the show notes or check out the awake.com network. That being said, ladies and gentlemen, I would love to introduce my guest for today, Asha Caravelli. While the West holds its ceremonies and PowerPoints and titrates trauma like a spreadsheet balancing the soul,

there are still those who remember. Not from books, but from bone. Asha Karavali is not the psychedelic circus. She is not the TED Talk Trip Report, not the neon lit ego death sold for $999 with a weekend certification. No, she is older than the algorithms, wiser than the wellness branding. A living prayer whispered across lifetimes. For over 14 years, she has sat at the feet of Iboga, not as a technician, but as a servant. Not as a biohacker, but as a torchbearer.

In a lineage where silence is sacred and ceremony is not content, Asha holds space like the earth holds grief with gravity, stillness, and infinite patience. She is a life, death, and transition dula, formally trained. Yes, but forged by fire, the kind of fire that only the liminal brings. She doesn't guide you to optimize yourself. She walks you to the edge where you must lay your false self down and greet the holy terror of who you really are. daughter of Ross and Paula, mother to Delani and Rocco, grandmother to Leon Emiliano.

This is not a resume. This is a lineage of love. And while the psychedelic renaissance obsesses over protocols, Asha cooks, she listens, she prays with her hands in the soil and heals not through dogma, but through dinner. Because the most sacred thing is not found in quantified molecule. It's in the way she prepares fresh food with love, like a Eucharist, only the initiated can taste. So if you came for dopamine, keep scrolling. If you came for truth, stay seated. Because what Asha carries cannot be tweeted, cannot be taught in a three-day course.

It can be transmitted from the heart of someone who has walked through the fire and come back with silence. Asha, thank you so much for being here today. How are you? Oh, you're still on mute over here. I said, thank you, George. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited you're here. It's such an interesting time for the world of psychedelics.

any Boga. Maybe you could, right in the beginning of our conversation, you were talking about something being certified with the Kubler-Ross. Maybe we could start there. Okay. I am a life death. My formal training comes as a life death and transition doula, which is a certification for non-medical professionals. I entered this work through an opportunity and an inspiration that arose out of caring for my beloved mother-in-law who got sick with pancreatic cancer and died very quickly. There has been a tremendous intersection between my work with Ibogain and this additional path that has been integrated into my practice with Ibegain. I have learned about a deepness to what it means to go through a life, death, and rebirth experience,

which is how Ibegain has been introduced to me, how the treatment has revealed itself to me, is in an initiatory fashion where essentially the person that you go into this experience, you will not come out that same person, that, that, the same. sacrifice of that self happens through a long kinesthetic encounter with the spirit within this medicine. The word initiation is something that rings true in real ceremonies and rituals and rites of passage, but it seems so absent in a lot of the psychedelic things that I see happening today. You say the process of death and rebirth, maybe you could.

Talk a little bit more about your personal experience. What does it mean to sacrifice yourself? What does it mean to die and then come back and not be the same? Let me maybe begin with the experience of my children. I have two, a daughter, Delaney, and a son, Rocco. And they, through a long series of events, and we can go further into the story if you want to, but a long series of events,

they were given an initiation with this medicine at the age of 17, which is a traditional age for this initiatory process in Africa. And it's also recognized as the transition from childhood into adulthood, where the child dies, you know, symbolically speaking. And out of that emerges the adult and the responsibilities that come with being adult and the recognition by your tribe, by your family that you've now entered into this role. So I have to step back even further. My ex-husband, Rocky Caravelli, was treated with Ibegain in 2003 for a life-threatening polysubstance addiction,

heroin, when there was heroin, methadone, and methamphetamine. And he had, we got married young, we had two children young, and we divorced, we separated, divorced because of his addiction. There was no, there was no way that I was going to go down the path that he was going down with our young children, nor was he going to allow me to. And so separation was the only thing that was possible. And he discovered Ibegain, and there's a lineage there, a relationship between he and Gareth Moxie, who you mentioned at the beginning of this, at the beginning of the introduction. And Gareth and Rocky knew each other through recovery. And Gareth knew that Rocky was very sick and dying.

from his addiction. It was pretty severe. And Gareth, in a short period of time, Rocky was introduced to Ibegain once through Gareth and once through an article in a magazine somewhere way back there where it mentioned, you know, when nobody knew, really knew about this medicine, it mentioned that it can help people

with mitigating the illness that comes along with opiate withdrawal and help people to escape addiction. So Rocky and his then-girlfriend were both supporting a habit and trying to support a life. And they saved up. They set an intention to go through this treatment. Rock felt that it was really the only thing that was going to work. And when he told me about it, I just flat out put my hand up. Like, I don't want to hear another word about this.

This is crazy. This is like a level of crazy. I mean, I've seen some crazy things from him, but this was a level of crazy I had never encountered before. You're going to Mexico to take an African hallucinogenic to get off of heroin. Like it was just so implausible that this could be anything. And at that point in my life, I had had recreation. I have a lifetime of recreational drug use.

I'm raised by cannabis use. losers. There's always been consciousness altering plants and or things in my house. My parents weren't addicted, but certainly was there. Let me see if I can get myself back on track. So Rocky and I, like, we lived two completely separate lives with very little interaction. And when we did, it was just, you know, fraught with all the shrapness. of addiction, the disappointments, the unmet promises, the, you know, things that could happen that weren't happening and the things that were happening that nobody wishes was. So he had his own personal path to the Ibe game that I had nothing to do with at all. But I did have, you know,

through the peripheral understanding of where my children's father was going, I did understand that he went to Tijuana, Mexico and was treated, he and his girlfriend were treated at the Ibegain Association by Dr. Martin Polanco in 2003. And therein is a whole entry and chapter of my family's relationship with this plant and with this medicine. So Rocky was treated in a period of recovery because it's, you know, in the immediate treatment, it really takes you a little bit to get your feet back underneath you again. And often people coming right out of addiction are not bouncing out of an ibigame treatment. But he called me and it was the second day after he had taken medicine and we spoke and I had this experience that I had not had in a very long time. And that was that I heard him.

I heard him back inside his body. And it was his voice that was sharing what had happened and what was happening. And I felt it. I felt him. And I found myself at that moment saying, welcome back, Rock. You've been gone for a long time. You've been gone for a long time. And he proceeded to, you know, over the coming days, ask for the kids.

He wanted to stay at that clinic in Tijuana and continue to help other people and continue to stay whatever it was right away. He was like, I got to stay close to this stuff. So it was a time in the, you know, the global Ibegain movement. It certainly has been a trend throughout that people receive this medicine. and then they're inspired to get involved. So at a time when his involvement was well received, he stayed there. And he trained and observed 75 treatments in Tijuana. He asked for our kids for the first time.

He just had not been able to take responsibility for them, take care of them. He could barely take care of himself. But suddenly that this return of himself and these, you know, strong messages that he received from the medicine about being the leader of his family and that re-embodiment and some therapy. You know, we went to therapy and, you know, told the therapist, are we crazy? Like, are we crazy? I'm not really going to let my children go to Tijuana with my recently addicted husband. And, you know, they're like 12 and 13 years old. But by the grace of God, they did.

They went and they lived with him for six months of this time that he was training there. And in that time, they were exposed to a father who was, you know, essentially being reborn and coming back into being the person that he had wanted to be but couldn't be because he was just very sick. and that's another entry into the medicine working its way into our family. Our daughter, particularly at that time, began to ask her father if she could have the medicine. And he said to her, you know, 14 years old, 13, 14, 15, 16, you're too young, you're too young. No, not yet.

And long story short, when she turned 17, she wrote her dad a letter and said, these are all the reasons that I am ready. I'm ready. And it coincided with a traditional age in Africa where, you know, people make this transition. And so she and he had an experience. with the medicine. He held space for her and sat for her at an appropriate dosage range. It wasn't like the kind of dosage that one might need to, you know, complete a detox. But it would be what we would call now like a pre-initiatory level.

And that was in the fall just after her 17th birthday. And the following February was when I'm leaving out so many details, but that's when I had medicine for the first time. And I had been in a, I'm a lifelong chronic depressive. Like I have this capacity to really fall into depression. I've also lived with an eating disorder that sort of is like a, like a hydra. I cut off one head and it just grows back and I've been working on my relationship with food for a very long time. But I was in a low point in my life. I had been a single working mother and in that, you know, the dark side of taking care of everybody else, but not really

taking care of myself. And Rocky wanted to give me medicine. He felt that it would help me. I, Again, I had gotten over my, how do you say, my rejection of the spirit and begun to develop what has, is still continuing to evolve my own personal relationship to the spirit. They had, Rocky had spent one year at that Ibegain Association and then returned to the Pacific Northwest. West for a couple of years. It could have been two or two and a half years and continued to work with addicts in the underground, having very little success with being received in that area, wanting to bring the thought or the possibility of this treatment to methadone clinics, to addiction centers, you know, wanting to shout out a little bit, about what Ibegain could do, but it really never,

it wasn't well received at that point. It didn't receive the kind of attention and recognition that it is at this point. He had a series of treatments over a 24-month period in 2003 to 2005. He was saturated or flooded with Ibegain once in Tijuana, eight months later again and eight months following that again. And each saturating dose and each experience, you know, he would describe it as his first

experience with the medicine was a physical detox. The second experience with the medicine eight months later was an mental emotional detox. And the third experience with the medicine three months beyond that was where he received his calling or what he called his spiritual mission, which was to leave that area and return to Mexico, but to a different part, to an area about an hour north of Porto Vallagata, a little beach town, Salilita and San Pancho, two side-by-side towns. And he went there with 25 grams of medicine, And, you know, a MacBook computer and basically started a Dreamhouse. There was nothing there.

No Ibegain in that area at all. And that was the first home, the first temple of the awakening in the Dreamhouse, where it remained for the first decade of its, you know, entity existence. So he did a couple of years of work there while I remained in the world. the Pacific Northwest. And in that, maybe it was the beginning of the second year, I brought the kids down to visit him. And we stayed there for a month. And I observed the first of my treatments, as well as the experience, personal experience of the first of my treatments. So I had, I mean, I've had a number of, and please tell me if you want me to go back and give it.

any context, but over the years I've had a number of, I'm not keeping track because it isn't important to me, but a number of saturating doses of I begin, which brought me up and out of this chronic depressive state and gave me some time to, I don't know, feel good, feel like a normal person, not feel like I was under the thumb of my own condition. condition and I guess jumping ahead at the end of his second year I was there in February my daughter in October myself in February and then two years passed and then Rocky called me and asked me to come and work with him in Mexico and what he said is I need someone that I can trust and so we had re-established a friendship and a peaceful territory between us after he began to work with medicine. And also I had reached a point where both of my children were, one had just graduated from high school and the other one was graduating that year.

And I was coming to a point in my life where I knew that or I was called towards my own personal quest to what I say is to find out who I was when I wasn't. their mother or his ex-wife or her sister or their employee, you know, was my, as a single mother, my first opportunity to go on that personal journey. And so I said to Rocky, with that in mind, like here's an opportunity to go to another country and live a life that, you know, I never even imagined was possible. So I said, sure, I'll come and work with you for a year. And I got there and I didn't leave.

At this moment, as of this recording right now, I have stepped out. And it's recent. It's just within the last couple of months after 15 years of what we refer to as trench work, where all of the knowledge that I've gained around Ibegain has been on-the-job training, experientially based. I came into this entire global movement as a lay provider at a time when that's what there were. There were lay providers. There was the, you know, we carried the stories.

We had the conversations and told the stories about Howard Lotzoff and Jeffrey Kamlet and Deborah Mash and Mugenda, like all these people who are, you know, globally recognized within there, within this big movement. And, you know, had what I consider to be, I mean, still call it what you will, but considered to be much more interesting conversations around this medicine than what has emerged out of the psychedelic renaissance. It seems like the more people talk about Ibegene, the less is actually being said. or the less of interest it is to me.

I was really captured by the, you know, the, I mean, the trite words, right, by the spiritual aspect of this and the ineffable qualities of medicine that you can give to another person. And no matter how many times, how many people you give it to, it's never the same. no matter how many times you give it to the same person. It's never the same. And so it's this, you know, enrapturing abundant medicine that just if you listen, if you listen and pay attention and stay present as a sitter within there, I've been privileged to have some of the most unique experiences and observe, you know,

in the chrysalis what's happening with them. people. And through my training at the Dreamhouse, which, you know, very intensive training, very, very detailed oriented, very protocol based in terms of screening, in terms of preparation, in terms of medical requirements and exclusions. And, you know, it was sort of the, you know, there was a framework for us to lean on. And there were the shoulders of giants who stood underneath us, you know, in the form of Deborah Mashes and Howard Lotzoff's and, you know, Boaz-Wachtels, like all of these names who are in there, Jeffrey Kamlitz. They had pieces and parts of the experience that helped us to work with the medicine.

And as well, we had pieces and parts of the experience that we could contribute to. to them whether or not they wanted to have any you know wanted to hear what we had to say there was certainly something to say um i learned about all the different forms of ibogaine hydrochloride purified total alkaloid total alkaloid root bark although i would say that my my training is not in the use of root bark it's not in the traditional use um the the the raw use I'm trained and I would consider myself to be an expert in Ibegain because that's where my experience was. Can I stop there and just see where we are? It's a beautiful story and I think it's so important for people to get to hear not only your personal transformation,

but the language of experience. I think that that's sometimes one thing that's missing in the world we live in today is like the language of experience. It's nice to have a certification. It's nice to have, you know, training at like a prestigious school or something along those lines, but there's no real substitute for the language of experience. And that comes from being in the trenches. That comes from being around people, from serving, from standing on the, you know, standing next to people that are in the dark and you yourself being in the dark. I'm grateful for that story. I'm glad that you shared it with us.

I want to bring in one of the questions we have in the chat here. Thank you to everybody in the chat. that's queuing up some questions. This one comes to us from Betsy. She says, is there a spiritual cost to numbing pain before it teaches us what it came to deliver? Sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah.

If I'm understanding the question correctly, I would interpret when she says cost to be, are you going to get punished for your pain numbing behaviors? And it would be, at least my experience is that, yeah, some people really got dragged through it. The number of times that somebody was just like magically released and into a state of enlightenment through the Ibegain is the exception. And the rule is that most people, what makes it so initiatory is because you're dragged through it. because you're so uniquely present in your experience and also completely at the mercy of it. Because, you know, we affectionately say, once you give this medicine, there's no stopping it.

There's no antidote to it. And it's, you know, the Ibegene's very long-lasting. We'll be talking for one hour. And that's, there's a tiny sliver. a tiny sliver of the duration of this experience. And side note, one of the things I just am so confused, I'm just completely confounded by, is the modern presentation of Ibigen,

which is that it's a 12-hour psychedelic experience. And I think not the medicine that I, I don't know what Ibegain you're giving, but the Ibegain that at hour 12, you are not done. You're not done by a long shot. You have perhaps made it through the most intense arc of the medicine, but there's no medicine or drug that I've ever taken that has the duration that the Ibegain has.

You're going to be where you are in this for a while, and it's part of, you know, proper, for me, proper informed consent. do you understand how long this is going to happen and being able to contextualize for people that it's closer to 36 hours and you can break it down into 12 hour increments but not done at 12 hours. So I find, you know, I just observe an inconsistency in how it has been presented and wish that long for a bit more honesty. in the way that the medicine is marketed. It's not particularly highlighted or really included the challenges and difficulties. I think that we hear a lot from people who have, how would you say, perhaps been led a little bit, that this is a love and light medicine and that they're going to receive the bountiful gifts of

spirit but again it's not the medicine I know the medicine I know the medicine I know really puts people through it you know you can have intense nausea and vomiting and you know be particularly I think for those of us who just you know self-abandonment is a you know first line of defense and Evoga won't let you you can't leave yourself in this experience and That's, you know, while we, we, I hear their talk of, you know, us wanting to increase our level of presence with ourselves and in this life, it can be quite a rude awakening when you are back in your body and you can't get up and walk around. And there is no scrolling your phone. You can't do anything but be in the experience of the medicine until.

you're let go. Yeah, I love the language of it. Like, you know, it's an initiation. I think the word ordeal seems to be left out of so much marketing these days. Like, it's an ordeal. Like, you're going to be, it's an ordeal. You know what I mean? Like, that's the word for it.

Like, you're going to have some real confrontation, and it's going to be really uncomfortable. And that's exactly what most people need is a big, giant dose of uncomfortableness. Because that's where the magic is. Like, the growth and comfort can't coexist. Is that fair to say? Yeah, growth and comfort can totally coexist. And also let me just, you know, put it in there, add to the conversation that I've seen the medicine completely bouts off of people. I've seen very little to know psychological or spiritual effects.

I've seen several times, particularly now in this newer wave of ketamine addiction. You know, the ketamine is like, I've seen the, I've seen. people just not respond to the I-Bigate. Does not like physically not respond in a predictable way, not have the same type of detoxification outcomes. And, you know, I think it speaks much more to the the drugs that are available now than it does to the power of the medicine itself. I just think the drugs have become, you know, as one of our former clients says, chemical warfare. You know, there's a more and more and more and more as time goes on, more and more and more stacked against the Iva game.

It's not, you know, back when I started and then we joke about this, not joke, but, you know, we notice the irony that those of us facilitating treatments would just love just a good old-fashioned heroin detox because it was such a different type of response than, say, you know, trying to accomplish. a detox from fentanyl using ibogaine. There's very different things. Yeah. What makes it so different?

There seems to be, if I would say it like an analogy, there seems to be a, like a real estate dispute with the Ibegain. And often it could be looked at as the spirit of Iboga comes in and it evicts the other spirit. So if we were talking about heroin, for instance, heroin has its own spirit. You know, it's an oenophrenic, just like I began.

They're both dream creators. I think that that's significant. So I think when you get in there and you're in this ordeal, it's a fair fight. And overall, the aboga wins and is able to push that other spirit out in which, you know, could be seen as the liberation of that person from the addiction. And now the drugs are just so strong that you, it's difficult to weight out their half-lives and to bring down the amount, the tolerances that people have.

Their tolerances for fentanyl are much higher than their tolerances for morphine, for instance, or for heroin, the fight has become unfair. And without the resources to do a proper preparation, which involves, at least in my training, it involves a switch from the opiate that a person is using onto something that's stable, like a stable, short-acting opiate. So that you're not trying to battle something like methadone,

where the half-life of the methadone is, so long and the withdrawals come for such a long duration and the way that you meet with waves of withdrawal is by administering doses of ibogaine but you can't because of the nature of the ibigene and the way it depletes the body you can't just keep giving ibigame you can't like people can't do it in that way there's you know recommended highly recommended dose rate for each 24-hour period and to give enough Ibegain to get the fentanyl out, you know, your clients in risk and just going further and further into risk because the ibup game burns up a lot of energy. They're not eating or drinking. They could be having

purging, which is just depleting the body of electrolytes, pleading the body of strength, that it needs to sustain the ordeal. Yeah, it makes sense. I'm glad you brought that up. I don't hear that talked about enough. You know, it's a really beautiful distinction to think about that aspect of it. It can be done. I mean, we've learned through experience that it can be done in stages.

You know, there can be, because it's really ideal for our client to begin an I'm a game detox in a place for anyone, in a place where they're stable, physically, emotionally, you know, spiritually stable. Like they're doing as well as they're going to do for what the conditions are. You know, their body is prepared. It's not there's no constipation or diarrhea. There's no illness. There's no elevated white blood cell count. Like all of these things are checked beforehand so that you're not.

you know, knowingly putting your clients at risk for the interaction between the Ibegain and what's already happening in the body. It's really, we like to know what's in there, like, and be the ones who are in control of what's going into that body so that you know, because once, like I said, once you give the Ivey game, you can't really stop. And, you know, this is one of the reasons that self-administering it is, you know, likely, you know, likely can be successful, but likely to be unsuccessful because it's really difficult to know how much medicine to take at what juncture, you know, at what, you know, how you begin. Do you need medicine eight hours later? Sorry, my dogs are. It's the mailman.

So understand, I mean, that's, to me, that's just understanding the medicine. If you understand the medicine, you understand the arc of the life of a dose and the average metabolic pathway about how long it takes people to metabolize that particular dose from first stage into the second stage. you know, how much you might add to it if they're having residual withdrawal come up, you know, helping a person to be able to receive a dose of I-Bigame, because, I mean, my experience is people are like, no more of that. I'm never going to, I'm never doing this again. You know, that's the ordeal. So that's what people are saying when they're in it.

It's, you know, every single person comes to the point where they're like, no more I've been, no more I'veigate. There's nobody who's like, yeah, I keep giving me more of that. Yeah, it's interesting to bring up. I got some comments over here. I got Hank Foley says only DOM seems to have a 36-hour art. First off, Hank Foley, thank you so much for always being here. You're such an amazing individual and you've brought so much connection to not only myself, but to so many incredible people out there. I really appreciate it. He also asks already, what is he? I'm sorry, let's go with this one first. says, can you contrast the ibogaine experience with that of a high dose LSD?

I thought of this yesterday when I was getting ready for this podcast. And what comes up for me is Rick Doblin from MAPS has a recording of his story of Ibegain, where he was given the combination of Ibegain and LSD and goes on to speak. speak of his ordeal. So I personally haven't ever taken a high dose of LSD, but it, my experiences with the hits that I have taken is that that's the next one in line, is that LSD has the same kind of duration of action. you know, certainly 12 hours. It certainly matches that 12 hour. And then, you know, it can be highly underestimated. The body load that Ibogaine carries, and that's in addition to carries versus other drugs.

It has a very unique thumbprint. And its actual high is very different than LSD. LSD really bends, well, I don't know about really. For me, LSD bent reality and I bent with it. Iboga put me very firmly in my body. And there was no, you don't have mobility. Like with LSD I did, I could wander around and, you know, have mobile experiences, but with Ibegain, you climb into that bed and you're going to be in that

bed for a really long time. I listened to a podcast in Mexico. I didn't really have much access to books, but I listened to a podcast by a gentleman who did multiple high-d-lose LSD experiences through the 60s and 70s. I'm just blanking on his name right now. But he was a scientist, and so he documented his 112 experiences with high-d-l-d-l-d. And listening to him, you know, the things that stand out to me were that, number one, he wouldn't do it again, you know, that that kind of, as he looks back on what he did, he really, it wasn't necessary for him to. I mean, it was in the front, but in the back, looking back, that he had some regrets about that.

And like somatically, what he spoke about was different, which to me is an illustration of just the different natures of the two. I would think that Ibegain is very from nature and LSD is very from the mind of man. And that's a notable difference. I would say also that both ayahuasca and LSD seem to be up and out medicines, like your consciousness is up and out and traveling around where Iboga is the opposite. It takes you in and it takes you down and you're in with yourself deep in thought. Like I said, experiencing this often underestimated body load. I hope that answers the question.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Hank, for coming in there. I know that, you know, I talked with Ronnie Bevin a while back, and he was one of the founders of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. And he talked about the way they would do LSD, is that they would hike out into the canyon, and then they would take, like, they would cap their own LSD, and they would cap them at, like, 333 milligrams apiece,

and then they would take three of those. And he was like, listen, man, you take this dose. There's no coming back. Like, you're going to lay on the ground. There's no getting up. Like, you're going to be down for a while. And I know with my own experience, I remember when I came back from my first dead show, I had, you know, I was flush with LSD.

And I remember taking like a 10 strip and just losing the ability to talk. Like, I could, I could mumble, but there was no communication happening. And it's a scary place to be if you let it. And it does freak you out because you're like, I can't talk. you know, but there's some real sort of coping strategies that you need to use to get through something like that. And when you look back on those experiences, like what happens when you lose your ability to speak? What happens when you lose God's gift of mobility? Like there's some real demons right there just getting to the point of being comfortable in that new state.

Like, okay, this is only going to be for a little bit, right? But I can imagine on Iboga, you're looking at 72, 36 to 72 hours. Like, you're going to be in some really fantastical states where, wow, you really got to, it's the ordeal again. You're really going to have to use some coping strategy to get through it. And that's why you need someone like Asha or you need someone like Gareth Moxie. Like you need these people out there that can help you walk this sort of path. It's an overhaul space as the framework of all of your coping skills comes down,

which seems to be infinitely more beneficial in the lawn run, Like, who are you when nothing that you've ever done or knew how to do does anything? And you're at the mercy of the experience and that part of you that thinks it can cope with anything dies. That is a brilliant point. Where are you when all your coping strategies come down? Like, how many people have really been there? In a way, addiction kind of brings you to that point because you're, you are.

And maybe that's part of the initiation. do you think getting to the point like hitting rock bottom whether whatever path you've taken to get there is that also part of the initiation is that also helping you become the best version of yourself because it seems like that character art once you fall so far now you have the ability to become who you are but it seems to me you have to hit rock bottom you have to surrender everything in order to become the person you're supposed to be is that is that a bridge too far um i i think it's certainly worthwhile. And I also think that, you know, in my experience, there are people who reach readiness in all different kinds of ways and the rock bottom mythology is limiting. You know, there's something

that is a path to, you know, something new emerging when everything else fails. But it's not the only way that it's done. And, you know, there's a lot. There's a lot of. lot of people out there who come for whatever reason. So I don't know. I don't know why it is that some people reach readiness by other means. But I want to be inclusive of it because I like I said, I think the rock bottom is limiting and people are extraordinary. Yeah. Loxmi puts up, she did an interview with Rick Dobbin and she put up the, for everybody in the chat, go down and check out this link right here.

Also, Lockshmi, if you can, can you put a link in the chat for the new Iboga event on June 17th at the Canyon Theater so people can see that going forward? Yeah, it blows my mind. We got another question coming in here. They says, that says, who's this coming from? This is coming from Neil. He says, can grief be a god and have you ever bowed to it in ceremony? There was a movie that came out a while ago with Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt, meet Joe. black where death was personified for a moment.

In my imagination, in my contemplations, I can, I have a picture of or a persona of grief. And also, I constantly bow to how it has its own agenda, I believe, you know, similarly to death when it came, it wanted to be here in this worldly manifestation. I think grief does too and often if you are the vessel of grief, which I think we are all called to be at some point or another, you're definitely at its mercy. That's one of the things that makes it initiatory in its own way and also so difficult for us. So difficult for us to hold, you know, what we would rather. pass by, you know, or have it passed through us. We don't want to feel those feelings. So yeah, I think grief has its own, it's got its own agenda. It has its own presence. I think that it's

got lots of personalities and ways of expressing itself and we don't educate ourselves or converse nearly enough about the different facets of grief, beyond. sadness, beyond, I just think loss is a huge topic and worthy of nice, long, contemplative conversations. Yeah, I agree. All right, here we go. The one and only Robert Sean Davis. If you guys haven't been listening to Robert Sean Davis, I would point everyone over the guy's amazing. And he says, great discussion point, George. Trying to discern the depth and level that suffering and hardship plays into transformation and whether it is objective driven or experience based with respects to the progression and ultimate destination versus what skills of knowledge were we meant to have or meant to develop

that allows us to support reaching the same observation and existence space without a lifetime of rationalized pain yeah any thoughts on that i would ask for context on that okay it's just because it's a type of language that I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm not sure what exactly he's saying. Right. I think he's speaking to the idea of the language of experience. And we spoke recently about the path moving forward. Some people find that path without having to hit rock bottom. But I think it's coming, just asking the question of like, what is it? Like what is it that allow some people to create radical transformations without having to hit rock bottom. Maybe it's something we're born with.

Or sometimes I subscribe to the theory that we all chose, we all chose to came here and we all have our own mission to do and figure some things out. But it's a brilliant point moving forward. This one comes to us. Who is this coming from? This one is coming from Desiree, from Palm Desert. She says, what is the role of the doula when the soul itself is crowning? Well, my training and my practice are more rooted in spaceholding than anything else.

And also as a mother, and I had two children at home with midwives. And so I have a personal experience of crowning. And I have a personal experience of the peak of intensity that comes with that moment. And I have the confidence that there's nothing that we as facilitators do. in that moment except hold space. It's allowing for it, allowing for the person to have that experience without any agenda of doing anything about it

or changing anything, but being willing to bear witness to another person's peak of intensity so that you can hold the story so that perhaps in time there's an opportunity to reflect back to them in an integrative process what you witnessed that they experienced. And so being present to that moment without agenda, without ulterior motive, having done the personal work yourself, like this is the basis, the core of the Dula training,

is we work on ourselves outside of the container so that when we're in the container, we're not mucking it up with our personal work. And so these are things that, you know, hopefully we're attending to outside of, you know, somebody else's treatment so that their treatment can be entirely theirs without my unexpected triggers having any type of influence on it. My mentor, Wilco Roy, from the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross Foundation, Mexico Centro, would say that this,

is where we are the hollow bone or the empty vessel and we are just there with the trust and faith that nature is doing exactly what it is doing what it needs to do without our help so thinking that i don't i just don't certainly the person's not really going to be that interested in what you have to say nor are they going to be able to talk which is i appreciate that point because high dose lSD and your description of not being able to speak. That's also the same with Iboga. Like it's, and you say this center is on pause for a while, and this center and this center and your guts are on, you know, on point.

Those are the ones that are awake. Yeah, it's such a unique experience. And it, on some level, it's always the language. Like it's our greatest gift, but it also says, seems to be meaningless at times. And when you can be without it, whether it's some people do silent retreats, or maybe you do it on a high dose of LSD, or maybe it's Iboga. But when you lose the ability to think in words, you learn to see the world in a different way.

You know, you know what I mean by that? Like, you really feel it. And there's a lot of empathy that comes with that. Like, oh, my gosh, you just got to take it in. It's a really powerful experience. And I don't know that everybody's ready for it, but those that are, if you ever get to have that experience, it can be life-changing in a lot of ways. Yeah, yeah, I feel a responsibility to work on in myself, that which keeps me from being empathetic,

not highlighting all the ways in which I'm so empathetic, but how do I cultivate, you know, less obstruction from my own empathy? It's really well said. It's really well said. I, Asha, I feel like we're like we just got started on our conversation coming up on like. I was going to say and I usually begin, you know, any talk about I began with the like, we're only going to scratch the surface. Yeah.

This is this is a 20 year conversation. I've been talking like about this medicine nonstop for 20 years and only so much can be attended to in, you know, this little bit of time together. But this is what I'm saying. I like a long extended conversation and not quick pat little answers of like, this is what's going to happen. This is what you can expect. Here's what you have to do to get ready. Because it just is, it leaves out all of the nuance and, you know, all the meatiness of the experience.

It does. I mean, I could go into, you know, I. You can kind of ask me many things. Again, I come from a lay provider point of view, not a scientific point of view. So I don't, I really don't study the science of Ibegain. I do stay connected to the experience of Ivigain and also being, you know, willing to be that one that will talk about what actually happens instead of what science says happens. Although it's, you know, I mean, I don't know. I don't know how many scientists are taking Ibegain and then, or are they just analyzing the data that's been submitted by somebody who did take it, which are vastly different experiences?

I think far too many are doing the latter. I think far too many are analyzing the data, and I'm sure with great intention, but we're back to the language of experience. You know, when you read the observation of something, it's a shadow of the actual experience. It's also including, you know, a more non-scientific language with the medicine, it's more allowing for the person to own and embody their experience for it, to be for them what it was going to be and to minimize that comparative mind, which people have, you know. But he had that experience, and it didn't happen that way for me. But for each person to be able to really own what theirs is and that it not be, I mean, the Ibegain I know, the spirit that I know in this plant is process oriented. It is not outcome oriented. And so there seems to be some, what is for me a little bit imbalanced about the highlight of what the highlight of what the

outcome of this treatment ends where I'm still integrating the first experience that I had 18 years ago and each one successively like there's not a thing that came out of it although so much did emerge out of it and and that readiness that we were talking about like what is it that brings a person to that point of readiness and I think that with Ibegain And part of it is a receptivity, you know, that this is not a medicine. Like I hear so many people say, I did Ibogaine. But it isn't something that you're doing. It's something that's doing you.

And you are the vessel in which that doing is happening. So this idea that you've, you know, or that notion that you're in the driver's seat in any way, I think that people who are willing to step out of the driver's seat and allow something beyond themselves to be in charge of them for a while, allow themselves to be, I mean, I don't know, we should all, we're all so easy, but allow themselves to receive this medicine, you know. This is a sacrament, you know, in its motherland in Gabon in Africa and the Congo basin with the boidi and the pygmies. This is their sacrament, you know. This is their wine and wafer. This is their, you know, taking in the spirit and letting it come through them, you know, letting the spirit manifest into this reality. a period of time. I mean, again, it's so complex that I'm going to say one thing, but there's

thousands of other things that it could be for somebody. Yeah, that's a great point. Robert Sean Davis, incredible. Thank you, Robert Sean Davis, for all the work that you do. I really appreciate you always being here and the things that you do. He says, you are mighty, Asha. I love the experience and testimony of those who recognize the organic and natural pathway to healing that these medicines provide, without having to limit their viewpoints and trying to assign an inadequate language to the process. It is beyond noble to relinquish the ego as part of the experience and avoid the entanglements that surround it spiritually, especially given how powerful and non-definable much of the magic really is. That's well said,

Robert. Thank you. Thank you. Midge Smith says, with the Iboga experience sounding so confrontational, is there a risk of a kind of resultant PTSD rather than a positive reformation? Yeah, yeah, there can be. I have seen people even with the most, you know, loving and attentive space holding in preparation. I've seen people come out and be shell-shocked

and be, you know, knocked off center for a while. Sometimes people come through and they're manic or sometimes they come through and the despair that has to move through them and be processed is traumatic. You know, it triggers the post-traumatic stress response. Sometimes it's necessary to do that as part of the healing. That, in fact, now through the work with the Oboga,

there's no place left to hide and you have to live that for a little while and, you know, perhaps the humility, humility will emerge out of it. So it's not common though. You know, it would be the exception rather than the norm for a person to have this response. And I would want to. I feel like I have learned over the years more signs to watch for in a, in a pre-screening before a person ever receives the medicine that might inform the type of preparation that they're given and might expand the type of informed consent that's necessary.

Yeah. Thanks, Midge, for chiming in over here. It's a great point. You know, and I'm glad that he brought it up because we do talk about how confrontational it is and some of the personal testimonies of people are so fantastical and so moving. It's like, wow, how can you not have that experience forever. Asha, I'm really thankful for your time, and I wish I, you have to come back because we need to have a longer conversation. I feel like this, like

you said, I just kind of scratched the surface of it. But before we land the plane, would you be so kind as to tell people where they can find you, what you have coming up and what you're excited about? Well, I'm at a time of personal transformation in my life. Like I said, having recently left the Dreamhouse,

returned to the United States and entering, reentering a workforce that I haven't been involved in for a long time. So I don't have a website. I'm super analog, but I could be reached. I have some contact information on the awake.net website. I'm working and available for consultation, both pre and post treatment at this point, being able, if I'm not serving the medicine directly, still being able to serve people who have an interest in moving towards it. There are a couple of clinics who I work with and have developed relationships through the years. So that's where I would say you could look for me on the awake.net page. I'm not exactly sure because like I said,

I'm not very digitally adept. All right. We'll put it in the show notes. But it's in there. And then, you know, I don't know. Do people give out their phone numbers here? Do they give out their phone number? Maybe if you have an email.

You know what? I'll put on, I can put all the email and stuff in the show notes that you want me to put in there. And we'll talk to briefly afterwards. Thank you very much. Of course. And Midge, reach out to the Awig. dot net network and um you can look for osha over there also put that into the to the uh show notes as well i think midge has some other questions he would love to ask you so well hang on briefly afterwards

but to everybody that hung out with us today to midge to robert to hank to betsy to neal to nick to everybody to everybody to lachshmi thank you so much for everybody for spending some time with us today i hope we answer some questions reach out to ayesha she's brilliant she has the the library of lived experience so reach out to her she'll be able to help you out with any other questions and that's all we got for today ladies and gentlemen hope you have a beautiful day hang on briefly afterwards ayesha aloha