TrueLife - Bleed Beauty, Die Laughing: The Radical Art of Alex Detmering

Episode Date: June 5, 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/Alex DetmeringTonight, we do not summon a guest—we invoke a storm, a feral force birthed at the crossroads where Blake’s mad visions meet Watts’ cosmic riddles,and the ferryman waits with a crooked grin, oar dripping with psychedelic fire.Alex Detmering is the alchemist who turns market logic into molten rebellion,who feeds fried locusts to his insatiable hunger for truth,and tears through the polite fabric of civilization like a wolf at the throat of empire.He doesn’t just strategize—he conjures sacred chaos,crafting exquisite designs in the shadows of collapsing pyramids,while whispering Shakespeare’s ghosts into the ears of gods and madmen alike.His mind is a battleground where character dissolves into myth,where every word is a lightning bolt aimed at the heart of the mundane,shattering the glass temple of conformity with a grin sharp enough to draw blood.Alex stands at the edge of reason and madness,where the Upanishads bleed into the wild hymns of the night,and Rumi’s spinning dance becomes a war danceto unmake the dead world and birth a new dawn soaked in fire and blood.He is the fierce ferryman rowing us through the psychedelic abyss,where intellect and intuition collide in savage harmony—where every whiteboard is a battlefield, every idea a weapon forged in truth’s flame.So brace yourself. Tonight’s journey is not for the faint.We’re stepping through the rupture,into a tempest where thought becomes thunder and silence screams.Alex Detmering isn’t just your guide—he’s the rebellion incarnate, the sacred wildfire burning down the old worldso the new can rise from its ashes, screaming and free.http://alexdetmering.com/http://linkedin.com/in/alex-detmering 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. 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. Hope the sun is shining. Hope the birds are singing. Hope the wind is at your back.

Ladies and gentlemen, Alex Detmering. Tonight, today, right now, we do not summon a guest. We invoke a storm, a feral force birth at the crossroads where Blake's mad visions meet Watts' cosmic riddles, and the ferryman waits with a crooked grin or dripping with psychedelic fire. Alex Detmering is the alchemist who turns market logic into molten rebellion, who feeds fried locust to his insatiable hunger for truth and tears through the polite fabric of civilization like a wolf at the throat of empire. He doesn't just strategize. He conjures sacred chaos, crafting

exquisite designs in the shadows of collapsing pyramids, while whispering Shakespeare's ghost into the ears of gods and madman alike. His mind is a battleground where character dissolves into myth, where every word is a lightning bolt aimed at the heart of the mundane, shattering the glass temple of conformity with a grin sharp enough to draw blood. Alex stands at the edge of reason and madness where the Upanishads bleed into the wild hymns of the night and, Rumi's spinning dance becomes a war dance to unmake the dead world and birth a new dawn soaked in fire and blood. Alex, thank you for being here today. How are you? Dude, I'm great. At some point, I would really like to get into how the hell you write these intros because it is a mystery to me.

And I'd like to know the answer to that. And also, I don't know how I'm possibly going to live up to the quality of your intro, but I, but I'll try. You know what? It's like a master plan because I feel like I'm talking to like the leaders of tomorrow today. And when I look at it and I read these introductions, I know that in like five or seven years from now, or maybe 15 or maybe 20, people like me when I was going to look back and be like, oh my God, that's Alex. Listen to this interview. Of course that's him. You know what I mean? So I want to be part of building this future. And like, I believe it, man. Like when I read your bio and I start researching the parable, the parable foundation and just

see the level of communication that you're putting stuff out there. It's staggering. And I'm really impressed, man. So yeah, let's jump into this thing, man. Like, you know what? I thought we'd start off with the question. What question do people never ask you, but you wish they would? Okay. That's a great question. And I'm going to turn it back on you. I'm going to turn it back on you. I'm to turn it back on you. What question would you like to ask me that you don't think you can? What are the most controversial topics in psychedelics and media right now? Oh, you sound of a gun. You asked.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. What are the most controversial topics in psychedelics and media right now? Oh, man. I think it's got to be the whole symposia thing, man.

To be honest with you, that's probably the most controversial thing. And I'm pretty sure most of people listening don't know. this is and I'm not trying to be like some kind of experty guy, but for background, right, mass, the organization that everyone has heard of, has been trying to get MDMA for PTSD, you know, approved by the FDA as a treatment for decades, 40 years, something like that, right? And it all looks good up until the last couple years, just some stuff starts coming out that seems to like to stabilize the chances that actually happened, right? I think the first big thing is probably, like the first thing that most people became aware of and are still aware of this day and people

bring up all the time is the Power Trip podcast that NY Post put out probably in 2020. And it covers a few things, but one of the things it covers is the case of one of the clinical trial participants experienced abuse in relation to the maps trials. Part of it, there's, this is a, this is a, this, what I'm saying right now is contentious, right, you know, but part of the abuse, some people contend happened during the actual therapy itself. And then part of the abuse, uh, seemed to have happened in a relationship that occurred, uh, between, this is the, the abuse I'm talking about is.

is the trial participant and then the therapists that were administering the therapy during this trial, right? So part of it is arguably taking place during that, and then part of it takes place definitely afterwards where the therapist and the patient get in a relationship, right? And so that coverage and that podcast is probably the first big thing. that starts to shake the narrative that the that MDMA is going to get legalized and legalized soon, right? And after that, just a bunch of other things start happening. And probably the next most important event is the FDA has this like public hearing.

It's pretty rare, but it gets called to discuss like things that have, that can't these these, these things can get called to discuss, I guess, like, you know, trials and, and, and, it, in process that are close to getting passed, right? So they have a public hearing, uh, experts come on and then some more doubt gets, uh, so in people's minds because a lot of the people that they, they talk to are talking about all these kinds of problems of the trials, problems of the data, reports of abuse, the, the instance that was, uh, as far as I remember, the instance that was covered in that, uh, podcast was brought up again during, during this, uh, during this public trial. And so people are like, oh, shit. And this is brought up in June.

If I remember quickly, this council meeting thing, my terminology is wrong. I'm sorry, but this council meeting comes up in June. And then people are like, oh shit, what's going to happen now? And because for like years, right, Doblin's on Rogan. And everyone's like, this is, this is in the bag, right? Every publication that you can think of is publishing, like these glowing reviews and, you know, I don't say puff pieces, but, you know, thumbs up, right? The FDA is going to approve this. And in the last six inches, when they're almost in the end zone, all this shit starts happening. And what happens, right? I mean, I don't, you don't need me to tell you, right? It doesn't, it doesn't pass. So this, like, what exactly

happened here to me is the most controversial thing in psychiatry. And this and psychedelic media. And it's hard for me to even like discuss this now because it's an extremely complex issue. But fuck it, George. Let's go, bro. Okay, let's go. So, so what's that, what's that play here? So, um, here's what I think.

This is my, this is my unvarnished opinion. Okay. All right. So I think that the, there, so behind the scenes of all of this shit for, for like, like years is a cohort of journalists that are working together to basically undermine the FDA trials. Now, we'll get into their motivations and maybe the justification behind the motivations in a second. But that this is happening is pretty much a fact, right? So you can just follow the online paper trail, you know, the people that put together with NYPost, the people that

help put together that podcast series, they are part of this group, right? The reason why there's even a council called or whatever to, you know, discuss whether, you know, the state of the FDA trials for MDMA, that was petitioned for and successfully called because of people that are part of this group, right? There's another review that's done by a well-known, scientific body, highly critical of the state of the research of those trials. A lot of the evidence that that critique was based on, or the critiques that are part of that review are based on from these journalists. You just, you just dig into it, right?

And it's not like this is like a conspiracy theory. George, this is a conspiracy. And look, conspiracy. can be justified, right? I'm not saying, I'm not saying, oh, you know, there's lots of conspiracies, right? A lot of whether or not a conspiracy is a bad thing or a good thing. Right. It depends on your moral outlook. But I'll be damned, George, you dig into this, and this is a no-joke conspiracy. So, so what's at play here for me is is a couple things. One is, I will be honest with you. I have an abiding and powerful love, an appreciation for the work that the people at MAPS have done for the work of

Doblin and Rick Doblin and his entire crew. I'll tell you, man, I mean, MDMA therapy in particular, which I have done of the course of, consistently over the course of five years, there is not a thing, there is a thing, not a person. There's a person in my life that's changed me as MDMA therapy and that's my wife. But there's a thing in this world that has been more influential in my life than MDMA therapy in teaching me how to open up my heart and like teaching me how to be courageous in ways when it wasn't. So like all and I would not have known about MDMA therapy. I would still probably be suffering and in straight up fucking hell, bro, if it wasn't for the fact that,

I found out about that and I did that. So that is in part a, I don't know if it's a bias, but it's definitely an appreciation that I have for, for them and what they've done because of the awareness they brought to it because I'm pretty sure there are probably thousands, if not tens of thousands of people that are like me, that if they hadn't found out about this, right, then they also would have suffered and worse, right, and worse. So, That's part of what's at stake here. And that's part of why teasing apart this, what actually is going on here is so fucking hard is because MDMA saved my life, right?

And so it's very difficult to be totally objective about something that has been so profoundly helpful to you. So that I'll just acknowledge that on the front end. But the other side of that and the part of this that I think, think made the and so that that group right right we're either part of an organization called symposia which is a 501c3 according to their website last I checked it's a 511C3 journalistic entity that's out to be kind of like a watchdog entity for the psychedelic world I think that group was talking about something and you would argue about how they were talking about it but there is a a kernel of truth to what they were talking about that allowed that opened up the door for it

to be as profoundly impacting as it was. And that kernel that kernel of truth, George, I'll just tell you from the perspective, my own life, because I can't really speak for anybody else's. So there's another, is that psychedelics are very complicated. Psychedelic therapy is very, very complicated. And, and what you're going, what you could go through as a result of doing psychedelics or doing psychedelic therapy is something where you can't really guarantee the outcome and the intensity of it and the journey that you're going to go through is something that really you can't ever really consent to doing because of how fucking crazy it can get. Right. And so, and not all, not all stories are happy stories.

right not everyone goes through psychedelics and like and and is healed or have been in and and doing this over years right and we can get into that in a bit because i've talked to talk to many of these people and interview these people and got to got to yeah right so but what opened the door to symposia in my opinion from my perspective right and their critique and the way that they're able to undermine the what in my also my privilege to be valiant efforts of all these um psychedelic advocates was the fact that there was a whole, I don't want to say shadow, honestly, of psychedelics that wasn't really being confronted or placed into the public eye in the way that it ought to have been.

Right. And so here's, here's like my story and where it weaves into this just as a way of saying, this is also, I think, true of many others. Okay. So I told you MDMA therapy helped change my life. totally did. The, the catalyst for me using MDMA therapy was a psilocybin session. And in that psilocybin session, a repressed memory emerged that I didn't know how to deal with. And so I freaked the fuck out, dude. I freaked the fuck out. And latent mental illness, which had always been kind of like

doing different things in my life wasn't really aware of it, that emerged. And it just squeezed the fuck out of like my perspective, right? It was like a python. And my whole reality got, you know, pinched to a pinhole. And I was in hell, dude. And I was in hell for a very, very long time for years. And what that latent mental illness was was OCD. And if you know someone who's had OCD, like severe OCD, you know, I think they'll tell you

it's hell too, right? Because what it's doing is it's taking the your greatest fears and the things that are most tender to you and your own heart in your life. And it is just stabbing them every minute, every second of every minute of every day for the moment you wake up, you wake up, that, that, that, that, that just cutting, just cutting into your heart over and over and over and over again. And not, and for me, it wasn't for a week, it wasn't for months. It was for years, right? It was for years and from every angle. And it was the soundtrack of my life. It was the, it was the, it was the, was a way I saw everything in my life.

It was through this lens of, of fear. And it was, like I said, it wasn't just any fear. It was fear around the things that mattered most to me in my life. And that made living fucking hell. And you can look at, I mean, I can, I can smile on the outside, but on the inside, I was screaming because I didn't know what I didn't know what to do, right? I had no idea what to do. And when something attacks you at that level, the fear that's involved with that is that you you don't want to look at it, right? Because what happens when you look at it, right? What could, you know, the fear that's attacking you is about your character and who you are

and, and the core of like what matters to you. And looking at that promises, you know, finality and finality can can turn out against you. Right. And so it's, it's, it's, it just keeps on going, right? And so that's, that's where my story, I think that's, I think how my story captures some of the complexity of this situation, right, is that I don't think I'm alone in that. In fact, I know I'm not alone in that because I've known a lot of people that have done psychedelics and a lot of people who've done psychedelic therapy, and they have had

to go through similar things. And I feel very fortunate in that I feel like my story, at least so far, has a happy ending. You know, like I worked like a madman, like a madman. Like I, I, like nothing I have ever worked on in my entire life on this particular thing because the the toxicity of the fear George is like you know like what I had to do or at least my experience of what shifted this for me was so these things are coming up minute by minute for me every day all the time sleeping not I'm not sleeping hardly at all I'm like sleeping like two and a half hours, three hours a night, broken sleep, right? What I, what I experienced that I had to do to get over this was the opposite.

Every second that something came up, I had to redirect and do the opposite of what I wanted to do over and over again, like probably millions of times. I'm not counting, probably millions of times, right? Because like I had taught myself to avoid. I had taught myself avoidance through, you know, through every algorithm, them in my behavior, right? Like, and this was like coming at me. And so I, you know, this was baked into everything I was doing. So I had to change that, you know, 35 years, 30, 35 years of avoidance through years, literally years of doing the exact opposite. And,

uh, that was so crazy. Like that was so hard, uh, at least for me, man, that if I had told myself, that was, I was going to, that, that is what I was going to have to do to get through this and to grow from it. I'd like, you're out of your mind. That's, that's not, that's, that can't possibly be the solution. And maybe there's more elegant solutions. I'm not here. All I'll tell you is that, um, that is what it was for me. That's what helped me. And, And now, you know, the end result of this process for me was, I love my life, dude. I love my life. And in all those questions that were so, like, terrorizing to me, at least all the ones I'm

aware of, I've answered those questions for me, right? I've answered them like so many times, you know? And that has created within me a deep piece and a love for my life. and that's the happy ending, right? But I just know that that's not true for everybody, right? And I don't know why that's not true for everybody. Maybe for some people, maybe some people, I don't know, maybe it is, maybe it is their calling or whatever it is for there never to be another side.

I can't say that that's what it is for everyone. All I can say is my own experience. But because I've had my experience, George, I can say that this to me is, kind of the core of what's missing, what I see personally is missing in a lot of psychedelic media is this experience, because this experience, I think, is probably at least a fair chunk of people's experiences when trying to deal with their shit with psychedelics and psychedelic therapy, right? It's just because it is so messy.

It is so complicated. There's so many, like, pieces and parts and puzzles and phases and chapters and, forward and backward and all this kind of stuff, right? And that's, and that's a very hard message to give to people, right? Because I wouldn't have listened to this message, right? If someone's like, okay, you know, if you do this thing, it's probably going to be the hardest thing in your life. Everything about your life might change. There's no guarantee you're going to make it through it. Your brain chemistry is going to change, blah, blah, blah. Like, if you gave me the whole download on this. I'd be like, what the fuck, right? Like, what is this? Yeah.

You know, so, but that's, but that's, that's so much to me of, the challenge of, um, of psychedelic media, right? And I, I love what's going on here because, um, I, I, I think, um, at least for me, what I feel like is like the, the only way that I can do this right is by like telling people all of that. Like, telling people all that because then they have the ability to make a decision. And I think, and I don't, and I don't want to skew negative because I'll be damned, right? Like a therapeutic MDMA experience is magic. It is magic.

It can be magic, right? When I, like, heard and felt like my heart talking to me and explaining my life or talking through my mind, who the fuck knows how it works. When I heard that, dude, or when I, like, felt the fate, like the glorious fate of the moment, and you feel like you're on the razor's edge of time, and you're like, holy shit, like, all of it is coming to this. And that's not, and then you speak out of that, and it connects with other people, and you're like, we're in it, right?

You can say that feeling is a delusion, and I think sometimes there can be delusional ways that we can take it. But there are other ways in which that feeling is oh so very real and and and and and life changing. So, you know, that's that you know, that's that you that's the balance. And that's so that's what's so difficult to me about psychedelic media is like, you know, it's hard to overstate how incredible psychedelic experiences are, isn't it? I mean, it's like it's hard to overstate. It's it's not like you're coming back from something and you're bullshitting when you say you feel like you talk to God. Like I have felt in some of these experiences, George, like I've been to a spiritual world. Right. Yeah. Without a doubt. It's like

the holiest of holy is within me. I have felt that I have been there. Right. And so when you speak out of that, you sound like you're delusional. Like you, You sound to someone who has not, you know, for whatever reason, had a similar experience. They're like, dude, you're delusional. So it and you want to, and I think this is, this is a big thing with me, man. It's like, I want to communicate that too because it's like, dude, this really is a crazy, beautiful thing that everyone, I think, should have the right to choose about whether or not they want to have part of their experience.

Yep. But what comes with that, right, is risk. What comes with that is danger because at least how I understand it, man, it's like, I don't think you get one without the other, right? I don't think you get a genuine spirituality without a real sense of like things going sideways and remaining sideways. It's like, you know, every time you like, every time someone jumps out of plane, right? Yeah.

And pulls the parachute, right? sometimes that parachute is not going to open that does happen right and you do enough jumps and you increase the risk of that happening right and so it's just like like every like you know some of the most extreme and powerful experiences that put you the most in touch with the impermanence and beauty in life that that that whole bargain part of that to me is also the risk of like you could come out of the other end like destroyed that is possible. right and and and i think that that is a beautiful thing and it isn't to me like uh to me that's on a critique of psychedelics not to say that they're perfect at all but i'm just saying that that in

itself isn't a critique of psychedelics that to me is evidence for how real they are as experiences and how non-fictitious they are how non-fantiful they are right if all the you know iwaska and ibogain and all these experiences that people were having, if no, if everyone was able to come out, there was no risk involved, right? I think that's even better argument that what we're dealing here are just realms of fantasy. But the fact that you can go into those things and you are definitely taking your psychology and your soul into your own hands and there are near misses and sometimes fatal crashes, that is just that that to me is that to me is uh is evidence of the of the reality right and so

that that that is like that is what i felt kind of happened from my perspective right and being kind of like an obsessive follower of this thing uh in the background for right that that's kind of my perspective is that like it's very very hard to especially from a marketing perspective as as someone who's trying to as soon as trying to deliver a message right truly right you're trying deliver a message to people like to deliver all of that to people is very very difficult because it just becomes it becomes so mud it's like i mean dude you you write on social media all the time you know if you included every caveat and nuance in a post right when you're like writing like the first line in your post it'd be like a paragraph people like what are you even talking about right right and so

there's this crazy trade-off between accuracy and efficacy that communicators have to like be willing. That is the devil's dance that we have to be willing to do to be able to communicate. Because no one's going to read my post if I write every complication, right? But if I take out too many complications, well, then I'm just lying. So how do you do it, right? you got to fuck around and find out. But that's, I think it's part of what happened. That's part of, part of what we're figuring out as in psychedelic media, right?

And people that do this is like, well, how do we, how do you do this? Right? Because we want to communicate the fact that people can have life changing experiences doing psychedelic therapy or doing psychedelics recreationally. Where the fuck, right? Because they can. Right. We want to communicate that there's all this power because, because there is.

Right. But on the other side, right, there's all these complications and difficulties and people go through really, really, really hard shit, you know, and some of them don't make it. And that and that is a, that's a lack actual, that's a tragedy that must be acknowledged. And so how we communicate that is, is, is, is, is, is, is, this is like I said, me and what I, what I feel like that is what we're trying to learn. And I think the one of the biggest obstacles. have to overcome to like ethically, ethically change how psychedelics operate within society, right? Because we can do a con job and we could try to like squash all this stuff. And we could try to pretend like there are no, there are no side effects and pretend like this is the inherent gospel, but it's not, you know? And we can pretend like people can't get diluted on psychedelics,

but they can. We can pretend a lot of things. right um but i don't think we want to do that you know and that's that i don't think we want to do that because i i think uh i think part of what psychedelics help can help you do is really appreciate the truth and the value of it you know and and and how and how powerful it is to just like keep on pressing towards that ideal and so that's what i feel like we're doing that's i love it man it and you know what like i don't think my personal opinion is that psychedelics goes back in the bag because there's no way to there's no way to saddle

certainty you know what i mean by that like and that's what science is trying to do is like how do we make this certain can we take the can we take the experience away from the trip can we can we do it in a way that's safe and the answer is no there's no possible safe way to ever do psychedelics it takes courage to do it it takes a lot of courage to do it and especially if you're going to do it for a prolonged time you're going to do huge doses but those are the things that are going to change your life in a way that no other experience can. Yes, there's a good chance

you can come out of the same more fucked up. That's just the facts. You could come out and be in a worse relationship. There it is. But you'll never ever get a chance to become the very best version of yourself unless you have the courage to try it. And that's what psychedelics invites us to do.

Marseille Aelad, and all these mystics wrote about it so beautifully, the terror before the sacred. And you know exactly what I'm talking about when you're in the depths of a fucking deep trip and you're, holy shit, you're paralyzed in fear, and all of a sudden the answer comes to you in a way that's as frightening as it is beautiful. And that is where you get the meaning because there's no words for that.

There's no way to come out of that and describe that to people, but you feel it. And that feeling is the catalyst for change in your life and all your relationships. And you do have to do it alone on some level. Like there's no one can hold your hand, like that you can sit with someone in a clinic. And for a lot of people, they may need that. But for the average person out there that wants to make their life better, I think the message is, you got to do it alone. Like, it's the only way.

How are you going to change yourself? No one's going to change your life for you. Like, you have to do it alone. And you can figure out your own way to do it. There's no right dosing schedule. There's no right. There's the phatiman pro. There's all these different protocols.

But at the end of the day, it's the Alex Detmering protocol or the George Moni protocol. We're going to find our own way. And that's what science is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you guys aren't qualified to do. do this. How many people are going to die? All this? Yep, that's coming. And like, that to me is why it goes back in the back. And on the other end of that, what I think is one of the most, what I think is one of the most sinister things out there is the radical commercialization of it. You know, you have all these people that are setting up these schools and are promising, they're preaching, like they're the authority on things. They're dressing up certification as qualification.

They're setting up sales funnel and allowing people to come down that are half broken and have these small experiences and then those people now think they're guides. Someone that goes to a year school of six months, a three year school is not Gareth Moxie. They're not Dr. Mash. They're not a guide. You're not going to be a guide from going to one of these schools. And if you think you are, shame on you and the very people that are putting these things out. This is detrimental to the system. It's not a good thing for this system. And why are all the CEOs making tons of money and their students are coming out and can't even set up their own business? Like that is an issue. Commoditizing vulnerability is an issue. And when we do these things,

we're running on some level i think it's the divine trickster like go ahead and try let's see what you guys can do here let me show you the ramifications of using psychedelics and sort of trying to commodify something sacred like that to me is all these things we're talking about yes we need an avenue for people that are that have real issues and then there should and there's already people for that i think on some level like you have gareth moxies out there you have um you know you have dr jessica rochester there's all kinds of people out there that started off as an apprentice and are figuring out how to work with these substances, they're using the old traditional ways of helping people move through them. As far as media is concerned, I think what you're doing is amazing.

You've got the parable foundation coming out. And like, you're doing real incredible work only because, Alex, you've been through it. There's something to be said about someone who goes through the experience that can help other people through it. And like that comes, you know, like you said, you're working hard than you ever have before. Like now you have a mission. But it was that psychedelic journey that allowed you to have that insight. once you go through something, and if you can look at tragedy as a way as the ultimate gift of experience,

like it's the language of experience that allows you to help other people get through that same thing. And I think that's what psychedelics are teaching us is that, look, you can talk all you want to, but until you've had this experience, you're not able to. It's an initiation. It's an ordeal. It's a tell me you're suffering, and I will sit with you and help you work through it. But it takes courage, man. I know that's a lot to throw out there, but what are your thoughts?

bro so many things i i want to i want to get back to the certification thing okay because i think it's an interesting discussion i think it's a really interesting discussion um but uh i do i do i do agree and i and i um about the fact that this is an initiation yes i love that yeah so all i can do is i all i can do with this is speak speak for myself right um but what i feel like what i have gone through right is accepting responsibility of living my own life and making my own decisions like to move from trying to live life in such a way where I was kind of just protected from downside and and and reducing risk to living life in such a way where I was choosing where I wanted to go and accepting whatever downside and risks that that came along with it.

And in order to do that for me, I had to develop a trust in life and a trust in myself that I just did not have before and only came for me through years. Right. Like trust. Yeah. It takes time. At least in my experience, trust takes time. You know. And I have to be willing to put my money on myself.

If like the chips, like if the chips. Like if the chips are down and I'm in some kind of bad situation, I have to be able to trust myself that I can act, right? And trust my moral character and trust my vision, you know. And I don't believe, at least for me, that didn't come through just me kind of like telling myself, talking to myself with positive affirmations. That's actually part of it, you know, like changing how I'd speak to myself. But the biggest thing, but the biggest thing was just. just like the slow, quiet things that I've never told anyone that I've done.

And just the part in me watching me do those things and seeing, seeing like why I was doing something and what happened after. Yeah. Right? Like, oh, instead of being defend, like someone says something to me that may be challenging to my perception. of myself and what I imagine other people who are perceiving in myself. And instead of responding, I just allow that to sit and evaporate.

Right. What happens when I do that? That's like a small kind of minor thing. Right. Someone says like, yeah, Alex, but you suck at this. Right. And instead of, yeah, so, yeah, but some, some criticism, someone says. Yeah, I'm with you.

Instead, or someone has like a legit, let beef with me about something, but I can't fix it right now. So I have to be, I have to accept the fact that they're just going to think ill of me. And I care about their opinion. Yeah. Right. Those kinds of things. Right. And then I decide to do something that other people don't know that I, that I've done, which is like, let it go, but just let it go. Right. And you do that a bunch of times. And what I discovered through that, George, was I was like, oh, I'm stronger than I think that I am. Right. That calamity that I was going to try to control the downside risk for, which is, you know, because this person criticized me, therefore people are going to think ill of me and that's all this reputation management game that you get in your brain. And it's not like I'm like, oh my God, I'm beyond this, right? All I'm saying is that I've made steps, right? And I'm taking those. And so that reputation game or the person thinking ill of me. And as I've noticed, you know, I survived. Right. I'm a. made a choice to not follow a previous strategy.

Yep. I survived. Life didn't end. Life goes on. I'm actually, I actually feel okay. I notice that I feel okay. I feel stronger for having not said that, right?

There's a set of realizations that comes along with those tiny decisions that, that, that I, that I have made, right? That then that slowly matures and cultures. This sense of inner strength and a sense of trust in life, right? That there's a whole bunch of reasons why I in particular felt that life was kind of out to get me. And it took me so long to kind of seriously disabuse myself of that deep fear, right? Part of it was a lot of it was just so many of these tiny things do. Like so like thousands of many decisions like this, right?

Part of it was that. Part of it came through in psychedelic experiences, dude, where I had to get into the ickyest of the ick of like why I felt that way, why I felt that life was a betrayer, right? Part of it had to do with what part of it had to do with religious stuff. Like I grew up Christian and I lost my faith or my faith in God. And that was something that I held so closely to me, dude. and losing and losing that, right, is a soul level injury, right? When you, when you are, when, when, when the love of God and a relationship with God is something that you hold to your heart, right? And then the reality to you of God disappears. There's the loss of a relationship, but then there's the loss of trust in yourself and anyone else.

Yes. Right. And that is like, that is like an epistemological sniper. Like, bam, like like, like you can no longer believe or trust fucking anything. Least of all yourself. Do you know why? Because you diluted yourself your whole life. You're a liar.

Who are you going to believe now? Right. And that's not something, at least for me, right? That's not something I can like, I can't talk. my way out of that. I have to live my way out of that. Yeah. Right. Like I have to prove to myself that I have integrity and I'm having the best intentions as much as I possibly can over years. And then and then and then the smoke begins to clear and then I and I feel that emerge, right? And that whole process is so wild and wily and unpredictable and individual, right? Because my may,

my maze is so individual, right? Like I said, there's a religious thing. There's trauma stuff for me. There's all kinds of these things that are all interlocked in ways that I don't understand fully. Right? Psychedelic experiences gives you like these like glimpses into what appears to be an inner world that you're just kind of trying to like reverse engineer after that. You're like, well, I guess that's part of this part.

And you get you definitely get insights, but then you also like don't really know because there's mechanics that are going on that are operating beyond your perception, right? And so, so this whole thing, I believe, George, what we're talking about right now is part of what makes this so difficult to incorporate as part of any kind of medical thing that we're aware of currently. It's because of its wildness and its weirdness because, you know, it might be the case that I need to have two years, that that's at least it was for me, I need to have two years where everything's only getting worse. Like what kind of, like how do you, how do you write a

protocol for that, right? How do you, how do you sit there as someone as an observer, right, and watch someone go through that and say, well, this is, he's on the right path. Shit, I didn't know I was on the right path at all. You know, so, so that, that, that, that process is, is a huge challenge. And it makes it, it, it makes it very hard to imagine how, how is it going to be part of, um, the system as it is. Uh, I will say, I don't think all substances are created equal in this way, at least in general.

And I think that there are more or less realistic, you know, I, I, I think personally, you know, MDMA therapy, uh, probably, could or at least get closer to it. I think that you could probably, there's probably a lot of people with PTSD and a host of other things. Honestly, I hope they use MDMA therapy for OCD, given my experience. OCD is such a toxic fear-based situation. And MDMA teaches you how to dance with that fear. But so I think that endemae therapy, I can see that as conceivable. when we start to get to psilocybin and then LSD and then as you kind of like march your way up like the the psychedelic ladder, those things to me become more difficult to imagine because what I think we're asking more and more of people,

you know, I'm just saying this to myself, like you're asking people to have more and more faith and more and go more and more outside of anything they consider to be normal as, as you go that way. And that's just, it's just hard to imagine, right? Because it really is a different thing. It sounds like you're, the word that comes to mind is ordeal. You know,

when you start to look like an ordeal is something that you have to go through in order to fully become the best, the best version of yourselves. And the ordeal happens in different ways, whether it's bipolar or maybe losing a child or OCD or maybe you lose a marriage. You know, The ordeal can come in your own specific maze. But I think it's imperative, and I'm curious to get your opinion on this.

Do you have to hit, like it seems like you have to get stuck in that ordeal before the medicine really does the job of helping you. And I think the ordeal is part of the psychedelic journey. You know, maybe you go through, maybe you have to go through five years of hell. Maybe you have to live till the age of 40 and that was practice. And now you get the medicine and you're like, oh, shit. And now you can understand. Oh, it was like a dagger stagging my heart every single day. But you would never know what that's like unless you live through that hell.

Even the Buddha himself had to walk through hell to get to where he is, to understand enlightenment. Like it seems to me like so many of these stories from like yourself and so many cool people I get to have on, they're talking a lot like the mystics of the medieval century. And like that seems to be something that is not congruent with science. Like science and mysticism sort of, you know, decoupled back in that time right there. But I feel like they're coming back together. So what are your thoughts on having to go through the ordeal? Maybe the first 40 years or something like that.

But is the ordeal necessary to thoroughly understand what it is you need to do in your life to become better? Probably. But yeah, I'll, yeah, probably. You know, for me, right, I don't think there would have been a level. And I wonder what you would say to this, George. Okay. I don't think there would be, I was thinking about this. Actually, it's really funny.

I was thinking about this yesterday. I was like, I was like, God damn, I was so lost. Like I was so, so lost. Right? Like, I was so lost. I was so lost for so long. I was like, that sucks so bad. Man.

And I know a lot of people have had it worse than me. I'll just stay, but, but that was my experience. like, man, I was so lost and that sucked so bad. I was like, was that really necessary? Was it really necessary that I got that bad? And I thought about this. And the answer that came to me, and I wonder if it's same for you, is that I don't know if there would have been the kind of self-respect that I feel for myself now. I don't know if I would have been able to have earned that. had I not been as truly lost as I was and, you know, and found a way out. And when I say found a way out, I want to emphasize the fact that many things in my life

broke in my favor, right? Like I had things work-wise. I have a wonderful, I had a wonderful, like, a group of people that I worked with and they were very accepting of me. And they like, dude, if it weren't for them, right, supporting me in the way that they did, I don't know that I would have made it through, right? I have a partner that suck with me. If I hadn't had her, I don't know what I would have done, right?

There's I, I, I, uh, friends dear like multiple decade long, uh, friends, right, that were there for me like the entire time, uh, specifically there's, yeah, and they were just always there for me, right? And many people are not so lucky. And I am very lucky. So yeah, that is a hundred percent. That is a hundred percent part of this whole puzzle. I want to say that because that said, you know, that said, too, the depth of how lost I was, right?

And just like scraping and grabbing and reading anything I could and just like so confused and like didn't know. And like and had to go through so. I mean, the number of psychedelic experience that I had to do and then the amount of like stuff that I did afterwards like between them is also just like, It's kind of shocking, right? It wasn't like, oh, I had an experience and I saw and I realized that this is just fear. And then after that, I was like, okay, now I can practice this all the time. No, I had to, with at least my experience with fear, it's like, it's like you have to experience, I guess maybe this is just true of OSE. I don't, I don't know, man. But you have to experience like every variation and facet of a fear, especially if it's core fear.

and defeat it or move through it, every, so it's, it's millions of versions, right, in tones and feelings and thoughts and all these kinds, it's millions of times, right? So just that that sheer number of stuff was crazy. But to your question, right, like the ordeal, right? I don't know I would have the level of self-trust and solidness in myself had it not been for the severity of the ordeal and how confusing it got, right? And how in the worst moments that I had, right? Like I saw that I survived and I moved through and like I exercise agency. There was a, I'll tell you something.

And I know I'm keeping some of this like vague. And the reason why I keep some of it vague. And this is actually part of the reason why I created Secret Worldness, the podcast is so that people could not be vague because some of the things that you experience in psychedelics are kind of reputational suicide or just like things that are so painful to you. They're so painful to you, right? To speak them with your name attached is almost impossible. But it's all to say, like, there was the repressed memory that came up.

It took me either seven years or six years. to have the strength to look at it. Six years of, two of the years we're running, we're straight up running from it, two to three years. And then, and the next three to four were just like building up the courage and building up the skills to look at it. And then like, dude, it like emerged and it was the same fucking thing. And I was like, look.

I was like, I'm looking at you. Right. And I looked at it. And it was like, it like, it like, turned. transformed. It is transformed from the most, the source, the greatest pain in my life into the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. And the only way that that happened for me and the feeling that you get when you make those choices in the depths of an experience or even in the smallest fucking decisions in life is agency. I choose to be aware. And when you make that choice and you, and you and you like then allow yourself to see what lies in the other side like that feeling that you get about yourself is irreplaceable it's like priceless right it's like you know that you're fucking legit and and and yeah and that and that and that I don't know how you get that I don't

know how you get that unless you are absolutely pushed to your wits end yeah and and you see which you see what you're made of so my question to you is is that is that how you feel right do you feel like um the ordeal is necessary because the self-respect um that you get after the ordeal is so powerful the word it's not only necessary it's essential it's essential and i think that we talk about being lucky and like we are lucky you know and there's plenty of people that don't make it back but i believe with all of my heart, that there's a divine intelligence that believes in you more than you'll ever believe in yourself. And it's constantly pushing you to make this choice of agency. And it will throw the

situations at you your whole life until you pass that test. And as soon as that test is over, it comes another one. There comes another one until it finds a test that you can't do because there's no, because no one can't. But that test is tailored directly to you. And you can run your whole life from these tests. But the minute you start fighting back, you're throwing a lifeline, whether it's a friend. It's a community member. It's an AA meeting. It's a stranger that walks by with a warm smile on their face and says, good morning when no one's talked to you for a month. But these lifelines, they start showing up. And when you start becoming aware of them, they give you the courage to face the next test. And while the ordeal is incredibly painful, it's designed to be that way. It's designed to be

impossible. That's part of it. And like when you, and you start realizing that as you start coming through the ordeal, you know, maybe the initiation isn't walking through the flame. but understanding that you are the flame. But these are all really nuanced things that only happen once you start moving through these areas. You know, Eric Kaufman had a great sort of analogy where he talked about, I don't like the idea of a mask.

I like the idea of my inner ancestors. And when I look back at this person that I might have been ashamed of, instead of being ashamed of that person, I get thankful because that version of George could never have done it. But he wanted to. He thought about it. He took the first step towards it. And because that version of George took the first steps, the next version of George that wanted to do these other things, he had a little bit more courage until you get to the person you are now.

And now you are who you are because of who you were. And it's so hard to think about. And trust me, I get it. Like when your kids die and you fucking sit in depression, you're thinking about suicide and your wife and everybody thinks fucking dying. You're like, why me? Why? You curse God. You curse everything.

But it takes something in you to die. in order for something to grow back. And I think if I could just put that message out there for everybody who finds themselves in the midst of the ordeal at this time, congratulations. I'm glad this dark thing's happening to you. And I mean that. You'll understand it when you come through.

Like, this is what's going to make you better. If you choose to get better, if you choose to have the courage to take the steps, a hand will reach out and start pulling you. On some of you, you've got to do all the work. But like the ordeal, Alex, is the, is what makes the individual become the best version of themselves. And on top of that, it's what creates a community.

Because because you went through this, you're searching for other people out there that have understood it. You've got a sick podcast, man. You're doing great work. And the words that you say resonate with the people that need to hear it. Even if it's one person out there, that here's one thing. You've reached that one person. And now that one person can reach two more people.

And so these ordeals, they're not just the individual, the community ordeals, and it's happening bigger and bigger because we need to change more than ever. Everybody's just ruined from a system of oppression that is no longer serving us. And it gets back to the idea of psychedelics and language, the language we use. We don't really have the terms to describe what happens in a trips, but maybe what's happening is we're learning a new language. We're learning the language of experience. Maybe we forgot it.

I think that that is the purpose of the ordeal on a few different levels. I want to shoot over to some questions. We've got a lot of people chiming in over here. say, well, here we go, we got Jessica Montereal. Jessica, you are crushing. I see you everywhere right now, and I'm so stoked to get to hear your journey and all the things you're doing. You're going to be epic, and I really appreciate everything you're doing. She says, this is such a valuable conversation. Thank you both. I can't tell you how much I respect and appreciate people who are willing to not treat complex topics as binary. Everything has become so binary, good or bad only.

You're an evangelist for it or you curse it. No in between. I watch this over and over in the recovery community on the topic of 12-step programs, for instance. 12 steps, depending who you ask, is either the only real way to stay clean or a creepy, sick, brainwashed cult, no in. What are your thoughts on what Jesse says has to say, Alex? First of all, thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for the comment, and I really, really appreciate it.

Yeah, I agree. It's so hard. It's so hard. It's so hard to talk about things that you love, honestly, I think is very hard. Because I think for so many people, psychedelics gave them credible hope when there was not, and they never thought there could be. Right. And that is part of why there is a religiosity, to be honest with you, to, to, to,

a lot of the psychedelic culture is because they have had religious experiences, right? And but the, but, but what's so hard with religious, religiosity and you know, I grew up fundamentalist Christian. Right. Uh, I, I was a missionary in, in China, uh, for, for, for a while, you know, I had, so, so that, that's given me a lot of experience and understanding of just kind of how, religious cultures work and their strengths and their weaknesses. And I think that one of the things, I'm just going to be real.

I think one of the things that hopefully psychedelic, psychedelic culture can be progressively more and more careful about is the pitfalls of religiosity. It's because, you know, we, you know, somebody's experience, like I said, like it really, you really are kind of talking to God. or at least it appears so you know you're really getting insights into your life you're really feeling your own heart open up and you're really seeing yourself in accurate ways and it's not part of it could be delusioned but all of it isn't because you start acting out of these things and you take in in real

life and your life can change for the better in like massive ways i've totally experienced this right so it's so difficult like so there's there's there is such an authenticity to the spiritual nature of psychedelics and their power to help you, help yourself, it's so hard, it's so hard to balance this with just the, because, because you're like,

I want you to experience this magic too, man. Like, I see in you, I see in you the despair. I see, at least a feel, I feel like I see in you despair.

I feel like I see within you a nihilism, right, that crushes. your hope in life and your faith in yourself like that that can be i think what can be felt and what comes out of that is like i remember myself feeling like that and i remember what it meant to me to have a authentic experience of hope that then i used as a lynch as as a jumping off point to help me change my life and so how do you communicate that with balance right how do you communicate that with balance because because i think the fear is

every bit that i like share that that seems like a critique is going to increase the chances that you're going to think what you're you're going to give yourself the the out right and and not feel enthused about it and so it's it's it's so hard but i think um what i'm trying to learn how to do george is uh i'm trying to learn how to communicate both and hope that the chips, the chips will fall not only where they may, but where they should. Right. Like if someone hears the truth in the positives and they also hear the negatives and they also hear the negatives and they choose that it's not for them, maybe it's not.

Yes. Right. Just because people can be people are so unique. Yep. Right? Like just like you were saying like, like this came in my, this came to me as part, a big part of my last experience, which was the most powerful I've ever had. And it was a very simple thing, man. It was a very simple thing. It was just like, people are unique. Like, people are unique.

And that's, at some level is like, oh, yeah, just as that, as that, as that, as that synced in, right? Then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, there comes in such an abiding appreciation for the beauty of other people because they guaranteed have secrets. You don't mean in a negative way. I mean secrets in like a religious, spiritual, beautiful sense. They have things. They have messages within them that have been authored by no one but them.

And so that gives them the ability to say something that no one has ever said, right? The feeling tones of their experience are unique, respect, right? Like feel that. Like that is true of people. Isn't that magic? Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that something that makes every relationship a fucking gift from God? If we could but pay attention.

Right. So there's that level of the everything is everybody's unique. And then the other level of it is like understanding and putting and see me is this funny, right? You can hear, you can hear the maybe, hopefully not unhinged, but definitely, kind of enthusiastic. I believe in it, man. But it's the other part of this, right, is that their maze, their truth, their doors and their locks and their keys are all theirs too. Right.

All of those things are all theirs too. And this is one of the reasons why when I write about this stuff, I try to use the word I a lot. And I don't try to use that at least, I'm sure sometimes it's arrogant. I'm a dude. I'm a fucking human, so I'm going to make mistakes. But I think the heart of it is, George, because I'm just trying to share my experience as accurately as I can for whoever gets benefit out of it can because that's all it is, right? I try to, everything I say, I've tried to anchor it in a memory, in a thing that I've done

specifically. I've done this. This has changed me. This has helped me. I realize this for real. Take it and leave it, but it's mine, right? And so that in my way is trying to honor the uniqueness of people. And that comes to the question of psychedelics and how to advocate for them is to realize that there are people in this world for whom it would do a disservice.

It's not their path for whom they're going to get it some other way. And that is not lesser, right? It's understandable. I think you can feel. to me, it feels to me, like, how could it, right? Like, how, how could it be as insane as what I'm experiencing right now, right? I'm rolling around in the fucking ground, right? And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and it's, like, a corridor of the spiritual, right? And I'm feeling, like, whispers from some fucking thing that I cannot see, right? That is, like, you know, and it's like, you know, and it's like delivering these things that

are like, my God, did Jesus write this? Like, where did this come from? Right? It's like, how could anyone ever, how could, shouldn't everyone experience this? And the answer is no, because you know what? Because you know what? There is, at least this is my belief, right? There's no difference between the mythic and the mundane, right?

That is an illusion, right? Someone can, someone can be in touch with this, that exact same spiritual, reality without it being what that is. And instead, it's a wordless exchange, right? Because there are mechanisms at work that we are unaware of. And so because of that, like, because of the complexity of people and because of the complexity of the world, like that, my only logical response is to honor that and to hold that as sacred. And the way that I want to do that, right, is by telling the most true, the most accurate, you know, the representation of myself and anything that I write about that I can because then that mess is life and then that mess is there to decide what to do

it. I love that. You have such a beautiful way of communicating and I like it's so like I can see you rolling around on the ground in the cathedral of Christ. It's so beautiful, man. It's well done. It's well done. And it speaks to a level that's more than just words. Like I think that the way you communicate has a sort of like image rich symbology about it. I think that's part of getting the message out there. Do you think that on some level psychedelics are changing the way we communicate? Like I don't think I could I could do what I do now and without having the relationship I have with psychedelics. Sometimes like in the deep trips when I see like these incredible, you know, geometrical images. I'm like, this is a language. You know, maybe it's my architecture of my brain

changing and I'm seeing that or something along those lines. But it really helps me try and communicate in a way that's more meaningful. You see these symbols and all of a sudden you have this affinity for symbols after psychedelics it seems like to me and they speak so much to you on some level. You think it's changing the way we think or the way we communicate and maybe that's part of no awareness, right? Maybe that's the evolution of awareness in real time hand in hand with psychedelics. Oh, hell yeah. And here's and here's a thought. Here's a thought here. I think this totally connects with the uniqueness thing, right? Yeah.

Because language like anything else, right? You can fall into patterns and modes. Yeah. And, you know, this has worked before, so I'm going to adopt it and that kind of shit, right? Yeah. The thing that psychedelics can put you in touch with is your own uniqueness. And then the logical extension of that as a part of who you are is how you dress. is how you act in the world.

It's how you speak, right? And writing and speaking to me is so cool because that's my love. I love it. I fucking love it, dude. I love finding, I love finding how to put something in such a way so that the person hears it, they feel it and they see it, right? That's, that's, and I am. I am totally a new, but it doesn't really matter because I love it, right?

I love it. I love the problem. And that's, to go on a tangent right here for maybe a little bit and, you know, for whatever it's worth, I think people love problems. I think people love problems. I think we make problems out of problems and they're not a problem, right? Like, it's so funny, you know, like we, what? What is a video game?

It is an opt-in problem. It's an opt-in set of problems, right? And like the video games that people get a most, that tend to get most attached to are the video games that are the most like life. You know? And it's like, well, that is life. Yeah. Right?

That is life. But then there's two big things that keep that kept me from recognizing how much of a deep game life appears to be. I don't know not going to say it is, but how much of a deep game life appears to be. One is that when you're playing a video game, just like when you're watching an action hero during like the fight scene or when he's down, right, or she or whatever, you don't feel the feeling that they're feeling when they're going through it. You instead are aside and are kind of like pacified by the certainty that good will win, right?

But if you were that person, right, and you were feeling that feeling, you'd feel differently. You'd feel like you feel during a crisis, right? And so I think there's two lessons for me in that, right? One is that, well, shit, I actually love this because I elect to watch movies where people work through problems. I elect to or have elected to play video games. Well, all I do is work through problems. That is what I inherently like to do. One of the main blockers to that, however, is that I just don't know how to be with my feelings as I do what it is that I want to do.

It's not that the thing itself is so much the problem. It's the learning how to be with the thing. And so that's like the one thing. The other thing that I think is really different. And as part of what comes into that trust conversation that we talked about is like when you play a video, video game, you're not particularly worried that the rules of the game are built to play against you. You think that the rules of the game allow for a solution, right? And so that gives you a sense of like playing the game as an optimism to playing a video game, right? Because, you know, it's not built to be unsolvable. It's built to be hard most of the time, but not unsolvable. Life can definitely feel differently, especially if you have a lot of trauma, right? Life can feel like a cruel and terrible game.

And it can feel like that for a long time for years, even as you begin to crawl your way out of that, that belief and that feeling. So I feel that, right? And I've only dealt with that to the degree that I've been burned with my own pain and my own things, right? Which I have been, right? But there have been people that have burned

with things that are multiple times worse than what I have to say, right? Or what I've lived. But I would say that's another big thing. But if I wish, you know, if I could communicate, if one of the biggest things I would hope to communicate, you know, to the people in my life where I try to communicate the people in life, anyone I meet is that like, like life is actually really awesome. Like life is really awesome.

And life seems to be the thing that you want. Like the ordeal, the ordeal that you go through, like it feels persistent. precisely icky in all of the ways that you do not want to feel icky like it is like it is like this thing and this fucking oh my god it is the worst feeling and like it is like everything that disgusts you and terrifies you it is all those things right it's like a fucking puzzle go for you totally and then and then and then and then and then and then there's a shift that occurred for me over time realizing what that feeling meant. That feeling is a sign of the path, of the thing, of the thing that's next, the thing to the next challenge, right?

And the feeling that comes with it is, uh, that's right. Leave it to Adam over there, right? Yeah. No, the, God.

And that feeling of impossible that comes along with this stuff, right, that I can never, and all that kind of stuff isn't a reality of like life is unbeatable. It's the feeling of coming into contact with the belief that I had that it was impossible. And that feeling then becomes a sign for me. Oh, it's like, no, no, no, no, no. This is the opportunity. It's opportunity. It's opportunity.

It's opportunity. Right. It's beautiful. It's all of a sudden you've beat the, you know, level five boss for me you know what it was for me for me it was uh it was like king hippo in in mike tyson's punch out like i just couldn't figure out how to hit that guy you know that i know i'm i'm naming my put my date out here but that was an old school nintendo game for people that don't know but it is it is sort of like a game that's built directly for you and if you give up when you're

up against the boss you'll never you'll never knock him out you know and i love the way you you put the word ickiness on it because each one of our ordeal seems to be the thing you don't want to face. But it goes back to what you said about life being beautiful. How does it feel when you overcome that thing that was insurmountable? There's a great book called The Obstacle is the Way where he gets into all of these ideas about. It's the thing that you're afraid of that you should run towards. And I think on so many levels, society tells us to run away to be safe.

And this gets us all the way back to the beginning of the conversation where we're obsessed with safety. Like you've got to be safe. You got to put on this. We've got to be safe. What if this happens? What if this happens? What if it doesn't? What if it doesn't happen? You know, and there's so much happening in the world of psychedelics that I feel is rewilding the mind. You know, it's like we're kind of getting back to this rewilding, you know, and you even see it in some of like the nature articles or the nature conservatories. We've got to rewild this area. I think that's what happening to us to psychedelics is like we're beginning to be rewild in a way. And that can be scary to authority. That can be scary to power structures. That can be scary to your

community. It can be scared to your family. But ultimately, me, man, I've gone through it. And I, it scares the shit out of me. Like, oh my God, you know, you start realizing you're dangerous. What does it mean when you realize for the first time that you're a dangerous person? Whoa, for me, I was like, holy shit, I don't want to be dangerous. Like, I don't want to, I don't want to scare people, you know, but you have to. Like, that's what you are as a human being. In order to accomplish what you want to accomplish, you got to be frightening to other people. Otherwise, you know, Is that too much to say? What are your thoughts?

No, no, no. I mean, this is, no, I don't. I don't, this is, man, I mean, a couple things. I want to, because you, you, you, you, you, you, you, a lot of, me, first of all, rewilding the mind is 10 out of 10. I don't know if you made it up, but, uh, I read it somewhere. It's not mine. That's great.

That's great. Um, yeah, dude. Uh, you know, I, I think, uh, I think, uh, what a lot of us have, at least me, I'll say, get hypnotized into just like making our lives as risk-free as possible. Because there is an inability to, like once for me, speaking for myself, an inability to tolerate the feeling of uncertainty. Yes. Because I don't think we're taught in any formal way how to deal with that feeling or the emotional skills involved with with with with with with with with being with and working with that feeling but i to me it's as essential as almost anything in life

is the ability to be with that like we i think we informally teach these things through sports and some sports psychology um a bit right but we're so uh you know so much of our the the mechanism of education is built around conceptual understanding. You got to learn calculus and in history and all these kinds. And all of that is amazing, right? But I think the thing that keeps you from applying most of those things in your life, that like higher level thinking, I mean, we don't, how often do we solve problems as difficult as differential equations? Not that often, right?

the problems that we're solving usually at least at some level are simpler at the at the kind of like the math of it right right but it's not the math of it that fucks us up so much it's the feeling that we get and the pressure and the uncertainty that sits on us like a fucking gorilla right and it's just pressing down on us and we want we just we're like I need to switch it off me right I'm like I because I because this feeling what What is this feeling, right? What is the meaning of the feeling, right? And we can't learn the meaning, at least for me, I can't learn the meaning of the feeling by someone telling me what this feeling means. Fuck, they don't know, right? The meaning of a feeling is something that I learn through experience directly, right? Because I won't believe everything that anyone, any wisdom fucking Eckhart Tully says,

which I love, by the way, but any wisdom that anyone says, right, to you kind of goes out the window as soon as the feeling gets bad enough. Right. But if you if you can learn to be with that feeling, to sit and hold that feeling, to process that feeling over a long time, at least for me, very, very hard, very hard to learn, then the other things in life are opened up, right? Then I can actually solve the problem because the mind will pull some kind of substitution when you put it under enough pressure. Instead of thinking about doing the thing that you want to do or accomplishing the goal that you want to accomplish, you think about getting it done. Why do you think about getting it done?

Because you want to relieve the anxiety of what the task at hand. Right. And so your mind starts shifting to completion versus results, right? Completion versus the goal. But once you, once I have learned, once I've learned to handle that. that pressure and handle that feeling and sit with that feeling, well, then I can think more clearly, fuck, what am I trying to do here? What's actually going on? Wait, hold on. My mind, I'm tricking myself. This is not the best. This is not the best route. This other route is. This is actually what I want to do.

Right. But I won't be able to know that's happening unless I'm able to hold and be with that feeling because the emotional pressure of that is this going to automatically cause me to do that switch route. Yeah, it's beautifully said. We got Adam chime in here again. He says, Alex channeling Mr. Watts, the wisdom of insecurity. We got also Clint Kyle's coming in over here.

Clint says, I arrive late, so glad to see you two having a check. Clint Kyle's is an amazing, incredible podcaster. He's got the second other Christian podcast of which you were on recently. Yeah.

That's awesome. He's got such a beautiful delivery. He's got a presence about him too. Like when you sit down and talk to him, I can feel the weight of like just his presence there. And of course, Adam Mezzo is a wizard. Like this guy is one of the most intelligent people, the funest people to talk to. And he knows so much about so much the incredible things.

Adam, I'm stoked on your brother. Thank you for being here. So I do have some lightning round questions for you, Alex. So let's see what you got here. Okay. Let me scroll down. We've got a cute coming chin. Okay.

What's the most dangerous idea you've ever loved? Oh, my God, dude. so much for a lightning round right okay here we go loved loves okay this is a great one this is a great one thank you yeah no you you've you've been asking great questions dude i really appreciate and dude i want to say uh before we get into this lightning round your energy is awesome your energy is fucking awesome and um it seems pretty clear to me i've only known you for a bit so uh but it seems It seems clear to me that all you're trying to do, or at least for the most part, you're trying to do, is just lift people up and build something. And it seems to come from your heart.

And I want to say, fuck yeah, dude. Thank you. That's so humble and so thankless. And I think it's amazing. And I deeply appreciate it. man thank you for seeing it i i i want i want everyone who might be where i was a few years to go to get where i am faster with no roadblocks i used to sit around and be like how come no one's calling me and offer me opportunities and then i'm like gondi be the change you want to

see maybe i should be reaching out to people and trying to give them opportunities you know what i mean and i think if you if you just follow some of those things and another good one for people to have when you have nothing else is this mantra of i have everything i need Like, that served me so well, Alex, and so many dark spots. Like, I have everything I need. You know, all the things just fall away. Like the relationship, like all the crap that's going through your life. If you just say to yourself, I have everything I need.

Just watch the clarity begin to one. Well, I've got to plug in my computer. But I'll kick it back to you. I think we were talking about the dangerous idea that you love. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So should I wait, George? Go ahead right now.

Okay. So the most dangerous idea that I loved, you just asked me some freaking, just get to get me radioactive questions. The most dangerous idea I loved was anarcho-capitalism. That's the most dangerous idea that I loved. So after I stopped being a Christian, I think I was looking for a new world explainer kind of level thing, right? And what I fell into was kind of like this libertarian like view that like society was self-organizing

if, you know, the right incentives were in place and the market market systems are very beautiful and elegant and solving solutions. And actually a lot of these things are interfering with that mechanism working. And like society, you know, you know, really whenever you know, if you're not trying to solve things through cooperation, which is, in their minds the fundamental, the glue of the market system is like mutual benefit. I think there's a little bit of a brilliance there and underappreciated brilliance to kind of at least how it seems. That at least some like capitalism works where it's like the reason in exchange occurs a lot of times is because wealth is subjective. And so when someone gives you something and you give them something, the reason that you're actually wanting to make that change is, because they believe that they're better off after the exchange and you do too.

And so both of you perceive, like, because wealth is, you know, subjective, and we can get into why that is, but it's like a one-minute conversation. It's like, how valuable is a water bottle? It depends on if you're in a desert or if you're in New York City, right? So, so this is kind of just beauty, I think it's beauty and elegance to this idea that, like, that wealth is not like a zero-sum gain. and that everyone can get wealthier because they can perceive it to be so based on people trading what they have for what they want, what they have for what they want, right?

So I really fell in love with this and like kind of made it into like. So because I felt I made it into my like kind of new idea of how the world works and got really into anarcho-capitalist ways of thinking about things. There should be no government and all that kind of stuff, right? And that's probably the most controversial or dangerous idea that I fell in love with. It's dangerous because I wouldn't say it's a dangerous idea. I mean, it is kind of a dangerous idea. But because it's like, because there is legitimate, awesome insight to it.

And so anarcho-capitalism is the idea that there should be no governments and everyone's just trading with each other and all that kind of stuff, right? And everyone will be peaceful then because governments are built on violence and all this kind of stuff. The danger with it is, I think, the danger of many ideas. And that is that ideas can appear to you to be 100% correct. And you can create all these thoughts in your mind of why these ideas are not working in reality because of this is, because of that, that. it wasn't until because if you look at our anarcho-capitalism, how many anarcho-capitalist places are there in the world? There's like fucking two, right?

Like some place in like Spain or some shit, you know, it's like the most random places, you know, that just, and you can like point to those examples, like, see, if only, you know, we were like this tiny village in Spain that has no government. And it's like you can play that game with yourself, right? But ultimately, reality is the arbiter of what works and what doesn't. And that doesn't mean that you shouldn't dream or have visions or try to make things that aren't real, real.

But what it taught me, and how I learned this, George, is through getting my ass kicked. Getting my ass kicked in business, right? Like where I was like, oh, man, this is such a great idea. And you try it. And then the idea just doesn't fucking work. and it seems you're like it should work, right? And I can create this whole thing of like, well, then the world is evil. Yeah, totally.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The reason why is because my ideas are great and the world is wrong. And it's like you could play that game too. Yeah. You're not going to get far. You're not going to get far. Right. So I just got my butt kicked a lot.

And then I realized this is something that, gosh, this took me years. and I'm still learning it, right? It took me years of just of this kind of ass kicking to just appreciate, appreciate the reality of reality, right? Of like, no, it doesn't work. And like, and what that, what I realized through that is like, it is, it's not that like, like, I know the right thing if I could just apply it. Applying it is how you know the right thing.

You think you know the right thing until you apply it. You apply it, then you find out. You fuck around and you find out, right? And so that just really helped. That just really helped me a lot with just, at least me personally, of just my opinions on things because I just felt like, okay, like I don't really know shit about shit until I like get my hands dirty and actually try to do something, right?

And then the truth emerges. So that's my answer. Sorry, those long. No, it's a beautiful answer. It's so true to get to see it. back to the language of experience. Let me see what else I got coming in here. Okay, when the noise fades, what's the one truth about creativity?

You wish everyone could feel deep in their bones. Creativity? Yeah. It's a mix, man. It's a mix. I think what I mean by that is that I think creativity is a mix of opening yourself up and also applying discipline and analytical rigorous. I think it's a mix.

And I think it's a mix. All these things, they're hard to hold two truths, right? But that's how I feel. I'll just put it in the context of writing, okay? Because that's the main thing I know. Like the cool thing about writing to me, George. And one of the things, I love it. I fucking love it, right?

It's because to write you have to channel, to write you have to analyze. You have to do both. And it's like this dance and you learn this discretion because you write from your heart and you channel and then you come back and you have to kind of like cut and like think and cut and think and like all this kind of stuff right and and and one will kind of if you if you're if you're just channeling it's too much if you're just analyzing there's nothing you're not sharing anything and now

pure analysis is just a knife right it's not it's it's it's not a brush right but but but if you just go while with a brush you're not so it's like this whole thing right and so I think I think to me one thing I would hope people don't understand about creativity. This is like what little I know is that it's like it is an art. It's a science. It's a love and it's also a math. Right. It's like there's all this kind of thing to it.

And it's both those things and that's okay. Right. And I think people tend to, I at least I have tended to fall into one school or the other trying to find my salvation. This is a recurring pattern for me. And what I've kind of learned is that it's a bit of a, there I go. It's a beautiful idea. Alex,

I feel like our conversation is just getting warmed up, man. I got a hard out coming up. And I should have blocked off like three hours because I feel like I got a ton more questions. So you'll have to come back on, man. And we'll do another. We should get Adam. We should get more people in this panel. I know I told you earlier we went to do some panels coming up.

I would love to have you come back, man. And we'll be talking more off the line. So before I land this plane completely, man, where can people find you? What do you got coming up and what are you excited about? Okay. Yeah, so I write all the time on LinkedIn where many psychedelic people, for some crazy reason, we've ended up on LinkedIn. And how that works, I don't know. It's kind of like some kind of cosmic joke, I think.

So you can find me on LinkedIn to search Alex Detmering and you'll find me. But I post podcast episodes there too. But the podcast you can find at Parable Foundation. dot substack.com. And that the podcast itself is Secret Wilderness. Every episode is published there. I prefer if you want to subscribe, subscribe there because I'll send you a little newsletter every two weeks because we publish every two weeks.

And then you can also just subscribe to the podcast, Secret Wilderness, on like Spotify or Apple Podcasts or whatever. So that's where you can find me. Awesome. What am I excited about? Oh, yeah. Dude, are you going to psychedelic science 2025? Yes, I'll be there, brother.

I will be there. I can't wait to see you there, man. Oh, hell yeah, dude. Oh, hell yeah, dude. Let's do it, man. That's what I'm pumped about. I am so, I am so pumped about this. I hope I'm going to contain it, right?

But my excitement is large. There you go. It's going to be so much fun. There's so many incredible individuals that are going to be there. There's so many cool relationships to be made. And there's so much nuanced information on all sides of it. And I'm excited to explore all the different ideas and just see the cool people there that are really kind of living their dream and trying to make the best versions of themselves and trying to build a better future for everybody else out there. So hang on briefly afterwards, Alex, to everybody from the sound of my voice and everybody that participated today.

Thank you so much for being here. I truly appreciate it. And I hope you have a beautiful day. That's all we got. Ladies and gentlemen, Aloha.