TrueLife - From Stigma to Healing: Garyth Moxey on Medicinal Journeys

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

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/Ladies and Gentlemen,It is an honor and privilege to introduce our esteemed guest today, a luminary in the field of entheogen provision and harm reduction advocacy, based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Garyth Moxey stands at the forefront of psychedelic therapy, armed with a profound commitment to education, healing, and transformation. Garyth's journey is one of relentless dedication and growth. Trained as a psychedelic therapist at the prestigious Synthesis Institute, he has become a beacon of hope for many, specializing in the application of Ibogaine for addiction detoxification, particularly for opiate addiction. His expertise extends to the realms of 5-MeO-DMT and Psilocybin, substances he employs to facilitate deep psychospiritual exploration.With decades of experience and rigorous training, including certifications from the Orenda Institute and the F.I.V.E. education program at Tandava Retreats in Mexico, Garyth is a master in guiding individuals through transformative journeys of self-discovery and spiritual awakening. His work transcends the clinical; it is deeply rooted in advocacy and awareness-raising within the psychedelic community. Garyth has been instrumental in documentary projects like "Dosed," which illuminate the profound healing potential of psychedelic medicines.Beyond his psychedelic therapy work, Garyth is also a passionate advocate for medical cannabis, producing high-grade cannabis oil tailored to the specific needs of his clients. His extensive knowledge of cultivation and extraction techniques ensures the highest quality of medicinal products.Together with his partner Blair and their beloved canine companion Millie, Garyth continues to create holistic healing experiences in Vancouver, BC. Their offerings include comprehensive Ibogaine and Iboga treatments, psilocybin therapy, and 5-MeO-DMT sessions, empowering individuals to embark on profound journeys of healing, transformation, and self-discovery.Please join me in welcoming Garyth Moxey, a true pioneer in the realm of psychedelic therapy and holistic healing.Garyth Moxey - Inner Realms Centerhttp://linkedin.com/in/garyth-moxey-b00614266 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. Fearers 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 Live podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. I hope the sun is shining and the wind is at your back. I hope you are in the mood for an epic show today because that's what I've got for you.

I have the one-only Gareth Moxie with me today, and it is an honor and a privilege to introduce him. He's a luminary in the field of Enthiogen, provision, and harm reduction advocacy based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Gareth stands at the forefront of psychedelic therapy armed with a profound commitment to education, healing, and transformation. Garrett's journey is one of relentless dedication and growth.

Trained as a psychedelic therapist at the prestigious Synthesis Institute, he has become a beacon of hope for many, specializing in the application of ibogaine for addiction, detoxification, particularly for opiate addiction. His expertise extends to the realms of five-imio-DMT and psilocybin substances he employs to facilitate deep psychospiritual exploration, with decades of experience and rigorous training, including certifications from the Orenda Institute and the five education program at Tandava retreats in Mexico, Gareth is a master in guiding individuals to transformative journeys of self-discovery and spiritual awakening. His work transcends the clinical.

It is deeply rooted in advocacy and awareness, raising within the psychedelic community. Gareth has been instrumental in documentary projects like Dost, which illuminate the profound healing potential for psychedelic medicines. Beyond his psychedelic therapy, where Gareth is also a passionate advocate for medical cannabis, producing high-grade cannabis oil tailored to the specific needs of his clients. His extensive knowledge of cultivation and extraction techniques ensures the highest quality of medicinal products. Together with his partner Blair and their beloved canine companion Millie, Gareth continues to create holistic healing experiences in Vancouver. Their offerings

include comprehensive ibogaine and iboga treatments, psilocybin therapy, and 5MEODMT sessions, empowering individuals to embark on a profound journey of healing, transformation, and self-discovery. Garrett, thank you for being here today. How are you? Thank you so much. There was such a wondrous introduction there. I'm doing very well.

Yeah. Thank you so much, George. And a pleasure for me to be here. And thank you so much for inviting me. Yeah, I'm excited to have you. I think you've been inviting people all over the world for quite some time to find alternative methods of healing. Like, have you always been a person that's inviting people to help, or have you always been that kind of individual that's looking to figure out a better way?

I, in some ways, I guess there's a part of me that's been involved in that. I come from a long history of psychedelics. When I was younger, I used to live close to Stonehenge. in the UK. And in the 70s and 80s, there was a free festival that used to happen at Stonehenge. And that used to run for the whole of June.

And back then, there was a hard kind of core group that were the main part of the festival movement. In some ways, you could consider it kind of similar to the dead scene, you know, in the Grateful Dead. Yeah. Like, we all lived in buses

and trucks and trailers and stuff and traveled in big groups around the country in a very similar kind of way. We weren't following a band per se, but we were a psychedelic movement. And, you know, if you wanted to find some LSD, then you went and saw that crowd, which is the same as the dead scene.

So at a young age, I found I only lived like 40 miles away. So even at 16, we would shoot on up to to Stonehenge and score ourselves some black hash and a bunch of microdllll SD or something or other. And so that was my introduction to psychedelics back then. And things were quite a little bit different in Britain then. The festival scene kind of grew out in the late 60s, early 70s, the free festival scene. And in Britain, the police don't have guns. And so it's a much more level playing field when it comes to interactions with the police and stuff. And so there was a big free festival movement,

and there was no organization behind that. We would show up on common land. A kind of a rough roadway or drag would be made out of vehicles. There would be a stage, and then people would come, and bands would play on the stage. And we would be kind of the infrastructure that sold, you know, veggie, carry, and rice and hash. and LSD and stuff.

And we were allowed to do that is because the police just didn't ever come on to free festival sites or anything like that. So there was a level of freedom that I got to experience in my younger years. And during that time, you know, I'd help some people through some difficult psychedelic experiences.

So yeah, that's kind of, in one of the reasons, why, you know, we, we, the work that we do is something of a vocation, I know. Yeah. And psychedelics are a way for people to, you know, really kind of find a truer part of themselves. When I was 16, I was supposed to go and become a dairy farm manager and work on dairy farms and fit into the system and stuff like that. that really wasn't my path.

And the first dose of mushrooms or LSD kind of very quickly took me off on a different path. So the whole psychedelic thing, I think most of my major decisions in my life have been made whilst I've been in a psychedelic state. Because I feel I'm moving more from my heart, you know, in that respect. So the psychedelics have been a big influence, I guess, I could say. say in my life and have been an important part of it. It's so, it's always mesmerizing to me to get to hear a little bit of the journey of the

individual with whom I'm speaking. And it, you know, when I hear terms like freedom or the psychedelic experience shattered my idea of what I was supposed to be or knowing more, like it seems to me like that is sort of at the root of so much mental anguish. Like so many of us, maybe not to later in life, get to have that experience. We're like, wait a minute, I'm not supposed to be doing this. No wonder I'm so unhappy in my life. Sure.

It seems like a thread that kind of runs through that particular Ariadne maze. It's like sometimes people get the realization that they've had their ladder leaning up against the wrong wall. So true. So true. And some changes need to be made, you know. Yeah. And when they're not made, it just stacks. up like the more you push that kind of stuff down the more the more it just it begins to bulge

out in different areas whether it's maybe your weight or your relationships or some misplaced anger and then then all of a sudden you know you're you're looking over the wrong wall sure yeah yeah yeah yeah what's a way of people finding themselves you know or a deeper part of themselves and connecting with that i think that's a you know an important thing i mean psychedelics aren't for everybody. Right. You know, but I,

in some respects, I feel that for those who, they could serve well, it's kind of a birthright, you know, that you should be able to, to be able to take these substances in, in the right settings as well,

of course, when I was taking them as a youngster, I mean, I took them in all the wrong settings. And the way that we do things now are quite different than, than we used to when we were younger. Yeah, sometimes I wonder, is it all medicinal? Because it does seem like you said, an earlier age on some level,

is the forerunners into maybe finding the right path, you know? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was just about to say something about that. And it drifted away. And I'm having to see in your moment. But yeah, I mean, you know, people have a better understanding of themselves and also the world that they live in. Yeah.

So, yeah. And I, you know, I think, well, as you get older, they can mean different things. And it's really also the intention behind it, you know. I was involved in Burning Man 20 years ago. And that could be considered a much more of a recreational scene. seeing, but for me it was very important as part of my newfound sobriety. I recovered from alcohol with LSD almost, it will be 24 years ago this August. Wow, congratulations. No, thank you. Well, I was retreading in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous and yeah, it was just, it was extremely

important to me. I mean, I was doing everything I could at the time to kind of stay sober and doing traditional things was what was, I thought was the best thing to do. And, you know, I think that all recovery has some uses. You know, I've done time in traditional rehab and stuff. And at the time, I thought, well, that was a fucking waste of time. But actually, it wasn't. You know, I mean, they're all building steps to get in where we want to go to, you know, or. So, yeah, the LSD was a very important thing for me. And a lot of the things that I learned in AA or in recovery and stuff, I just couldn't implement. I just couldn't put them in place.

It was all, and a lot of people speak about this, like they can get all the theoretical stuff, but it's feeling it. You know, and in the LSD journey, it was like the penny dropped, you know, and I got the message then that life would just be awesome if it was very simple, just don't drink. And I'd been told that in AA as well by, you know, old time of saying, oh, you know, Gareth, if you don't drink, you can't get drunk, you know. And back then I was like, oh, yeah, of course, yeah, I'm fucking wise words, you know. And then later, you know, after the LSD experience, I mean, it just kind of. of a lot of those lessons were kind of dropped into a more of a heartfelt space. And then I just didn't want to keep on doing what I was doing, you know, which was self-harm, really, in many respects.

You know, that's what a lot of drug use is. That's so well said. It's so difficult to have something become heartfelt, unless you can't experience it from an altered state of a, awareness because that's so well put. I was going to ask the question, like, what was different between the traditional model versus using the LSD model? But I think that explains it well. And it gives you empathy with other people to know they can hear it, but they can't feel it.

Like, that's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I mean, we work with a lot of people that that system has kind of failed them or, you know. And, you know, myself personally, that was something I had to get away from. And that was big part of the message was, oh, Garth, you've got to stop hanging out with those people. Because I don't believe that I had a disease. And then standing up, sometimes three times a day,

standing up and say, hi, I'm Gareth, and I'm an alcoholic, a drug addict, and all of the above. I don't think that that's conducive to healing. Or it certainly wasn't for me identifying like that. Yeah. And I was saying, oh, I am an alcoholic and I am a drug addict. I'm not trying to downplay people's experiences in alcohol use disorder or addiction, you know, but that's not exactly who they are.

You know what I mean? They're suffering from an affliction at that time, but I don't think it's a disease model. Like most people don't get a bunch of insights and get up and walk away from cancer, you know? So if people get a bunch of insights through their addiction, or not, you know, sometimes, but I've known a friend of mine was addicted to heroin and he went to this treatment center

that treatment center and the other one and then he hit like 38 or something went oh yeah I think I'm done you know his family like finally you know after God knows how much money

but you know it was almost again like the penny dropped and he went yeah no I'm done with that so yeah so yeah I mean Yeah, to continuously identify with the fact that you have a disease and you're defective and stuff,

I don't think that that's helpful in the bigger picture. Now, if that's what people need in order to stay sober, then how about it? You know, I just don't think that's the thing for everybody. You know, and it's a very old institution now. It's almost 100 years old. And I knew about what they wanted to do with that. Bill wanted because of Weyburn in Saskatchewan, they were using LSD in the 1950s with a 45% success rate of total abstinence with one or two sittings of LSD, which, you know, of course,

there's no medical value to LSD. And there were hundreds and hundreds of papers written on LSD in the 50s, you know, so I knew it all about that. And I'd had about six months sober, but that was my M.O. I would stay sober for six months. and then I would get some weird idea that, you know, I could drink a beer or something, and I would do that, and then I would be drunk for another six months, and, you know, everything would be back in the toilet,

and, you know, then I'd come crawling back six months later and hi, you know, a newcomer again, and everybody's like, oh, yeah, I've been waiting for you. So, yeah. It's so interesting to see that pattern. You know, when you get up and you identify as something, You have this negative feedback loop and those vibrations or those thoughts or those things corrode the containers. When you get up and you repeat that thing, there's no wonder you come back in six months. Like you've already programmed yourself to come back in those six months.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it wasn't working. Right. I mean, it just wasn't, it wasn't, the penny wasn't dropping. And that was the big message that I got from the LSD that time was, oh, you've got to stop hanging out with those people. and go and find life. And actually I did. I got involved with Burning Man,

you know, which is what most people wouldn't consider the smartest thing to do in recovery. But actually it was, you know, it was engaging with my people and art and stuff, you know, and then I quit drinking.

Yeah. And Burning Man and re-engaging in life was a big part of being able to do that, you know. And then also some, psychedelic use a bit more responsibly than when I was in my year 20s in the UK. You know, we used to take LSD so that we could be out all night selling more LSD and remain drag and do you know what I mean? So we used to take it a lot, a lot, not. And then this was before

MDMA came on the scene as well. So if you went to festivals back in the day, then you took LSD. That's what everybody did. You know, there was all these different types of LSD and stuff like that. So it's quite prominent back then as well. Yeah. What is your relationship with it now? I really like it. I really like LSD and I haven't taken it in be three years this summer because we've just been too busy. Right. And, you know, so I'm I'm trying to coordinate with some friends that we're going to get together and do some LSD sometime this summer. But, you know, it's just been a busy summer and which is yeah that's just me probably not taking as much care about myself as I should but I should be allocating a little bit of time and saying okay no that weekend has been

put aside for LSD and I just find it a real how can I put it it's just a deeper check-in with myself and I haven't had a chance to do that with LSD in a long time so so that's kind of my relationship. I do have a relationship where I'm trying to have a relationship with I'm just trying to find the time, you know. I work more often with 5MEO on a personal level. I find that that gets in there. We'll like we get a lot of vicarious trauma through the phone calls, if not even the phone calls with the people that are in addiction, but the phone calls with the parents of the people that are in addiction. So I find that I get this kind of, you know, almost like kryptonite or something, it gets on me, for one of a better word. And then when I work with

the 5MEO DMT personally, and it's like a psychic shower, which cleanses that off and kind of gives me a bit of a reboot. And the time-wise, the timeline for that is a little bit shorter. You know, LSD is normally like 12 hours. Right. And then it's a couple of days to kind of come back from that, whereas the 5MEO is I'll be in for like an hour or so and then I'm out and then I sit for my mentor and then we, you know, we'll chit chat for a while and then I'll get in the car and drive back to Vancouver, you know, so it's kind of an afternoon thing. And, and I think that probably serves that purpose just as well, maybe not in some ways even better just because of the nature of the 5MEO work, you know. Yeah.

They're quite different signatures. You know, they're deep journeys within the psyche, but the signature is a little bit different. Yeah. It's interesting that you say that you can sort of get the kryptonite on you. Like you can't be in surgery without getting blood on you. You know what I mean? By that. And like it's just part of it, I think.

And it takes, it seems to me, I don't work in any of, of, which I don't work in any of the fields where I'm guiding people through difficult situations, but it seems like it takes a certain type of individual to do that, and not only do it once or twice, but continue to do it.

What is it that drives you to continue to be on that path? Well, I spent so long on a shitty path. In addiction, you know, so, you know, when you trace it back and look back at it, I mean, a lot of my addiction started at a very young age, you know, so it was an integral part of me, whether that was, you know, as far as back as I can remember living in Quebec, you know, I used to, I'd get home

and if my mum wasn't around or couldn't catch me, there was always these Macintosh apples in the fridge, and I'd get into them and I'd eat two or three, and my stomach would be, oh, and then I'd hurt my stomach. But I just couldn't help myself, and it was the same with honeycomb, in cereal, you know, and I'd eat so much of that stuff that made the roof of your mouth raw, you know, and so those are just consequences of this. So it's always been there in one way,

form or another. I'm neurodivergent. I have ADHD, so again, that's a, you know, being dopamine deficient. I understand why I was being dragged into that kind of thing, that dopamine thing. So it's been a, it's been a, it was a long time. And it really affected my life and all my relationships and stuff. And so when you find something that, that a tool that somebody else can use, because they're the ones that do the work, not us. We set the stage and we're the support team.

The people that are doing the medicine work are doing the work. Yeah. So, but when I, when I found a formula for, for this, and, you know, there, there wasn't really anything more important. There couldn't be anything more important. You know, I, I got sober at 35 and, um, the most important thing to me at that time was staying sober. And, and actually to making it to 35, uh, was a pat on the back and not really having, or where I should be in life, you know, in terms of material possessions and equity and things like that. None of that shit ever mattered. And now just being alive, you know, when the odds were that I maybe shouldn't be, now I just want to kind of continue that work as a vocation. You know,

Blair and I, it's not easy in this, you know, it's always, you know, it's always, a bit of a winding road and ups and downs and finances and stuff like that. Now there's so many more people are being involved in medicine work as well. So it's not easy, but then I couldn't imagine ourselves doing anything else somehow. And so it is kind of like a vocation. And so, and we, like I was saying, we don't do a lot of the hard work. What we do is we set the stage. And it's the people that come and take the conversation.

compounds are the ones that are doing the real hard stuff. And like I say, we're Houston or something, you know, should there be anything go awry or anything like that. And then we're the support for people afterwards as well. When people are coming in for opiate detoxes, they normally stay with us for two weeks. And we're just kind of like a private residence. And we work with one or two people at a time. And so we have active people in addiction coming and stay with us, which which is in some respects easier than people that work in rehabs and stuff because we have medicine on our side and those people don't. So in some ways the work that we do is eased a little bit by the medicine that we're doing. Yeah, it's interesting that you bring up the idea of a lot of,

a lot of people seem to be moving into or attempting to use different types of plant medicines and theogens and psychedelics to help people now. And it's, you've been around for quite some time. Do you think that this particular wave of plant medicine is similar to the last wave of plant medicine in the medical container? You kind of like the wave of the 60s? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, do you think it's falling in a similar pattern? It's a little bit different as it's more legit, you know? It's more legitimate now. So, and I don't think it's having quite the cultural shift that the 60s did. I mean, you only got to look at the early pictures of the Beatles and then Sergeant Peppers. And you can see what four years of LSD did to culture. So I don't think we're having any kind of a shift like that culturally. And then that's also when a lot of psychedelic stuff was shut down, you know,

because they were doing an awful lot of stuff with LSD in the 50s and the 60s. And then once the genie got out of the bottle by 1970, they shut it all down. So I think there's been quite a bit of hype around this, you know, and there's this kind of like panacea or magic bullet kind of thing that that came because there's corporate interest in this now. Huge. You know, and it's a little bit different.

So I think there's been a bit more of an emphasis on training. And I took advantage of that as well. I mean, I went and trained with Ibergain with some people that were serving Ibergain. And so I went and spent, I think, seven weeks with those guys. And they taught me the, you know,

rudiments of working with Ibegain. And we did a bunch of different treatments. and stuff. But now I think there's, even though there's quite a lot of training programs out there, there's also people that are just picking it up, you know? And now suddenly they're five MEO shamans or something. You know, I'm like, oh, God.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I feel fortunate that we've been able to do some of these courses. It's an investment in ourselves. And also an investment in the, in the movement itself. You know, we, we all want to have negative stories coming out of the psychedelic world.

Of course, we're going to because we're all humans. You know, and there has been some negative stuff coming out, like in the MDMA trials in Canada and, you know, and every now and again you hear of some practitioner, you know, with a God complex going off the deep end or something or other. and smoking too much 5MEO. You know, so I would like to see some kind of, some more, some kind of standards. But at the same time, it's a multidisciplinary world that we live in.

And so, yeah, it's, so it's a little, it's a different from, from that time in the 60s, because all of the, you know, academic stuff just got shut down. And then you couldn't get LSD. but at 16, I could get LSD by going to Stonehenge. And I could probably get 20 different types of LSD back then as well. There was so much of it, you know. And it's the same now with, you know, like MDMA. Actually, now here in Canada, they're allowing exemptions for certain people to take MDMA and stuff.

But there isn't one for either game. So it's important that I think a certain amount of standards are going into a container where we're holding people through a very vulnerable expedition or, you know, however you'd like to call it. But, you know, that's a vulnerable time for that person. And they need to be supported and held in the best possible ways, you know, which is quite different from, I used to sell LSD to anybody that had £2.50. You know, now that's a huge screening thing that happens and, you know, what are they going to go home to?

and, you know, so it's all of this. Now it's quite a different thing where it was, you know, £2.50, there you go. And so, but then also that has its place as well, you know. The intention is to use LSD recreationally and listen to your favorite band and hang out with your friends and have a really good time. Well, that's spiritually an uplifting thing to do.

Yeah. You know, so it's really the intention and stuff behind. Sometimes I wonder, sometimes I wonder when I look at like some of these trials that where there's been you know where there's been some inappropriate behavior and relationships and it makes me wonder when you sit with someone that takes a large dose of whether it's MDMA or it's you know psychedelics or in theogens I think that that has a radical effect on the facilitator as well And you can't really measure that.

But if someone is going into a state to heal themselves that may have had sexual trauma and the facilitator on some level is unhappy in their relationships or has something else going on in their life, that person that takes the psychedelic is radically going to affect the facilitator in ways that they might not be able to imagine on some level. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I can think that kind of thing happens. And that's why educators have to check the on a regular basis.

Right. You know. So, but yeah, yeah, you can be affected. There can be a transference and stuff going on, you know, as those altered states, as people are going through those altered states, you know. But then, you know, that's also very important that, you know, facilitators, facilitators have a good understanding of what they're doing.

Right. So, you know what they're holding, what they're supporting, what they're supporting, you know. And I think that maybe sometimes that people that are stepping into the field without some kind of formal education don't really understand that bit. You know, there's a little bit difference

between somebody who's just sitting somebody for somebody and supporting them. I feel, you know, a sitter might not be trauma-informed or, do you know what I mean? In some respects, I feel that it's good that people can be supported in some way, but it's got to be done right, I feel, you know, with integrity as well and not, you know, with some nefarious ideas that the practitioner might help. I mean, we hear more stories all the

time, you know, about weird stuff that's, that's happening in such and such, or, you know, this happened at so and so, or, you know, this shaman behaved this way in Peru, you know, so we're all humans at the end of the day. Yeah. You know, and, yeah, humans can make some pretty large mistakes. Yeah, it's true. It's, if I, if I mix it up into a, into a different type of question. Do you think that the altered states of awareness that one can find themselves in these altered sort of environments, what is it? Like it really changes our relationships to our social roles. And you know, like that can be very damaging to society. If people have these preconceived notions, especially authority figures, have these ideas about how society should work.

And then someone comes back from the well with this water and tries to bring it to the community like, hey, look at this. Look at me now. Like that has a radical way of dissolving boundaries. And do you think that that radical shift is something that maybe people are afraid of in the bigger community? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, in some ways. I mean, like the 60s and 70s like shake things up on society.

You know, and then, you know, there was things like Black Panthers and. weather underground and stuff, which is kind of radicalized out of a situation. Yeah. So, so I think that newfound consciousness back then

was, was more radical. You know, we're not quite seeing quite so much of that now. But, sorry, where were we going with that again?

Well, I just, I feel like it's, I feel like, I guess another question is, while we haven't seen the radical cultural shifts yet. Yeah.

Might this be, might we be in the late 50s? And like we are on the cusp of the radical change. You know, if you look at maybe what's happening in colleges, you almost had a Kent State with some of like the things that were happening there, you know, like maybe it's bubbling up. And when you look at like, Lycos and maps being denied this thing, might this be a pathway out of the medical container into a larger community, but people are like, you know what? It's not going to work.

Let's just do it. Let's just do it the literary way. Well, I think there's a certain percentage of the population are afraid of that. And they were like now we've got people smoking cannabis because there's cannabis stores. Yeah. They might not have been doing it when they're dispensaries, but now in Vancouver we have cannabis stores. So people are like, and you know, a lot of older people are starting to try gummies and things like that. But with the psychedelics, it's also happening.

people are coming to us now because there's more of this stuff going on and they did that in the 60s, but now they would like to come and do it in a bit more of a contained space. But I think some people are still, you know, psychedelics were getting such a bad rap during the 60s and the 70s. You know, a lot of public service events, people thought their chromosomes were going to change. And, you know, we take LSD, you're going to jump off of a building. and kind of weird shit like this. So I think that that kind of stigma has had a bit of an overall effect on society. Like they first got in with psilocybin because nobody knew what the fuck psilocybin was.

You know, they everybody knew what LSD was. But psilocybin, you know, it's the way it's spelled and everything. So I think it kind of came in around the back door just through, you know, people's ignorance at the FDA or whatever. So, but whether we're going to see a shift again like that or some kind of a shift, I don't know. You know, the green movement was kind of born out of the psychedelic movement, I feel. You know, and because when people do psychedelics, then they're more, they think about nature more and things like that. And, you know, so, but generally speaking, there, I don't know if it is having that much for shift. people are still incredibly greedy, you know.

And I know people in the psychedelic state that are, it's like psychedelic space that are just assholes, really, you know, self-serving. So I, do you know what I mean? It's, um, it's an interesting thing. And I don't know if it's going to have, um, effect on society in the way that it did before. And we all thought it was, you know, we're like, oh, there's going to be this huge, you know, resurgence of psychedelics and everybody's going to be finding themselves and you know it hasn't worked out like that so far you know and synthesis almost went under as

well they almost went bankrupt and they were like the the gold standard you know and there again they tried to extend too much and probably looking at getting too big and do you know what I mean so so I don't know we'll have to wait and see yeah I'm I'm hopeful that, you know, it's, it's, in that the whole thing that's happened just with, um, with maps or Lycos or an MDMA. Well, I'm not overly surprised there. Given what kind of happened with the rollout and the trials and things like that. So, you know. And then also, you know, some of these ketamine clinics are, it's all done by Zoom. You get your lozenges, you know, and then you connect with us by

Zoom or something and it's all kind of like do it at home. And I don't know if I agree with that, you know, really. But then again, it's also making things cost effective. You know, so how much is it going to cost an insurance company for two qualified therapists and a 10-hour MDMA session? I think they would rather just pay for antidepressants. Yeah. Or something, you know.

So it's interesting to see how it's going to unfold. old. You know, I like the idea that there would, every big city would have, you know, psychedelic, a place where you could go and take psychedelics and it can explore your own consciousness, as is your birthright, you know, so it should be able to be done in a safe place, you know. But unfortunately, at a moment, it's not reaching all of the people that it should be reaching, you know, so. And that's because of things like, the FDA, you know, turning down the application for MDMA therapy and then how many veterans are killing themselves daily? And then there's a hundred overdose deaths a day in America from fentanyl.

We have eight a day in BC, you know, four in Vancouver and four throughout the rest of the province. And Ibegaine is not even being spoken about. So we're a long ways off. specs, you know, the veterans are still killing themselves from their PTSD and, yeah. So it's a bit of a long road. Yeah. And we always want things to change like that. I thought weed was going to be legal by the time I was 25, you know?

And of course, Britain will be the last place on the planet when you can allow legal cannabis. So, yeah, it's a long, it's going to be a long road. And it's not going to be quite as we had imagined, I think. But I think that we're progressively moving forward if people are going to be able to find the space or, you know, you can go and get mushrooms downtown now. That's the genies out of the bottle. So, you know, it's, it's, the drug war has been a colossal failure. And if anything, it's made everything much, much worse.

You know, so. And to think that you'd be able to keep drugs. out the hands of people in a capitalist society. You can't keep drugs out of high security prisons. Drugs are a currency in there. You know, so how will we expect to keep it out of the free world? It's ridiculous. You know, so what is the drug war going to be replaced with?

I feel is important, you know. How are we going to dismantle this and have drug peace instead of a drug war? You know, the people are dying of fentanyl. Well, that's because, That's because of the drug war and the capitalist society that we live in. Somebody could send like five grams of pure fentanyl through the mail from China to Canada, and then some gangster is going to make that up into a kilo of dope in his bathtub or whatever, you know, with his Vitamix.

I don't know how they do it, but they do. And then they knock out pills. And so the drug war just means that drugs are, you go to downtown Vancouver, it's a free-for-all. I can get as much methamphetamine, crack cocaine, cocaine, or opiates as I want. There's nothing standing in the way of me doing it. And there's nothing standing in a way of a 14-year-old kid doing it as well. So I think what, you know, the whole, the way that we've looked upon the drug war, really, is kind of like humanity's self-inflicted wound.

I see that their intentions in the beginning why they did that. But if we'd had heroin dispensaries here in Vancouver 15 years ago, we wouldn't be losing eight people a day in the province. Heroin's quite a benign substance to somebody who's been using it for a long time. And what kills people is the variation in the strength of the gangster-controlled narcotics. And that's why we lose fucking kids in Starbucks bathrooms and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, I'm hopeful that, you know, the drug war seems to me, don't do their drugs, do our drugs.

You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's crazy to think about, but on some level, Iboga has begun to make its way into the lexicon. I know in Kentucky, they've been, they've been having a lot of, my friend Doc Askins has been working and had to do a podcast recently with some people. in Kentucky that are using it to really help people, veterans, especially with addiction and stuff like that. How do you feel, is this, is, is, is, is, is, is, is something new that you've been working with over the last five or seven years or recently or what's the relationship with that?

No, I, um, I, when I recovered from alcohol with LSD, that was when I kind of, 24 years ago, was when I was going like this on the internet, think, think, think, um, because a friend of mine had an Apple computer and that was the way. I got on there. And so then I looked up psychedelic recovery and that's when I found I began. I mean, I'd known about Iboga since I was 16 because after a huge mushroom journey, I got this book called Plants of the Gods, which is a book by Albert Hoffman and Schultes, I believe. And so that goes through all of the psychedelics around the world. And I got that a young age. So I found out about Iboga, a very young age. And it was on my to-do list.

bucket list. That sounds really interesting. I'd love to do that one day. And so after the LSD journey, I was, I was like, oh yeah, I'm going to go to Canada because I'm Canadian by birth, English parents. I'm going to go to Canada and I'm going to open an Ibegain clinic. And that was like 23 years ago or something. Wow. And then a friend, a mutual friend of mine through the, I knew through Alcoholics Anonymous. Actually, he was going to be my sponsor, but he started drinking ayahuasca and then came to me and said, Gareth, I'm sorry, I can't be your sponsor anymore because I started drinking ayahuasca and I'm out of here.

And then I did LSD a couple of weeks later and I was like, yeah, I'm out of here too. But we had a mutual friend who I was going to ask to be my sponsor at one time. and his name is Rocky, Rocky Caravelli. And he'd be some of the interesting. I would love to. I love to. Yeah. Yeah, I'll put you two together.

Okay, please. And anyhow, so I learned all about Ibrahimine on the internet. And then my friend Chris said to me, he said, oh, Rocky's out of relapse, you know, relaps on opiates and methamphetamine. And I was like, oh, he needs to do Ibogaine. And he's like, what's that? And then I explained it to him. And then he went to Rocky and explained it all to him. him and then Rocky looked it up and then Rocky saved money and went and got a treatment like six

months later down in Mexico and um Rocky and his ex-wife run awakening in the dream house there in San Miguel now so yeah so that was a early connection I had um with Ibegain and uh and I you know I was finding out through our mutual friend how his treatment went and how he was doing and stuff so I at that point was like, oh, I'm going to, because I was living in California illegally at the time. And I was like, I'm going to go to Canada. I'm going to open an Ibegain clinic. So it had been on my list to do list or, you know, planning to go and do this. I wasn't about to start giving LSD to people with alcohol use disorder, which I've done a bit since then, but not, I wasn't about to do that at the time. And I was all set to go to

Canada and I had my little truck and my little caravan and stuff and then I met my ex-wife at a Burning Man party in San Francisco and the whole Canada thing got put on a back burner for quite some time we bought a 195 school bus to drive to Canada and then we had to rebuild that and everything so and then when I arrived here I because I was importing my wife from the states, I had to for tax reasons, I kind of had to have a normal job and things like that for importing her

in as a resident. And it was during that time, actually, that she was already up and everything, and I had an opiate relapse. I was just about to go to the UK and

some personal reasons, which gave me a whole bunch of stress gave me back pain and I was a painter back then I had to do a bunch of baseboards and so I got T3s from the doctor which is very smallest amount of opioid and there's a tiny little bit of oxycodone in there but that started a relapse and so within a very quick time I was doing dilaudid and yeah and then I went to the UK and took a bogea while I was there. And then that gave me all of the clarity to move forward with what I wanted to do.

You know, I was still working in construction, really wanted to work with Ibegain, you know, after recovering from alcohol use disorder with LSD, and then having this kind of opiate slip-up, and then me taking Ibigame in oil, Iboa, in the UK, that kind of solidified what I really wanted to do. And it gave me the umph to go and do it. I remember I came back from Britain and I was the head painter on a big casino job. And we all got called into the office to talk about where we were and everything.

And I just showed up, come back from Britain for a couple of weeks holiday. And they're all like, oh, welcome back, you know. And I said to them, well, yeah, I'm not going to be here for very long. I'm going to become a, and I began, probably. provider and I'm done with construction. Very seriously. And they were looking at me like, what's that? What is he?

What's this? Okay, very good. But let's get this job finished. Yeah. But that's where I was. Like, I'm not going to be doing this much. And it was very firm in my mind that I knew the path that I was going to head off on. And that was in August.

And by February of the next year, I was being trained in Mexico to work with IBM and do detoxes. is that is that sort of mindset that shift in mindset that i'm not going to be doing this is that something that you see in the patients that you help that come in with addiction or something like that yeah yeah yeah there's that kind of like oh i'm going to make changes you know yeah i'm done with that and this is the path that i'm going to go on that path gets a little bit you know that's what And that's the intention of most people that come to work with us anyhow, is they're done with this shit and they just need to move on. But the opiates have a very strong pull on people.

And the withdrawals from opiates are horrendous. And then also what happens afterwards, the post-acute withdrawal syndrome, the depression, the malaise, anxiety, insomnia, can go on for months. So the longer somebody's been using opiates, the longer that shit goes on. And so working with the ibup gain can allow people to disconnect from that, you know, and have the ability physically and mentally to be able to walk away from opiates. So, and other drugs as well, other drugs of choice or behaviors as well. You know, gambling, porn, shopping, stuff like that. You know, they're all distractions.

You know, they could be looked as soft addiction. you know as as a species we're very much involved in self-soothing you know and comfort and you know yeah we do a lot of addictive things like you know look at oil for Christ's like you know what it's doing but you know we we all we're born into it so true yeah do you it's interesting to me to think about how an individual doing the work to create the best version of themselves, maybe the way we heal society. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, yeah. I mean, you know, kind of one at a time, right? Yeah. Really. Well, I mean, people do have to work on themselves. I know. It's hard. You know, because then it makes the world a much easier place

if people have done at least a little bit of work on themselves. Yeah. It went and so the raw works in progress. Right. You know, like I didn't have a particularly, I had a troubling relationship with, my father when he was younger. And then I just went to back to Britain because he passed away last October and I spent three weeks with him and he's a very different person than he was when I was a

kid. You know, and I'm a very different person than than I was when I was in my 20s and 30s. You know, so we're all works in progress. Yeah. And so I think the work probably gets a little easier as well when we get a little older, but you know, that just naturally has. happens, you know, that we're not, that we seem to, to get better. We hope, anyhow, with age, you know, and then we work on ourselves and, yeah, that makes life easier for ourselves, as well as everybody around us. Yeah. There's that saying that, you know, people end up in therapy because somebody didn't go to therapy. What, as someone who has experience in, in altered states of awareness, what do you think are some of the major differences between LSD and Iboga and the effects that it's having?

Oh, they're very, very different, very different. Like, I booga is one of the most unique experiences going, I think. For people that are they used to psychedelics and had a lot of, I've tried a lot of different psychedolics. I mean, because they're all psychedelics. They will work in a certain manner, whether they're triptomines, phenylethamines, you know, it's a deeper journey into your consciousness. But Iboga and Ibegain is very unique, and their actions are very unique. It's a classic tryptamine like LSD and DMT, but it's also dissociative psychedelic, like ketamine and 5MEO.

And it's also an own name. And oneric is like a waking dream, daydream. So the actions of itself are like very heavy daydreaming. So it's more like going through, it's more like going through a dream, you know, a dream scape. And then different stuff can can arise. I'm not overly concerned about what happens during the treatment. Like when I did it, I totally overdosed myself with something.

something I bought online. I thought it was 30% total alcoholoid. Turned out it was 60%. So I took twice as much as I should have done and I dose myself high anyhow. So I don't, I kind of squeaked through. I feel that I should have died in that experience, but I didn't. And I made it through. But the whole experience was this, that artist Pink. She has a song called Laser Glass and it's all about getting fucked up,

drinking and stuff. And when the medicine started kicking in, that video started playing in my head, clear as a bell like I was watching on TV. And then we get to the end. And then it got back to the beginning and started again. I went like this for about 15 hours as I dry heaved into a bucket. So, you know, was that deeply moving and theogenic experience? It was pretty horrific. But what came afterwards and the clarity that I had afterwards in the next three, three months was really what that was the beauty of that experience. The time itself was, and then also some people don't remember their Ibegain experience.

Kind of like if you take too much LSD on the dance floor, you don't remember between midnight and four. You know you probably had a pretty good time. Right. But there's a memory gap on that. And so Ibegain can be like that. I've known people to go through a treatment. And, you know, this thing overtakes them and they go through something.

and then as it come out the other side, they don't remember it. Right. It doesn't mean to say that shift hasn't changed, that there's a shift that happens. And then it's what happens over the next few months. And that's why we focus on getting loads of Ibegin into people, because the more that they take over a period of time, the better they will feel over the next three months or so. And with the neuroplasticity of the brain,

that's what we're looking for is time for those new pathways to kind of set up. And that's what it takes is a period of time, that. So it's really, it's quite different in a lot of respects from an LSD journey or other other triptomines. True. Garrett, can I hold you over for another segment here? I know that we're coming up on an hour. How are you doing on time? Yeah, I'm good. Yeah. Okay. Let's take a short pause here. And I will, for those tuning in right now, I appreciate your time. We'll take a short break and then we'll log back in and go with part two here coming up. So, to everyone watching, thank you for hanging out.

We'll be back shortly. Gareth, hang on just briefly afterwards. I want to talk to real quickly. Okay, sure. Okay.