TrueLife - Joel Brierre - 5-Me0-DMT Education & Training

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

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/https://five-meo.educationhttps://kaivalyakollectiv.com/https://www.itsallsource.com/welcomeJoel Brierre is the Founder and CEO of the psychedelic wellness companies Kaivalya Kollectiv and Tandava Retreats, as well as cofounder of the 5-MeO-DMT education and training platform, F.I.V.E.. Joel has been a leader in the modern psychedelic movement, specifically in the realm of 5-MeO-DMT and the Bufo Alvarius toad, and has spent years helping to create safe and effective protocols around this molecule. With a passion for preparation and integration protocols, Joel and his team are involved in everything from clinical research and trainings to experiential retreats in Mexico and Jamaica. 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. Hears 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. Welcome back, everybody. George Moni, True Life podcast. I'm so excited today to get to share with you not only an incredible story and an incredible individual, but incredible results. And I think that that's the one thing science gets wrong sometimes.

It's like trying to measure, trying to measure these things. But in this case, I think that you can see real results happening. And I'm so stoked to bring everybody, he's no stranger to this space. Juel Breyer, the founder and CEO of the psychedelic wellness companies, Kivalya, Collective, Tandava Retreats, as well as the co-founder of the five-M-O-D-M-T education and training platform, 5-F-I-V-E. You guys have seen it. You know Benjamin Malcolm's over.

There's so many amazing people involved in it. He's also a leader in the modern psychedelic movement and specifically in the realm of five MEODMT. He's an incredibly passionate person that cares deeply about making the world a little bit better. And it seems like he's doing it one person at a time. Joel, thank you so much for being here today, man. How are you today? Thank you so much, my friend. Thanks for having me on.

I'm doing wonderful. Thank you. Yeah. It's such an interesting time to be alive. And, you know, I, I, there's so many things that I could begin this conversation with. But I have found that, you know, a good place to normally start is an origin story. And I don't know how far back you want to go. But I was curious if maybe you could tell people a little bit about kind of what got you going in this space and what kind of motivated you to do the work you're doing.

Yeah, thank you. So I was born in Washington, D.C. in the early 80s. And, you know, I was no stranger to all the madness that entered Washington, D.C. And, you know, loved to get myself into a lot of trouble. But luckily back then, you know, especially in the 90s, getting into trouble still involves psychedelics. You know, it wasn't medicalized quite yet then. And something stood out to me about psychedelics.

I could tell there was something very, very different. And I had a fairly spiritual upbringing. I was taught to meditate as a child. And psychedelics offered a very, very different. deep into sight into some realms that seemed very intriguing to me. So I started doing a lot of reading in my early teenage years, you know, all this Huxley, of course, all the Timothy Leary books, anything I can get my hands on back then, McKenna.

And, you know, but then I ended up finding my healing because, as I said, I was a bit caught up in all the nonsense of Washington and the surrounding areas at that time. I found my healing through meditation and yoga. And I stepped away from substances. And psychedelics were included in those substances. And my life started to shift in the mid-2000s. I ended up moving to the Virgin Islands. And I was living in a tree house as part of this eco resort.

And it was just an amazing rebirth period of my life, you know, where I got to completely just let go of the, you know, nearly decade and a half of traumatic events that I'd gone through in self-destructive activities I'd gone through and got to remember how to be a child. again and got to remember the concept of play. And I think that was a very pivotal time in my life. That was also where I met two of my most inspiring teachers there who really inspired me to take my yoga practice very seriously, where, you know, I was a casual yogi before then. That was when I adopted a daily yoga practice. That's when I started doing practice, you know, at 3.30 a.m.

and going until 7 a.m. every day with one of my teachers. and he and I became best friends. And he was the one that suggested that I'd become a teacher, somewhere back around 2009, 2010. And that was where everything started to really shift. I was undergoing a lot of growth around that time. And that was also when I was reintroduced to psychedelics by my two teachers. And this time going back into the psychedelic space

while having some sort of system of self-inquiry such as yoga, it was a complete game changer, where previously things would start to get. get rough and it's, oh, no, I'm having a bad trip. I've got to use my mental faculties to think about something nice and fluffy. Now it was, okay, something's feeling uncomfortable. What is that? Let's explore that. How do I move into that? How do I really let that open up and be discovered? And that's when I started experiencing a whole lot of kind of evolution very, very rapidly in my own psychological process, started coming to terms with a lot of my own self-destructive ways, started to get

to know myself, you know? Yeah. From there, I kind of moved around the world for a while. I got to study under some amazing teachers. I lived in India for a little while. I did the Ashram life. I studied under a hundred and two-year-old Swami for a little while. And, you know, had my first, what can be considered spiritual awakenings,

living in India right around 2010. And got a glimpse of that very, very altered state of consciousness without substance. and from there I moved to Australia and in Australia I got to get involved in some peyote ceremonies that were happening with a medicine worker coming up from Central America and there was a there was a pretty great community in Sydney that was some there were some Mexicans some Venezuelans a few different people from different parts of North Central and South America and so all of us started getting together for his ceremonies when he'd come up. And then we started doing, you know,

he helped build the Temescal a sweat lodge. I became the firekeeper in his ceremonies and began some kind of, you know, a little more than casual, but not serious mentorship, but began studying, you know, in what can be called the Camino Rojo or the Red Path.

And it was a really beautiful time. It was a really, really beautiful time. And that was when I started to feel really, really, really drawn towards working with these medicines. From there, I kept on moving around studying under different people, studied under an ayahuas ghetto for a little while. Around 2013, I began extracting and making my own DMT and naturally began serving it to some of my friends. And because I'd been teaching yoga for years, the natural inclination was to guide them into some breathwork first, a little bit of meditation to regulate the nervous system.

And, you know, that began evolving into its own ceremonies and its own thing. And then I re-experienced 5MEO DMT. And I had first tried it back in 99, but I don't even really remember that experience much. But this time it hit me like a ton of bricks. You know, and I had that full classical, mystical experience. And that was where the full-on obsession with all things 5MEO began and it's never ended. But, yeah, I would say that would be the origin. It's a beautiful origin story.

You know, I think that something that is important to underscore in this explosion of the psychedelic movement is this idea of lineages, this idea of being able to trace back the practice to the people that thoroughly understood the rites of passage. You know, I want to talk about that a little bit more. But I know that you have a background in like the Vendanto tradition. And like when I start when I start thinking about some of like the Mahavaki's big eye. ideas like I exist and all that exist. Like just like butter exists in milk and the fragrance and flowers. Like if you just, you could just take one of those and just think about them for a minute.

And if you do it long enough, it'll change your life, man. You sit with those ideas long enough, man. Like, dude, just mind expanding, right? It's out of control, man. Absolutely. Yeah. The, you know, the philosophical realms of,

yoga, act as a very amazing geography for 5MEODMT. So when I began serving five, I was actually training with the Shepibo tribe down in the Amazon to serve ayahuasca. And I got a very strong message that ayahuasca was not my medicine to be serving. There's a very strong cultural implication with this medicine. There is a very strong longstanding tradition and lineage that is to be respected. It is not something we can just do a little training. for is something that we study an apprentice for decades. And I really appreciated that. And at the same

time as receiving that medicine, I was shown that 5MEODMT desperately needs geography because it has no lineage. You know, 5MEODMT, unlike every other entheogen in plant medicine, doesn't have an ancestral set of elders that we can look to for wisdom. There isn't an ancient lineage. You know, the earliest recorded use of Bufo, the toad medicine was mid-80s with a white guy from Texas. And so it is now becoming an indigenous practice in the Sonoran Desert with the Yaqui tribe and the Sadi tribe. And I think this is very special that we get to watch new indigenous medicine customs unfolding in real time. But at the same time, Five MEO desperately needs geographies that can handle and hold space for the depths of that non-dual experience. And there was none.

So, you know, especially around 2015, 2016, people were being harmed left and right by their five MBO experiences. There was toadsters going around piping people with 100, 120 milligrams with no preparation without any, you know, without any, hey, your sense of individual self might completely go offline and you may actually think you're dying, you know. And so people were getting traumatized for their experience. Some people were dying. It was getting hectic. And so that was when I had already started, I'd given one or two lectures in L.A. around using the yogic lens as for direct application for psychedelic integration and preparation. But it fit like a glove for the container with 5MEO because the peak experience of 5MEO, unlike any other psychedelic,

is we may enter a non-dual state undergoing a full dissolution of the ego. And the term ego death gets thrown around a lot. But very few people really understand the implications of a real ego death. And most people are not going to a real ego death when they're on, say, ayahuasca, psilocybin, etc. If there's a sense of self there to witness and say, holy shit, I'm going through an ego death, it's not an ego death. There's still an ego there to witness it. So 5MEO is the only one that can reliably bing us completely out of a subject-object relationship to where there is no sense of individual. There's no separation to say, wow, this is crazy, because that would infer something being

other. So it is pure omnipresent awareness. It is not a journey we go on, more of a remembrance of something far more timeless and ineffable than we could ever wish to comprehend. And that experience is synonymous with what the yogis would call Nirva Kalpah Samadhi or with what the Buddhists would call Nirvana or in Islam they would call fitra. or the Christians would call the beautific vision, there's always been this notion of this state of consciousness.

However, 5MEODMT is something that can give us a real-time experience of it, and it is not just told us about, told to us about. And so what I love to really look at is that when it comes to lineages, when it comes to specific traditions, because there is not one group of people that can say, this is our medicine and this is the right way to do it. This is a medicine that is right in time with what is happening in the world. If we want to really look towards unity,

we're going to also have to look towards detaching our identification with our own personal beliefs, understanding that all paths lead to source. All different lenses are different ways of describing something that can't even be understood. All religions are different ways of having a relationship with God. If Judaism is about celebration of God, Christianity and Catholicism about love and fear of God, Hinduism about understanding the multifaceted infinite aspects of God, all of these different Islam surrender and submission to God.

They're all just different relationships with the ineffable, with this state of consciousness. And so 5MEODMT invites us to undergo a raw, purely authentic spiritual experience that cannot be bound by any lineage. but those lineages can be used as geographies to and from this experience. But the last thing we have to do to fully go into that experience is let go of everything, even our own personal beliefs, because the infinite great mystery cannot be encapsulated by any idea of the mind. Anyone who's had a pure mystical experience can understand this. And this doesn't even necessarily need to have quote unquote spiritual implications.

We can just speak in this in the language. of quantum physics or quantum mechanics, if we are the quantum field, if we are the Higgs boson particle experiencing itself subjectively through these unique individual experiences that are present everywhere at the same time, it is like taking the radio receiver out of the equation that allows us to dissect all of that infinite information into one path and gives us the entire quantum field. And that's something that the mind can understand because it's something that the mind was created to make sense of. So it's a big experience.

It's really, really big, but it's in a teething process because, like we said, there's no ancestral wisdom. This is something new that we've got to figure out how to navigate and really how we can grow from it and with it. Wow. You are such an amazing ambassador for the world of 5MEOD&T in the psychedelic community. It's interesting to hear it explain like an empty parking stall on the first. front row of the world of psychedella, he's pulled right in over there. You know what I mean?

You know, it's there's a, one of my favorite authors is Marseilleat and he talks about the ineffable and the way he describes it, you know, is the terror before the sacred. And never in my life have I felt that, you know, to thoroughly understand the terror before the sacred, like how do you explain something so beautiful? unless you use the word terrifying. Like it seems like it's a paradox, but it's not, man. I'm wondering if you could dive into that a little bit.

Like I haven't had the five MEO. I've had some high states of awareness and I've gotten close. I've been scared out of my mind, but I've yet to have that full immersive experience where you are dissolved into that. But maybe you could help me and the guest and those listening try to define the terror before the sacred.

Absolutely. You know, the terror before the sacred, you know, we can call it the demons or the shadows at the gate of the state. The aspects of our psyche that want to see if we really want this. The aspects of our psyche that hold on so deeply to our identity where the mind cannot conceive the notion that it can go offline and then come back online. And so sometimes in the death process as we are going into full dissolution, the mind may go into survival and think that it's dying. And that's where those shadows can come into play. It may be specific. like I think I'm actually dying, or it may be just something that is so chaotic and so deeply, deeply unknowable that it sends the mind to recoil in terror.

You know, those demons, those shadows, those can be the aspects of our individual self that are in charge of making sure that we have an individual experience. So they may not be malicious by nature, but their fear may need to be experienced. There's a lot of different ways we can look at that, whether it is an aspect of higher awareness, testing to see how. how deeply we want to experience this remembrance or this nosis? Or could it be aspects of our own individual psychology that are attempting to hold on to the known and are fearing the unknown? It could be both. Who knows? But it's scary.

And so, you know, the death process is something very sacred to behold. When we have individuals who do go into that fully gripping death process, one, it's something that we've spent. weeks preparing them for through a rigorous preparation process to you know if we as facilitators have taken time to allow them to feel safe enough they can enter this death process and really feel it for the beauty in it as well because just like you said and I would say there's paradoxes all over the five MEO space and that's the beautiful thing you know when you get down to the nitty gritty everything is and it isn't everything matters and it doesn't matter it's it's all a very very big paradox and I love it. And, you know, I was a teacher of spiritual philosophy for years before I

began deeply working with this medicine. And now I would say I have a whole lot more questions than answers. A lot of the things I had answers for, those answers have been replaced with, I have no idea. And if we allow ourselves to let go into that not knowing, I think that allows us to experience the beauty of the mystery to a deeper degree because it is not bound by our mind's attempt to understand something that is beyond its capability. Yeah, that's, it's really, really well said. And it blows my mind. I was, I'm so thankful that you had framed it that way and painted that picture.

Because I think that when we talk about harm reduction, imagine the terror before the sacred and the elegant way in which you explained it. Imagine not having any, someone has that experience and there's no rails for them. There's no rights of past. There's no container. Like, that could ruin you for. That could put you in a place where those demons put you in prison forever. Instead of it being the most freeing experience in the world, guess what?

Have fun being locked in your room under your bed for the next five years. You know what I mean? And so I think that that's so important to have people back to the idea of a lineage, back to the idea that someone who has studied not only a small sample model, not like a small GPT model has been trained by a few people, but someone that's traveled around the world and been able to sample different slices be like, that flavor is not for me. That's not what I'm looking for.

And I have this theory that I read somewhere. It's not my theory. It's just this kind of a quote that I found very fascinating. I think applies here is that those things that you were interested in are interested in you. And it seems like you've gone around and you've been denied access to places. Hey, this one's not for you. Find something else. And I think that that is the adventure or the adventure is not the right.

The education someone must go through in order to find out where there's supposed to be. Do you feel that you are placed in a, in currently in a spot where you can maximize the education for other people? Absolutely. Absolutely. With education, you know, that's been the forefront of our subsidiary five, you know, five MEO DMT information and vital education, the brainchild of my partner, Victoria. You know, this was made out of a despise to find some semblance in this in the five MEO spaces. As I mentioned before, people were being harmed by their experience, people were dying. And so we put out, we brought together as much of the five MEO communities we were as we could, all of the different top minds that we could bring

together, different specialists in various fields that were relevant to offer a fully well-rounded understanding of this molecule and that's implications of working with it that covers everything from the mystical to the clinical. So, you know, with five, we're involved in both. Five is mainly a bit more in the clinical, as Tandapa, our retreat company is more in the experiential and the mystical. But with five, we're engaging. We're partnered with UCL for clinical research this year. We've got a few other research projects on the horizons. We have a training program cohort currently in progress.

We're opening up for our next cohort of students for 2024. So we do regular facilitator training programs. We do refinement courses for existing practitioners. We do clinical trainings for clinics that are doing clinical trials as well as clinics that will be opening up to work with 5MEODMT in a medicalized context. So 5 is kind of a lot more around bringing, you know, now with 5, it's how do we take a medicine that has obvious mystical implications and make it make sense in the clinical space? Because we know that 5MEODMT has the potential to eclipse other psychedelics in terms of safety

and efficacy, or particularly efficacy. As we've seen firsthand, full, full, full amazing results, long-lasting results with things like treatment, resistant depression, acute anxiety, things like this. And so our fear is that companies who may not have a deep understanding of this molecule may make some hasty decisions and a participant may be harmed. You know, let's say a participant in a clinical trial has a psychotic break four or five weeks down the road because their mind is not able to come to terms with the non-dual experience that they went into. And there was no preparation or geography given beforehand. And again, we don't have to use seemingly spiritual languages to give framework to this, but there needs to be some sort of understanding and consent on a participant's part into the depth of what they're getting into.

You know, we have our way of working, especially at Tandava, is meeting each participant where they're at. You know, every participant is coming to us with different stories from a different place. Some people are deeply healing, may have little interest in a spiritual experience and may have no experience with this stuff. We're going to use different languages and protocols with them as we would. Someone who has, you know, been working with ayahuasca for a decade and is coming here to gain a deeper understanding of their inner and outer world. We're going to be using different protocols with them. Our protocols involve everything from ancient Eastern practices to working with modern biotech devices and biofeedback devices and neurofeedback and Western psychology. It's, again, it's the need of or the, it's meeting the, meeting the need of the participants by meeting them where they're at and speaking to their unique process from experience.

And so our team is we've got a great team with so many different varying skill sets. And I kind of wandered off from the education realm. I'm not sure how I did that. But yeah, it's perfect. It's perfect. You do have a good team. And I think with a team comes education. Maybe we can talk about some of the team members.

I know that I've spoken with Ben, Benjamin Malcolm, a neuro-psychopharmacologist. What, maybe we could just start with him. Like, what an amazing addition to bring in this whole world of pharmacology to understand how things are happening in there. Like, how did you, maybe we'll start with him and move on to some other people, but like how did you build that relationship and why is it necessary to what you're doing? Ben's a great one. You know, Ben and I actually go back to maybe 2016 or so.

We all used to, I used to attend their psychedelic integration ceremonies, our sessions in L.A. and then began facilitating some of the integration groups as well with the group that Ben was working with back then. And, you know, he and I were, he and I were good friends years ago. And, you know, both of our endeavors went in, went in kind of amazing directions. And we'd always been in touch and we'd always kind of, you know, we'd always refer to him. And as his spirit pharmacist's platform kind of really came out, we were really, really happy to kind of, one, subscribe to his membership. Because it's, I mean, that's an amazing membership for anyone

working with medicine to have, to be able to get pharmacological advice. from him. And Ben is also on our, yeah, he's on, he's on our team with five and is involved in the clinical protocols and is just a great, great, great ally to have. You know, some of the other people are, you know, one of the former MAPS trainers, Dr. Gregory Wells. We've got Dr. Joseph Rusuglia, who I also, you know, both Gregory and Joseph, I know from back in the day as well, from the, from the, from the underground space and from, you know, their presence at different conferences. And it's really been wonderful finding people who are deeply passionate about this medicine and familiar with it, watching us all kind of come together and work towards a common interest.

You know, we really believe in all of our companies in collaboration over competition. And it's all around, all about working together because it's not about us as a company. It's not about us as individuals. It's about us believing in this molecule that has the potential to change the world, you know? Yeah, I do. And it's redefining. And one thing I'm really excited about is this redefinition of how the medical community can work. Not how it is working now, but how it can work.

Like you are seeing, you know, I'm not an electrician, but I'm really stubborn. So sometimes I try to fix things. You know what I mean? And I'll be like, and I realize the last time I almost electrocuted myself, I forgot the ground wire. Duh. And it seems to me that that's a big part of what a lineage does or people that understand that space to. They're grounding people. Without that grounding, you just have these live wires.

Yeah, it might work. But guess what? You know, you have a little flicker of power or something like that. Watch out. Everything blows up. And it seems to me that's another part of the mental illness that happens. Without that grounding, hey, you're working for a little bit, but it can explode back into you. You know, I was, I was, it's fascinating to think about, maybe we can talk a little bit about this whole UCL collaboration.

What's this all about? Yeah. I wish there was a little more information I can give on it right now. we'll be able to announce and kind of give more info in the, and hopefully in the coming probably next month, a month and a half. We're in the legal process of getting everything, all the,

all the contracts squared away, all the paperwork squared away, make sure, you know, make sure all the data is going in the right areas and all of that fun stuff. But we are going to be taking on 32 healthy volunteers with a 30, to come down here, to have experiences with this medicine and a,

multi-day retreat format with both integration and preparation. But we will be using a 32-point headset to capture the peak four to six minutes of this experience and to get the first ever full brain readings of the non-dual peak mystical experience. And so we will be bringing in what we call Buddha sitters, people who are known to sit very still during this because it can be a it can be one where a lot of people become very physically dynamic and that will result in a lack of clear readings so luckily we've got a great catalog of buddha sitters and most of our team being some as well so we're very excited about that yeah you should be it's really fascinating to get to see some of the neural feedback in there

what are some of the potential findings that we can measure from that like what i mean obviously there's probably some ideas we haven't even thought of that we can find. You know, novel, there's some sort of novel experiences that bring about new information, which is exciting. But what are some of the things that people are focusing on? Can't say a lot right now. True, true. The companies collaborating with the research project, but we will be able to soon.

But, I mean, you know, right now this is going to be a fairly general reading. So we're just going to be looking to capture all the information. What can come of that is a lot. I mean, getting a full understanding of what happens during a full mystical experience, getting to understand the serotonin 5HT1A and 5HT2A receptors better, getting a better understanding of what parts of the brain are going off line, are more offline when we are having this full unit of experience? Are there parts of the brain that are functioning better?

Yeah, a lot of different ways we can look at it. And then there's potentials into gaining a deeper understanding or this serving as a foundation for deeper research into a lot of different conditions. Yeah, it's well better. I can say. I hear you, man. I had to push.

I mean, what kind of a host would I be if I didn't push for answer? You know what I mean? Absolutely. Let me ask a similar question, but off that path. It seems to me like we're beginning to see new models emerge. Like when I look at some of the stuff coming out of John Hopkins, you know, there's, there's like this new kind of a spider web graph that has like intentions on it. But, you know, I also am beginning to see, I talked to Premah over at Moxha Journeys. And they're beginning to implement this idea of, I don't know if you've ever seen like a 3D printer on a computer, but it has like an L graph and then it has another line that comes out. So it kind of comes down into a reverse T like this. And they're using three dimensions so that they can measure like in an attempt to. measure the subjectivity because it's very difficult to do. But if you can add a depth line into that chart, I think you can begin to manage a little bit more. But as we, if I stay there for a

minute, sometimes it does seem like there's so much subjectivity that's important, but science can't really measure that. What do we do with that? That's, you know, that's the tricky thing. That's where the paradoxes come into play. You know, even with science, if we start looking into the fabric of creation, real, real deep. The deeper we get under a microscope, the less connected and solid things become, I would say, as above so below, that stands true for all of this. When we are experiencing or exploring the depths and the infinite nature of consciousness, there's going to be some things that are going to be pretty hard to translate into the clinical models. You know, we can use words like ineffability, et cetera. But that being said, I think we're being offered an opportunity to explore a

deeper than just depression, which is something that we work with most, I'd say treatment resistant depression. But we're being offered an opportunity to offer something far deeper in the way in terms of the way that we experience ourselves as humans and as conscious beings. The more we can begin to understand and understandable, I think, the more we can come into right relations with ourselves and nature. Yeah, I think that there should be a column for the tears of joy. from family members who see their loved one get better. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Exactly. I love it. Yeah, it's, here's another question I think about sometimes, too. And I find myself, as a podcaster, I find myself, can you talk to so many cool people? And I'm introduced to so many different ideas. And I'm like, I never thought about that angle.

I never thought about it from that angle. And so I find myself kind of standing on this foothill in the mountain of dreams. And when I look down, Joelle, what I see is some people are, explaining this particular time in this psychedelic movement as a tsunami and other people are explaining it like a high tide do you think do you see it one way or the other um i don't know i might use a non-weather reference or or or metaphor for my own description i'd say i see it um i see the whole world in a death process right now um starting in at least 20 20 where the entire planet has been

going through what can be considered spiritual emergence slash emergency, where our worldviews are being shifted very quickly and very dramatically, where we are seeing systems that we placed our trust and faith and crumble and collapse, left and right, from institutions to governments. And I think those of us who are familiar with the death process can see this as a beautiful, beautiful sign of deep transformation. I think we have a chance to be able to witness something. completely new on this earth.

And so, you know, I see psychedelics as a powerful, powerful catalyst to this death process. And I see it as all of the above. And I think that there was something to be said and there was some value in the quick hype of so many of the eager companies that are now no longer with us, you know, as, you know, as, of course, those models were lacking integrity and sustainability. but they still happen to get the word out there quite quick. And so I think there was something to be said for that. And now I think the game is going to go to those of us who will play at the natural pace and rhythm of the medicine,

who understand how this stuff works and are not going to try and rush to create as quick a revenue generating project as humanly possible, but can keep it sustainable. There's no one saying, you know, these don't have to make money. We can all make money here. It's just let's keep it about the missions. Let's keep this about what these medicines can do for the world. Money's going to come too. But if we try and bring the old stories into this game,

we're just going to pollute this game too. It happened in the cannabis space. Let's follow this prompt to create something completely new in this world. Yeah, I love it. And I agree with you on the whole death and rebirth. You know, there's a quote that I wrote down from a phenomenal poet that sometimes I know you quote Rooming, and he says that, when the world pushes you to your knees,

you're in the perfect position to pray. Exactly. You know, when people ask me, when participants are asking me to describe the experience and, you know, what, to describe this medicine, I just tell them, you know, just read Sufi poetry or Zen proverbs. They were able to put it to words far better than any of us can. Yeah.

You know, there was a recent article in Spanner Magazine where they, I think Adam Tapp was talking about how there was a gentleman who began to get dementia and he got so bad that they actually told the family like listen you know he's lost his license he can no longer play guitar he can't do these things he's forgetting things he probably has a few more months until he is going to have to need to be to a home and now now i don't have the documentation in front of me and this is a story that i read i'm not a doctor anything like that but according to the story they started treating him with five m eo dmt and a nasal spray and

And, you know, it seems to me that there is some pathway that could potentially help for neurodegenerative diseases as well. Have you found that? I have. I have. There is definitely anecdotal reports of this. And there are definitely interest in that direction. Yeah. Yeah.

It's fascinating to me. I'm so excited to get to talk to you and just play a small part in listening to these stories about. 5MEODMT. And it does seem that along the way that it can be a giant catalyst for good and for help and for healing the world around us. If you were to kind of encapsulate it and put it in a nutshell, like what are some of your biggest hopes to this path you're on and what this medicine can do?

My biggest hopes around this medicine and this path is that tools like 5MEODN, which allow us deeper access to our own internal worlds and our own psyche into our own fragmented parts than any other tool I've ever seen, especially when in combination with other tools, the more we're able to come into contact with our true self, the more we're able to begin caning control of our behavior without it being automatic, you know, automatic creations of our own patterning from our childhood traumas. The more we can begin to interact with each other human as a reflection of humanity. rather than as a reflection of our own worries and troubles.

And so the more the world can come into peace with itself, the more we can remember what an amazing, amazing divine creation that we are amidst and can take part of this beautiful play and be fully present in the moment. Of course, it's lofty saying I think psychedelics can change the world. But, I mean, psychedelics can help us shift the way we relate to ourselves quicker and more effectively than anything I've seen, especially when in combination with other tools. Thus, if we shift the way we relate with ourselves, we shift the way we relate with our

others and our surroundings. And I think that's a pretty solid start to a new world. Yeah, I do too. And I think that the work you and your entire team doing down there with Tendava, with five, and with the Kaivalya collection and all the people you're helping, Joy, it's really inspiring to me. And I've spoken to many people who can see the ripples from the pond that you guys are putting out there, man. And every person you guys help, I think, is making the world a little bit better. I'm truly thankful for that. And you also, you have a new center coming up in Costa Rica as well. Is that accurate?

Actually, no, no, no. So we were planning on opening a center in Costa Rica. There might still be some info around that I've got to figure out everywhere. It was posted too. But, you know, that was a great learning. experience. You know, we ended up pulling the plug on that project and very, very glad it didn't happen because it would have been too much too quick. We, we really, we're really interested in keeping our focus on evolving these protocols and being present 100% with what we're doing.

If we're spread too thin, there may be some lapse in that. And 5MEODMT is too big of an experience to really, to rush. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Joel, you've been incredibly kind with your time. I'm super thankful for going on. Before I let you go, what do you have coming up and where can people find you and what are you excited about? Yeah. So we have

we'll be at the Maps conference next month. If anyone's going to be there, it's going to be a lot of fun. We've got a big event that Tuesday night on the 20th with great music. We've got Savage who's going to be there. We'll have free bevvvies. We'll have good vibes. Lots of networking. It's going to be great.

Come see us there. We've just reopened our group retreats, and we're really excited about that. Most of our regular protocols is an individualized protocol, and it's really for deep healing processes. But it's also nice to play. Our group retreats just started again. We've got our next one coming up in August. We've got specialized group retreats. My partner, Victoria, is doing one for female survivors of sexual trauma.

We're doing a couple's retreat teamed up with Dr. Holly Richmond, all different types of group stuff. Check out the site, tandaverretreats.com. check out the five platform 5-MEO. I think, or education, education. And yeah, check us out there. And we've got webinars monthly and all types of fun stuff going out of that platform. So we'll see you all out there. Yeah, absolutely.

Everybody, check out the show notes down there. Check out the work they're doing and do your own research. Take advantage of the free information that's provided to you from the sites. There's a lot of information and an incredible team built around this whole five MEOT. DMT community that Joelle is built. And hang on for one second. I want to talk you for a moment, but I'm going to close it out here.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this as much as we did. That's all we got for today. Aloha.