TrueLife - Matt Zemon - Love, Fire, & The Tides of Time

Episode Date: January 5, 2025

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/🎙️🎙️🎙️Today, I’m honored to introduce a trailblazer at the forefront of psychedelic wellness—a dynamic educator, best-selling author, and transformative leader whose work is redefining the way we approach healing and growth. With a Master’s in Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health from King’s College London, they bring a rare combination of academic rigor, personal insight, and entrepreneurial innovation to the field of psychedelics.As the author of Psychedelics for Everyone, Beyond the Trip, and The Veteran’s Guide to Psychedelics, their writing has inspired countless readers to explore the profound potential of these substances for personal and spiritual transformation. Their role as Executive Director of SP Community highlights a dedication to fostering safe and sacred environments for exploration and healing, blending cutting-edge science with deep reverence for entheogens.From consulting with medical practitioners to co-founding impactful organizations, their vision is clear: to expand access to these transformative tools and empower communities to embrace their full potential.Please join me in welcoming a true pioneer in psychedelic wellness and community building!www.take2minutes.orghttp://linkedin.com/in/mattzemon 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 Seraphini. 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. I hope the birds are singing. I hope the wind is at your back.

Ladies and gentlemen, I got a returning guest, a friend of mine, an incredible show, and I'm honored to introduce to all of you a trailblazer at the forefront of psychedelic wellness, a dynamic educator, bestselling author, and transformative leader whose work is redefining the way we approach healing and growth. With a master's in psychology and neuroscience of mental health from King's College, London, he brings a rare combination of academic rigor, personal insight, and entrepreneurial innovation to the field of psychedelics. As the author of Psychedelics for Everyone Beyond the Trip and The Veterans Guide to Psychedelics, his writing has inspired countless readers to explore the profound potential of these substances for personal and spiritual transformation. His role as Executive Director of SP Community highlights a dedication to fostering safe and sacred environments for exploration in human beings.

healing, blending cutting-edge science with deep reverence for entheogens. From consulting with medical practitioners to co-funding impactful organization, his vision is clear to expand access to these transformative tools and empower communities to embrace the full potential. Please join me in welcoming a true pioneer in the psychedelic wellness and community. Mr. Matt Zeman, thank you for being here. How are you? George, it is great to be here.

And I think you're going to have to start doing my PR. Like, that's quite the introduction. Well, you have been making quite the introduction for the last few years, man, probably longer than that. You have been on this circuit of really bringing awareness to all fronts in the world of psychedelics, man. Thanks for doing that. I don't know what else I can do when I believe so strongly in this spiritual movement as it relates to psychedelics. And I so understand how the science work that's being done there is shifting. the perception and culture, and I just feel like if I can get good, responsible information

out there, it can help, it can help transform the world, one person at a time. Yeah, I see it, man. I'm wondering if you could shed some light on this journey for us. You know, we have spoken multiple times, but from your first bestselling book, Psychedelics for Everyone, to this new book and the many talks you've been doing from TEDx talks and just going around the world of speaking to people, how have you, you seen this sort of fourth wave change out there and how has it changed you? I'll start with how does it mean, how does it change me?

Because that's really at the end of the day. That's what this is all about. We do the work for ourselves. And then sometimes we do the work in community and with inviting others in. So I just, my life is so radically different at this point. I am I am way more connected with with this idea and source and the idea of source that had none no relationship prior to psychedelics. I'm actually about a year away for getting my doctorate and ministry, which again, it's just so far different than the life I was leading before. I love doing this work in community and being able to have these opportunities to learn, heal, and grow together.

That's amazing. And then to be asked to participate and to help create a book for veterans on how they can responsibly think about whether they should or should not make the decision even use psychedelics. And then if they are going to, how do you do it? Where do you, like, should they go to a retreat? Should they go in a medical setting with ketamine? And giving them the information that they can make their own decision. And then the tools to help prepare and integrate afterwards. It was so much fun to be a part of it.

I learned so much. And just, yeah, just simply honored to be able to put that book together with a heroic hearts project. Yeah, what a great outfit. And it's such a transformative tool, all the psychedelics and the entheogens. And you bring up a really interesting point that I want to pull on this thread a little bit more. And it's this idea. For example, psychedelics are a bit are inflammatory. Like we've seen, we've read the research and we know that psychedelics can't and theogens can be inflammatory for the individual.

But it seems it's also inflammatory in a group setting. And what I mean by that is it's like less divisive. We're kind of seeing this as above so below. What's your thoughts on this idea that the the the pathogens that we ingest not only change us, But they may, they may change our relationship with ourselves, but they fundamentally change our relationship with the group and our relationships out there. Does that kind of make sense? Like what is, what is changing in us is also changing the group dynamics?

Is that like it seems just this, it's fractal in a way. What do you think about that? Yeah. What I, what I think, I think the first, the power starts with from within. So when we take these entheogenes, it's not anyone doing something for us. And it's not the medicine in our, in our Western culture, how we think, though. I'm going to take this pill and it's going to do this. It's going to cure me.

Uh-uh. Psychedelics don't cure anything. They are catalysts. They're catalysts for insights. They're catalysts for awakening. They're catalysts for awareness. But those catalysts, the knowledge comes from within and then we know it. When we start there, we start with the eye, we can then, and when we do that in community,

while then we also are reminded of the interconnectedness of all things, that we might look like different waves, George, but we're part of the same ocean. So that when my fellow travelers, and this person's laughing and this person's crying and this person's experiencing whatever they're experiencing, that all connects to my journey. And then I love the sharing circles, the time when people bring up whatever it is that came forward for them, for me, I can then connect different dots from my journeys that I might not have been able to do otherwise. I might not, I would not have been able to do otherwise. So I think it's super important that this work is done when possible in community. And again, I'm talking about, I'm not talking about for people who are actively

suicidal. I'm not talking about for people who are severely depressed or in active states of substance challenges where a community setting might not be the right setting. But for the vast majority of us, we can do this in community, and that community, it's reinforcing the center-connectness of all things. Yeah, I like that a lot. And I, maybe it's the circles that we run in and the groups that we run in, but it does seem as if the idea of community, at least to me, has almost been foreign. And I feel like I'm revisiting this idea of community. And it seems like it's so healing in some ways. Is there also like, do you see that divide?

And is there a similar divide between spirituality and sense? science. Yeah, I mean, let's start with that first one. I think we're brought up in a culture that is about productivity, that is about accumulation, that is about individual success. And I know for me what that looked like is I would wake up, I would go to work, I would come back, I'd eat something with the family, maybe watch a show, or then do some more work. And I didn't have a lot of time for community during the week. The weekends, I was exhausted. And, And many of the weekends I was working anyhow. So just wasn't a lot of time for community.

I think these tools remind us how important community is and how, yeah, we are. My health, it ties into the community health and vice versa. And I forgot your second part of the question at this point. I guess the second part of the question is you have studied in both worlds. Like you have found yourself in the world of science and you've found yourself in the world of science. and you find yourself now in this world of spirituality, is there similar communities, and what's the difference between the communities in those two aspects?

Yeah, so I love this, and I think a lot about this, because I think you and I've talked about Alan Watson, he used to talk about how in the old days there was just a healer, and the healer is both a spiritual healer and a medical healer. And in our Western society, we've separated those roles. And I totally get that if we were to say, well, psychedelics belong only to the spiritual healers, they don't have the latest knowledge of our brains and bodies

potentially to keep us safe. But conversely, if we give it to the doctors, they've had no spiritual training. And we know that many of these tools occasion spiritual experiences. So we need a collaboration between the two. This doesn't need to be an or. It needs to be an and. And part of why I'm so adamant about the spiritual use of psychedelics becoming legal for these churches to get federal exemptions is because we want for for risk reduction purposes we want to have a collaboration with the medit with medical

professionals we want medical professionals to be allowed to come to ceremony and not worry about losing their licenses we want um spiritual groups to be able to get insurance so not have to worry about trip and falls taking down their ability to practice um and in this and i think it's all working together i think we're seeing science what spiritual communities have known for a long time. And that validation in those papers and that those publications and those news articles and those movies are helping transform the culture where after 50 years of prohibition, they're going, oh, okay, not all drugs are bad.

Not all drugs are going to lead to addiction. Not all drugs have no medical purpose. The culture is understanding this. And that gives more room then for the spiritual communities to say, and this is part of our sincere religious belief, and we want to do this and for people to not just react, but to say, okay, I can get that. I can see that.

With the veterans, when they send them down to Central and South America to work with, I'll use Peru and Shepibo healers. That's not a medical ceremony. It's a spiritual ceremony, but those people have great knowledge of plants and of body and brain. But they're also, the veterans aren't just being sent down there just to go to a ceremony. they're given therapy and coaching before and after. And all of that together can be an and.

We can have the ceremony pieces. And for those who need it, medical therapy. Why not? I love it. I do. It does seem to me that we're beginning to realize as a culture. And we're beginning to realize that multiple things can be true at once. I'm like, that's a huge step in our collective.

perspective awareness. Like, wait a minute, both of these things are true. Now what do we do? Like, that's a big step in awareness, right? I think so. I mean, it's, it's similar to if we can take it to the extreme. Like, what an amazing time to be alive with everything that's happening right now and how much opportunity is there to make it even better. But I get so excited, George, when I think about, look at this. Look at what's happening. Look at the ability to access knowledge has never been cheaper. We have AI on the rise. We have renewable energy. We have clean water. We have vertical farming. We have autonomous cars. We have all of these things happening. We have lab grown meat. Forgot that happening. That's going to change the way we actually live, the way we physically

interact with this world. Meanwhile, we're finding ourselves, reminded ourselves about the power of these tools because what happens when we don't need to struggle so hard to get a roof over our head and to get food on the table and I think we're there and we're certainly getting there. So we don't have those concerns like we have in the past, in the past 500 years. We have a lot more time to understand in a process. Well, why are we here? And what do we do while we're here?

And these tools that have been here for thousands of years, I think, are going to help us on this next thousands of years as we look into ourselves and we remember that we are spiritual creatures having a human experience, that we remember that we are loved and that we are worthy and that we are enough and that we don't have to work 50 or 60 hours to just provide, that there's more to life than that. Yeah, so yes, are there lots of challenges in the world and there are lots of isms that separate us and lots of walls that divide us and church done all sorts of bad things, and yes, of course.

And, oh my goodness, we get to be alive right now. How amazing is that? The trillion upon trillions of accidents that had to occur that you and I can have this conversation right now. Amazing. Yeah. It gives me goosebumps to think about all the potentials and the evolution of awareness

and the possibilities that are out there. And I really admire seeing this sort of yin and yang between science and spirituality coming full circle and the things happening. I sometimes I wonder, Matt, like, you know, if we look back at this sort of last wave of psychedelics, you know, we see a lot of similarities. And if if the best predictor of future behavior is past relevant behavior, there seems to be a lot of, to be a fight taking place on some level. And I, like, I can't help but, but begin to think about is maybe they're a commodification of veterans. You know, like, there's so much attention for veterans dealing with PTSD and psychedelics,

but there's no one really addressing the fact like, like, I'm for all of it, man. I am for all of them, whether it's going and hanging out with Gareth Moxie up in Canada or going and hanging out with Diego Ugalde in Peru or Lou Jensen or all, or your, Like there's so many incredible people doing incredible things. But on some level, it seems like we're failing to address the reason why these veterans have PTSD. Like there seems to be no call for like, hey, man, what about this whole war thing? Maybe we should stop doing that. You know, it just seems like a commodification on some level.

What are your thoughts on that? I love the way you think and I love the way you ask your questions. Thank you. Yeah. So let me back up a moment. Okay. And what I've been learning about in this past. year is depending on which study you look at somewhere between 18 and 44 veterans a day,

U.S. veterans a day are killing themselves. Right. We know that since 9-11, about 7,000 service members were killed in combat. It's a pretty big number. But we know in that same time period from 9-11 until today, over 30,000 veterans and service members have taken their lives. So these are big numbers. And it's easy to say, well, the reason this is happening is the antidepressants, the drugs most often prescribed just aren't working on enough people.

And that's what science needs to solve for. That's the easy answer. And that's the, I think it's the most digestible answer. The deeper answer is, what are we doing? What are these borders? What is this fighting about? What are we? Yeah, why?

And that's a much, much tougher question to address. I think the other thing to bring up as horizontal as we're talking about this, and then Rick Doblin talks about how a lot of what he does isn't necessarily science. It's political science. We know that when we talk about veterans and we talk about healing from treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder, so staying almost on just that surface level, we can get bipartisan. support from Republicans and Democrats. We can get support from liberal and conservative donors. It unites the country. It's an easy thing to unite on. It is harder to say and

war is not the answer. It becomes a much more, well, what about the, and then we get into the fear-based rhetoric that we saw a lot in this last election. Well, what about the immigrants coming across? What about climate migration? We get into all sorts of other things. So I Well, I believe at a, I believe we are all hungry for peace. We are all tired of growing up with nuclear warheads pointed at us. Of course we have a rise in anxiety and depression. We've grown up in this constant state of alert, even if we don't talk about it, let alone the school shootings and the things that are happening here in our country. So, yeah, I agree with you.

And I believe that's where we're headed. and I believe that's where we're headed as a species and one step at a time. Let's focus on the veterans. Let's focus on the bipartisan support. Let's get these tools out there. I think there's one more thing I'll mention. I'll stop. Yeah.

That research on treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder, sure, it's beautiful for veterans, and it's powerful. And we don't spend enough time talking about the victims of sexual assault, the other people who have treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder where they also need help. It's just not as easy to digest and to make policy change, which again, and the last thing I'll say is that's where this has to be an and. Let's go ahead and have the people pushing for policy change and the medicalization

and the let's get MDMA and psilocybin legal for those purposes, beautiful. And let's allow these entheogenic churches that are practicing responsibly to be able to do that legally so that others, can go and do their type of healing, no medical claims, but their spiritual healing in those types of settings. Yeah, it's really well said. And I'm thankful to be here to see this taking place and be able to look back and see some of the people that fought beforehand. And, you know, I read an article the other day that was sort of a reducte O'D absurdum type of article where they were like, alcohol has no medicinal benefits.

It should be a schedule one. You know what I mean? And it's like they made out this really great argument like, yeah, why isn't alcohol a schedule one? Like what does it really do? You know, and so we would be and I think on some level we're beginning to see the role of humor, which is also in psychics, sometimes dark humor, but this role of humor as a way in which to pull down the defenses of the people making the rules. Like, wait, I mean, this is absurd. Like, let's look at this. And it's very difficult on some level to deal with absurdity, right? Like how, you have this cognitive distance. Like if alcohol is able here, like, why aren't these plants legal here? Like, what do you think that this is a strategy moving forward that much like it's easy to unite on veterans, that it's, it's also easy to unite on on sort of reducing to absurdity some arguments? Yeah, and I think the work that Dr. David Nutt did at Imperial College, where he looked at harm to self and harmed others and put like his most dangerous self to harm to self and harm to others is alcohol with nicotine

up there in the left-hand quadrant of his of his chart with and then psilocybin. I think alcohol is a 72 and psilocybin mushrooms are a six. Yeah, that's absurd. Of course, is there risk of course there's risk. 438 people a year die from acididephine overdose in America. There's risk to every drug. So no one's saying anything is safe or flawless.

But it's absurd that something as non-toxic and non-addictive as natural growing psilocybin mushrooms were even having this discussion when we could look at alcohol. And we look at Dr. Gable and Claremont, very similar, where psilocybin mushrooms are in the bottom left in terms of addiction and harm and then caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, all up in the top right-hand side. So, yeah, it's absurd. It is kind of funny. And I think in this information age, people are getting it.

They're understanding, okay, yeah, yeah, probably shouldn't drink so much. I know that. That hasn't shown to be well. Oh, this is a safer alternative, and it's not done on a every Friday night type of thing or Saturday night or every day. Yeah. You know, I'll say one more thing on this. I think it's interesting that a lot of people in the psychedelic space,

I certainly feel pressure sometimes that it's like we want to be so careful to say how how safe these medicines are. And I do think it's important that we talk about. So again, I said psilocybin is a six in that Dr. David nut study. Yeah, a lot of harm can happen in that six. So we should be able to talk about that very openly. Okay. harm can happen. How do we reduce our risks, mitigate our risks as much as possible? And then how do we have candid discussions about source? Where did our drugs come from? Set what is our mindset and setting?

What's the physical environment? And how do we pay attention to those three things so that we really do reduce the risk of something happening to us with psilocybin? And we should be able to have that as an adult to an adult discussion without, oh, wait a minute, now you're showing how. how dangerous these are, and that's not what we're doing. We're showing the relative risk and mitigating relative risk, just like they put tamper-proof bottles with acetaminophen in it. Lots of, like, we all do things to mitigate risk as a society, and it doesn't mean things should be outlawed.

It's just, how do we mitigate risk? Yeah, it's a great point. It's coming to terms with trauma in your life as an individual, has radical ramifications for everyone in your life. And when multiple people start figuring out, like, hey, this is a generational thing. And it's been suppressed for a long time in my family. Maybe the rest of the family doesn't want that out there.

Maybe your neighbors don't want that out there. Isn't that a risk? It's interesting. So when I think about things like the Holocaust and the generations that followed and how they, raise their children. And we wonder why there's lots of erotic behavior and with people who were impacted in that group. My wife's family was the Armenian Holocaust. And lots of,

her great-grandfather was killed. They walked from what was it, what's now Turkey was part of Armenia at that time to Greece, to get on boats, to get to America. I mean, it just, I can't even imagine what's happening in in in yeah what's happening in the Israeli psyche the Palestinian psyche the Syrian psyche um and those are those are big T trauma so yes these types of medicines can really impact the individual life today it can be multi-generational I love ceremonies where we have 80 year old mom 55 year old dad 25 year old grand kid all in the same space and they're all able to do things together.

I love End of Life work with psychedelics. We're not just giving the psychedelic or the endiogen to the person dying, but to their friends and family bearing witness. And we can watch the healing take place, the conversations that needed to happen, happening, the love that is being shared, the forgiveness that is occurring. So will there always be some people who don't, want that, of course. And that's okay. I mean, that's kind of, that's kind of my position. Like,

I don't think any adult should tell another adult that they can't put, I'll stick with psilocybin, naturally growing mushrooms in their body. And I don't think any adult should tell another adult that they need to put naturally growing mushrooms in their body. So if this is something that's exciting or interesting or needed for you, great. And if it's not, that's great too. there's lots of different paths up the mountain this is just one of them yeah i'm excited to see this sort of on some level it's it's a coming together but it's also like it seems to me we've been divided for so long between all kinds of lines whether it's black and white or gay and straight or man or woman or youth or old like there's so many divisions that have been happening and it seems to me in this

sort of with psilocybin and ceremonies you are beginning to see the sort of coming together through division. Like, hey, here's a, I've spoken with lots of people that are, that are moving towards the end of life. And it seems like they are finding each other and finding ways to come together. I find people with, like, sexual abuse trauma coming together, even though they're divided from the other, and talking about their trauma using ceremony. And it seems like ceremony and rites of passage are sort of making their way back into the

Western world where there's been an absence of them for quite some time. Do you think that psychotos can help play a role in fostering community through rights of passage and ceremonies? Yeah. So it's always funny, George. You ask these questions and there's always like four layers to every single question. So holy moly. It's like it's like, hold on. Like what is he?

Okay, where is he going? Okay, here you go. So, oh my goodness. I mean, none of us, very few of us have rights of passage to adulthood anymore. Yeah. And even those that do, I think many will say it didn't feel real. It was an obligation. It was a duty.

But it didn't feel like they've really progressed into something. So and when are we adults in our culture anymore? It's not, I don't think it's 18. Maybe it is. But certainly a lot of handholding is happening post high school years in our culture. So when do we actually have the ability to be an adult? On top of that, because we are prescribing so much younger, these different medications, are we giving our next generation the chance to feel all the things that we feel as we progress through puberty into adulthood?

or are we numbing those things? And are we sedating the, oh, instead of allowing people to bounce off the walls and connect all sorts of dots, nope, you've got to think this way to get this test score to get into this college. And I try to be really careful with this because for many people, medications have been a huge impact and a positive impact for them. So it's, again, how do you find the balance? I don't need to find the balance for everybody.

I need to find the balance for me. I need to find the balance for my family, and I think everybody does. What I think these medicines help, though, is how do we get to the root of what's causing the anxiety, what's causing the depression, what's causing the behavioral challenges? To your point,

maybe it is realizations of, I don't want to participate in this game. I don't want to go to war. I don't want war. I don't want borders. I don't want, I don't want the separation. I don't want the need to define this or that.

I think this next generation in some regards have like, oh my gosh, they have such certainty over housing and food. I mean, it's such an abundant time to be alive. And I think they also know that it's going to be a while for what houses cost in the places that they are. it's not really achievable unless they come from wealth. So then how are they making new, how do they live a different game if they can't live the game we've been playing?

And I think we're seeing that in things like the tiny house movement, the van life movement, people moving out to these smaller towns that are populating. We have a town near us that was, I think it was 30, the population of it maybe 30,000, and they're building 15,000 homes out there. because it's just too expensive to live here. But that's beautiful. Why not? I think these tools also show us just how many places that there are walls. Oh, you need a credential.

Oh, you need a score. Oh, you need a, you need, you need, you need. Do we need? Do we need? What do we need? And I think when we start unraveling the walls come down. And I do think. I mean, how much is this next generation pushing on all of these different areas?

Let's talk about gender differently than we've ever talked about it. Let's effectively create a new vocabulary for us to all use. Let's talk about the fluidity and the range of sexuality. Let's stop the binary. Let's talk about namings. I don't want to go by that name anymore. That doesn't resonate with me. I want to go by this name.

Okay. And again, I'm not saying anything is right or anything is wrong, but it is beautiful to watch just as a shift in culture. I love that. You know, I think that language and psychedelics are tied together in a way that is inseparable. And there is an incredible change in language that we have seen over the years. Like if you just look at somehow nouns have become verbs. And what happens to society when nouns become verbs?

Well, Matt becomes a process instead of a person place. Instead of a person, you become a process. George becomes a process. And there's a lot of beauty in a process, like a flower that climbs up a tree and unfolds at a certain time of year and blooms and has this fragrant smell to. So to individuals. What happens when we start changing our names or, you know, maybe we add a suffix or a prefix that denotes integrity.

Like what happens to contract law? Uh-oh, looks like we can change all these things. Sorry, boys. You know, but like it's on, I think we're on the cusp of that. And that's, it is a beautiful thing.

And that gives me lots of hope to see this next generation that is coming up against the hard walls of being priced out of life and then going, okay, we'll just make this little incision over here and then we'll all go through.

Like it's, it's pretty beautiful to see the way life works like that, right? It's beautiful to see and to be able to remind them. You're not priced out of life. You're priced out of the materialistic life. You're priced out of this type of life that your parents have led that as we look around and we look at alcoholism, substance use challenges, depression hasn't proved to be that successful. So what kind of life are you going to construct? And then we get into, okay, let me try this.

We, the soup that might have a 19 and 21 year old, they swim a lot in wanting to change the way people talk with them, which again, I think is beautiful. And it's an and. It's super important that that light that they're shining out turns in to help. Okay, how do you receive? However, anybody speaks with you, how do you receive that? And are you finding that finding ways to make yourself empathetic and understanding and strong enough to say, okay, this person's talking me this way because they don't know. It's not intentional. It's it it doesn't need to be quote harmful.

Right. But it can't hurt. How do I do that? So the, so the, the analogy that I love is like in the, I think it's dangerous when. I don't feel well. So I'm going to go to the doctor and I'm going to get a prescription for you, George. I need you to fix yourself so I can feel better. That doesn't work.

How does this generation go and get to realize, okay, I need a prescription for myself and it's not a medicine. It's an understanding. It's an awakening. It's an awareness. And you're talking about process. Something I think a lot about is we've grown up in this kind of patriarchal or hierarchical church. I'm the priest and I know better than you and you're going to sit there and I'm going to teach you and then you're going to learn this technique and you're going to learn these words and you're going to go forth and be better. And I'm from me, again, not saying for anybody else, for me, I'm finding the spiritual peership to be so powerful to be the ability to in community connect with source to remember who I am, to remember where I came from, to

then find my inner voice, which again our culture suppresses all the time, and then to decide and act from that place of power, what I want to do moving forward. And when we do that in community, each of us has the opportunity then to find that inner voice, to come to their own realization, then to move forward with all the things that that comes with that.

And that's very different than I'm going to read a book and learn how to do this. You're going to feel and you're going to know at some point. And at some point you're going to know these things. And yeah, it's a very different methodology than what we grew up in. Yeah. Did that make sense or is that a, that they lose you there? Okay. No, totally.

It brings up this. idea of education, shared goals, and shared sacrifice. And you can understand why an instrument becomes an institution. Like we want people to be able to live on the same plane. Hey, here's our history. Let me tell you guys. Bring it all in to everybody. Come here.

Let me tell you our history. Here's what happened. Everybody got it? Okay, good. We can move forward now. But then you go out into the real world. He starts talking to people from other places. You're like, that's not.

What do you mean history? Maybe that's just his story. You know, like if we don't, what happens when we decide we no longer believe the history. Like that seems to be what's happening too when we talk about the youth changing the idea of white knuckling through life and just powering down some 40s to get through your mortgage, you know, like, I hate this relationship. I'm going to pounds and beers here. You know, but it seems that we're moving away from shared goals and shared sacrifice. And maybe that's necessary. But isn't it also necessary to have these shared goals and share.

sacrifice. You know what I mean by that? It seems like a dichotomy there. So again, I love what you're saying about we were taught a history and we're taught a religion that is written by men with a purpose and a position. Totally. Yes. And, you know, it's funny. Like this last election, people are so upset. And again, it doesn't make a difference what side you voted for. But it's like, we've, well, it's not what America stands for. America stood for the manifest dynasty. I mean, America stood for, like, this is our land and anything in between is ours. This stood for segregation. It's been, I mean, George, I grew up in the Northeast, but living in the South for the last 20 years.

Like, segregation is a thing, but it's also a thing in the North. So we stand for a lot of things. We just don't acknowledge it. So what are the community goals? It feels to me that we have the opportunity. to make sure that everybody, every human has enough to eat. It doesn't have to have a buffet, but that's enough to eat, that every human should have shelter,

that every human should have access to medical care. We have enough abundance right now for that. So that's a shared goal. We get into very quickly, going back to our previous discussion on the veterans, we get quickly then into a, wait a minute, I don't want to pay for this person. this or I don't want to but again humans with names with families with ambitions with dreams is there any reason not to have that baseline for everybody um I don't think so we have plenty of land and we're reclaiming land the reason I was bringing up those things earlier so like a couple silly

silly examples. We can farm in much less acreage with much less water, and then we can reclaim that acreage and use that for human development. That's pretty beautiful. Lab grown meats. We can create meat without harming the animals for those who care about that, but certainly without all of the land and waste and things that go into those things. And we can reclaim that land for human development. So yes, are we billions of people more than when we're we're we billions of people more than when my grandmother is born, we are. And are we going to have a whole bunch of moving people because of climate change, regardless of how it happened?

Of course we are. And where are those people going to go? And we can choose to make this a conflict and to make it a battle and make it a war, or wars. Or we can find a way that all people can live and we can repurpose that money for food and for housing and for medical care. Man, it sounds so beautiful. But to me, it seems like it's really easy to want to change the world.

But there's so many homeless people in my community. You know what I mean by that? Like, I feel like it gets so corrupted. Like the message is beautiful. And the movement begins. But the movement stops when all of a sudden you start talking about redistributing things. It's like, look, man, we can change things. There's enough of us.

We can make this thing happen. Let's change climate change, man. let's save the planet. But why don't we just save the people in our community first? Like, it never happens like that. You know what I mean? Like, the politicians will help us. No, they won't.

Like, they don't. It doesn't matter who you voted for. You're still going to get the same foreign policy. It doesn't matter who you voted for. Like, is that guy really running stuff, man? It just seems like, how do we make a movement, Matt, that sticks to the very core beliefs and actually makes changes. And it seems like we had that somewhat in the 60s.

Like we we have these movements, but it gets co-opted so fast with these grandiose ideas of of transformation and change. Is that what do you think? So you're talking about language earlier. And I do want to be careful of things like repurpose. Repurpose is a triggering for so many people. It's like, oh, you're a communist. You're trying to do repurpose my money into this person's money.

So I just want to. Yeah. And I also, for me and my journey, so I'm going to. I can't talk about anybody else. I'll talk about myself. I wanted almost immediately, how can I both learn more and do more now? Now that I know this,

how can I share this? How can I go into inspired action? Yeah. And I think one of the things I encourage people to do now is to slow down. Let's not go into inspired action. Let's go into contemplation. Let's go into self-observation.

Let's go into really solidifying our awakenings and feelings towards the world and making really sure that we are interconnected and loved and worthy and we know that at our core, that we are spiritual creatures, we know that at our core, and that we can wake up every morning and feel that vibration and move slowly in the world with that position. Our culture is so much about go, go, go, go, go. And those first steps, which can take a long, long time, getting really solid, helps us become more solid, which then helps change the relationships that are closest to us. It changes our relationships with our family, our colleagues, our friends. When those changes start to happen, ripples occur.

And if we all just where we are, just did this. just really, really resonate, really, really get clear, stay consistent, recognize that what we do doesn't matter as much as how we do it. And bring that practice to everything we do. Well, the change is going to happen. Everybody wants this. Everybody who has the hunger for this. We're just scared.

We grew up being told, you've got to get what's yours. told you've got to go win this game told you've got to be top of your class told you've got to get the best test scores go to the best college that there is it's been very very competitive and yeah if we can remember really remember who we are and where we came from we can change our local environment we change our local we'll change the world i love the ripple effect i love the idea of the small stone being cast into a calm body of water and the radiating ripples, washing up on the shore and creating a little bit of erosion. Like it's a beautiful metaphor and analogy.

Can you give me an example of something that you changed inside yourself that had radical rippling effects on the people you love around you? Oh, I mean, yeah, so many things. Awesome. I think knowing that like being able to say to my kids, you are beautiful and you are okay now. Like it's not like you have to go do this thing to go be okay. You are okay now. So what is it that you're like in?

Where does your energy and your body move? What are you excited about? What problems do you want to solve? If any, what do you just want to create? That's all beautiful. But you're not creating. none of us are broken. There's nothing to fix.

If we look to the outside for external things to fix us, we're never going to get there. You're beautiful right now. So then what do you want to do? How do you want to play? How can you move through life with joy without fear from that position of, I'm okay. And I think that's absolutely had a ripple effect in my family.

I know that's had a ripple effect in this community near around where I live, where we have, we get to practice and have these conversations together and remind each other. Because we forget. That's the practice. We forget and be able to say to somebody, dude, I love you. You're perfect. And you're a perfect work in progress. And that's perfect. but there's nothing to fix. It's to remember. You can't create something you already have. You just need to find it.

The word discover comes to mind. A lot of the times you think of, I discovered something, but really you just took the cover off, and it was right there. You know, and it's sort of the same way, at least in my experience,

that psychedelics have revealed things to me. Like, oh, you get this, revelation of like, oh, there was always, I always knew that. How come I just now remembering that? Like, I'm hopeful that those things that are revealed to you are revealed to me. And maybe they are. Maybe things that are revealed at the time they're supposed to be revealed so that you can move past things when you're ready. It's interesting to think about. What are your thoughts on discovering, taking off the layers to truly understand how to move forward? I think this ties into the same thing.

It ties into how do we live? So I heard a speaker talking about, do I have a devotional relationship with life? Or do I have a transactional relationship? When we move into this devotional, it's like, oh, my goodness, I am so excited to be alive. I am so grateful for this opportunity just to be here. And I don't need anything. it's a really strong place to be. Yeah.

The transactional, yeah, has some more things. So more challenges. I think we all go through the things that we go through because we needed to go through them. And then we get to different places and we realize that suffering is optional. And that we... You know, George, it's funny, actually.

When we, for many monies that we start, the first day, we actually don't do any medicine. We oftentimes do these nature activities where it's like we just take a minute to feel our feet on the earth and just remember how supported we are. And we walk around quietly and we look at the green all around us that I know I walk past all the time and don't pay attention. Just a green wall. I don't pay attention to the intricacies and the beauty and how these plants and these bugs and these birds and these frogs and these frogs and these. These animals are all conspiring to support me. But when I slow down, I can remember, wow, there are a trillion different things that have conspired to allow me to be alive, to allow me to live like this.

I am so sorry. No worries, no worries. And with that, we have, again, it's then, whether it's for our kids, whether it's for our So it's how do we want to walk through the rest of this time we have from that level of awareness of where we are connected. We're not separate and apart from nature. We are in nature. What do we want to do to take care of it? And then we can get into what my body feels really inspired to go and clean some stuff up.

Great. What do you want to clean up? I'd like to clean up some of these challenges with the environment. Great. Go do that. I want to just build sandcastles because nothing makes me happy in building sandcastles. great go do that but there's no even there's no hierarchy to the sand castles are more important than the climate it's the the importance is the connection with source the feeling of love the the

devotional relationship with life um and then we can figure out where our body wants to go slowly and do that inspired action that we were talking about but giving ourselves time and stillness to really get solid on ourselves first is so important. Yeah, it is those first few steps of, you know, making significant change in your life. And it feels new. It's like, it's, I'm always reminded of the Matrix when, when Neo's like, why do my eyes hurt?

And he's like, because you're using them for the first time. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, man. You know, it's interesting. And I don't know, maybe it's being middle age or something like that. Or maybe it's just the steps that each one of us takes at times. But it does feel like the world is right for discovery when you're ready, like to look around. And it can be painful, right?

It can be painful to look back and be like, man, I made some big mistakes right there. Or, gosh, I wish I wouldn't have done that, you know? And for me, psychedelics have been a real catalyst in order in the ability. to approach past negative behavior without shame or without guilt or even just to hold shame and guilt and be like, okay, let me just think about this for a little bit. What are your thoughts on on the ability to sit with shame and guilt, whether it's due psychedelics or maybe a different type of therapy, but how important is that and why is it important? I am constantly amazed how shame, blame, and guilt can be suppressed with these tools, which,

then allow me to look at pieces of my history differently. So the example I've talked about before is having this experience in puberty that was mortifying. And that was, yeah, that was something I couldn't even talk about. And with an entheogen, to be able to not look at that experience through the lens of my perception, but to look at it through hers. And without condoning the behavior, I could understand the loneliness and sadness and substance use challenges that she was going through.

Without condoning the behavior, I could have real empathy. And from that position, I could understand this wasn't something for me, this wasn't my fault. it wasn't something I need to carry and I could heal and then I can move forward. Shame, blame, and guilt are us replaying things in the past and attaching a meaning and a narrative to them that is, I don't believe is helpful for the present. But that's easier said than done. And these tools can really help us let those, not so much to let them go.

I'm not sure that's the right language, but it's to process them and understand them and move forward. So we talked about with, I was talking earlier about psychedelics as catalysts and not cures, and that we have in our culture, we're so used to numbing our symptoms and to just try to make the feelings go away. And psychedelics brings it close, and it enables us to discover what happened in a way that we didn't understand before, to understand it in a way that we didn't understand it before, and then to move through it, and then become the, not to become, to realize who we are today because of those experiences. Yeah, and I think time spent in suffering is really not that different than time spent fantasizing about the future. It's all taking us away from the present. That is, it is, for me, these tools to be able to help

me suppress the shame, blame, and guilt while I work through those things has been incredibly helpful. And I think that's why we're seeing these pushes for in the medical space, for them to be allowed to use MDMA and psilocybin for whether it's treatment-resistant PTSD or depression or anxiety. It's to help people move through those things. And remember, you're good. You're alive. The fact that you're alive is amazing. And yeah, this hurt and this was hard, but now you're here. I wish there was a way for clinical trials and science to measure that. You know, it seems like these, and not that everything has to be transactional,

but it seems to me that these particular substances or entheogens that have been around for so long, like they have a proven track record of healing and healing. isn't that experiential evidence. How come that can't be parlayed into clinical trials? Like, it's been around this long. Like, why is that not something that science looks at and it's like, this is empirical? Here we go.

How come that can't be used, Matt, in clinical trials? I think it's different languages. It's different languages. I mean, it's certainly used in papers, but it's non-clinical trial. So when we think about what are some of the challenges in converting how this is used in ceremony to how this is used in trial?

All the challenges is it has to be the exact same medicine. Well, when we're picking up strains of psilocybin, it's not the same medicine. When we're talking about the precision of dose, that's different. When we're talking about the method of delivery, it's different. When you come to a group ceremony with, I don't know, 20 people in the room, it's messy on purpose. It's the person laughing next to the person weeping, next to the person retching. and that's all part of the process for ceremony. I lost your volume right there.

Is that better? Yeah, I had, okay, nice. It was unmuted. It got unmuted me. I lost you. Where'd we lose me? Right at them. We lost track at the person laughing and the person retching and the person crying

and the purposefulness and messiness. Okay. So that's the messiness of ceremony and that's not how science wants to, compare apples to apples. They want precision and as many things the same and as few variables as possible so that they can prove if we give somebody at this starting point this much medicine for this much time, this is the expected outcome. And that's just not how ceremony works. Now, we can say we can prove that psilocybin is non-toxic. And we have lots of evidence of that. We can prove that it's not addictive and we can look at animal studies and in human

behavior. But we can't say that you put somebody in a group of 18 and they're going to have this type. The expected outcome is this, the way science wants to. The other thing that's super important from science is by definition, they want to say, okay, George, you today are a, and pick your diagnosis. And on that diagnosis, you're a blank. I need to give you a measurement so that when I give you this medicine over this time, I can take your measurement again and say, you've done better than you did here. But I think all of those diagnoses, I mean, then we get into, well, what does that mean?

What does it mean that, okay, I have, am I experiencing depression? Or am I depressed? am I um is this a biochemical issue in my body and my brain or is it a biochemical psychosocial spiritual and how I live my life and it's just there there are pieces of this that are beyond with science where science wants to go and at this point and that's okay so long as it's an and we talk about you know the the big eye opener for me and this was was being in like an all night prayer circle with a bunch of indigenous people And watching like, oh my gosh, there's kids here.

They're not taking the medicine, but they're part of the circle. And then, oh, look at all they're going to sleep as we're continuing to pray. And wow, the sun's coming up and here the kids are waking up. And this is beautiful in realizing that these, in that case, indigenous keepers have kept this medicine alive and have kept this in ceremony and community. And if we're to take it from them and say, nope, this just belongs to the science. That's us colonizing again. this can be an and let's go ahead and have those who want to meet the people in the white lab copes who want to hand over their agency to to doctors great here's an option for you and for others

here's an option for you and it's all um it can all be okay and it can all be above ground and that's that's kind of the world that that i envision for this next this next chapter of my life that's where I want to go. I don't, I don't want to practice. It's one thing to practice, protected by law and statute. It's another thing to practice legally. I want to practice legally in this country. This is a sincere religious belief with a non-toxic, non-addictive sacrament that's been used for thousands of years, that we're even having this discussion is absurd. Yeah. Yeah. It always comes back to semantics, you know, like I, sometimes when I when I read the papers that are coming out and I love science and modern medicine

and Western medicine. It's given us so much, but it just seems silly to me when they're like, listen, this variable, and you can't measure this. But you know what? They don't ever measure. We took this on Tuesday, January 25th. Okay, where were we at in the universe? What time was it? Like they don't measure a lot of things, man. You know, what day was it? What time of the day was it? Like really, if you start thinking about like Theseus ship and replacing boards, aren't my cells changing every day. Like you're not measuring that. So why not many?

Like, it just seems so incomplete. You know what I mean? I love that. Yes. Oh, it's so funny. You exclude all of these things, but this is what matters. And on top of that,

let me scare you first. You could die. This is a serious matter, George. You could die from this. All of a sudden, I'm like, I'm in a whole different state where I want to believe. I'm giving away my agency to someone else's belief in certainty.

And it can be powerful. Like that person could change your life, man. But what level are you willing to do that? Like, I don't, I think science is juvenile in some ways. Like, we're not, we're going to pretend that doesn't matter. Like, isn't that on some level juvenile? I love that. No, it's, of course.

I love that. I love that, and I want to be careful in the spiritual space that we don't hand over our agency to spiritual leaders. That we don't conflate the person who gave us the medicine with the internal work we just did. And all of a sudden, oh, this is my guru. This is my healer. No. This person kept you safe in a space so that you could do your work. But you did the work.

And I think that's really, really important that we don't forget that and we don't just substitute one doctor for another doctor. That this is our power. We're walking into our power, remembering our power and moving forward. But you're completely right on the, in some respects, how juvenile sciences. And it's our desire to put things in buckets and categories and things. I mean, I love it. Like in ceremony, the, we, we don't even have, like, I love when there's ceremonial musicians who are, well, let's take it a couple steps. We can go back to the Shepiebel people we're talking about.

They believe in their tradition, they're channeling. That's not a playlist. It's, I'm going to channel what needs to be channeled through the plant medicine to you. And I'm going to use this channeling to heal and to help you in your spiritual journey. And there, that's how, that's that. interaction in the ceremonies that I do, we have ceremonial musicians who, again, there's not a structure to this going to be these 26 songs. It's, hmm, the energy in the room right now is calling for this. So that's what we do. I don't see how I know we can put playlist together for psychedelic

journeys and I think the custom ones are better because you're actually in real time responding to how the medicine is impacting the people in the room. So we're going back to science. It's like, okay, well, we're always going to use this playlist for our things to see how people progress. And okay, great. And maybe we have suboptimal results from that. But it is, I can understand the need for apples to apples and sometimes we don't

need apples to apples. We just need enough to say, this is this is going to be good enough it's good enough we don't know exactly how much depression is going to impact what's going to impact your it can impact the way you experience depression anxiety oCD eating disorder substance use challenges um and depending on where you do it and how you do it and how you enter those things um we'll see what happens yeah yeah i'm reminded of the quote in a society that is sick, the most well-adjusted people are the sickest. You know, when we started talking about disorders and, you know, mental disease, like,

in your opinion, how much of that is from the individual, like, it seems to me on some level, all of these diseases are cultural diseases. Like, you have Susto, like in South America, right? Like, you have this different thing, and you have bulimia over here. You know, like how much of this dis-ease is culturally perpetrated on the individual? Like, it's the society that is. Is it fair to say that maybe it's the society that's sick versus the individual that's sick? Of course.

We as a culture have norms and things that are not healthy. The isms that you were talking about before are not healthy for individuals. The war that we were talking about before is not healthy for us. this fear of I need to go in store more than I can ever eat or use. I need to accumulate that. And I need to be the person who decides. Yeah, that's not, I'm trying to be careful because language matters. I'm not saying that, I was an entrepreneur for many years.

That's important to you to go achieve A, B, and C, go do that and have fun with it and do it. and do it in a manner that you can feel good about, a process that you can feel good about. But we're accumulating well beyond our needs for our generation, let up maybe well beyond what we need for the next generation or generations to come. I don't think that's necessarily healthy. It is funny.

I mean, again, we look at these depression, anxiety, loneliness, and the people who are coming out, And we're like, well, what's going on? We can all sorts of cultural things that we just take. It's just normal. It's just normal. We've been arms dealers for the world as a country. And it's like, oh, we're arms dealers.

I don't know if you watch Saturday Night Live this week. I mean, there's an awful situation where the CEO of United Healthcare was shot in New York, shot and killed. And Chris Rock said, yeah, but every now and again, drug dealers get shot. I was like, oh, that's fascinating. Fascinating way to look at that. And how differently we judge the person selling drugs in the inner city than this particular situation.

And it's all not okay. It's all awful. Yeah, that's an interesting lens to see it through. And why not? You know, it's, there are some, some, sort of lights at the end of the tunnel when you start looking at like outcome-based healthcare versus, you know, there, there are some things on the horizon that seem to be happening. But we got a long way to go, man. It's, it's interesting to see the way healthcare is, is talked about, whether it's, whether it's the science that we spoke about early or, you know, there's another issue too that, like, how about what comes to your mind when I say the McDonald's of transformation? I don't know. I haven't even thought about the McDonald's. I guess I think about Donald's a transformation. I think what comes forward for me are these self-help gurus and programming that's this

this never-ending loop of I need you to pay so I can teach you a technique that you're probably not going to be able to embody and then you need to pay more to go do something else and it becomes this actually let me try it this way george i get a lot of questions about hey what credential should i go after i want to be in the psychedelic space what credential should i go and get and what i say to those people is look there's from a consumer perspective it's really hard to know the difference between i took a weekend course online and i took a 10-month apprentice through XYZ group. But for that same amount of money

that you're probably going to spend on those credentials, can you go and spend more time with the medicine? Can you go and spend more time with yourself? That's kind of where I feel. Like, let's have less of the happy meals and the burgers and go and get into the ground and eat some nutrition that's out there. and see how the body and mind responds to that.

I think, yeah, people would be, again, trying to be careful, because there's certainly value in these $10,000 credentialing programs, $12,000 programs, but you can go experience a lot of medicine and really dive deep for that same $10,000 or $12,000. And then with that knowledge, that presence, you still have to go attract who, you're going to track to go have whatever conversations you're going to have. But that's different, because now we're getting into what do I want to do with this knowledge that I already have

versus I want to go get the knowledge and then go do something with it. And I know it's, I understand that that's overly simplified. Most of those people who have had some experiences that's leading them to get the credentials, but not all. And a few experiences, and a few experiences, is not, may not, I don't know, is not, may not be enough so that the actions are really coming from the heart and coming from this presence of knowing. Did that, I'm going to ask you to, did that make sense to you, George, and did that sound, I mean, you talked to a lot of people. Did that, did I land that in a way that's not going, I'm not about to get a whole bunch of angry emails What are you talking about? I think it's clear.

I talk to a lot of people, and I just see it emerging. You know, I hope to be doing a booth at psychedelic science that is the McDonald's transformation. You know, I think it's a great pop-up sort of a, it brings to the forefront of consciousness. It brings to the forefront of this whole movement. Like, what are we doing? What does credentialing mean? Who are you to credential?

Like, I think that that's a real conversation that should have. happen and it's been happening if you look at the last psychedelic science where people came up and like wait a minute i think it talks to the idea of cultural appropriation you know i i also see i talked to joe more yesterday from psychedelics today who they got banned from instagram you see this walker get banned for instagram like this is a conversation that needs to happen and most people don't want to have it because it's like oh shoot are you calling my credentials in well hey wait a minute you're calling my credentials in on the on the court right now and maybe you know i i don't know what makes you know what makes you know what makes a good program. I do know that once I know that when the instrument becomes institutionalized,

it really loses its ability to be effective. And I think that on some level, I don't think I don't think psilocybin or cannabis want to be commodified. You know, we talk about the embodiment of these substances. We talk about being in a state of wholeness with the environment. And the moment you try to commodify it, it's like you're taking a blade to it and cutting it off. Like it, it's just, I don't have the language for it. But what you said does make sense. And I don't know how to parse it, but I do see that, you know, it wasn't that long ago that we had Charles Manson and Jim Jones. And I think it would be naive to think that there's not these things that pop up again.

Like it, you know, I. And so that's why I asked the question of, you know, what does it mean to get a certificate from this? particular institution versus this one. Who's to decide? You know, I speak with you. I know Dr. Jessica Rochester, she had to apprentice for like 15 years before she was even allowed to start talking. You know what I mean?

Like that seems like a pretty good. That seems like it passes the smell test. You know, like there seems to be when there's a lack of ceremony or a lack of, of wisdom keepers on some level. I don't have the answers, man. I don't know, but I'm with you, man. It does make sense what you. said i i don't have the answers but it's a brilliant question right like we should be talking more about

it i love this and i love this not just for the certification of the of the uh of the of the person but how so how do we how do we instill quote unquote best practices yeah without commodification um and with these so again i'm trying to be really careful here have risk associated with them, and it's a relative risk. So then how do we reduce that risk as much as possible so that we can do these in community settings? So in one hand, it's easy to say, okay, we need to do a medical, a strong medical form so that we know that are we getting someone who is actively suicidal or super high in the

depression scale or taking different medications or prescriptions that might be. a contraindication for whatever psycheduct. Great, that's easy. It gets trickier when we say, okay, well, this person's bipolar. And we don't have a lot of research on bipolar. As James Faddyman talks about this with, there's a beautiful interview with him and Sam Harris, where he's like, oh, well, but there's a ton of citizen scientists who are bipolar, not in an active manic state, who have done psychedelics with reasonable outcomes. So then we get into, okay, well, then how do we have informed consent where we can say to that person, look, you are bipolar. There's very little research on you.

What we know is in an active manic, it's definitely going to be dangerous. Outside, there's just little research. So are you sure that this is something you want to do? And that's an informed consent discussion. But how do we make, and that's one example. The next example would be schizophrenic parents. Okay. You're 22 with schizophrenic, schizophrenic close family member.

again, very little research. It's typically frowned upon during this age when you are possibly, if it's going to appear, it's going to appear now. You're 50 with a close schizophrenic person. Well, we don't have a lot of research, but probably not. But that's again, it's your decision. Yeah. We then move into how do we do preparation? Okay, great. Here's one way that one group does preparation. Is this how everybody needs to do it? No, but it's probably a good idea to have some preparation, some, so where do we draw the lines?

And then certainly integration, which, again, it's a fancy word that indigenous people didn't have because our whole culture. It's like, oh, you're just finished the psychedelic. And now you're coming back in. We don't have the judgment about this experience you did. But how do we then, how do we help? So in our Western culture, it's about how do we help make these insights and awarenesses that occurred during the psychedelic, turn those into

meaningful lasting change. And how do we help you not forget those things? How do we make sure that you feel loved and supported in this process? And how that is done, there's a million different flavors. So I always say, like, I don't, I think it's risky when we talk about, like, like, we want to create a church that has places all over the country. Not sure. I think this is an incredibly local practice that we can borrow and share best practices, but each local organizer needs to figure out what's right for them, and then from there, what's right for their community. But having safeguards in place so that we don't have a Jim Jones, which again, not psychedelic, but they could have a situation where a controlling figurehead come.

forward using these tools of suggestibility is also important how do we find that balance and it's tricky george it's tricky yeah but it it also provides like it provides not only opportunity but it provides a change to the system that doesn't seem to be working for a lot of people like you know we spoke about the youth earlier finding a new way to move forward in a world that that no longer makes sense to them. You know, and I think medicine on some level is changing just as fast as our language and as our values. And it's exciting for me to see.

And I think that the questions moving forward are probably going to be answered. It's going to be messy. Like, it's going to be messy, right? Like, that's the best way to look at it. Like, yeah, there's going to be some bumps along the way. But ultimately, if we change how we view addiction, if we change how we view how we view health, if we change how we view our values, coming from this altered state of awareness, then we change our relationship to how we live in illness and wellness and wellness.

I think it might have been you that told me that what's the difference between wellness and illness? Was that you that told me that? I don't think so. The I. I is a difference between wellness and illness. We and I. Illness is this eye problem, which we talked about earlier.

I need this. I need to accumulate more. I need to have this. illness and I seem pretty connected. What do you think? I love the indigenous expression of like, okay, I'm not sick. I'm getting well.

That my body is doing exactly what it needs to be doing during this period. And it's just a different way to look at it. Again, it's painful. But it's, I'm getting well. I'm not sick and getting well. I love that. You know, this other thing is coming up forward for me

in this particular part of this discussion is lineage. And there's a lot of discussion. of like, well, okay, we're going to allow this particular church to have a federal exemption because it came out of Brazil and it's this, that, or the other thing. And they're using this tradition to create. Right. And I think a lot about this for our community. It's like, oh, well, we're not that. We don't live there. But we're this. And we've studied how endiogens were used in Africa and India and Europe and Scandinavia and. and Siberia and North American, South American, Central American, we've looked at that. And we've looked at where do our medicines come from? We've looked at what is the wisdom tradition of our people. And what do our people as modern tribes people need?

And we put together our own lineage. Does that make that any less sincere than those that are connected to something else? And if we believe the wisdom transforms, which you said a moment ago. Yeah. You know, we'll go back to this whole thing on queering psychics. If we believe the wisdom transforms, well, there are things that we can do in our modern society to make space available for more people that and and use language that might be more available for the people in our society than would be done in a different group and with that lineage. So I think I think that's also something for us as and again, anyone listening to this podcast, an hour and a half into this, you're deep into this. anyhow so you know this is this is like we're we're really diving into the nuance of this but it's

yeah else to think about um and and and just being it's okay i should be able to say this is what we this is what i stand for and this is what we stand for as a community and if you want to come into this that's amazing and if you don't that's amazing but i shouldn't have to pretend that i'm part of I use it, the Native American church. I'm not Native American. I'm not part of that church. And that's okay and different. And necessary.

And necessary. And necessary for modern tribes people in this cold. And actually, I can't speak for all of America. I can speak for my little community in my little area and what we're doing and who we are at this moment in time. And that may shift. and that's okay. And this is that idea again. This is our practice.

This is my practice being done in community, and it's a co-creation around that. Yeah, it's necessary. It is. But when we get ourselves in trouble, we pretend that we're someone we're not. Now we're just, we're just again shedding one skin for another.

Oh, I used to pretend I was a business person. Hmm. No, you're, now I'm to pretend I'm this. Mm-mm. just be who we are and be transparent and be loving. And we can. And it's, again, it goes back to it's not so much what we do. It's how we do it and all of it.

It's all the same practice. There's times when we're doing the practice and we're making money. There's times we're doing the practice. We're hanging out with our family. There's time we're doing the practice where we're hanging out with friends. There's time we're doing it and we're doing community. It's all the same practice. It's all that devotion to life.

Yeah. I think it's super important, Matt. I think it's beyond necessary. Like when you look at communities, there's a lot of evidence that shows if you eat the food that's grown in your community, you're more prepared to deal with the outbreaks of illness in that community. And the same is true with ideas and wellness. And, you know, when you start borrowing from other traditions on some level, you're also inviting that sort of tradition to have power over you. And you don't need it. I often wonder, like a lot of people that I talk to, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going here.

I'm going to Costa Rica. I'm going to the Amazon. There's nothing wrong. That's amazing. And I hope people that choose to do that, they do it. And they find that thing that they're seeking. And I'm confident if they do the research and they do the work that they will. However, why not have your own tradition here?

You know, like how much gets lost in context? How much gets lost in, we know that interpret. is, I can't think of the word right now. It's, you know, when you interpret something, you are also putting your own spin on there. So how much gets lost when I don't thoroughly understand what someone in the Amazon is referencing when they talk about a myth. That's not my myth. I don't have that myth. So I don't have anything to put it against.

But if I have someone in my community who is using the stories of my community and talking about the individuals from my community and the relationship, my community has to the soil, my community has, now that medicine can really be part of me. So I think what you're doing is not only necessary, but it's, it is imperative. You know what I mean? But like, we have to have our own traditions here for people to thoroughly understand how to heal themselves here. So thank you for doing. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And we can explore everything with this. Like, oh, I can learn from every interaction and everything. So, yeah, I might go. I'm going on a retreat to Costa Rica coming up. And I was with a group of veterans in Peru this summer. Everything has things to teach us. But I don't need to subscribe to only one teacher for anything.

And I don't want, that's not the collective consciousness. That's not all of us as peers. That's hierarchy. And lots to learn from lots of places. and how do we then find them, bring it home and what works for us? And what works for you, George, might not work for me. And that's beautiful. And I don't need to convince you to do it my way.

Or do you need to convince me to do it your way. And that's, again, that's when we start putting up our own isms because now all of a sudden I've crossed the line to where, forget, oh, well, I don't want the doctors tell me what I should do, but I know better than you what you should do. No, no, I do not. So knock it off. We're spiritual peers having this journey. Let's share what we learn and go from there. I don't know that I've ever heard the term spiritual peers. Thank you for that.

That's something we talk a lot about in our community. And that's part of why we use different medicine people, is that we want to reit. So we have a kind of, we've separated the process of that, of the medical intake informed consent, statements of religious belief, preparation calls, integration calls into kind of those are community activities it doesn't matter who serve the medicine we do those things the same way period and then we bring in different medicine people

and then we remind ourselves all the time that look we're doing this together um and it's no higher it's not a hierarchy it's a co-creation um and we're using these tools at different frequencies depending on who we are and different doses depending on who we are um yeah for for our own learning healing and growing, and we're doing that in community, and we're sharing as we go. And that's also part of why we do so many non-medicine things. We have a monthly song go. We do songs of devotion. We do concerts.

We do movies. We do book clubs. We do all this other stuff, which might look more like a traditional faith tradition. But it's done without, really without hierarchy. And that's, it's really quite beautiful. Yeah. It's interesting to think about hierarchy, decentralization, and boundaries and the relationship to psychedelics. Like, psychedelics really peel back that idea on a lot of levels.

Yeah, very much so. Yeah, the boundary one is interesting. What's coming forward as you say that is like, it's like, okay, we tell people, okay, ceremony's going to be messy. Again, there's no right or wrong way for you to do ceremony so long as you don't interfere with somebody else's journey. So we asked there isn't talking during ceremony between participants, but you're welcome to laugh and you're welcome to cry. You're welcome to weep. But those are boundaries that we establish in advance and everybody knows going in. Or there's going to be no touching without permission.

What does that mean? It means, okay, you raise your hand because you are genuinely scared and you've already done the techniques of exploring with wild curiosity and you don't like where you are. and maybe one of our facilitators comes up and says, may I touch your feet? And you can say yes and you can say no, but they're not just going to go up and touch your feet. They're not just going to go and put a blanket on you without asking you, can I do this?

So we're still respecting the autonomy, respecting the boundary, agreeing on the boundaries in advance. And again, not saying that our boundaries are the right boundaries. They're just the right boundaries for us. And if you don't like these boundaries, go find boundaries that work for you. Yeah. It's beautiful to think about the, the ability, like the shared trust, you know,

asking permission on some level and allowing someone to give you permission. Like that just sounds like the foundation of building a new relationship, especially with people that are trying to solve problems. It's almost like you're, you're reorienting them on how to have a faithful relationship. That's probably not the right words, but it's interesting to have, to have that. What do you have like a, when you are out, when you are working, man, is there a code of ethics that people can see or that you work with or that's talked to the group? Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. We call them agreements, but there are, so I think it's,

I think it's important. When anyone's looking for a spiritual community, that they're finding what's right, but resonates for them. So it's not saying that this flavor is better than that flavor. Chocolate's not better than vanilla. It's just some people like one, some like the other. So we talk about what's our dogma? Well, we believe we're all spiritual people having a human experience. We believe that we're spiritual peers, that we believe that we are born before we're living now. There's life before and after the time here on the planet. We believe that everyone at that our essence is loved and is worthy and is enough. Besides for that, we don't have a lot of dogma. Same thing is true with our rules. We talk about there's no

There's no talking. There's no physical touch that we ask people to stay in the circle for as much as possible. If they're going to leave, they leave for a song or two, and then they come back. We have, in addition to the facilitators in the front of the room, we talk about our one-to-seven ratio of sitters or guardians or whatever you want to call them in your tradition. And they're going to keep an eye on you, not because we don't trust you. It's because we want to make sure that you feel safe, that someone's watching you, and that you're not. going to wander off and that you're not going to go hurt yourself during this this ceremony one thing i'm excited there's a group out there called sacred plant alliance and one of the things

i'm excited about they're doing is they're offering a an ethical oversight of spiritual communities without um where where basically they're saying look okay you you've you've you've shared these ethics and if you have if you believe your ethics have been violated come to us and we can research it for you. And I think that in this type of space is good. So it's not we're creating the Roman Catholic Church and that there's going to be a Vatican Council. It's no, we're just trying to create ways to, in this very gray, quiet area to have oversight. And I think that's really important work that they're doing. And I can't wait to see how that evolves. I think we'll see some more of that in this space.

And then as we get head towards more organizations getting true federal exemptions, where there's actually a legitimate process where that can happen, I think we'll see even more of that. Because they're just like we've had issues in psychology and psychiatry and in medicine and in gymnastics and in football, we're gonna have issues here.

And that's okay. It's not something to be, it's, I don't want that for me. I don't want that for my community. But these things will happen. And how do we, again, reduce the risk as much as possible? How do we make sure people have as full of an understanding as possible with what's going in? Taking this all the way back to this Veterans Guide to Psychedelics where we started this discussion.

Part of why we start on health literacy with this forward by Dr. Bob Kaufman in the beginning is so people can make an informed decision at, each of these different levels of what's right for them. Yeah, and then they can make that decision and then have that respected through the process and whichever process they choose, a medical process, a spiritual process, a retreat process, a underground therapist or coach process. This helps them keep those boundaries in place. Yeah, I'm really excited for the future to see organizations like this and to see new laws being passed. Our friend Jack Gorsland in Boston has been uncovering quite a bit of information

and stuff with the potential ideas of RFK seems to be very positive and finding ways to move psychedelics forward. Do you have any thoughts on that on maybe RFK getting in there or just the psychedelic movement sort of gaining ground in all these different states? Are you bullish on the future for this? I'm so bullish on the future because again, I believe at our core, we all want the same thing. So it's so easy for me to say like, oh, I want to have a discussion with our government. I don't have a discussion with the government. There is no government. There are humans who work for government positions.

So I'm very excited at some point to have a discussion with a human with another soul who's going to understand where we are, what we're doing and why we're doing it. And I'm excited about that opportunity. And I believe that that conversation will lead to a federal exemption for us. I do get excited about some of these politicians that are coming in, having more of an open mind to psychedelics. I get excited about some of the work that's been written about recently about, well, this is interesting how vaccines were used in COVID. Could that same process be used to allow a path, a legal path for psychedelics? That's interesting. I believe, and then just like, and if it takes veterans and this awful tragedy that's happening to help shift the perception to help again bring this forward, that's amazing, the end of life work being done it.

NYU, Johns Hopkins, UCSF, Imperial College, King's College, if it takes that type of work for people to go, oh, I see if I can give this person who is dying in antidepressant and give them a few months to see a, if it works and then wean them off and then try something else, or I can give them a single dose of psilocybin and have a marked dramatic improvement and depression, anxiety, and hopelessness? I can understand that. I don't want my parents to suffer. I can understand that.

Great. Then let's use these things that we can understand that are bite size. Let's get those things through. And then these other things will come because we all want it. We all want, we're all hungry for this amount of peace and love and abundance in mind.

And we just thought we had to get it through an accumulation of wealth and goals that kept moving. And we were wrong. And some of us thought we could get it through this faith tradition or that faith tradition where it was going to be forced fed to us. And if I learn the rules and I play the rules, I'm going to get it. And that wasn't semantic enough. Well, here we have something that we can do.

and have an individualized, direct experience and come forward with a knowing after that, and then use all these other techniques and practices and wisdom to continue to be reminded of what we saw or to make sense of what we saw. So yes, George, I am bullish. I'm excited. I think there's never been a better time to be alive. And I'm excited that people like you are hosting these super long conversations that people are listening to. who's listening to this?

It's people who are hungry for the messaging. They're hungry. Actually, they're not hungry for the messaging. They are hungry for the feeling and the connection. And some are listening for permission, and some are listening for understanding, and some are listening out of fear, and some are listening on how to go deeper.

And it's incredible. And you've brought such a wide variety of people. people to these conversations who are willing to talk with you for a couple of hours. And then you brought your listeners on board who are willing to listen for this amount of time. It's beautiful. How can we not be excited? Yeah. Thank you for that.

I appreciate it. I'm thankful for the future too, Matt. And I appreciate all the work you're doing. I tune in quite a bit. And I see, like, you are always finding a way to put a message out that is meaningful to people. And you've used different platforms and different mediums. You've got multiple books and you've spoken to so many cool people. You're working diligently in your community and always learning, man.

I have a huge amount of respect. And I'm thankful for the work you're doing, man. I appreciate that. As we're landing the plane here, I was hopeful that you would be so, you've been very gracious with your time. Thank you for that. I was hopeful that you could tell people where they can find you, what you got coming up, what you're excited about.

And just how to maybe explain. some of that for people that are listening. They may want to learn more about what you're doing. Part of why you thank you for that, and thank you for this opportunity to do that. For those who have veterans in their lives, this veterans guide to psychedelics, 100% of the proceeds.

I'm not taking $1 off this book. Goes to Heroic Hearts Project. So if this is something that you have somebody, it's making your Christmas present. It's a great, I think it's a great book. A guy named Dr. Ken Weingard was the clinical reviewer. There's a whole bunch of activities in this book that are done before someone takes a psychedelic during the actual psychedelic experience or right after it.

And then the integration, a 30-day gratitude journal and all these activities. So that books available on Amazon. My other books are Amazon or audible, well, both. Atzeman.com, which will be in the show notes, is if you're looking for a speaker or you want to buy bulk copies, and that's where most of these, most of my books are groups buying 100, a time for retreats and ceremonies and therapists' offices and clinics and that kind of stuff. But they're super accessible books. They're written for all of us.

And I'm excited. The Beginners Guide to Psychedelics will come out in January. I'm very excited about that. And then I have a therapist and coaches edition of the Veterans guy that should be out like in the next week or two. So I'm trying to beat the New Year clock on that. But that's if you're working with veterans, this has like, how do you run? on a preparation session with them and down to like 10 minute increments um what follow-up emails

do you send what homework do you assign that's all in this therapist uh edition that can and i co-authored the therapist edition awesome there's a lot coming out and i would recommend everybody within the sound of my voice go down to the show notes reach out to matt check out the books there's there's so much on the cutting edge of what's happening and what's to come and i don't know a more caring or personal person that's willing to put a message out there, man. And I hope people that are curious reach out to you because you do tremendous work and you're an incredible individual. So hang on briefly afterwards to everybody within the sound of my voice.

I hope you have a beautiful day. I hope you realize that there's a miracle waiting to happen to you if you have the courage to chase it down. That's all we got, ladies and gentlemen. Have a beautiful day. Aloha.