TrueLife - Matt Zemon - Psychedelics for Everyone

Episode Date: October 15, 2022

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 we speak with Matt Zemon A Psychedelic Medicine Advocate, #1Amazon Best Selling Author,Collaborative Leader & Entrepreneur. [e-mail] One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fearist through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Friday. We are here with a True Life podcast first. An unbelievable, charismatic, great awesome. author who's won first place in 19 categories, the one and only, Matt Zeman. Would you be so kind as to introduce yourself for people who may not know who you are?

George, that is quite the introduction. I appreciate that. That is awesome. My name is Matt Zeman. I'm psyched to be here today. I'm the author of Psychedelics for Everyone. And I'm also the CEO and co-founder of a company called Happy, Two Wies. And we are a telehealth company that's transforming lives through psychedelic-assisted ketamine therapy.

Man, it's so awesome. And for those who may not know, I just want to say this again, the man you're seeing on front of your screen has just become a bestselling author in 19 categories. How does that feel, Matt? It is, the whole point of this book was to get it out into as many people's hands as possible. And in my wildest imagination, I did not think so many people in these first few weeks would be downloading it and buying it. It just feels great.

And I'm truly hoping that this can change some lives and the people can say, hey, I do see how psychedelics can be a benefit for me or for someone I know. Yeah, well, I think that, you know, what you wish for is manifesting itself in reality because 19 categories is not one, it's not two, is 19. And it's just beginning. I mean, you just dropped it on the 3rd of October. Is that correct? Yeah, that is correct. So it's only been a few weeks. So it's pretty wild.

Now, do you think that maybe. be the authenticity of what you've written is what is reaching hold through the pages and grabbing people? I don't know. I'd like to think so. I mean, I put in some very personal stories about how I went from being kind of a non-psychedelic user to a deep dive psychedelic user. And what that's really meant for me and for my family.

And I hope that resonates. The Ford is written by a gentleman named Dr. Carlos Warder, who's an MDP. who has been working with psychedelic medicine for 50 years. He's part of that old guard. Yeah. And he brings in this beautiful element of human consciousness and the human promise and how psychedelics can help unlock that. And I think that hopefully resonates with people.

And then each chapter, I use different experts for different pieces. So we're able to really do deep dives into a lot of different medicines. And then put in for the really good. geeky people listening, put in the references for anyone who wants to dive even deeper, go like, what are, what studies are he, is he talking about? Are they talking about? And they can dive in deep. So I'm hoping that there's something in here for everyone. But this is, it was really written for the common person. You don't have to have a science background to read and understand this book. Yeah, it's almost like the psychedelics wrote it through you. You know, there's all these when I, like,

I like to think that I read up quite a bit and I know some things about it. But when I see it with your hundred books a year. Yeah. I would imagine you read a little bit, George. I love it. Yeah, it's intoxicating. But, you know, because I do that, when I see you use words like psychedelics can be allies of different types of therapies. When I hear the word allies, I'm like, look at this guy giving a nod to Carlos Castanato over here. You know, and like that kind of, for geeks like me, like, I'm like, oh, this guy gets it.

And he's leaving little Easter eggs all over this thing for me to find, you know. And it's, it makes it fun to read. And it makes it worthwhile to read. than that, it shows the community how much you care and the research you've done. So I can see why it's a bestseller. But what, if I were just to begin at the beginning, what inspired this? Like all of a sudden, you say you weren't really into psychedelics. You weren't a big drinker.

You were living your life. And then all of a sudden, like you just become this, you have this psychedelic renaissance. What happened to make this book happen? Seriously. I had never, in my wildest imagination, Let me try again. I'm trying to find the words, George. It is that first experience for me when I had a guided psilocybin or magic mushroom experience

and reconnected with my mom and realized, oh, my God, I have been scared of dying my entire life. She was 49. And I was like, I was what, 46 or 47 when this happened. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm living my whole life afraid of dying. I'm missing someone. And she's still here. I just was looking in the wrong place. And that was such an eye-opener for me.

And then the way I saw and felt her and the different other experiences and that first, the ego death, that it was such a tremendous experience that when I came out of it, I was like, oh my gosh, what is this? How do I learn more? And how do I learn more quickly? And then how can I help? How can I be a part of this? And that led, so I felt for me,

And in some ways, kind of like you, George, I'm, I dive in deeply and I'm definitely on the geeky side. So it's like I felt like I had to go get a master's in psychology and neuroscience to get some foundation to understand how do I read a scientific study. I haven't taken the science class in 30 years. It was very funny. I was like the only one doing like Kuman on the side. Not Kuman. I can't think what it's called right now that the videos where you're learning like the refresher courses for kids. It took a lot to get through the head.

And then deep diving into lots of psychedelic conferences. And then as an entrepreneur, just looking around and saying, okay, where can I add value? Where can I help? And trying to find a spot where I thought I could fit in and help make a difference and help other people who are either on this path or are looking for an alternative for people that they love because the existing systems aren't working for them.

Yeah, or even making it worse for them. Or making it worse, yes, yes. And there just hasn't been, there hasn't been a lot of options. Until now. And like that, that's where the title comes in. And, you know, I always, I always pay attention to the title to see how people use that, not only in the books that they write, but in the acts that they do outside of what they write. Because I think that the title of something, it more often titles not only their work,

but sort of their, I don't really love the word legacy, but it titles their, it's their title as well. And I see psychedelics for everyone, not only in what you wrote, but in what you're doing and the words you use to speak the message you're speaking. And when you talk about all these, like you hit so many, so many different levels there from, you know, I died. I reconnected with my family. I went back to school. Like that, that is a, like there is a psychedelic level on every. one of those. And it's amazing how you could tie all those huge things into one little paragraph. If we had more time, we could dive into every one of those because I think that psychedelics shine a light on all

of those things. So let me, let me just grab one piece here. You had this psychedelic experience and then you decided to go back and finish your schooling. That to me seems like a fancy way of seeing neurogenesis happen in real time. I think you're right on that. But I will also, again, And now fast forward and look behind. Please. It's like, okay. So even knowing what I knew after that first session, I deep, I went in the Western approach. Okay.

This is awesome. I need to go to school and learn stuff so I can be better at this. And I'm glad I did. No regrets. But that became only one part of the schooling over these last three and a half, four years. There was also then going at almost the same time, studying under different spiritual leaders studying under different people who have worked with psychedelic medicine in different traditions for a long time and having them show me that there's other ways besides the Western

medical model way to look at this. So I started to have a whole appreciation for, okay, this is a kind of religious, religious model, oh, this is a decriminalization model, oh, this is an indigenous model. And all of them have a place, which again brings us back to, like you said, psychedelics for everyone. Doesn't mean everyone has to take a psychedelic, but these medicines are good for the world and there's lots of different ways to approach them for lots of different reasons for lots of different people yeah you know i we often hear the saying i think it was gosh i'm not going to say who i think it was because it might be wrong i do that all the time i hear you that's that's a yes yeah so uh i've often heard the phrase history doesn't repeat but it rhymes and

it seems to me it's not so much rhyming as it is moving into helical mom like up and up and up is where we're going. And it makes sense that we should rediscover some of these technologies from South America that have been in the world of medicine, maybe not Western medicine, but been in the world of medicine for generations. And we take them back here and we learn how to use them. My question to you is that when you go down to South America, it seems like there may be some things lost in translation because if you're going to get an authentic experience,

It probably shouldn't be an experience on a beach with Baba Ginoos from Los Angeles. You know what I mean? It should probably be something a little bit more ceremonial in a setting that is more authentic. But I'm wondering if things get lost in translation down there because you're not from that culture. You're not part of that culture. So you bring it back to the West and all of a sudden you have to feel like you go back to school.

Are we losing something in translation there? Of course. And we're gaining something in translation. It's both. It's a both hand. And it's not just South America. And that's the other thing I didn't understand. It's like, oh, my gosh, every continent, every culture across the world has a medicine

tradition and has their healers. And like the idea that they were burning witches and what were witches doing in Europe, in the Middle Ages and such. It's like, oh, oh, I didn't know that. Wait a minute. This is connected. or a Scandinavian shaman and what they were doing up there and in Central America and in South America. So yes, we are whenever, I think any of us who are experiencing anything today,

there are things that are being lost in translation that have disappeared over the time and over where we're doing it and how we're doing it. And I think the person who we have picked to deliver whatever that is to us, they're bringing it all with them. They're bringing their experiences. They're combined, the parallel cultures that they've been living in and straddling, even get to talk with you and be sitting in front of you for that moment. So there's all sorts of puts and takes here.

Yeah, it's interesting to think. I'm a big fan of gardening and nature, and it seems to me that you seem like a pretty, I think you maybe draw some inspiration from nature. Can you tell us, maybe share a story with us about how you, you've been influenced by nature and the psychedelic experience? Wow. Yeah, a few things. It's funny these questions.

Then it comes about psychicinecta. It's like, oh, which story do you want to tell? Right. But it is, I think for me, I'm debating between psilocybin and ayahuasca. I think I'll stick with psilocybin because it's more accessible to more listeners, I think. I was surprised with when almost every time I've ingested. mushrooms. The way I look at nature shifts, that you can almost see the trees and the flowers breathing and communicating and the start and stop point between me and the ground. Like I love taking

my socks and shoes off and just that connection between foot and ground and how it becomes almost one thing. And you can feel the grass becoming intertwined with the foot, which becomes intertwined with the leg. And all of a sense, like, whoa, I'm part of nature. We are one, we are not separate. We're just one thing plowing through the cosmos. And then the inspiration from that is how does, okay, that's great. I can now connect myself to the ground. I can now connect the ground to the tree, the tree to the sky. But then how do I take that forward and connect to you, George? and be like, we are not different. We're talking to each other and having two different experiences,

but we're still this, we are connected. And how do I then remember that? And this is the practice piece of this. And in the non-psychedelic moments, how do I remember that? It's kind of that idea of like we're all brothers and sisters, but in a much more literal sense than I ever imagined possible. And all that's from psychedelics. Can you relate to this?

Man, you're preaching to the choir over here. I love every second of it. And I firmly believe you don't come into this world. You come out of it. And that's a psychedelic revelation that happens. And when you begin to see that, when you begin to understand that everything you see and somebody else can only be recognized because that exists in you, whether it's anger, hatred, love, beauty, or animosity.

Like, people around you are a mirror for you. And once you begin understanding that, you see it everywhere. It's like the reticular activating. system in your mind. Like, you know, you have, how people bought a car? And then all of a sudden, you start seeing that car everywhere or you buy a new shirt and you're like, hey, that guy's got my shirt on. Hey, that girl's got a shirt on. You know, there's this thing that happens in our mind where we begin to notice the very things that we do or we buy or we have habits of. And that same psychedelic experience, once you have it, you begin to see it in everything

around you. It's like we have always been part of this one organism, but in some way we lost our way. And I think that that's where the healing comes in. I think that that is the idea. You know, you said when you, in a psychedelic experience, you like to take your shoes and, and, and socks off and feel grounded. How many people that have mental illness aren't grounded? It's not that they're bad. It's not that they've, they've, it may be partly due to a traumatic experience, but they're not grounded. And once they get grounded, it's like, oh, gosh, I feel so, I feel so relieved. Hey, I'm normal. I'm one of you. And like that to me, to me, is the essential foundation of healing is coming back to the idea that we're one.

And that's what I mean. When you said that, that's exactly what I heard. And I can feel it, man. I get goosebumps when you talk like that. It's incredible. It's also interesting. We talk about mental. So many things.

There's a lot to unpack in almost every sentence you threw out here, George. So it's interesting to think about mental illness or the diagnosis. And so it's okay, I have depression. Great. Boom. I can pull a flag. I have anxiety. I have bipolar or whatever.

Okay. But how many of us, I'm fine. I'm fine. And that's it. I'm just fine. I'm not going to look at this. I'm going to put this in a drawer. I'm not going to talk about. I'm fine. And I think what psychedelics do is gives the opportunity to be more aware, going back to what you're talking about, to practice this awareness to say, oh, I know what I'm looking for now because I've seen it and I felt it. And now I can be more aware today and tomorrow when I'm not using psychedelics. And to go from, okay, I am fine because I'm enough and I'm loved and I'm safe and all that's fine. And I think I want to look back a little bit and see what happened here and see if this thing, if I'm allowing this to impact the way I'm living my life moving forward. And maybe if I can look back and address that, I might change some of the behaviors moving forward, which then helps heal the next generation and my friends and my family. So it's this

really lovely opportunity that psychedelic medicine gives us to not only heal ourselves, but to heal backwards and to heal forwards. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, that's why this guy is a bestseller in 19 category. Everybody should rewind that, rewind those few minutes right there and just enjoy that. Like, that is poetry, my friend. That is beautiful. Thank you for that, man. I appreciate that. This is a lovely burst of a feel good right now. It's lovely. Thank you. It's psychedelic, man. And let's take a quote from the book here. The psychedelic medicine allowed me to disassociate from myself to re-look at an experience that had haunted me for years and release the anger, the hatred, the embarrassment, the guilt, and the shame that had weighed me down for decades without me even realizing. How can you have all

that stuff but not realize it, man. Like what, what is this paragraph about, man? Wow. So, George, for your, for your, the listeners who have not, um, read this passage, this relates back when I was a teenager, um, early teens, I had, um, inappropriate sexual contact with some, a family member 10 years older. Um, and at the, at the time, at the time and after I was mortified.

It was like this shouldn't have, this was wrong, but I felt it was my fault. And I just kind of, I kind of put it away. So I'm, I'm good at compartmentalizing. I was like, I'd have to stick it in this drawer. I'm not going to think about it. So I was able to separate myself from this particular family member and not have any contact. So that helped. But kind of like as life goes on, things would happen.

Like there'd be something on TV or someone would make a joke and my ears would get red or my cheeks would get red. And my body would be like, yeah, something's wrong. I'm like, no, no, no, push away, push it away. And what happened is on a psychedelic journey with my intention was not related to this. Again, this was so far back. This was so deep. I mean, it was like, this is not something even, I just didn't talk about it. It wasn't top of conscience.

And I was right there again, looking at the situation. And I was like, oh, I don't want to be here. But again, that was preparation. If you're in a place that you don't like, ask it what you're here. to teach. Okay, I'm going to trust in this process here, but again, not comfortable, not loving this. This would be in the challenging experience bucket. And I was able to look at her and go, oh, my God, she was so sad. She was so unloved. She was so rejected. She was feeling so bad about herself and she was struggling with alcohol and drugs and comparing herself to other people and just

she just wanted to be loved and she wasn't it wasn't malicious um i don't have to forgive and i don't have to accept it um but i can i can understand it differently and i could have empathy for her as a human and i can heal and move on and now i can talk about this all day every day without any feelings and any embarrassment or any shame, blame, or guilt. Yeah, and it's just, and again, it's one of those, like, in my wildest imaginations, I didn't think psychedelic medicine could do that. And sure enough, here it is. It was a trauma that impacted me that I held somewhere deep down inside,

and it was able to kind of go in there, find it, pull it up, help me look at it, and help me move on. Thanks for sharing that. And I want to say congratulations. and I'm glad that happened to you because if that didn't happen to you, then you wouldn't be where you were. And in some ways, we can look back at the people that committed atrocities on us and be thankful for them. And that's part of forgiving. That's part, maybe not forgiving, but understanding.

And the way you described her, I can't imagine how many years it took for you to come to the realization that this person was in pain and that you were not some sort of object of fetish or you were not some sort of object. of abuse, but you were just this conduit that happened to be there. And people may not ever be as strong as that, man. And it would ruin them. Like, you felt the pressure of that on you. And I know what that feels like. You can go a lot of different routes with that kind of pressure on you that you hold in. But I believe the purpose of tragedy, and let me know if you believe this to be accurate,

but I believe the purpose of tragedy is because there's a force bigger than you and I can imagine. and that force is forcing us to go through the most uncomfortable, sometimes horrible things because it believes we're big enough to come out on the other side and help people. That's the purpose of tragedy. So you can come out the other side and not only can you help other people, but now you have like this sixth sense where you go,

I know what's happening to them. Oh my gosh, that happened to them. I can tell in their language. I can tell by the way they hold their baby to the far right side when the dad's on the left hand side. Like, you know, and it's scary that you should. start part of that the I think that's part of the process of self-destruction and even getting better is that you have this new sense of what's happening and you don't know how to integrate it it's like a trip that's

never been integrated and in a weird way no matter what you experience you're different from it but I went off on a tangent and I don't mean to be rude when I say I'm thankful that happened to you but I am a little bit it is not a tangent and I completely understand what you're saying but I would not have understood what you were saying had I been not on the psychedelic journey. And had I not understood that we're not that everything that I'll take it a step further. I subscribe to I'm responsible for everything. Right. So I've created everything in my life to this point and it's perfect for what it needed to be to get me to this point in time.

And now what am I going to do moving forward? And what I've remembered in the psychedelic medicine process is that I can help, that I have skills and I can help and I can communicate. So the things that have happened to me in my past helped me be a better communicator to people that I'm trying now to to help as I look forward. And to relate and to understand and to have empathy and to have sympathy and to, yeah, to be able to hold kind of their experiences, not to compare, not to interject my opinion, but to say, I understand.

And I'm sorry that that must have been chat. challenging and you are loved and you are enough and you are safe. And what's what's it going to be today? What's today going to look like? Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know if I've told you, but this is the reason why this guy has a 19 category is the bestseller. Okay, so let me shift gears a little bit. One thing that I have noticed in people that have been on this path for some time

and have come through some strong situations is their ability to command language. And it doesn't need to be this ability of huge words. What it seems more to me is their ability to explain concepts. And I think there's something happening in the psychedelic experience that allows for people to become better communicators. I don't know if that means you're more open or if on some level at the peak of the psychedelic experience, you are becoming more comfortable with high. senses of awareness or if you're taking in more information. But I believe that the psychedelic experience is allowing those that are on that journey to become better communicators.

And it's affecting our language, be it concepts, be it understanding, or be it words. And I'm wondering if you have noticed a difference in the way you speak or in the way you communicate since you've been on the road of psychedelics. I think what you're saying is fascinating. I haven't thought of what you're saying in these terms, but I can connect to this. And I'm going to put it this way. I believe what psychedelics, because it gives you the opportunity, and everything's an opportunity.

You can take psychedelics and just go on a trip and whatever and let it go. But assuming that you are integrating and thinking about what happened and trying to move it forward, in many cases, you're stripping the masks. It's not, I'm not an author, I'm not a father, I'm not just a brother, a son, I'm not my name. I'm a human. I'm here. We are humans.

So we've stripped off a lot of the masks. We've then, in many cases, it's like you don't want the surface conversation. You don't want the cocktail party conversation. It's just no fun. Right. So it's like if we're going to talk, let's talk. If we're not going to talk, that's totally fine. I'll go talk with somebody else.

But let's have an authentic conversation about the stuff that matters. How are you feeling? How can I help? What's going on? What's really going on? And because you've now taken the conversation to a different level and you're connecting with the human in front of you with all of your heart and all of your attention

and all of your awareness, I think whatever you're talking about can get through in a way that the cocktail party of who beat who the other night just doesn't matter. So I think that's my take. And then I believe you start, it's not that you're, you start putting yourself in situations where you're having these conversations, you're having more opportunities to communicate and therefore more is getting across. I think that's my take on it, George. I'm not sure if I learned

any vocabulary through, if I remembered any vocabulary through these psychedelic experiences, but I do think I've, I've increased 10 times the authentic conversations I'm having on a daily basis. Yeah, I agree that. this surface layer of labels that we use and we begin to teach kids at an early age strips us of seeing the world the way it is. And so let me just shift gears for a moment and say this. You know, in our earlier part of our conversation, you had decided to go back to school to learn some things. And after you had said that you followed that up with another sentence that was like, oh, that's just something you do in the West. I often wonder if this idea of education and psychedelics is connected,

it seems to me that knowledge can be revealed to you as much as you can learn knowledge. What do you think about that? I think that's right on. I mean, I love this notion that we're not really learning as much as we're remembering. That's so true. And that, yeah, we have these different opportunities to remember in different ways. however in our and in our shared agreed upon consciousness that we all are living in at this point I think one of my skill sets is trying is understanding kind of how do you play this game

so I thought if I want to first understand the science I need to get the I need to get the degree I need to understand more then it was like I also need the degree if I really want to speak about this and spread this as knowledge have Having a degree would be helpful. Now, a PhD would be better. I'm not sure I'm that committed. But this was my, like, I can do this. I can commit to two years and I'll learn this much through the Western way and I'll get

this degree. And hopefully that adds enough credibility to have conversations where people are taking what I'm saying seriously. And then I also know when to tap out and say, okay, you're asking very specific questions about a very specific drug interaction. this is not really where you should be talking to me. I would recommend you go talk to a psychopharmacologist or you talk to your psychiatrist.

You talk to somebody else who can take it up a step. Or you're saying, I really want a deep dive into a spiritual realm and this is what I'm looking for. I'm like, yeah, you should go talk with this person because they have been training under this, and this seems like it's in the vein of what you're looking for. But there is, it is, there's so many different ways to approach these medicines.

It is mind-boggling and it's beautiful. Yeah. You're like the prefrontal cortex, man. Like you have like the eastern background. You have like the right hemisphere of the brain. And you go to the west to find the left hemisphere of the brain. And you have the analytical, it means it's spiritual. And you're like the corpus callosum.

Moving them across each other, man. That's awesome. I'm curious if, if, so we've talked about your. book a little bit. You also have a company that helps people using different psychedelics. Can you talk a little bit about that? It's not different psychedelics. So I'll tell you how we got here. Okay. I started with psilocybin and then moved to ayahuasca and then moved around and during this process, learned about ketamine. And when I went back from my master's, I really focused on, Okay, since this is legal, what can I write about?

What are the studies? And can I make my dissertation on ketamine? And specifically oral ketamine and even more specifically oral ketamine for adult anxiety. So super, super niche. Ketamine is the only legal psychedelic. And because I started with psilocybin, I poo-pood it at first. I was like, ah, it can't be as good. It's this man-made thing.

And I was just, I was wrong. It's just different. It's just different. It's different to psilocybinus, psilocybinus to ayahuasasas to five MEO. It's just different. And it can do a ton of good. What made me angry as an entrepreneur is what it cost to do ketamine. Two things.

Actually, a number of things. So many things made me angry, actually. We want to go, we want to dive down here. Things that make me angry about ketamine. So I didn't like that there was infighting between the different groups. There is the anesthesiologist who's like, we are the kings of ketamine and we are the ones who should control this. And psychologists are like, wait, wait, this is really only for, for mental health and everything in between. I didn't like the pricing that was being charged, $6,000 for

six sessions, especially those that were charging that and not giving any mental health, that were letting people come in and having a nurse anesthesiators, put an IV in somebody's arm in a dental chair, no preparation and no integration and just let the biochemical reaction work. It's amazing that it can work for so many people, but it's so much better. The research, everybody knows what the research says. If you combine it with any type of therapy, licensed or unlicensed, the results go up. So that pissed me off, that there's hundreds of academy clinics not doing that with the mental health piece. The pricing made me angry. And then the, um, there are some really great providers

who, um, were like, well, you, you, you can't do it any other way besides the way I do it. And they do it beautifully, but they're booked. So it's like, okay, it's lovely. I'm glad that you're amazing and you are. And I can't get my family member in with you for months, if ever. So it's not really helping the scale. You have, you're a great doctor, great practitioner, but you're not a great technologist or business person in terms of scaling systems. So it just became painfully obvious that we have a, we have a marketing image around a drug that's legal and been legal since 1970, that you can have in all 50 states that's overpriced in most cases. And so how do we bring the cost down? How do we make it more accessible? And then how do we represent?

those really cool things that people are doing, how can we do as good of a job as possible with automation and with technology? And that's what we're doing with Happy. So is it as good as if you can get to the number one ketamine doctor and have that personal experience inside a clinic? No, no, no. If you can afford that and you can get to that, that's what you should do. But for most people, if you can pay 20% of that price and get sick.

sessions and have a really positive experience, that's pretty amazing. And we can help with depression and we can help with anxiety and we can help with alcohol use and we can help with optimization and all of these different things that Kedamy does. That was a long-winded answer, George. Man, it was really well done. And I think that an answer to my question, it needed to have a platform build below it. So I think he did a great job on that and building it out and explaining to people the different types there are, what you're passionate about, and just giving some reasons why you did the things you did.

You know, I, I'm curious, if you see that same sort of friction happening, not only in the world of ketamine, but in the world of other psychedelics. Of course. So one more thing, just so I don't mention, I feel guilty for the rest of my life.

My business partner in Happy, Wolf Schlagman, has been building telehealth companies. companies for like 20 years. And that's so it's this, but he's also so passionate about this experience and about the psychedelic medicine. And I just think a lot of the medical professionals

don't understand or don't appreciate the business skills that go into building a scalable business. And that's okay. They don't have to. But it's, I think we have something that we're built. It's pretty special. Your question was, I just lost the second question. That's okay.

friction like it makes me have other questions about what you did said but the friction between the same sort of friction happening that you noticed in the ketamine space is that same sort of friction happening not only in the psychedelic space but in medicine in general do you think yeah and it's yes and differently so oh nice where do we take this we can start in the let's just talk about psychedelic medicines i mean there's people who are like oh this is indigenous to south america period okay i get there's a lot of respect and and and and and tradition that comes out of South America, and there's a whole European tradition as well.

So just because I'm not of an indigenous, South American tradition, doesn't mean I don't have any ancestors going back or so. I'm not trying to be literally, but then there isn't potential for, again, Scandinavian, European, African, Asian. There's lots of traditions that should be, if we're going to talk about the indigenous or the traditional routes,

it needs to be a global perspective. and there is there does seem to be some just not such a broad perspective sometimes we lose sights of other parts of the world um i think there is we know it's almost a philosophical argument in terms of the how how are we going to get this to the world so we have the group who's saying let's do a western medical model because realistically this is their language not mine realistically that's how we do this we need to get the FDA to approve MDMA and then once the FDA does that it's going to be medically legalized across the United States and then psilocybin's going to be right behind it isn't that great cool love that model put that over here but then you

have to decrim people who are saying whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa that's not good enough not at all these plants should never have been illegal and making it Western only raises the cost and and and decreases access and doesn't get us where we need to go. And that's not good enough. And I can completely see what they're going to say. And then sometimes those two groups disagree and fight. And actually, and then then you have a third group,

which would be the religious people who are saying, this is a religious sacrament. And I thought we had freedom of religion in America. We do not. I did not know that until I was almost 50. It's just, that's what I was taught in school. We have freedom of America. Freedom of religion.

Yay. And no, we do not. We have freedom of some religions, but not all religions. You can't, yeah. So that has been, again, eye-opening. But then the real, so then even de Crem, there is a situation with, where they had left in peyote in a particular legislative movement. And then that was a very controversial and got some fighting.

There's a lot of great hearts and a lot of great minds and a lot of minds that disagree from time to time. And it's all okay and they're all right from their perspective. And I just didn't know all that happened. I like that. That's so true. And it's such a sobering answer of what it's a real answer of what's happening in the trenches and on the ground right now. And I often wonder if people thoroughly are getting to enjoy the possibilities that are in front of us. Like there's so much potential and possibilities on the ground right.

now and we're really shaping the next hundred years of medicine and I can see it in the way in which you and your partner are transforming not only ketamine therapy but telemedicine is something that while it may lack the the true connection of one-on-one or the the embrace of the otherness that is there when you're with somebody it is a tremendous way to begin the procedures of helping people become whole. And I'm wholeheartedly a huge fan of it. I wanted to ask you this. Like you had mentioned that in the beginning, you know,

you were, you were more affectionate towards psilocybin than ketamine because you had tried psilocybin and you would notice that there's other different medicines that can help different people or different therapies. I'm wondering if in the future, maybe we might see ketamine being really targeted towards certain problems versus psilocybin being targeted to other ones.

And even if you made it a little bit deeper, do you think that there's going to be, I think there's going to be blends or even that certain types of specific mushrooms may be better for different types of certain types of, you know, melancholy problems. What do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, if we're going to dream, let's dream all the way. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, man. So what did they do in this? What did they do pre this all becoming illegal?

What did they do in the underground world? They stacked things up. They said, you know what? We're going to do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And you know, in an hour, we're going to come by and give you a little bit of this. Yeah. And they were trying different cocktails of medicine like any doctor would. They were trying different cocktails of medicine to have different outcomes on individual

patients. So at some point, when we think about a skilled practitioner who understands the medicines that they're working with and understands the biology of the human that they're working with and the spiritual needs of that human that they're working with and the past history of that human that they're working with, and they can make a determination of, you know what we need to do? We need to first open their heart and we're going to use this medicine to do that. And then once the heart is open, we're going to come in over top with this, which is going to allow them to look back and heal. we're going to finish it all with a little bit of grounding to bring them back into the world with love and connection. That's cool.

We can't get to that yet, but we can talk about it. We know it's possible. We know it's been done. Yeah. So, yes, I would love to get to a world where we're doing those things. For now, ketamine is legal. Right. 50 states.

You can get a prescription. You can do it with telehealth. You can do it in a clinic. You can do it one-on-one. you can do it in a group. If you're scared of needles, you can do it nasally as well. Lots of options. And so for so many people who are not willing to do the things that you and I are willing to do, George, this is a, it's a great entry place.

It's a great entry place. And for many people, having been on SSRIs or SNRIs for 25, 30 years at this point, the idea that they could put it. I'll tell you one quick story. Please. There's a, there's a person I know, a friend of mine who,

um, he, his first, um, his first suicide attempt, he was 23. And he went through about 20 different medications over 15,

20 years. And, um, and last year about this time, he finally worked his way up to ketamine. Um, and he's in Canada where there's, it's not quite as,

uh, there's, it's, in his town, for example, there's only two ketamine clinics. So he finally found ketamine. And so a year ago, he's going in on a scale of one to 60 on depression.

He was a 53. Wow. So I talked to him a couple weeks ago. He said, how's it going? What's happened? And he's like, I'm a 10. I'm a 10. One year later.

And then I said, what's your frequency? Did you do the six and then spread out? He said, yeah, I did six within six weeks. and now once every four weeks, and it's a game changer. And that's incredible. And how many people out there are either on antidepressants that don't work,

on antidepressants that work, but the price tag is too high with the side effects. They're tired of having sexual dysfunction. They're tired of having gastrointestinal issues. They're tired of having brain fog, and the price tag's too high. Or how many people out there have said, I'm not going to do antidepressants because I don't want to be addicted to this medicine and have

withdrawal and all this stuff and just didn't know there was another option. So I love to be able to jump up and down and do it through us, do it through anybody. It doesn't matter. There's 400 ketamine clinics right now, 400-ish, that are working with mental health and ketamine. Pick any of them. Try it. And this is that whole abundance going back to your business question. There's no competition because there's there's plenty for everyone there's plenty of everything for everyone period so here yeah i i'll help you find we're operating in florida right now there's a time that's that's that's that's it so wherever you are you need to help i'll help you find somebody in wherever you are because it doesn't matter i need my job is to help you period and i'm either going to help you

with a company that i have or somebody else's but i don't know that's that's awesome It's exactly what it's supposed to be. And if what I took away, which really hit home there for me is you're talking about someone who has committed suicide or attempted to commit suicide. That's a negative 10. And if you read the research or if God forbid you got people in your life that have done that or are contemplating it or you've had to hold their hand in the hospital while that happened. And that's not something that people normally talk about getting over less in a year. That's something that people have with them forever. And they can't get that sticks with them.

It's part of it. Sometimes it consumes them and becomes who they are. And you just told the story how someone who was on the lowest level went to the opposite side of that and began to love themselves in a year. In a year. Yeah. Like that's that's mind blowing. Like that is world changing, especially if you're that person. So I'm so thankful, man.

And this is one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you. I'm excited to talk to you. And this is another reason why your book is number one in 19 different categories. Ladies and gentlemen, the book, the man is Matt Zeeman. He is an incredible individual. He is helping out so many people. If you check out the book, I promise you, you're going to find something that you can relate to it. He's making himself available via LinkedIn.

All the links will be in the description below. And one more time, Matt, would you be so kind as to maybe give the title a little bit of background about the book where people can find you and what you're excited about? Yeah, so it's psychedelics for everyone. It's available anywhere books are sold.

Our audiobook is coming out here in a few weeks, which is very exciting. So Dr. Carlos Warder reads his own forward. I read all the pieces that I wrote, and then this lovely narrator reads the pieces that different women wrote in the book. And so I'm very excited that that's coming out because I'm realizing a number of people just don't like to sit down and

read the physical book and they want the audio version. So off we go. Audio book it is. What am I excited about? I'm excited about the promise or what psyched adults can do for the human promise. Period. Full stop in a story. So for some people, that's like, I want to, I wanted to help me with depression or anxiety or OCD or eating disorders or alcohol use or whatever or suicidal ideation. Pick your thing. Great. Others, it's like, I'm fine. And I just wanted to, I want to think differently. I want different relationships. I want to have a different relationship with myself, with my parents, with my kids, with my siblings. Great. And others, like, I want, this is for religious purposes. I want to dive in here. And I want to, I want to have a personal conversation with God.

Well, you know what? That can be arranged too. Absolutely. How, wherever you're coming from, there is something here. And yeah, so that's, that's what gets me excited. That's what I love talking about and I love helping people on their journeys either for themselves or for their loved ones in finding safe ways, harm reduction ways and kind of best practices on how to have the best possible outcomes from this particular type of medicine. I love it, man. I love it. Ladies and gentlemen, in a world that seems to be plagued by disaster, if you just look under the hood, you'll see the beauty and the harmony in which the machine runs. And I think that what we're seeing right now, if you just look under the thin veneer of nuclear war and craziness,

you'll see the healing taking place. You'll see people like Matt coming up with books that are out there for everyone to share and enjoy. And it's a, I think your book is an invitation for people to explore what the world can be to them if they take the time to do it, man. I said, thank you for that. I'm really thankful for spending time with you today. So thank you. George, I'd love what you just said. Can I just jump on that for just a moment? I know. I just can't let that go.

It is, there has never been a greater time to be alive. There has never been less hunger, less abuse on minorities, less war, less money spent on arms. You pick the category and there's never been a better time to be alive. Does that mean everything is okay? No. But there's never been a better time to be alive. And the things that are happening in the world are hoping, I believe are leading to better discussions. And I'll give just, I'll give a simple, awful, interesting example.

What's happening in Ukraine right now and Ukraine right now? We have one country saying I want to take over this other country. There's other country saying no. We have the threat of nuclear war. All that is challenging. But what's the bigger discussion? The bigger discussion is, you know what? I've lived my entire life.

And George, you've lived your entire life. with nuclear weapons pointed out our heads all day long so okay now we're realizing oh wait a minute someone might actually use one of these and that's going to be less than ideal so what conversation does this drive i'm hoping it drives a discussion of we need to disarm as a world and and then maybe that drives to and if we weren't spending all the money on this what would we do with all this money oh wait a minute there is enough there's enough for everybody there's enough for every member of the human species to live to eat to have housing there's enough so so when these things happen how do we turn that lens and say what's really the negative situation here and how do we

have that conversation and how do we start changing things and I know these are big goals big things but it starts with one conversation then another conversation then a group of conversations and then things shift. And they have been shifting for hundreds of years, which it brings us back to there has never been a better time to be alive than right now. And it will be better for our children. It'll be different. They might not eat tuna.

It'll be different. But there will never be a better time to be alive. Yeah. You can live your best life now. And it's exciting. And people should be excited. You know, we are seeing the transformation from scarcity to abundance.

And if you just open your eyes and believe, And look, take a good, hard look at what's happening. And you can't not see the beauty emerging. It's there. If you're willing to see it. It's there. It is. Yeah.

George, we need more time. I know, man. We'll do it. We'll set up some more. I promise. This is way too fun. Yeah, this is way too fun. This is a great.

This is really a lot of fun. Yeah. I bring us some more people. This is, but either way, I'm, I am open. This has been, yeah, really a great conversation. I'm glad that. We had the chance to do this and record a little bit of this moment in history. Yeah, the first of many, I hope.

And I, you know, if I can just say one more thing before we go is, you know, when I think about the analogs and when I think about the potential to dream for bringing things together. And I look and I equate that with the people in other countries that practice medicine in a way where they experiment on themselves and then they go out into the world. Like, I really think that the majority of these therapies, be it psilocybin or ketamine or whatever it is, I think that that all of those could be taken with HGH and it's going to radically improve, not only the neurogenesis, but it's going to improve the overall experience. Because I think that you're seeing the neurogenesis, but if you add HGH, whether it's like a- You mean human growth hormone? Is that you're talking about?

Yeah, exactly. We can share. Yeah. Like, and, you know, there's different, there's different. analogs now that you could take orally like mk 677 but you could take these eight you could take human growth hormone in conjunction with any psychedelic in my opinion i'm not a doctor i don't know this i've just tested it out on myself and i feel like this works and i think if there was literature it would show it but i think that those two things continue to go i mean there will be this is this is this is

this is right we need to get to a point where our researchers are allowed to do the research that they do and that they can do that in a free in a more free way and that they can say wait a minute what if we combine HGH and this and then start experimenting and start running and do things and be able to run those trials. But right now it's so prohibitively expensive because of the scheduling of these medicines, which again brings us back to psychedelics for everyone. It might not be about taking it, but how do we think about legalizing it? How do we think about it for our academics? How do we think about it for our government? How do we think about for our religions? That's what this is all about so that we can get to conversations like you're just talking about, George.

It's beautiful. Beautiful. Psychedelics for everyone. I understand it. Check out the book and reach out to Matt if you have any questions. He's a lovely person and he likes helping people and the world needs more of that. That's all we got for today, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your time. I hope you all have a beautiful day and you see the beauty in your life. And that's what we got for today.

Aloha.