TrueLife - Psychedelic Pathways Magazine - The Library of Altered States

Episode Date: June 7, 2026

Support the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USOne on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingMost of us are missing the point about psychedelics—and this episode shatters the illusion. Strider John Peterson, publisher of Psychedelic Pathways, reveals how responsible engagement with plant medicines, art, and storytelling can TRANSFORM CULTURE and consciousness—and why it’s more vital than ever. This isn’t just about psychedelics, it’s about awakening a movement rooted in integrity, storytelling, and authentic human connection.Imagine a world where the stories of veterans, explorers, and underground voices don’t just echo in secret but ripple out to reshape society. John shares firsthand his journey from ophthalmic science to spearheading a magazine that captures the true depth of the psychedelic renaissance—stories of trauma, hero’s journeys, and sacred masculine evolution. You'll discover how responsible storytelling, grounded in intention, can challenge industry hype and steer this movement toward genuine personal and cultural awakening.We break down: the unseen power of visual storytelling, the role of responsible narratives in dismantling revolution-in-industry, and how psychedelics are just the beginning of a shift—an evolution in human awareness. John emphasizes the importance of honoring indigenous traditions, nurturing responsible use, and recognizing the power of community storytelling in a world eager for authentic change.The stakes? Without this responsible voice, the psychedelic movement risks commercialism, spiritual bypassing, and co-optation. But with it? Massive cultural shifts—building courage, purpose, and character in a fragmented world. This episode is perfect for anyone hungry for truth, real stories, or curious about how to guide a spiritual renaissance that amplifies our shared humanity.Geared toward seekers, activists, artists, and pioneers ready to challenge the status quo—this isn’t just a podcast. It’s a call to wake up, step in, and be part of the responsible revolution. Are you ready to listen deeper, think bigger, and say YES to authentic change? Hit play now & subscribe to the magazine your mind and soul will thank youFREE MAGAZINE https://www.psychedelicpathwaysmag.app/Contact:[e-mail]://www.linkedin.com/in/petersonjohnc 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/Legal Disclaimer / Release of Liability for Podcast:This  content  is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this transmission constitutes legal, financial, or professional advice. I am not your lawyer, financial advisor, or telling you what to do.This podcast documents historical events, analyzes publicly available information, and explores hypothetical scenarios. Any actions discussed are presented as educational examples of how systems work—not as instructions or recommendations.You are solely responsible for your own decisions and actions. Any application of information presented here is at your own risk. I assume no liability for consequences of actions you choose to take.By continuing to listen, you acknowledge that this content is educational commentary, that you’re responsible for researching applicable laws in your jurisdiction, and that you’ll consult appropriate professionals before taking any action that could affect your legal, financial, or personal situation.

Turn on. Take the power back. Man, there's no more chance now. There's no more chance. Oh, I'm here. Trapped in the chair. That's it, man. You're locked in.

Am I locked in here with you? Are you locked in here with me, man? I don't know. We are together. All kidding aside, this is a joy for me to be here. Man, I'm so stoked. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're joining us right now, Thank you so much for being here.

Got a great show for you today. Stryder John Peterson, publisher of the Psychedelic Pathways Magazine. Let's hear it. Let's hear it. Let's give it up for the Psychedelic Pathways magazine. John, what's cracking, man? I want to talk about my shirt first. Let's do show everybody.

We're going to talk about this shirt. I just returned two weeks ago from a trip to Peru. I know we're going to talk about this later in the hour. But I brought back this shirt, and I love it because it's my color, and it's symbolic of the experience that I had. And I want to point out this circular pattern here, which represents the Maloka, which is the sacred ceremony space in which we do the ayahuasca ceremonies. And everything inside it represents the Icaros, which are the songs that are sung. by the by the curanderos and the facilitators. So I just love that image of a circle,

that beautiful container, right? Universal Sign. And within it, this wonderful magic that's happened in music. And there's some other patterns that, but you've got to see me in person to get the rest of the shirt. But that's where we're launching today. We don't have to talk about clothing for the rest of the time, though. We got other stuff on our agenda, don't we? We do, you know, but clothing's interesting because whether it's a shirt or your personality or a mask, like that all seems to be a form of clothing, you know. So when you go down, and you're fresh from a trip, man, you're fresh from Peru, man.

Maybe you could talk a little bit about that, you know, and the masks that people wear and what you learn down there and why you went down there. Yeah, well, so I signed up for a 10-day retreat. Okay. And in the Amazon, we launched out of Iquitos, which is a large landlocked Peruvian city. Landlocked meaning you can only get there by boat or by air, no roads, a city of 700,000 people in northeastern Peru. And that was our launching point. We took a boat ride about an hour up river, and retreat center was right on the river. and so the reason I went,

some people go to ayahuasca ceremonies with one big plan. Maybe the PTSD, maybe it's some other thing that they're working through. I think I came through and I chose to do this because of a number of small reasons. I'm an adventure

seeker. I'm looking for new experiences. I was looking to learn and explore. And I also figured as a publisher of a psychedelics magazine, I needed to have this experience. And I had had one previous experience with ayahuasca in Ecuador about three years ago, not nearly as deep as this. So there's a lot of preparation, dietary preparation. We, for example, well, the list is long of things that we were asked to give up. Salt, salted foods, sugar, caffeine, red meat, a lot of oils, dairy, and practices to give up. Give up sex. Give up drugs.

give up recreational drugs, give up alcohol. These are all meant to prepare the body for a cleansing ritual. So we sat five ceremonies with ayahuasca, and the morning after the first one, we were handed a glass of got it written down here, so I don't forget, Sangha de Galada, devil's blood. drink this and then wait five minutes, and then we're handed a picture of warm water.

It says, guzzle it. Drink as much as you can. And the purpose was for all of that to come back up. And believe me, it did, to clean the stomach and the esophagus. And so the Shepibo people who, this is the tradition that I was in ceremony with, believe very strongly in in purging and cleaning. So man oh man. It was quite a sight. I was one of

eight people in a group and we all just sort of gritted our teeth and went after it and felt fine afterwards, but it was probably 15, 20 very unpleasant minutes working through that. But that was meant to prepare our bodies for engaging with the medicine more sincerely and more without interference from other stuff that's in our body and in our minds. So that set the stage for a true engagement with plant medicine. And I want to launch into that term, plant medicine. One of the observations that came to me is how, within this experience, how much that term of plant medicine is thrown around in the psychedelic realm.

I think it's with good intention. It's meant to, well, we engage with, we'll think of the plants that we psychonauts engage with, right? Cannabis. We can engage with ayahuasca. We can engage with San Pedro Cactus. We can engage with Morning Glory. You know, we can engage with tobacco. And these are all medicinal plants.

However, the plant medicine umbrella is way larger than the psychedelic umbrella. By orders of magnitude. So, and the reason is that the people of the Amazon and indigenous people worldwide have, developed relationships with plants over centuries that is far deeper than anything I had imagined until I got a taste of it of late. So we had, in describing our magazine, we had the description that we are for the, we are for people who are exploring the responsible engagement with psychedelics and places. plant medicine. And while I felt that was, on the whole, accurate, we're still about

responsible engagement, but I felt I had to narrow that down. So one of the first things I did when I came back is talk to my team, and we rewrote that. So now we're talking about psychoactive substances and altered states of consciousness. And not a really big deal, but it felt important to me because I think accuracy is really important, especially in the media sphere. We work hard to make sure that we're giving good, accurate information. So I don't want to declare that we are a plant medicine publication when what we're actually doing is we're talking about this tiny sliver of the plant medicine world. I'm stoked to hear about the trip. It's always interesting to me to get to hear the firsthand accounts of how someone's travels,

not only in the psychedelic space, but in the actual space affect their journeys and what they learned. But I'm glad you brought out this idea about medicine. Because for me, the idea of medicine is it's so westernized. And we have this idea that when you go to get medicine, it's because you're sick. But how many people that do psychedelics are really sick? The idea of altered states of awareness is so much better than plant medicine. Granted, there's a place in time for plant medicine, but I think that just the whole idea of altered states of awareness is vastly more interesting.

It's vastly more beneficial to individuals to experiment with these altered states of awareness. You don't need to be sick. And it seems like in the Western world, because that's where all the money is. The money's all in medicine. The money's in putting a patch on things. there's all these venture capitalists that want to stick a big sticker on a class

and sell it to you for 10 or 20 grand that's all bullshit to me like 100% unfiltered bullshit if you want to understand what the world's about then it's imperative that you understand altered states of awareness you don't need to be sick

in fact if you're sick I don't know that you should be doing that many psychedelics so I'm glad you brought up medicine there's a time and a place for it but I love the idea that psychedelic power is more than a plant medicine magazine. And so maybe as we move into the idea of the magazine a little bit, like what drew you to become a steward of the psychedelic renaissance through your magazine?

What's this magazine all about, man? Give me the breakdown. How you got here, why you're doing it? Let's get into it. Brace yourself. Here comes a life story. Okay. I was born on a Monday.

So there I was. Or a Tuesday. I'm pretty sure it was a Monday. Actually, my birthday is a date in history that one should know. The Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. Okay. Now we're talking. Disaster and a real failure of the Kennedy administration.

And depending on whose conspiracy theory you believe, it could have been the thing that launched that eventually led to Kennedy's assassination because of his failure to... address the Cuban Revolution. Okay. I'm going to stop there and fast forward many, many years, because that's a rabbit hole. I don't want to go down right now, but I wanted to throw that in because I know your listeners are open to that stuff. Anyway. Totally. So in my 20s, I, fresh out of college, I had an agriculture degree that I knew I didn't want to use because I didn't want to work in food service or food production. And I started exploring photography and ended up really being fascinated by the science and art. Now, this is back in the day when you actually work to get a photograph, okay?

Right. I really enjoyed darkroom work and began working, doing some magazine work, along with many other things. I assisted an architectural photographer. I shot my fair share of weddings, things like that. But the magazine work really intrigued me. I really love the layout, the process of telling a story, using images to drive a story. Kind of like in a Broadway musical,

how songs propel the story, okay? Another interest of mine. But when the kids came along, freelance photography was a real grind for me. And I stumbled into medical photography, in particular, a thalmic photography. So an eye photography. So I was an eye photographer for 28 years. And that was good and steady work, interesting work.

I never had fear about losing. I had job security all the way through. Got pensions. I mean, all that stuff that, what's a pension? No, they still exist, but they're pretty rare. So I love that because, A, I could support my family. I had weekends and evenings off. I was doing good work.

I was helping to prevent. blindness and vision loss, for God's sake. I mean, that's terrible. You know, it's a terrible social thing, not only for people individually, but for society at large. When people are losing their vision, that their costs involved.

So I felt really good about that. Had a really good run. I worked at four different universities. Ended my career at the University of California, San Francisco. And right around about two and a half years ago, I decided that I've had enough. the work was getting really the patient numbers were going up and the the staff levels were

even right right so we're always being asked to do more and more and I said you know hey I've still got a lot of tread on my tires I was in my early 60s I want to do some other things yeah so So I briefly dabbled with the idea of a career in personal growth coaching. I had done a lot of mentoring and training along the way. I felt I was good at it. Didn't really work with me as a career for various reasons. But then I stumbled upon a couple of guys who run a platform for niche magazines. really narrow niches.

I mean, one of them is Texas Longhorns football. Nice. Calligraphy magazine. Yeah. It's a whole number of things. So what intrigued me, and this is absolutely come true, that as presenting yourself as a magazine publisher, yeah, people sat down the phone and they listen to you.

it's way different. If I had to come and said, hey, I've got a newsletter or, hey, I've got this blog. So what? You're one of 10,000 other people's doing the exact same thing. Oh, you're publishing a magazine. How cool. What's it called? Tell me about it. So I lean into that and found that to be absolutely true. And I'm still grooving on that. It's really great fun that people pay attention to that title. And so, and I know there's a bit of ego massage going on, with that. But then again, I think I've got a lot of gifts to present, so I don't want to sit in the corner. That's not my style. The title of the theme of psychedelics came up kind of organically. I mean, I have a 50-year relationship with cannabis. have had my dabbled in my kind of the obligatory psychedelic experiences in my college age. A lot of that fell off. When the kids came along, my cannabis use, I curtailed that entirely while my kids were underage. So, yet, I was driven by a lot of things. And one of them is a deep sense of the injustice of the drug. of the war on drugs.

And I know many of your listeners are going to be nodding right now when they talk about all the bullshit messages that they got about how horrible drugs are. Yeah, we can laugh, but we can also cry because think of what it's cost us as a society. Think of all the talent that's sitting behind bars. And even today, you know, in the states that don't get it yet. I live in a cannabis-friendly state. I live in Massachusetts and I came from California.

Yeah. So it's a battle that's still on. I'm not an activist. I used to be really politically engaged, but I found that it's really not healthy for me. I take the wins and the losses way too personally. So I think I found a good spot for myself. I can advocate and I can,

I can nurture and curate a platform where people can be heard and express their activism or their personal experiences. So we're having great fun with it. I mean, we're just in our second year. Issue 7 is about to go to the designers. and it's on a theme that may not be near and dear, but it's on everyone's radar of death. Nice. And so we've dabbled in all sorts of cutesy ways to name the issue.

You know, it's death and dying. It's it grief and recovery and rebirth. And then finally we just said, no, fuck it. We're just going to call it death. Yeah, that's the best possible that you can do. Let the readers figure it out. We can't explain the whole day of magazine before people actually come into the magazine. So if you're listening and you want to know what's in it, get the magazine.

You will have an opportunity to do that at some point in this conversation. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So that is that, so I took you from my birthday all the way up to where we are now. So I do want to say where we are now because I use the plural because the first three issues I did all by myself with the aid of Kevin and Damien, who are expert in this area, and I've learned so much about the digital world, how to market, how to promote, and I'm still

very much on the learning curve with that. And then last August I brought in Nancy and Haley, who are helping me with, well, they now have titles. I have a managing editor. That's Nancy and my communications manager slash social media maven is Haley. And then two months ago, we brought Claire on board. And Claire is, has not only experience in the psychedelic retreat sphere, but she also has a long career in corporate sales and relationship building sales. And she, for her own mental,

health got out of that business. But she's still got great energy. So she's the one who's going to make it rain so this magazine can thrive and sustain his self. So far, it's been self-funded by myself. It's a legit way to fund a business as a bootstrapping. By the best way. Stay true of the cause, you know. It doesn't mean I'm not open to other ways. I haven't gone into debt to do it. But, yeah, some mornings I wake up and start counting beans and say, hmm, is this really a good idea? But then again, we've had a really good week this week.

Just the energy within our group is really wonderful. And so we're here in June of 26, May of 26, is. psychedelic science in Denver. And I've told my team, or I've shared with my team, that I am visualizing us all there with a booth, with a presence, with a banner, with print editions of the magazine, with merch, with the whole McGilla. Not at knowing how I'm going to pay for it, but I don't care about that, really. Not at this point. I think that the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, attention is there, then the resources will show up to make it happen, one way or another. So I'm really jazzed about that.

So I did mention we've been entirely digital, even today, and there are great advantages to the digital world, right? I mean, distribution is easy-peasy. We can embed different media into the platform. We can have videos, we can have music. without paying for paper and ink. Yeah. However, I have noticed when I go to in-person events

and I share with people what I do, the excitement, really, you publish a magazine, where is it? Yeah. I say, well, here it's on my iPad. And say, oh, okay. there is a hunger and a thirst in this highly digitized binary pixelated world we live in for high quality material that you can hold in your hands. And the magazine, there's something fascinating about the magazine.

I mean, think back on it, George, you know, when you're a kid, Yep. Think of the mags that you had. Did you read comic books? I used to read Mad Magazine. Mad Magazine? You had to foldover at the end? Yeah, the foldover on the back.

You did the foldover. You can't do that with digital. Totally. That's a good idea. We're going to do a foldover. Okay, Nancy, if you're watching this, we're totally doing a foldover, all right? Comic strip. Comic strip. Right.

Right. So comic books, that was my first. touch with magazines. And my sisters would get these big, fat, glossy fashion magazines. L and Vogue were the two that they would pay good money for. And I'd flip through them because I like the pretty girl pictures, right? The models and everything. But I would give them grief because I said, you know, this is nothing but advertising in here, right?

Like 80% of this is ads. Yeah. I felt to me, right? Of course. I don't know if that's true or not. But they said, well, that's not the point. The point is the experience of leafing through the magazine. And it's been really interesting to me as I think about where we're going with this,

that it's mostly the younger people. that are saying, oh, please put out a print version of this. Yeah. You know, my kids, they're in the early 30s, so they remember a time pre-internet, okay? But they're still highly digitized in their world. Of course. You know, they don't have file cabinets.

So I've got file cabinets with stuff in them all over the place. So, and I thought, huh, so you have space for magazines in your living space. my nieces and nephews, they, at Christmas, they give each other books. And they have books, they're not reading off of a tablet. They're reading novels and nonfiction out of books

because they want to hold it. They want to feel the weight of it. They want to smell it. They want that whole experience. They want to hear the pages leafing. And that is the, that's the impetus. So one of the things I'm excited about,

this week is I did a test run. Okay. So I have. Oh, look at this. This is just a quickie flyer, one article that we did. All right. And everything's looking nice. That looks beautiful.

Well, okay, so first to cover. So this is our issue to Clancy Kavanaar. If any of you know, Chakruna Institute. She is Beelabati's partner. And she's a psychotherapist and a wonderful artist. and she contributed to this. So that's your teaser, folks. So what I'm working on now

is I want to get a full edition out. And our issues, digital world's things expand. Yeah. We did a women's psychedelic issue that turned out to be 140 pages. You just went nuts, you know? Right. So I don't want our future issues to be that long.

for because I you know now if I'm going into paper and ink there's costs involved that so we need to we need to constrain that a little bit but I'm really excited because it's a beautiful issue it was guest edited by Lindsay Kent from author and filmmaker from California hope you're watching this Lindy Lindsay love you and she did a wonderful job pulling together some beautiful voices from the, from the women who are making this space vibrate, you know, not just the written world word, but also artists who contribute it. So it's a really beautiful issue. And I want to get it out. I want to have it on to show and to sell. Let me pause you right there real fast, John, for a second. Because I want to, you mentioned the talent and the articles and the

artists that are in there. And the idea of a print magazine. You know, when I'll go back and I'll buy like the old like life magazines. I got one with Mohammed Ali and Michael Jackson on there. But it seems to me a physical copy of a magazine is a piece of history. You can go back and look at some of the covers of old time magazines or old national geographic magazines.

And it really brings you back not only visually, but you go back and you read that article that somebody wrote. And it's like you're transported. into the mind of someone walking around at that time. And I bring that up because some of the writers that you have in this magazine not only are friends of mine, but I think that they're the voices of the underground. You got Adam Mizo in there. You got who is my friend over at Psychedelic Conversation?

Susan Gooner's over there, Greg Schenkin. You have all these incredible people that I believe right now are writing the DNA of the psychedelic Renaissance going forward. So not only is this magazine something that I enjoy checking it out, looking onto online, but it's like you get a real glimpse of the people that are on the front lines right now sort of creating the next rails for what's happening. And while it's fascinating to me and you and everybody in our circle, I think going forward, it's going to be something you're going to see in college kids' bedrooms, you know, right next to their, you remember those old posters, those blacklight posters had? And there's always a few like High Times magazines down there. Sure. Like that is a fat nugs.

Yeah, shout out to Fat Nugs magazine. But yeah, that's what it is. How do you get in contact with all of these people that are writing for you or these artists? Like that seems to be incredibly culturally powerful to me. Like what is that connection? How are you finding them? Are they reaching out to you? Are you reaching out to them?

Why are you choosing them? Well, I'll take you back to the beginning. Okay. And then it was all, nobody knew who I was. I didn't even know who I was, frankly. So, and for a bootstrapped organization, I'm not in a position to pay people for articles. However, there's a lot of content out there that's one and done. It showed up in a blog once.

It showed up in a newsletter once. It showed up in Substack once. Like good music. Good written content deserves to be heard or seen and read again, hopefully over and over. So the advice that I got was to aim for evergreen content. That's the term. So when you talked about going back over those old magazines, there's something evergreen about that. And I think we understand that concept, right?

It doesn't, it doesn't, the leaves don't fall off in winter. Right. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's alive. If I were to read this next year, three years, five years, 10 years down the road, perhaps the context has changed in 10 years. We're thinking more about, wow, that's how they thought back then. That's okay. That's still evergreen to me. Yeah. There's been new growth that's happened on top of the evergreen, right? Totally. So I just scoured the web. And I used some names that I had gotten from some conferences that I signed up for along the way. And so I, you know, the, the foot in the door was rather easy. The part that astounded me was the response rate that I got. So I had a template and I wrote it just an email.

template that said, hey, I'm starting this magazine. I read this article. I think it'd be great. What do you think? You want to be in it? I'll put you in there and I'll give you a free ad. The response rate was about 50%. Which if you know anything about like sales, that's a, that's like a batting average off the charts. Right. So it's like going in baseball and batting 500. Nobody does that. Totally. So I knew it wasn't just me. There's nothing magical about me. Nobody knew who the hell I was. But, oh, a magazine about psychedelics. And it's not the only media space out there. You know, there's a lot of, I mean, double blind has been doing what they've been doing for way longer than me. And they've got a way bigger team than me.

I admire what they do. And I don't see anybody in the media sphere as my competition. I see these as my as my as my, as my, my comrades, my colleagues. And I, it's important, you know, there's, we can talk about positioning and everything, branding, that's another discussion. So the first issue, I cobbled together nine articles and gave it to the designers. They, they did a beautiful job with it. and ran it up the flagpole and got some attention. The part that I'm, I'm not going to use the word struggle.

It's not a struggle. It's a challenge for me. All of it, yeah. Is helping the contributors to understand that. they have skin in the game. If they can reach out to their audience and make a passionate case for why they should download this magazine, and by the way, it's for free for this particular round because I want to get eyes on the magazine, that's going to help rise the tide that elevates all boats.

So in other words, if there are nine contributors and each one of them gets 100 downloads, then that's 900 sets of eyes that are looking at the magazine. And there's cross, there's all these wonderful cross sharing that happens. And someone from, it's audience sharing, basically. And it's it's, it's, it's digital marketing 101, basically. So one of the assets that I'm trying to build is my email list. But that's not. as interesting to me right now. It's a big, it's a big topic from my mind. Yeah, I'm here with you.

I don't think we want to talk about digital marketing. I want to, I have other things I want to talk about that are, that are pretty cool. So yeah, I'm fascinated just by all the different voices right now. Because when I think, I've had some long conversations with some of the people that have written these articles. And it seems they all have a unique view into what they're doing, whether they're practitioners, whether they're sort of culture jammers or, but they all coalesce under this big umbrella of psychedelics that's fundamentally changing our culture right now. What role do you see your magazine having in shifting the culture or is it supposed to shift the culture? You know, and I'm curious to get your thoughts on, I know I read the mission statement of the magazine,

but what's your, what is your opinion of the purpose of this magazine? Well, first of all, I want to be very clear about our ability to shift culture. We're not that big. We're not going to be able to turn that battleship on our own. However, if there is a cultural shift that we can help to catalyze, it would be about the responsible use of psychedelics. And so I kind of picture this as, on the one hand, And we've got the fundamentalist prohibitionists, okay? You know, and we know, we don't have to talk too much about that,

but I will just mention the hypocrisy of a just say no to drugs message. And every freaking town in America has a drugstore on Main Street. Yep. Okay? So square that circle for me, please. all right and then in the other hand there's the

unfettered uh let loose you know fly you know fly high lifestyle right

and you know okay there's a place for that but I don't think we need to be advocating for unfettered use of recreational substances, psychedelic substances, right? I mean, there are risks involved, and it can fuck up your life if that's the path you choose, right? You know, LSD every day is not a good path, kids, I'm sorry.

Don't put it in the water. Don't put it in water. There are times, what I thought. There was a time. There was a time. Well, I think we're kind of in that now. but that's also another top. The water of Washington, D.C.

Anyway, there's a middle ground, okay, where that I want us to occupy. And that's kind of the voice and the style of the articles that I want to bring in that are, say, okay. And, well, just in simplest terms, I want to amplify people's stories. everybody's got a story. Yep.

Right? Where'd you come from? We did a veterans issue. The lead article is from Afghanistan to ayahuasca. Nice. Bobby Wade, a writer from Australia. Ended up in freaking Afghanistan, you know? Fighting a war, he had no idea.

I mean, why he was there. He came out physically unscathed, but mentally scarred and emotionally scarred. And he talks about how he, how, how, how the jungle medicine helped him find his path. So I love that. I love those. And everything has this format of a hero's journey, right? Yeah.

I was here. My life was messed up. I sank. This is how far I sank. One account in that issue on the veterans, a man, a veteran had a gun in his mouth, ready to pull the trigger and his dog came up and looked him in the eye. And then that moment he just realized what he had to live for.

And that was his low point. Yeah. Right. And it could have gone way worse. So, wow. We want to hear about that. We want to amplify those stories. I want to bring those out.

And if society changes along the way, that's great. I don't see that as an overarching goal. My overarching goal is to make these stories more available to people and in a way that is aesthetically satisfying to engage with. right i mean we we we we we put a lot of time and effort into illustrating these articles finding photographs and illustrations that move the story forward this takes me back to my early days in magazine work how does how do how do visual how does visual content Yeah.

Anchor points of the story and allow it to move forward. That's fascinating to me. And I love the psychology of how we engage with images. Me too. So that's a real turn on for me. And I think we do a pretty good job. And I really try to communicate this to my team, the ones that are pulling the images. You know, that brings up a...

So you, myself, and the team at the Psychedelic Riders Guild, which everybody should check out, an incredible team over there putting on the Psychedelic Riders Guild. I think they're going to start taking them soon. Yeah. But in that... We had a couple conversations where we were talking about intention. And I bring that up because I think that that's one thing

that your magazine does, is it bridges the idea of imagery, language, and intention. That's sort of the word I was looking for when I was looking for. at the magazines recently, like there's a real intention in there. And I'm glad that you got to flesh it out and explain it. Because that, to me, is the bridge between images and language. Like, you can look at a really cool image. Like some of the cover art on the magazine cover, I was like, whoa, look at this. And then you read the article.

And when you look at those two things together, when you hold the story in your mind's eye, you look at the image, all of a sudden you can start, you can kind of start seeing the intention there. And I think the intention of something is what really, resonates with people and makes it go viral. Sometimes you look at a magazine, you don't even know why you have it, but you always keep it around. It's because the intention of the person putting that together makes that story complete. You can read the story of the Afghanistan veteran coming back, and you can see the images. But when you put those two things together, you understand that the

intention is to find peace in yourself and fix this problem. Those three things together are like the triad that bring together. meaningful content, man. And I think that's exactly what the magazine's working towards, man. And I see it each cover getting a little bit more intense. And when I get to finally sit next to you and hear this story play out, like it kind of clicked in my mind. Like, those are the three things right there. What are your thoughts on bringing those three things together? Oh, wow. Well, I think there's a, there's a subconscious intention at work, which is to to enhance the story arc.

Okay. And I mean, if I could do it with music, I'd do it with music, right? But we happen to be working in a visual medium. Right. So, gosh, wow, lots of thoughts came up with that. Let's see if I can pull them together. Take a time, Matt. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Give me a couple bullets from what you just said. So what is the relationship between storytelling and intention? Mm. Well, good. Obviously, the writer has intention.

Of course. In this story. And I am very attracted to vulnerable stories. Mm. And when the death issue comes out, you're gonna, you're gonna read some harrowing stories that it took a lot of guts to put on the page and share. And at least one of them was written for us.

It wasn't preexisting. And I remember going through the editing process with the writer and encouraging her to dig deep, make me cry make me weep what you're telling is a story that that you're describing a

trauma that that no parent wants to go through the death of a child you have volunteered you've raised your hand you're putting it out there now go for broke don't hold back

right make us make us feel that. Like really right here, feel that pain. And good writing does that. But anchor that with imagery. Then you've got something that's really, really powerful and something that people will want to hang on to and feel that this belongs on my shelf because I want to come

back to this. So, and, you know, of course, we have a lot of articles that don't have that level of intensity. I mean, I don't know if I can handle editing all that. He'll be like, whoa. Wow. Yes, I know. But who knows? Maybe one day we'll nail it and we'll have a, we'll have, you know, we'll have six to whatever number of articles.

Everyone's a tearjerker or a laugh riot. And wouldn't that be cool? I would accept that any time. So I think my, I see my, first of all, as far as intention goes, I don't think it's appropriate for me to have a carved in stone agenda. Nice. So I'm not here to say, I'm only publishing articles that blast the war on drugs. Right. I want to come at it from a different angle. I want to say, no, this is, let's tell stories about military veterans who served this country, served it overseas or not, and were wounded by the experience in some way or another. and the very organization that pulled them out of their safe life gave them a place to experience adventure to grow as leaders, right?

That's the good side of the military, right? It's camaraderie and training and giving opportunities. And I'm not going to deny that. So that's a good thing that the military does for people. However, there is that dark side. So I don't want to come at this saying we're, I don't want this to be like an anti-war statement. Other people can make that. I don't want this to be a flashing red light statement about how screwed up the,

the war on drugs mindset is, people can arrive that to that on their own. I trust the readers. So, and I think through a, I guess it's a softer, gentler approach. And part of that comes from my, like I said earlier in this, in this talk is I don't want to, I'm not an activist. I have my political views. I have my views about, my views about, society, I have my views about everything. But they're my views. Yeah. And I welcome opposing views. So that's how I learn, right? That's where, I mean, without that friction,

there's no growth. No pressure, no diamond. You know, no waves hitting rocks, no sandy beaches. Right? Without a doubt, man. Yeah. So intention is contained in one way or another within every piece that interests me when I read it. And I have my own intention. But there's a dance. So I'm not going to ask my readers to say, I want you, you know, I want stuff that tells us how screwed up, you know, the DARE program was.

Maybe, maybe, but not as an overarching global foundational reason for being for the magazine. I want this to be an enjoyable experience. I want something that people can take into the corner with a pot of tea and spend time with. And that's another reason why I love what we're leaning or moving toward the paper format, because something about curling up with your iPad. It's not quite as romantic. And you know what, too, is like, there's no better calling card than a magazine that's left

in an airplane seat or in a taxi or at a coffee shop, you know, and you're just, you're doing something mundane and you look over and you're like, dude, what is this? Oh, yeah. Whoa. What magazine is this? Who is this writer? Who is this Adam Mizo character?

You know, like, who is this? And then it's just, it's, it's sort of like the same way that seeds bind themselves to animals. And then those seeds drop off in a fertile soil somewhere, you know, like the magazine is a seed, the writer, the language, the article is a seed that drops into the, the firm fertile ground of the mind and grows into someone out there, having their own experience, you know. Wow, that's great, George. I, I'm going to use that. Yeah, use it. I got a bunch of people lining up over here with some questions. Then let me jump into the Discord over there.

I got Billy coming from Austin, Texas. What's up, Billy? He says, if psychedelics help people see through illusions, should we be worried about what happens when millions of Americans start questioning everything? Thanks for the question, Billy. Hmm. Define we.

I would assume he's talking about all the collective. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The collective unconscious. I think there are power structures that are very worried about the greater acceptance of psychedelics. Yeah. I think the alcohol industry is getting pretty nervous. Yeah. People aren't drinking as much as they used to.

Yeah. I think big pharma is worried. That's why they're both investing heavily. or they've got money sitting in great, they've got big pots of money waiting on the sidelines. Yep. So they want to get in and they want to play. I don't know.

Let's also, I think it's also important for us to take a step back. I don't think we're ever going to reach a point where 80 to 90% of the population is microdial. dosing with psilocybin. Okay? Maybe. But this is, we're talking about a pretty narrow niche. Now, I will also say the 1960s get to have this, this, this reputation and the mindset of being a time of free love and everything. Incredibly narrow sliver of people actually taking LSD, right?

We got way more people taking it now, but it doesn't make the news. Because, I mean, I think just from a number standpoint, that's something to be kept in mind. Yet, I don't know. Well, let me put it this way. If we were ever to reach a point where 80% of the population is microdosing, it probably happened for a pretty damn good reason, I think. I think that people generally, people move toward things

that are helpful. And yes, they also move away from things that are painful. Those two things put together would speak in favor of me, well, let's take the example of drinking less alcohol.

Yeah. Right? I can die of alcohol poisoning. I can't die of cannabis poisoning. Right? So we can look at it from that perspective. Yeah.

So I think it's a great question, Billy. I don't think we need to, I mean, yes, we need guardrails. So in answer to the, and I don't know if you use this particular phrase, should we be worried. But I hear that a lot. Should we be worried about this new thing? Worrying is a choice. No one tells us we have to worry about something. Right.

Yeah. Right. So frame it that way. And be careful. Anything we do, I think we make decisions based on what's right for us and the people who rely on us. None of us really has this magic wand that's going to affect society at large. You know, there are varying degrees of influence that some people have. But society is going to do what society does.

Yeah. That's well said. Thanks for the question, Billy. I think maybe questioning comes in in seasons. You know what I mean by that? And maybe psychedelics are a catalyst for questioning. But I think we're in the season of questioning. And it seems like we've been moving towards this bloom of questioning for quite some time.

But the change is all around us, man. Change is happening faster than it's ever happened before. And it just so happens that it's coinciding with psychedelics and a return to, you. maybe an evolution of awareness. But that was a great question, Billy. Who do we got over here? Thanks, Billy. Appreciate that.

F-22J from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. What's up to the Steelers out there? He says, everybody talks about healing trauma. Why aren't we talking more about building courage, character, and purpose? Ooh. Do you want to write about that, brother? Send it along. Get it out there.

Or sister. I didn't get your gender in that. Yeah, exactly. But I don't know. I mean, are we? Are we? Well, I think, first of all, I think there is a trauma is like a gateway symptom. Totally.

Into discussing this realm. I mean, you know, Texas didn't approve $50 million for Iboga research because of to facilitate expanded states of consciousness. They did it because of trauma, because of PTSD. Right.

In the veterans and first responders population. So trauma opens the door. And for good reason, right? Yeah. I mean,

we have just absolutely tragic levels of suicide happening in the in the, in the vets and first responders population. That's a, Absolute scandal.

So yeah, let's talk about trauma. But boy, building, what are the three? I heard courage. What's the other? Courage, character, and purpose. Courage, character, and purpose. Boy. I almost think that courage, character, and purpose maybe grow out of trauma.

You know what I mean? I think. Oh, sure. I would say that those are, you know, facing your trauma takes a lot of courage. It builds character and it kind of gives you purpose. Bingo. I think it'd be the question they're asking is like, why is it so, and let me know if this is what you're saying, but he says, or she says, you know, I think what they're trying

to say is like, why is it only so much about trauma? And my answer to that would be that's where the money is. The money's in trauma. The money's in fixing. Just like the modern medical system is like we try and solve sickness. And I agree. It would be a different world if we were studying wellness to the point where, you know, what if we were studying optimization instead of sickness? But that's just not the way the medical system works. Maybe it should change. It might be a whole different world. You might be able to wipe out half of the DSM if we were more focused on optimizing or more focused on courage, character, and purpose instead of, you know, all these mental illnesses. But it's an interesting question. Our one legal, well, besides cannabis to a limited degree,

but our one legal psychedelic that is available across the board is ketamine. Yeah, that's a strange one. So that is finding great utility in the psychotherapeutic space. And what do psychotherapists do? They help people work through their shit. Yeah.

So, and there's money to be made. And people are doing it. And optimists that I am, I like to think that's a net positive for society. Of course, there are things around the margins that could probably be improved, of course, everywhere. But we're moving in the right direction. And we took a gut punch from the FDA a couple of years ago when they shot down the MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. To me, that that taught us as much about the world of clinical trials as it did of the world of psychedelics. Topic that I got really involved in and my years of working in ophthalmology.

So I get a lot of the reasons for why the FDA took that position. So, boy, you know, courage and character come. out of addressing our shit, our shadows. Yeah. And purpose comes from, I mean, it's hard to find your purpose if you're in a fog of, of, well, of medication that's been handed to you because of your PTSD, right? Right. So I think psychedelics offer an opportunity to get more clarity.

And believe me, I want to hear those stories, right? And I think my hope is that in this sort of typical hero's journey arc of a lot of the content that comes our way that we share, is a act of courage, okay? Yeah. I said to myself, no more. This is it. Okay, I cannot go down this path anymore. I have to take a stand.

Courage. And then through that comes a purpose, right? Because you're now, you emerge as a new person. So I don't think that these topics are buried. I think they're within the story, but trauma is what opens. the door. And I think if at the levels of society, which is an important debate, because that's where the legal construction comes from, that's where the guardrails are made. And not just the

guardrails, but also the roadblocks, which we want to dismantle, but carefully, we can't do it saying we're going to imagine a national initiative to legalize MDMA because it gives people purpose. Yeah. Do you think that would fly? Knowing the political climate? I believe it. I think George believes it. I think a lot of your listeners and your audience believes it.

But it's not what moves this 800-pound gorilla or 8,000-pound gorilla from its nestled spot to a place where we have a more constructive relationship with these medicines. Yeah. Yeah. I hope that answers your questions. Yeah, that's a good one. Thank you for that. Appreciate that. I love that because that forced mind.

mind into places that I'm not often challenged to do. So that's, I love it. I got the best audience in the world. This one is a, this one is a great question. Megan from Portland says, how do we keep the psychedelic renaissance from becoming just another industry selling spirituality? Hmm. Thank you, Megan. That's a deep one. Thank you, Megan. Yeah. Shout out to voodoo donuts in Portland. Keeping it weird. Keeping it weird. Well, first of all, I'm going to differ with, I'm going to challenge one thing in that question, which is we're not just selling spirituality. People want to sell drugs. Yeah.

Big pharma wants to sell you drugs. And big beverage wants to sell you THC or CBD infused soda pop. That's what they want to sell you. So, yes, there is a segment that wants to sell spirituality. And I see myself approaching another off-ramp or another rabbit hole, which is about big religion, right? Which is one of the many big institutions that I've had personal struggles with in my life. So I'm going to not take that exit right now. Topic for another day.

I don't know how we prevent that, Megan. I think preventing that sounds like a really big swing. And I'm just one person with one magazine. I think we have to learn to recognize the sincere players. And move toward them, support them, right? Support this podcast, right? Support all the other podcasts that are trying to get a sincere message out. There is legitimate concern about the co-opting of the psychedelic renaissance or the movement of this new awakening.

this happening, new realizations, you know. The very fact that my late mother's 90-something friends were openly talking about microdosing, that's a pretty cool step, right? So I guess my personal concerns are more that, and I don't spend a whole lot of time trying to understand what's happening at the legislative level. that Jack Gorslein's beat. He's really good at that. He is good.

Brilliant, brilliant writer. And however, I do think that there's a lot of legit concern about once legalization happens that suddenly this title wave tsunami of money comes in. And what's happened in legal cannabis in a lot of it in a lot of states. where the small growers have been squeezed out because of the flood of big money coming in that's able to invest in these huge growth centers. And my local dispensary, great stuff that's cheap, right? Yeah.

And I can seek out the boutique growers. I can do that. I have that choice. But boy, as far as moving an economy with a capital E, we're up against a pretty strong forces. And the issue we've just put out a few weeks ago is our money and prosperity. And Alex Beiner contributed to the section from his book talking about the God of Destruction. And it's represented by the god Malik, which is a Canaanite god that represents the insatiable,

unstoppable grab for for power for for for of to the the the mindset that would look at a forest and intact ecosystem and start figuring out the board feet of lumber that you can get out of it. You know, the money, by clear-cutting this, I can make X amount of money. And it's the industrial machine, it's the military industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower back in 1961 warned us about as he was leaving office. I don't think the system has listened to him. Yeah. Which is really ironic because he came from that system. So I don't think we're going to make that go away because that's archetypal.

That's within the system that we have. It's within capitalism. Capitalism has its pros and cons. The very fact that we're talking through this medium is a product of a capitalistic system that gave incentives for people to invent things like Riverside platform or Zool. or computers or the internet. I don't think this is, the internet wasn't developed for spiritual reasons.

It was developed for technical, for, for, for, for the, for the, for the, for the reasons that there's money to be made off of it. Uh, I don't mean to be, you know, Danny Downer about this. I think it's, it's important to be honest about the world we live in. Right. And what gives me personal satisfaction. is knowing that I can move out of that world.

I can go to Peru and disappear into the jungle for 10 days and truly experience as much as I can in only 10 days, which is a drop in the bucket. Yeah. What a different, a different world, an entirely different world. So, and I hold on to that, and I appreciate that. because it's precious, right? The Amazon is under a lot of pressure. So I guess the answer, Megan, is I don't know.

Maybe we can't. However, what helps me is to think about my own mindset, where my own heart is and where, and the hearts of the people that I connect with. So feeding the feeding the, feeding the things that are good and denying attention to the things that are not. Yeah. It's a short answer to me.

That's good. I would add too, Megan, like, I think you can, I think someone who's experienced enough in life can see the hollowness and the empty words of people trying to sell them something they don't have. You know, they said one of my old mentors used to say that the emptiest barrel makes the loudest sound. And it's like, you can tell, like, if you just listen to people's words or if you listen to someone in a podcast that's talking about giving away millions of dollars, you can just hear it in their words. Like, no, you're not. You're not doing that. Like, I'm doing this for these people.

Or if they have, you know, you can see it in their marketing. You know what I mean? Like they're, you can tell people's intentions. Are they trying to help? Are they trying to make money? And you can, two things can be true at once. I understand that. But if someone is putting the financial incentive way ahead of the helping incentive,

like that should be a flag for you to investigate deeper out there, Megan. And I have faith in you, Megan. You sound like a smart individual. Go with your heart on that. You'll figure it out. And then that's how it does. Each individual makes their own decision. You develop your own spirituality with yourself, your relationship to yourself,

how you treat other people, your values, your morals, Megan, stay on that path, lady, and you got it. And be in service. Be in service, right? What does that mean? How do you define that? Being in service. Being in service is acting in a way that's toward a greater good, not just my own needs. Most of my volunteer work is in the men's work.

Right. And the way things are set up in our group, when we do a training, I go in as a volunteer or actually pays for the privilege. So that's putting skin in the game for the greater purpose of helping men who've been in one. reason or another are not feeling fulfilled and are not serving serving their community the way they want to their families, their work, their friends themselves. So I come out of that feeling like I have been, I was a recipient. Yeah.

Rather than as a giver, I worked my ass off on these weekends, right? Yeah. But it's with a smile on my face. I get to do this. Yeah. So if a person can find something where it doesn't feel like work, you know, if it's serving up at your local food kitchen, yeah, soup kitchen or whatever it is, helping kids,

helping teenagers, my goodness, you know, teens need so much support today. in mentorship and all these things that I would love to do if I had twice the time of day. Having a North Star, this is a world we need to be moving toward. We need to be moving toward a world where kids are emotionally healthy and developing in the way that nature intended. We need to be in the world where the elderly have support and are not, you know, ignored and are not valued for their mentorship gifts, right? Yeah. So it starts with a vision. And then there are no shortage of opportunities, believe me.

Yeah. That's true. Let's talk about that for, like you've been doing some work with men for a while. Maybe we could talk about that. Maybe there's an issue coming up of men in psychedelics. That would be an epic issue. Yes. It might not, it might sort of be, people might look at it.

Oh, man, it's psychedelics, whatever. But still, I think it would be an epic issue. Yeah. Well, we could talk about the work you're doing in there, man. What do you got going on with these men's groups? So, not the only one. There are many men's organizations that do really good work. I happen to be involved with the men's groups.

Mankind Project. Nice. It's been around for about 40 years. And it's global. It's not everywhere, but it's well, there's a lot of the density. There were chapters all throughout the United States and Canada and into Latin America and Europe and South Africa. So I went through it because I had big questions about my role. as a man in this society. I knew that I had been getting pretty messed up messages about

masculinity. Yeah. And interestingly, the Mankind Project formed out of a realization, observation that women in the women's movement that really gained big speed in the 60s and 70s, I witnessed this. This is big in my mom's life. Yeah, mine too. Where women decided we're not going to take, we're not going to allow ourselves to be defined by anyone but ourselves.

Okay, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to seek opportunities based on our merits and all good. Yeah, totally. Right? So it's a way different world for women now than it. was when I was growing up and certainly when my mother was growing up.

Absolutely. And it's a better world. Yes, we regress at times. But I don't think it's a much debate that the world now is way better from women than it was, say, 100 years ago, as far as opportunities go. So if we stipulate that,

I think we can also stipulate that men have not caught up. And to me, one of the great tragedies of the Western world is that we no longer have an initiation process for young men. Yeah. Agreed. I certainly got nothing like that. I mean, there was sort of rites of passage. What are that?

Well, okay, my family were hunters, you know. Hey, someone shot his first bird, you know, or got his first deer or when I got my driver's license. Yeah. What is that? That's not a rich initiatory experience. And it's tragically lacking. And as a result, we have in positions of power a whole lot of underdeveloped adolescents walking around. And they have their left, then they have their hands on the levers of power.

And unfortunately, also a lot of enabling women who, are also victims of that, that lack of initiatory process that we used to have. And so we're playing catch-up in a big way. So what we're trying to do is help men get out of their heads and a little bit more into their bodies, right? being aware of how their bodies react to their emotional world. So what's been great for me is that it's helped me to not only be allowed to talk about my feelings, but be pushed into it. This is a requirement for my development as a human being.

I have to talk about how things land in my body. and at the same time, there's a lot of work about archetypal work. Yeah. We lean into the archetypes of the lover and the magician, the warrior, and the sovereign or the king, really strong stuff. And it's making better humans. So we have one of the, after these, these, weekends that we do or after a lot of trainings that we do we have what's called the homecoming so we

invite everybody who's been back through either in person or online and we invite them to bring anyone they they feel like bringing uh and the part that has struck me and put chills down my spine in a good way and tears in my eyes is when the women speak up this is happening right now um and so say, I've never heard men talk to each other like this, right? Be so open with each other. And it's not, it's not wimpy, guys. It isn't. It's really fucking powerful.

When men step into that warrior energy that they have in support, in service, it's, it's magical. And the, it's, it's, it's powerful medicine. So the work is so. I mean, we're not using psychedelics in this work. There is a lot of overlap between the communities. And in fact, I'm really looking forward to this. There's a plug.

There's a Women and Enthiogen's conference in Boston. This has been done for years in Detroit, but I think for funding reasons, they moved it to Boston, which is great for me because it's two hours away from where I live. And I'm planning to go not only because it's a, chance for me to plug the magazine and show off my the women's issue but they also have a an arm for for men exploring sacred masculinity and i want to be in that room absolutely and uh you know i i had an amazing experience out in California a couple years ago with a just a weekend event that was

nine men who we all took MDMA and and psilocybin together the hippie flip wonderful combination one of my that's that's that's my personal favorite and and the amount of openness that poured out of us in that weekend. None of us really, I didn't know any of the guys going in. But we were, we felt this, this beautiful deconstruction of the barriers that we brought in. So that was, that was really wonderful. So I'm not saying that we're going to, you know, be shrooming together at this conference. However, it's a, an opportunity for.

for men to speak openly about their journey and their path and in a container in which it's organized by women I love that and I can go on and there's other work that I've done that's that's been working with women going through their own hero's journey I've been in support of that so and that's really cool. And I want that to continue. So, and I guess it just lands, you know, it goes under the same theme of being in service, right? I mean, I want my magazine to be sustainable. So we, so it's not creating, you know, it's not challenging my nervous system and my bank balance over much. But that's not the purpose, right? This is, this is a, I feel like we're in service. And I love to be able to give people opportunities to show their stuff and to grow.

That's been really awesome for me to watch with my team to see how they've stepped up and leaned into their skills. So, yeah, I'm 65. I've got a few good decades ahead of me. Of course. I would love to leave a legacy that said that this guy, was got it. You know, this guy was about service

and not about his own ego. You know, I've got an ego. It's, it rears its head now and then. Of course, all of us. Don't we all? Well, the ego is what keeps us alive, right? It's the part that finds threats and protects us from those threats. So I'm not going to tell anybody to,

ego dissolution. is okay in a protected context. But we don't want people walking around with dissolved egos. We also don't want people walking around with trumped up egos. And I use that word, that was a bit of a Freudian. But I'll allow your listeners and viewers to make their own interpretation of what was going through my head when I said that. Yeah, I think that if I could change something about the whole psychedelic renaissance, it would be the idea of ego dissolution.

And I would change it to like ego evolution. You know, I've heard people describe the ego as like a radar in a submarine or on a ship that's like bloop. You know, it's a threat detector. And when I think about those old sort of instruments, you know, like that has like that little line. It's like doop, doop, do. Yeah, yeah. Like, it's like a 2D image. And if you think about that as your ego, maybe what's happening with psychedelics,

or maybe it's just a time frame we're in or wherever the earth is in space. Maybe we're going through this evolution. But maybe the ego is evolving into more of like a 3D map of what's really happening. So instead of it being a binary, like threat or nothing, maybe it's like, okay, well, how much of a threat is this? and which sort of weapon should I use to dissolve this threat? You know, because you start thinking about, like, you need your ego. Your ego is what drives you forward. Your ego is what allows you to find the courage to keep moving when everyone is telling you you can't.

You don't want to get rid of that. Like, you want to find a way to integrate it into your own being so that you can solve the problem, be it a submarine or an angrient. neighbor or, you know, whatever it is. Like, but yeah, I think that, uh, that would be a cool sort of thing that we can construct in the, in the, in the world of psychedelics as ego evolution. I think it comes from men's groups. You know, I spent, uh, in the beginning part of the year, I was working at the boys and

girls club and I was the only guy there. And it was these kids from like kindergarten through sixth grade. And the amount of attention that I got, just being a male, like these kids were flop. over to me. I was teaching them wrestling and we were climbing trees and getting in trouble. Like, hey, you can't climb that tree? I'm like, why not? Liability. And I'm like, dude, they're going to climb it. You know, what do you want me to do? I can't get him out there. I know. I know. I know. But, you know, I think if we had like more men volunteering at places like the Boys and Girls Club, and there are some awesome men there. I'm not saying that there's not, but, you know, it's not looked as a manly job.

So some men don't want to go do it. But I'm here to tell everybody out there, if you're a man and you are trying, if maybe you find a little emptiness and you're like, go volunteer at a place where there's kids. And you'll find a sort of part of yourself that's been missing. Like you have all these gifts. Just being a man and being at these places, you will see wonder and beauty and curiosity and questioning that just come to you. And you'll have the answers to throw them out.

So that's sort of my plug for people. out there. Find a place you can volunteer as a man and let your gifts be out there because people will find you. Yeah. That's wonderful. Yeah. I love hearing that. That's, boy, and I've experienced that too. Yeah, right? Just being present. Totally. You don't have to go in there with like, okay, kids, here's our, I mean, I had a tortured boy scout experience.

years ago because it felt like a paramilitary operation frankly and everything was so structured right we're going to do this and we're going to have our uniforms just right and I just wanted to play and

there's you described a type of play that's pretty rare you know climbing trees digging holes you know lying face down on the ass and just see how many things you see that move. Right.

How many lizards can you catch? How many, how many, how many, how many bugs, how many spiders? Right, right. And it, there was that magical time in a young person's life where they don't see a difference between the dream world and the physical world. Yeah. That begins to dissolve around the age of six or seven, the way I'm told. and just allowing kids to have that and experience that makes stronger adults down the road.

Yeah. And isn't that interesting? That's kind of what psychedelics brings back is that imaginary participation in a world you can't see. You know what I mean? Like the vibrant ecosystem underneath the shade tree with ants pulling apart a cockroach. You know what I mean? Like, look at this little machine over here. It's amazing.

You know, and the hummingbird swooping in the ground. Whoa, did you guys see that? Or the eagle coming down and picking up the snake. Like, whoa, that's all so psychedelic. It's like the nature of language. And they've been doing it for way longer than they've been humans. Way longer. Yeah, maybe that's it.

They were here first. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's important to keep our perspective. And I think that's one thing psychedelics does for us. It puts things in perspective.

Well said. Proper's perspective. Right? Because, yes, we are the dominant species on this earth, but we're far from the only power that's doing, I mean, just think about the fungal world, right? Yeah. I mean, there's so much happening that we don't even see,

that we have no idea about. Science is just starting to teach us and learn about that, how trees communicate via a fungal network. Yeah. Trees of different species. Yep. How is that possible? No, you know, if it's, how can an oak talk to a maple, you know? Yeah.

They do it. They do it. And they're, they're, it's done through fungal mycelia. So there's wisdom in there. And I feel that when I engage with psilocybin, I feel that grounding. Like, you're entering into my realm now, and you better do it with respect because I know way more than you do. Yeah. And so it's humbling, and we need that.

You know, humble pie, man, bring it on. Yeah. Yeah. Being humbled is probably second to neuroplasticity in psychedelics. Like when you get humbled, there's a whole lot of neuroplasticity happening up there. And whether you embrace it or whether you turn from it, you know, it's a really underrated thing that happens to you and people run from it. And maybe that's where you're talking about ego of evolution. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's... Is understanding your place? Yeah. Which doesn't mean that we're suddenly worthless, you know, pieces of protoplasm. We're valuable and we're vibrant and we're important. and we can make a difference.

And we have all these opportunities to serve. Yeah. So let's not hide it. Let's not, you know, put it under a bushel. Yeah. Right? Yeah. As the spiritual goes.

That's true. All right. I got a couple more of these questions coming in here. Let's see what else I got. Okay. Who do we got? Donna coming from Sedona. What's up, Donna, thanks for being here.

Donna and Sedona. She says, what is the strangest thing you've ever heard from a serious scientist studying consciousness? Oh, my gosh. I got the greatest science. First I go through my list of serious scientists. And I know a lot of serious scientists from my time in ophthalmology. A lot of them were very locked into a lot of them. a Cartesian worldview about would not entertain the idea that there is something bigger out

there than the world we can actually touch. Scientists studying consciousness. Well, okay. I'm going to talk about eyes for a second. All right. So the way the eye works is light comes through and it's focused on the retina. which is the inner lining of the back of the eye, okay? And the job of the retina is to take a electromagnetic signal,

a visual light photon, bundles of photons, and turn them into a nerve impulse, turn it into a, from electromagnetic to an electrical signal, that then goes to the optic nerve, travels to the back of the brain into what's called the visual cortex. This is why when you get a bump on the back of your head, you see stars.

Because that's what, okay? So, science has figured that out, that pathway like incredibly well. And we also know most of the ways that that pathway can get disrupted,

disrupted. So there's a single thing. signal does not arrive properly, a clear signal, which we would describe as good vision. Okay? What happens after that is a total black box. We really have very little idea. Okay, so somebody might challenge me on this. With my current knowledge, what happens in the brain to turn that signal that arrives in the visual cortex into what I describe as vision?

we don't know because now we're talking about consciousness. So I came into this industry as an outsider. I was not medically trained. I was not scientifically trained. I had some scientific experience, but nothing compared to all these PhDs and MDs that I was working with. So I looked at the, it said, wow, that's really fascinating, that we get to this wall beyond which we have no idea what the hell's going on.

So in psychedelic experience, when we see visions, when we see, we have entities approaching into our world, right? I had this in ayahuasca. I had people visiting me. I had people beckoning me to come over here. I have something to show you. We can't explain that. We can say, well, is the body's reaction to DM? Okay, we have a molecule that we can pinpoint that has that hallucinatory effect on our minds.

We still don't really, really, really understand it the way we understand, for example, optics, how to focus the light to get to the back of the retina, you know, what glasses prescription to use. So I think that's a weird story. Yeah. It's not so much a weird story as a weird state of being. that how this, I'm trying to visualize it. It's like a fully tricked out toolkit, right? It's got everything to keep people seeing well,

running down the highway and then suddenly bang. The pavement ends. We can't take you any further. We cannot understand what consciousness is. because we're looking at ourselves. It's like a barbershop mirror. We're trying to understand consciousness through consciousness. Yeah.

How are we going to do that? So, Donna, I wish I had some more gripping yarns for you. Yeah. But thank you for allowing me to, I hope, create a little bridge between the world I used to live in and the world I live in now. Yeah, it's well said. I don't think we have the faintest idea. I don't, let me, let me, my background is a truck driver. So let me just put that out there for everybody.

Let me premise it with that. I don't think anybody has the faintest idea of what's really happening. We have great stories about what we think is happening. But when it comes right down to it, the smartest people out there, they may have a better look at a fuzzy picture, but I don't think we, know. And that's both the tragedy and the beauty of it, Donna, is that

what do you think is happening? What is your thought process, Donna? Whatever that is, lean into it. Find out some scientists that you like out there. Better yet, find out some theories that you're curious about and pull on those threads. And those will often

lead you to better questions. There's no answers, but there are better questions. And the more you read and the more you talk to people like Strider John Peterson, the more you read Psychedelic Pathways magazine, the better questions you'll have to go and dig deeper. Way to plug, George. And Donna, I will also say there's work coming out of King's College in the UK. Work coming out of Johns Hopkins.

Yep. other institutions that are that are talking about psychedelics and consciousness. Yep. And they're taking on a pretty mighty challenge. And I honor them for that. Yeah. So. There's some giants coming out of there.

Mm-hmm. All of, many of them half my age, which fills me with hope. You know, when those folks are my age, you're going to look. back on these long careers and they're going to say, wow, 2026, that feels like it was yesterday, but man, look at how far we've come since then. And who knows, if we still have a biosphere that we can survive in, I think we're going to see some tremendous change. You know, I think of, when I think of a half a lifetime ago, for me, would have been, you know, early 90s.

God, so much has changed. We didn't have an internet back then. Yeah. Yeah. I would add Maastrioc University, there's some, there's just some incredible students. Zeus de Pato, Abigail Calder. There's so many incredible people that are studying psychedelics

because it's no longer a no-go zone. It used to be, as soon as you told your PhD professor, that's what you wanted to study. They were like, get out of here. Career-inning. Yeah. Look at Stanislov-Groft's work from the 60s and 70s, pre-prohibition of LSD,

a lot of it out of what was then Czechoslovakia. Yeah. They were doing amazing work on addiction and, well, I think addiction was a main focus of theirs. In an unfettered environment, they could do real research. So his work has been mothballed in many ways, but he's written extensively on his experience. And it's worth a read.

It really is worth a read to, and it's kind of, and I find myself feeling sad about it because we had this great opportunity. And then suddenly the door slammed shut. We couldn't research LSD anymore. Thankfully, we're slowly getting back into that. But unfortunately, the way the academic world works is I think a lot of those experiments are going to have to be repeated. whereas logically you should be able to just go back and say, look, we already studied this. Stan Groff did it decades ago.

Let's build on that rather than thinking we have to start at zero. Because we're not a zero when it comes to understanding how LSD works in terms of, you know, how it opens them up and affects major change in people's bodies and people's minds. A lot of that's already out. there. Yeah. And I think it wouldn't take a very complicated web search to find those original papers. If that's your, if you've got an appetite for that, it's all there.

Or in the books, many books written by Stan Groff, Stanislav Groff, GROF, one of the OGs in the business. You know, it's interesting to think about some work that may have been done. I recently read Tom O'Neill's book called Chaos. It was about like the Manson family. and he just puts together like some incredible ties about the San Francisco Free Clinic like this was a big clinic back in the day

and he ties these researchers that were doing these papers on LSD and methamphetamines and the researchers that were according to what I remember in that book he ties a direct line to people that wrote research papers

on the effects of LSD on community and the effects of methamphetamines on community. And the same researchers that wrote those papers that tested stuff on communities of rats were also like the lead people at the San Francisco free clinic. And if you haven't read Chaos by Tom O'Neill, you guys, just check it out. And it gives credence to maybe the people that know the most about LSD are the people that started MK Ultra.

Like there's some real life experiments going on there that we may never know about. But I find that kind of stuff fascinating. I know I kind of want a rabbit hole there, but it's so fine going. That's a that's a, that's not a rabbit hole, bro. That's a four-lane highway. Yeah, it really is. I want to do a FOIA request and try to get like, I tried to foyer a little bit, but there's so much out there about it already.

A lot of people have tried to get other documents, but who knows, knock on wood, maybe I'll get a good response back. Yeah, yeah. So, well, John, we have covered a lot of information here. We've had some awesome questions from the chat. I'm so stoked on Psychedelic Pathways magazine. I'm stoked to get to hear your vision of it. I'm super stoked on the team that you would mention

that are hoping you put this together. They seem like amazing people that share your vision and are a big reason why you guys are succeeding. The authors, the artist out there. What have we not covered yet, man? Anything else you want to drop in? What have you not covered? Which four-lane highway,

and rabbit hole highways have we not traversed yet? Well, I have a list. But I'd rather come back on and talk about it because we've been talking for almost two hours. And I don't want to start jabbering. What happens when I get tired is I start just, you know, replacing content with, see, I'm doing it right now. I just start. that's the good stuff. Mouthing, mouthing meaningless words.

So, so I guess to me, just approaching the coda of this conversation, yeah, I'm curious about the QR code that you've got there, where that's going to lead people. I'm going to, I want to find out because I might want to amend that. Yeah. So tell you what, I'm going to do. this and I'm just going to look at it. I'm going to see where it takes my phone right now. And it takes us to... Oh, cool. Good. We're leaving it. It takes it to the current issue. It takes it to the money and prosperity issue. Good. Love it.

So, folks, I would just love to have people download the magazine and check it out and send me comments. I read everything. I answer most. And just, I want people to feel that this is a community resource to a certain extent. And I also want to encourage people who have ideas, who have stories to tell. And to be brave and write it down. or tell it, dictate it onto, I mean, just find a way to get it into a text form. You're right?

You could just speak it into your phone and get it transcribed. I'll look at it. If you've got a good story, we want to get as many voices into this magazine as possible. And there are so many areas that are touched by that psychedelics could talk about. I mean, we're going to do a sex issue. Nice. We're going to do an issue on substance-free experiences. You know, through, oh, gosh, you know, all sorts of ways we can look at that.

We can look meditation, drumming, static dance, extreme sports. Yeah. breathwork. Yeah. If taking the substance or not your thing, that does not mean that you are denied the opportunity for enhanced states of consciousness. So I don't have, like I said, I have an agenda, sort of, but my agenda is pretty meta in terms that of, I want to have. have a platform that people can engage with and contribute to because there's so many, everybody's got a story.

And some of them are absolute barn burners. So if you're listening to this, you've got a barn burning story, send me a draft. Send me just an idea. And I'll coach you through it. I love doing that. It's a really meaningful experience for me. And we'll get you published. We'll get you a tear sheet.

Who knows? It might launch you on a great new direction. I mean, we need more good writers. What do they send it to? Like, say someone has a story, do they... So your sound cut out just now. Oh. That's probably...

That's okay. I think the audience might be able to hear. So I guess the question is, if someone has a story or they want to reach out and find you, they could either scan the QR code right down here in the corner. But where is it that they find you, Striderjohn, because you have a web address or an actual, I know you got an actual site, but maybe you could put it out there for the people. Yeah, that's, you hear me? I can hear you fine.

Okay. All right. I'm just going, going the different route. I need to be able to hear you, George. Okay. Yeah, you're the driver. All right. So throw out the website for those people that are looking to send a story or reach out to you.

Email, SJP at psychedelic pathways mag. dot app. Okay. Email it to me. And also striderjohn at proton.m.e

is another email address that I use. And look forward to hearing from you. Thank you to all of you gave the questions. That was really,

really great. Really, really stimulating. All right. And I hope we're able to answer to some satisfaction. Yeah. John, thank you so much for hanging out with us today, ladies and gentlemen,

Seagadilly Pathways Magazine. Go check them out, scan the QR code. Check out the mag. It's free. Thank you so much for being here. It's free. It's a, it's, we'll figure out a way we'll make it pay eventually. But right now I want as many eyes on it as possible.

All right, John. Hang on afterwards, everybody else. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. That's all we got. Bye, everybody.