TrueLife - Recovery, Revelation, & Revolution - The San Francisco Psychedelic Society

Starting point is 00:00:01 Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear, Fearers through ruins maze lights my war cry born from the blaze.

Starting point is 00:00:39 The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope everybody is having a beautiful day. I hope that the sun is shining and the birds are singing. and the wind is at your back. I got a great show for everyone today.

Starting point is 00:01:19 I'm honored to welcome the one and only Danielle Nova, a pioneering force in the field of psychedelic recovery and a beacon of transformative healing. Danielle is the founder of Psychedelic Recovery, an executive director of the San Francisco Psychedelic Society, an organization that has become a cornerstone of support and education for those exploring the profound depths of all states of consciousness. Danielle is the co-founder of the microdosing facilitator training, pioneering the first training program in North America that trains facilitators and clinicians how to properly and ethically guide individuals through microdosing experiences.

Starting point is 00:02:01 This training program is the only training program in the world that teaches people how to interrupt addiction and safely withdraw off of medications through the use of microdosing. The microdosing facilitator training has an environment. incredible faculty of world-leading experts, psychedelic research, like Dr. Jim Fademan, and clinicians in the field. With a deep commitment to addiction recovery, Danielle has specialized in harnessing the healing potential of psychedelics to guide individuals through their journey towards wellness and spiritual growth. Her work is a transformational guide and micro-dosing facilitator trainer at San Francisco Psychedelic Society, and psychedelic recovery has empowered thousands of people to navigate their personal and collective evolution with grace

Starting point is 00:02:42 and insight. Danielle's dedication extends beyond the individual up to the community and global levels, honoring the indigenous lineages that have long understood the sacred power of these substances. Under her leadership, the San Francisco Psychedelic Society and Psychedelic Recovery have flourished as a 501C3 nonprofit organization weaving together a diverse community united by a shared interest in consciousness exploration. Their mission is profound to destigmatize all drugs, provide vital support and integration resources and promote harm reduction. They advocate for access without dogma, ensuring that the transformative potential of psychedelics is available to all who seek it.

Starting point is 00:03:25 Psychedelic recovery is creating a new paradigm for how we understand, how we heal, and how we treat addiction, and the role psychedelics can play in the recovery process. Danielle, thank you so much for being here today. How are you? I am so grateful to be here today. Thank you for the invitation. to weave our consciousness in this powerful activating portal that you've created. It's my pleasure, and it seems that we are creating together.

Starting point is 00:03:52 I know you've been doing a lot of work, and before we got started, we had touched briefly on the dangerous beauty that brought you to psychedelics. And I just want to hand that back to you. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that dangerous beauty. I love that you used the word dangerous beauty. I thought that was so unique and powerful. There was like an intrigue that kind of sparked my interest when hearing that. And for me, it's been a journey of alchemizing my pain into purpose.

Starting point is 00:04:23 I believe that pain is a portal to our purpose. And I spent most of my adult, an adolescent life, heavily addicted to drugs, running away for myself, suffering, suffering, depressed, pseudocidly depressed, wanting to die, wanting to escape the earth. And that led me to my work with psychedelics and overcoming that. So I really feel like, you know, the places that we are might be afraid of going within ourselves or the suffering that we might have been experiencing throughout our lives or the things that we've overcome, the darkness that we've overcome, leads us to our purpose.

Starting point is 00:05:07 And I'm really grateful for the medicine. and how they've taught me how much my suffering has led to the gifts that I now bring to the world. So that's when I hear you say dangerous. That's kind of what I perceive when I hear that. It is dangerous, but it's beautiful. In a previous interview, I heard you mentioned something that your relationship with addiction was a search for God. Can you explain that a little bit? I've been waiting to ask you that question for a while.

Starting point is 00:05:38 Oh, thank you. I love that. That's actually been a new revelation for me. So when I was a teenager, I actually had a spiritual awakening. And this happened when several of my friends committed suicide in high school, which led me to start to question the nature of reality and what the meaning of life is. I didn't even think about death prior to that point. And I started getting really into philosophy. And that led actually to me working with MDMA and going to raves.

Starting point is 00:06:10 It was an awakening to feel unity consciousness and connected to so many other souls and connected to myself. And I started just questioning, why are we here? What is the meaning of life? What is this purpose? And then I fell really deep down into drug addiction and was always trying to fill this void. And throughout my work with psychedelics and this healing process that I ultimately, that led me to after so many years of addiction, as I realized that the entire time I was just trying to find God.

Starting point is 00:06:44 I was just trying to fill this void of the divine. And that's what psychedelics have helped me understand. Entheogen means to discover the divine from within. Ultimately, the void that we seek is the void of ourselves. And we are a fractal of the divine. You know, we are not separate from God. The separation is an illusion that we need to experience on this physical plane on earth. so that we can come back together with it.

Starting point is 00:07:11 I think it's something about the nature of polarity in this reality is that we, in order to understand light, we need to experience dark, right? We need that polarity. We need that separation. And the entire time, I was, you know, filling my life and filling it with addiction

Starting point is 00:07:28 and escaping myself from addiction. I was really just trying to feel reconnected with myself through the fragmentation that I felt with trauma, through the disconnection that I felt with the wounding from my family members. It was a pursuit of my own divinity. And that's a beautiful place to get to once, you know, we can escape and interrupt the addiction process to really reconnect with our own divinity is incredibly powerful. Yeah, that's beautiful. I was looking forward to hearing your answer to that. And it, you know, when we talk about drug use, it's such a tainted word and it has

Starting point is 00:08:07 such a negative connotation to it, but I found myself a lot of times, like up for three days or four days and just searching for something too. And there's something, there's something fulfilling or almost freeing to be it an altered state of consciousness through different drugs, whether it's MDMA or, you know, usually you're with a group of friends. And maybe the question I'm thinking, I'm trying to get out is, is it all medicinal? Yes. Of course it is. Of course it is. I look back on my journals, and I love that you're asking these questions, by the way. It's so powerful and profound. I look back on my journals when I was high on cocaine. And it was like these incredible transmissions of feeling connected to God. It's all medicine, even, especially the suffering, actually. Like, I am so grateful for the years of drug addiction because that was my training program. Instead of pursuing my PhD and, you know, addiction counseling, I...

Starting point is 00:09:30 Sorry, I think it froze. Oh, there we go. Am I back? You're back. I lost you a PhD. Well, it's like, it's the life experience, right? Like I really wanted to experience what it would feel like to go through addiction. You know, that was part of my sole contract.

Starting point is 00:09:53 And I think it's all medicinal, all aspects of it. You know, I really want to reframe how we view medicine, which is important because especially the suffering is the teaching. The depths that we go to is all part of the medicine experience. it's not linear the experience of it. It's on a spectrum and it's a fractal. Yeah, I couldn't agree anymore. It's so interesting to get to be in a position where people see you as someone. And I'm not speaking, for me, for me, it was interesting to be in a position where people didn't want to be around me.

Starting point is 00:10:34 And then I had to figure out why. I'm like, what is going on? And you're forced to live out these different lifetimes. When I look back at the life that I used to live, it was different than the one. one I live now. And it's sort of like a psychedelic trip. When you go on these high dose journeys or when you go on these different altered states of awareness, it's sort of like looking back on your life. Do you see some similarities on the person you used to be versus going on like a high dose journey or into a different state of awareness? That's a really interesting question.

Starting point is 00:11:04 I think that when we're younger, it gives us glimpses of who we're going to be. But these life experiences that we go through shape as to who we are now. And I remember when I was younger, I used to create my room into a store, like I was an entrepreneur. And I used to invite my parents into my room and give them a shopping basket and ask them to come shopping in my room. And I would like put price tags on all my clothes and things. And who knew at that point that I was just this little entrepreneur wanting to create? And I think when we, take these psychedelic experiences and we can zoom out of the tunnel vision of who we are. We can see how everything in our lives that we've been through has led us to that moment in time.

Starting point is 00:11:54 Like all of it was essential to get us to where we are now. I'm so grateful for everything that I've been through in my life that's brought me to this moment with you here on Earth, that we get to share this sacred experience to weave our consciousness together and to have this moment on Earth. So, you know, but sometimes when we're in it, especially when we're in the suffering and in the addiction and the thick of it, it's hard to see how it can all be a part of the learning process, how it can all be a part of, you know, the wisdom that we're gathering through these life experiences. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:12:30 I love the idea of lived experience as far as a classroom because the people that need help are best served by the people who have walked a similar path. And it seems like, like you said earlier, like that's part of the medicine. You have to walk it so that you can turn around and give a hand to someone on their way up, right? Exactly. Yeah. And it can be really profound to learn from someone that's been to where you've been. And I think that was one of the pain points for me in my recovery journey was I didn't have anyone that I could look up to because I found out that I was one of, you know, very few people that decided to come.

Starting point is 00:13:10 come off of psychiatric drugs. Most people are put on psychiatric drugs and it's a life sentence of drug dependence and there's no off ramp. And so I didn't really have a pathway paved for me at all or anyone that knew how to help me and especially the doctors and the physicians that put me on the medications to begin with, had no idea how to help me. So that is my life mission is to be that guiding light. That's why I changed my last name to Nova. To be that guiding light to other people. I want to provide that pathway to freedom and liberation for others and to be the person that I wish I had. I'm glad you chose that. I'm glad you're doing it.

Starting point is 00:13:49 Let's talk about mindset for a minute. Can you remember what it was like to be on, like what was your thought process like being on those psychiatric drugs, whether they're SSRIs or whatever they were versus having like a plant medicine? Can you compare and contrast to two different mindsets while in those different states of awareness? What a beautiful question. Thank you. You have such great energy. So with the psychiatric drugs, I went on them very young. I was a teenager. I was 16 years old, suffering from a lot of anxiety and depression after I lost several friends. And I would say that experience was a state of desperation. It was a state of powerlessness looking outside of myself for, something to fix me, feeling broken, feeling less than, feeling like I didn't have all the answers within me, feeling like there was something wrong with me and being actually being conditioned and told that there was something wrong with me. I was given so many mental illness labels,

Starting point is 00:14:57 all of which aren't true. And, you know, all of it was unresolved trauma that I was not conscious of at the time and, you know, really believed that these drugs were going to fix me and believed and was told that I would have to be on drugs for the rest of my life. And I would have to take, you know, ultimately up to 20 a day medications and prescribed medications a day at one point. My minimum is like eight medications, just handfuls and handfuls of pills every day as a teenager and thinking this was going to be for the rest of life and none of the drugs worked I kept having to try new medications I was maxing out on all the doses of them and yeah it was just a mess it was a complete mess

Starting point is 00:15:45 I was completely controlled because I didn't believe in myself and I didn't have anyone teaching me how to believe in myself either at such a young age especially when you're like your parents are sending you to a doctor when you're a child and putting you on meds you think that's what's best for you and so yeah I think, you know, working with entheogens and psychedelics is about taking our power back. It's about trusting ourselves. It's about realizing that there's nothing wrong with you that you're not broken. You're not sick.

Starting point is 00:16:14 It's the belief that you're broken and sick. That's what you have to heal. And it's about getting to a place of wholeness and empowerment and facing the darkness instead of suppressing the darkness. With medications, they can be effective because they can suppress things and make, you know, I don't want to demonize medications because for some people at some point, they might be appropriate because they can't face the trauma. They can't face the darkness. They don't have that resource or that support around them. So maybe medications are appropriate for them at that time. But it comes with a cost. And for me, the cost was greater than the reward. Like I have learned that I have

Starting point is 00:16:57 suppressed so much in my life. And now removing the addictions, removing the dependency on the psychiatric drugs, all of the stuff that I was suppressing is all coming up for me to deal with. You know, it just buries it down deeper when you suppress it. And it actually hurts you more to suppress. The suppression of discomfort is a continuation of suffering. And that's why I never got better on those medications because I was stuffing, stuffing, stuffing, suppressing all of my suffering instead of actually dealing with it. And dealing with it is the harder path, but it's actually, it's faster, you know, and it creates liberation and joy, and there's so much reward instead of just keeping everything down just to, you know, be quote-unquote,

Starting point is 00:17:43 as my parents would say, keep me manageable, you know? And so it's been really powerful to just to see the differences with the two paths. And that's what I want to prepare people for as well, is like just because you take psychedelics doesn't mean it's going to change everything in your life. You know, there's so much more work that we have to do in tandem with the psychedelics, the integration work, shifting our mindset, shifting the foods we're eating, the environment, and especially our identity. And that's what ayahuasca has taught me about is like addiction is an identity. And it's not a fixed identity.

Starting point is 00:18:21 We're not an addict for the rest of our lives. I'm not depressed for the rest of my life. I'm that's a temporary state of consciousness that can be evolved and healed it's not fixed so yeah those are some of the lessons i've learned from both of the different paths it's so interesting to think about the way in which at least in the western world we're given these boxes we can check you know like when and i think of culture tells us the first four letters of culture is cult like you could be a doctor you could be a lawyer, you could be an addict, you can be a professional. Like we have all these sort of cardboard cutouts of what you can be, but those are so limiting. Like everyone is all of those and. It's like, yes, and all these other things too.

Starting point is 00:19:09 But it's so easy to get tunnel vision, especially for parents who may be going through their own trauma that are just trying to manage their kids like, I got my own problems here. Who am I? How am I going to help my kid? Like it's maybe that gets into the idea of generational trauma. Maybe you can speak to that bigger umbrella

Starting point is 00:19:25 of culture, preconceived notions of who we are and generational trauma. Wow, those are all such big topics. I know. I think I'll start with like the generational trauma. So there was this beautiful study that was done where they had rats and they exposed the rats to a cherry blossom smell. And every time the rats would smell the cherry blossom smell, they would electrocute them. So they started experiencing trauma around the cherry blossom smell.

Starting point is 00:20:00 And then those rats had babies, and then those babies had babies. So they had three generations. They had the grandparents that were traumatized around the cherry blossom smell, and then they had the parents, and then the babies. When they exposed the parents to the cherry blossom smell without ever electrocuting them, they had a reaction, like a PTSD reaction. They were anxious. They were more depressed.

Starting point is 00:20:24 They were jittery around the cherry blossom smell. And when they were exposed to the cherry blossom smell, their initial reaction was to protect the babies. And so it showed, and also the babies around the cherry blossom smell, they had a preconceived, I forget what it's called, but you're more likely to scent it out without ever been exposing to it prior. And they experienced anxiety, depression, PTSD symptoms. So it showed that generational trauma is,

Starting point is 00:20:54 passed down at least three generations. And so much of what we can be experiencing this lifetime doesn't even, didn't even start with us. And I thought that was just an incredible study. I've never even, it was the first time I've heard about them actually being able to prove how generational trauma is passed down through generations. And it makes sense. You know, I think so much of, especially around addiction, it's like, oh, it's genetic or it's just something that's wrong with you or it's a disease. no, it's not. It's not a disease. It's not something that's wrong with the person. It's actually quite brilliant. It's an attempt to try to solve a problem. It's an attempt to try to feel connected from disconnection. And I think a lot of the traumatic experiences or symptoms that people might be

Starting point is 00:21:40 experiencing could not even be a source from this lifetime, which is incredibly powerful and profound to think about. And it's not to say that it takes, you know, it's not about giving our power way, oh, it's just an ancestral trauma and there's nothing I can do about it. It's, the awareness of it is incredibly powerful because it didn't start with you, but it stopped with you. Like for me and my family, part of what I experienced was my parents were not very emotionally available. They would rather send me to a psychiatrist, put me on meds to manage me rather than being present for me emotionally. And it wasn't because they were wrong or bad. That was how they were conditioned. And it goes back, you know, to my grandmother. I asked my grandmother, I said, what's your relationship

Starting point is 00:22:24 like with yourself? Grandma? She says, what relationship? I don't even know what that means. Like they, just from their conditioning, the priority wasn't on emotional availability, emotional processing, being present with ourselves and our emotions and understanding ourselves. That's actually privilege, you know, of 2024. We're lucky to be so conscious and available. So, you know, You know, I think that a lot of these things that we experience are part of this just timeline of ancestry that goes back thousands of years. And finally, we are the ones to break these cycles. And it's a huge undertaking.

Starting point is 00:23:05 It's massive. Like I can feel the weight of it even just speaking to it right now. And so, yeah, I think that's sort of, you know, the process that we're going through. And for me, it's been an interesting journey to, I think there's been some anger. that I've had of like, you know, just the ancestral trauma that's been passed down in my lineage and anger is very healthy. And to understand how it, you know, I don't actually think we're ever going to understand the roots of it, but to see how the pattern plays out. And that also informs, like, now I understand why I became a drug addict. I get it. You know, that was my, that was my saving grace.

Starting point is 00:23:48 that was my escape because I didn't have the resources or understanding at that time to process what I was going through. And I was really, it was an intelligence. And that's how I like to view addiction is that, you know, it's not something that's bad or wrong with a person or this disease that they're going to have to manage for the rest of their lives. It's something that it's a learned coping mechanism. And it probably saved my life, to be honest with you. And I probably would have taken my life many times. I even attempted at one point. So it saved my life until it didn't. Then it started becoming a harm in my life.

Starting point is 00:24:28 Thank you for sharing that. That's very personal and very deep. And I think it speaks to a lot of what a people, a lot of people that find themselves at the crossroad of addiction and suicide are dealing with long-term generational trauma that's manifesting in their life immediately. And you said like that's, it's kind of beautiful to think about. it from that angle like whoa this person is going to deal with everyone's trauma for five

Starting point is 00:24:54 year like whoa and they're going to get through it like maybe you do need some kind of drugs in order to find yourself in this altered state of awareness so you can finally get to the point of like I'm so pissed off at them but you know what they probably did the best they could they had and the ones that they did the ones that did know were too scared to do it or they didn't know what to do so I guess it's on me to do but it's it is it's empowering right it's so empowering Yeah. It blows my mind to think about where we are right now and this new form of conscious that does seem to be evolving in some ways. Do you have any thoughts on the way in which this particular psychedelic experience is happening? You got the psychedelic society in San Francisco. You're coming from the roots of the roots over there. Maybe you could speak about this next evolution of the psychedelic society that you're pioneered. Absolutely. So I think that. that we are stewarding a movement of,

Starting point is 00:25:52 we're maturing psychedelics, which is really nice. Psychedelics have been along around for thousands of years used by our ancestors, probably were the source of all religions and have been around for as long as human existence, I'm sure, you know, part of nature. And I feel like we are the generation that is here to professionalize and to mature this field. And we do that at the psychedelic society through a variety of different ways.

Starting point is 00:26:24 And primarily we are a community. So we're a hub for people to meet other people on a psychedelic path. Community is the medicine, you know, and it's an important part of reintegrating ourselves into society. We've been so fragmented. We've been just as a collective of individuals,

Starting point is 00:26:43 we can be so separate from ourselves. all live in our separate little boxes and have to, you know, survive in this earth. So we really bring people together that are using psychedelics, and be able to process them, build new friends and a community of people around them. We host a variety of educational programs. We have professionalized different support training. We support training programs like the microdosing facilitator training. We also have educational courses and classes that are on our website. teaching people how to integrate microdosing experiences, teaching people how to use psychedelics safely. We offer a variety of in-person events. I have an introduction of microdosing workshop. I teach about

Starting point is 00:27:27 psychedelics and addiction, teach about an introduction to psychedelic experiences. We're definitely a first point for people that are new to the psychedelic space to learn how to use psychedelics safely and intentionally and integrate them into their lives. We host a variety of indigenous leaders and elders whenever they come into the Bay Area where people can learn directly with them, experience some of their medicines, experience some of their wisdom, their teachings. We like to support Native communities and honor the sacred reciprocity of this work. And we just started, we know we're really in the Bay Area. We're in the hub of a lot of psychedelic research.

Starting point is 00:28:07 There's so much happening from Stanford or UCSF. at in Berkeley has a new psychedelic center doing research. So we are launching this new speaker series in collaboration with one of my and dear friends, Dr. Manesh Gern. He is a PhD neuroscientist at UCSF that is in Robin Colhart-Harris' lab. He's pioneering research around psilocybin and neuroimaging. He's also starting to do some research on creativity. So we're launching this speaker series. He's the first speaker of this series. And we're going to bring in. different psychedelic researchers in the bay to bring the research and what's happening from the research front to the public and accessible format. We also have over 15 integration circles a

Starting point is 00:28:53 month online where people can come and process their psychedelic experiences. And we have our psychedelic recovery program, which is outside of the disease model, the 12-step model. It's a program where people can learn about psychedelics, also integrate their psychedelic experiences, and learn how to completely evolve and transform out of being an addict consciousness through the intentional use of psychedelics in our recovery program,

Starting point is 00:29:21 which I'm feeling really excited about. We're shifting the paradigm of how we understand heal and treat addiction to a model that's rooted in self-love, empowerment, and transformation. I love it. These conversations are so fast, I feel like on some level, some of us are galloping forward and we're looking over the hillside and we're seeing this move not only past addiction, but into a world of maybe creative destruction. You know what I mean by that?

Starting point is 00:29:53 Like people are moving past the addiction model and they're like, you know what? I can be really creative with this. You look at sport, people that are professional athletes and they're using this to fine tune their ability to be better than they've ever been before. People in Silicon Valley are finding ways to use their imagination to create a future that was unheard of so long ago. Teachers are finding ways to communicate through dance that can teach mathematics. I think that this next step, as we've spoken a little bit about addiction, we're moving into this idea of creativity. You spoke about this speaker series. Maybe you could speak to the idea of perhaps the future of creativity and psychedelics and what that might look like as far as workshops and that path moving forward.

Starting point is 00:30:33 Yeah, I think that, you know, in such huge questions we can mull over for hours, right? But the future of creativity is neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. That's what I feel so excited about, especially, you know, the signatures of a lot of these psychedelic experiences is that they can create neuroplasticity and create neurogenesis. And what Dr. Mnesh-Gern teaches about is that, that neuroplasticity, which is new nerve growth, you know, new neuro pathways, new belief systems, new ways of thinking, which in and of itself is creativity. And Manesh teaches about is that actually neuroplasticity is in and of itself, it's inherently neutral.

Starting point is 00:31:19 So it can be positively influenced or negatively influenced. So after you do a psychedelic journey, if you just go right back into chain smoking cigarettes or eating McDonald's, it's going to ingrain that neuro pathway even deeper for you. If you use that critical time window, which generally can be for certain psychedelics weeks, days, weeks, even months after a psychedelic experience where you're more flexible for change, you're more creative, you have more brain, higher connectivity, you can actually influence the neuroplasticity through self-directed motivated practices. So whether that means, you know, integrating new practices for yourself, starting to write, thinking out of the box, learning a new activity, dancing, moving your body, trying new things, all these things that you can do in this neuroplastic window can increase the neuroplasticity. And I think that in it of itself, the more we train our brains to think outside, it's, you know, the small window

Starting point is 00:32:23 that we've lived in for our entire lives. That's in and of itself creative. So I'm just really excited about the neuroplasticity and especially the self-directed neuroplasticity. The fact that we can actually motivate and change our brain, we can have an influence on our brain's ability to change is incredibly powerful. And it takes work. You know, it takes consciousness. It takes intention to be able to really look at even the thoughts that we're having. Like how much am I subscribing to negative thinking every day? How much awareness am I putting on these actions that I'm taking daily, which maybe in the past might have just been, oh, this is a habit. I love the quote from Carl Young that says, until you make the unconscious,

Starting point is 00:33:09 conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. And I think that's where I was operating from, especially around addiction. I was told, oh, you're just an addict. You're going to be an addict for the rest of your life. It's like, wait a minute, that was actually me approaching addiction unconsciously. But when I bring consciousness to addiction, wow, I actually don't have to keep, this isn't my fate, you know, for the rest of my life. Like, I can influence it and I can change it. And so, yeah, I think that's part of, like, the creativity that we're going to see is people's ability to create these new neural connections and change their relationships with themselves and the outside world. I love it. That was really well said. And it makes me excited for the future.

Starting point is 00:33:50 It makes me excited for learning. And the truth is that it's happening all around us. If you look at like parallel economies beginning to pop to pop up and people that are no longer happy working at a maybe a multinational that treats them like a number, people are standing up all over the world. And it's, it's this wave that doesn't seem that can't be stopped on some level. It's, it's an awakening. And it's beautiful to see. It's beautiful to be part of.

Starting point is 00:34:18 And there's an amazing relationship between thoughts and language. And for those people who bump up against the ineffable and an altered state of awareness, be it an ayahuasca or silasivan or maybe you've watched a friend die, you find yourself unable to explain this emotion or thought that you're having, this is just kind of like, do you think that that is part of the ability to create a new future? It's like, I can't explain this. I'm going to try to do it. I'm going to try to act it out in a weird sort of way.

Starting point is 00:34:48 I'm going to create this new linguistic pathway to bring something into the world. Like what is that? What do you think? I think that's integration, right? That's integration. Because a thought is just a thought. It's like, you know, two sticks are just two sticks. You could say, oh, a stick is meaningless.

Starting point is 00:35:06 But when someone put them together and rub them together, it created fire. And fire changed the world. And so I really think that that's why integration is so important. You can have all these visions and thoughts and ideas in the psychedelic realm. But until you put those into action, they kind of just stay in that liminal space. That's why action, integration is so important to bring these visions into life. And that's what I feel like the work that I'm doing and stewarding is even this podcast is, right?

Starting point is 00:35:39 It's a physical manifestation of a vision that you had for yourself, bringing it into life, bringing it into creation. We come here on earth to create. That's why we're here, I believe. We're here to create and we're also here to love. And we're also here to overcome and alchemize. So yeah, it's a beautiful creation. You know, creation is a part of integration. And, you know, I think that's really important, too.

Starting point is 00:36:05 What I like to instill in people is this, when we're working with psychedelics, it's about relationship. And it's important that we don't approach this relationship with a colonizing mindset, which just can continue on to replicate ancestral. trauma. I look at the relationship with psychedelics is how do I give and receive to this relationship? Being here today, having this conversation with you is part giving back to the medicine. The medicine wants us to do that. You'll see so many people that start to work with psychedelics are like, I want to share this. I want everyone to know about this. I want to create the,

Starting point is 00:36:41 it's the medicine working through us and us also giving back to the medicine. I don't even know how much is me here on this call here today. I'm probably channeling ayahuasca. I just had a ceremony on Saturday. But they work through us in this way because that's what they're here to teach us is about honoring the sacred reciprocity of this life. It's not about me being broken and needing to take ayahuasca to fix me. It's how can I ingest this plant spirit and to healing myself in my lineage, but also giving back to the world. And I think it's so important for anyone that's listening to this podcast that's approaching their work with psychedelics to really think about how can I give and receive to this relationship, you know, and not looking at it is something

Starting point is 00:37:24 that I can take or what can I get from this medicine, but how can I be in a healthy relationship with it? And that also changes the paradigm of how we view drugs, right? Like in the past, it's, I would just view drugs. I was viewing the drugs that I was using with such a colonizing mindset of like, what can I get from this? It's not working for me. It's not fixing me. And that's part of the medicine. That's part of the teaching of it. And so another thing I want to say is something that I teach around addiction is even if someone's an active addiction still, how can they bring reciprocity to their addiction and their experience? So I have people look at their medicine, like let's say someone's addicted to opioids. I literally have them think the opioids every day and set

Starting point is 00:38:11 their intention with it and to start to shift that relationship out of that shameful relationship with the drug to a relationship of reciprocity and honoring. So, yeah. That's deep to think about, I get stuck on the word shame. Like on some level, you know, when you look at back at so many different religions, at least monotheistic religions, we have this idea of original sin, but maybe we're born with like original shame. Like we come into this world like ashamed of who we are or I'm not enough or, you know,

Starting point is 00:38:47 everyone has more. Like it's so weird and that cloud of shame just hangs over you. But maybe you could speak more to the idea of helping someone understand that relationship. Like if you find someone with opia, it's like, how do you go about helping them change the relationship to it? It's such a beautiful question. I think the first step is that person has to want it. They have to, the most powerful medicine that's more powerful than any psychedelic is the desire for change. that person has to want to change. They have to get to a point where they're ready. They're ready to

Starting point is 00:39:23 see what life is like not addicted to drugs. They have to really want it and they have to be willing to do whatever it takes to get there. And for some people, they're just not there yet. And I am interested in the role that psychedelics can play in helping people get more ready or maybe helping shift that process of change for some people so that they have more motivation. But ultimately, down to the individual. There is this popular TV show called Intervention. I think a lot of people have heard about, you know, if someone's going through an addiction, we should intervene and be an interventionist. And now we're shifting that paradigm. It's not about intervention from the outside. It's about intervention from the inside. Like how can you start to intervene with yourself

Starting point is 00:40:12 to create an inner inside intervention and really realizing, like, Like, maybe the drugs are not helping me. You know, maybe I'm ready to evolve beyond them. Maybe I'm not going to be an addict for the rest of my life. I also teach people about the language that they're using. People are, you know, saying I'm clean or I'm dirty. You know, using drugs doesn't make you clean and doesn't make you dirty. Some people are afraid to come off of the drugs that they're addicted to

Starting point is 00:40:41 because they don't want to feel and they haven't felt. drugs are a very powerful way to suppress feeling. And I think it's important to prepare people. Like, you're going to feel a lot coming off these drugs. And everything that you've been suppressing is going to come up. But it's going to come up to liberate you and to help you achieve and become the person that you've always wanted to become. And that's so exciting because who knows who both of you and I are going to be in 20 years from now. We're just continued to be evolving.

Starting point is 00:41:12 But if you are addicted to drugs, it stunts your growth. 100%. It's going to keep you exactly where you are for the rest of your life. And that's someone once asked me, what's your biggest fear? My biggest fear is staying exactly where I am for the rest of my life. Like we come here to evolve. If you look at a tree, it's constantly shedding, you know, new colors, new leaves. Like it's evolution is why we come here. And so if we're stunting our evolution and just staying stuck and stagnant, that's kind of a scary place to be. But people have to be ready for that evolution. And then in terms of healing addiction, it's really important, I think, to have an anchor of support, whether it's a community to go to or a practitioner, someone to work

Starting point is 00:41:55 with you, to have someone guide you through that process is incredibly important. We don't heal in isolation, especially around addiction. And it's important to have support of your family members. As my dad now says, he says that addiction is a family issue. We've made it. We've been conditioned to think it's an individual issue, but it's actually a family problem. And that's why in the future we're going to be creating programs specifically for families to make sure that people are held as a family unit. And it's not just, you know, one person being the problem because usually that's, that's definitely not the case.

Starting point is 00:42:32 And also, it's important for people to, you know, it's going to be such a personalized process. I couldn't really educate here in an ethical way how to, you know, go through. a process of overcoming addiction because it's such a spectrum. It's such an evolutionary process for each person, but it's a process of reclaiming our love for ourselves. I think at the core of it, I was addicted to drugs because I hated myself and I wasn't in love with myself. And I didn't like who I was and I just wanted to escape who I was.

Starting point is 00:43:05 And that can be really hard for people to learn how to love themselves again. You know, the 12-step program, is all about focusing like on your character defects or the things that are wrong with you. But for me, it's like, what about what's right for you? What's right with you? What are your gifts? What is beautiful about you? You know, what are you celebrating about you?

Starting point is 00:43:25 Where do you want to go? Who do you want to become? And especially having people to start to think about that once they're thinking about transforming out of addiction, you know, really setting goals for themselves and empowering people that they can do anything they want. If I can overcome addiction to opioids and oxycotton and hundreds of psychiatric drugs and cocaine and I smoke cigarettes for 15 years, if I can do that, you can do it. You know, it's accessible to anyone.

Starting point is 00:43:57 I love it. There's something ingrained in the human being that loves stories. And the stories we tell ourselves tend to be the paths that we walk. And when you are in a bad situation, when you're in an environment, be it a family addiction or be it a group of friends, not only are you telling a story, but everyone around you is validating that story. And it's so, it gives me goosebumps to think about how awkward and isolating but beautiful it can be to have the courage to begin telling yourself a new story and then having people validate that new story, right? Like, that's what happened to you on something. Can you talk to that a little bit? I'm so sorry. I don't think I understand the question.

Starting point is 00:44:38 Okay. So there was a time when you, when you were in addiction and you had a mental story you were telling yourself. And it sounds to me like your parents were validating that story. Your dad came out recently. It's like, look, it was a family addiction. Like the family or our friends, there are enabling our story in some level. Was there like a certain sort of flash in the pan or was there a moment where you went like, okay, I'm going to tell a new story. And then how long before that new story became your, your new identity. So cool. I love that. I think what was programmed into me was the story that I'm sick. I'm sick. And there was something wrong with me. That was the story for ever since I was.

Starting point is 00:45:30 Where did that come from? Where did that there's something wrong with me come from? I started experiencing depression and engagement. when my friends took their lives in high school, or even actually earlier than that. Like it came from unresolved trauma, unresolved sexual trauma, that there's something wrong with me. And probably on an unconscious level, it's my fault. And I deserve whatever happened.

Starting point is 00:45:58 You know, it was my fault that that happened. And I probably programmed myself with sickness because I felt so sick about the experiences that I had. And I'm still overcoming sickness, to be honest with you. And I've been on this journey for almost eight years. It's an evolutionary process. I think the moment, the breaking point for me was I was on eight different medications. And I went to my doctor and I was like, hey, once again, the meds aren't working. What can you give me? And he's like, smoke more cigarettes, drink more coffee, you've tried every medication. And that was this lightning bowl moment for me of like, oh, wow, my savior, the doctor, had no other tool for me. They had no other solution for me.

Starting point is 00:46:46 And it literally forced me to take my power back and realize there was nothing wrong with me. I'm not sick. I don't have all these mental illnesses that they told me I had that I have to take all these medications for. And, you know, slowly started to create a new story. for myself. And I don't even think I was conscious of the new story I was creating for myself for a long time. It was just like, how can I safely get off of these medications? And then after that, then I really, after I went through this whole taper process, which was years, and then 18 months of acute withdrawal, then it was like, okay, who am I now beyond addiction? Because most of my life, I had been identifying as a drug addict. It's such an identity that you can kind of escape in and

Starting point is 00:47:32 feel really safe in. And so that's been really exciting. You know, talk about creativity. It's like I get to always recreate, you know, who I am now. I'm a completely different person today than I was seven years ago. And that's really exciting. And it's also a reclamation. You know, it's a reclamation of our soul. And it's a discovery process. And that's where I feel like psychedelics can be so powerful. Like the root of psychedelic is, I forget what it is. I was just taught like psyche, which is like a Greek word for like soul retrieval. It's basically a retrieval of the soul. And so the medicine has been such a powerful teacher for me to start to pull back, you know, aspects of my soul that got so lost and so fragmented through that experience with addiction. And it's a continuous evolution. You know,

Starting point is 00:48:20 it's constantly rewriting the story every, every year, every day, you know, who do I want to be today? How do I want to evolve from these past harmful belief systems? It's constantly deprogramming. of all this negativity that I was just unconsciously continuing to replicate in my life. Wow. Thank you for sharing that. It's a deeply personal story, but I always think that the audience, there's always a seeker in the audience, and you never know which word or which tone or which story is going to shed a little bit of light on that person and help them see the next brick in the pathway, or the next brick in the wall if I'm Pink Floyd. Danielle, I'm so curious about,

Starting point is 00:49:04 they say that the best way to predict the future is to create it. What are you most excited about creating in the future with the work you're doing now? I am so excited about all the little, just all the butterflies that the work is going to create. I'm excited about helping millions of people interrupt addiction. with intentional use of psychedelics. I'm excited about helping millions of people find freedom from dependency on psychiatric medications. I'm excited about empowering millions of facilitators and teaching

Starting point is 00:49:41 them how to hold their clients through addiction recovery experiences, how to facilitate microdosing experiences. I'm excited to empower. I'm excited to help others grow and evolve and find and liberation and joy and love and to shift earth, you know, to change the paradigm that we've been experiencing and to also change the way that we view addiction. I'm really excited for that. You know, it's time that addiction gets a rehabilitation out, you know, away from being a disease or something that's wrong with a person and really viewing it as something that's an attempt to feel normal, an attempt to save someone's own life and not something that's wrong with someone. and it's, you know, an attempt for people to self-sooth and, you know, shifting out of just this,

Starting point is 00:50:31 like, harmful way that we've been viewing, even viewing the individual and to really helping people find joy and, you know, reconnecting themselves to their own power. I'm excited. I'm excited to see the journey. I'm excited to meet you and be here. And I think much like your last name attest to, I guess you're just producing. producing the supernova of light and warmth for people to, to see a better way. And we start talking about addiction as something we're outgrowing, as something that's normal,

Starting point is 00:51:04 it's something that happens to people that are going to be future leaders. Like, that's an empowering thing to think about. And I'm so excited you're doing the work that you're doing. I know you've got a few other things coming up, though, and we're kind of coming up on our hour. But before I just want to throw it back, I want to give you some time to talk about what you got coming up, what you're excited about,

Starting point is 00:51:23 and where people can find you. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for your amazing questions today and just the depth of your consciousness and the work that you're stewarding in the world. I'm really honored to be here with your community today and to share the sacred geometry that we created, the tapestry that we created together.

Starting point is 00:51:44 So I just launched the Microdosync Facilator Training, which is the first four-month training program in North America that is taught by world-leading psychedelic researchers, experts, and clinicians. We have an incredible faculty from Dr. Jim Fateman, who pioneered modern microdosing into the public consciousness, Dr. Minesh Gurne at UCSF, Connor Murray, who created the first LSD microdosing study at UCLA. We have amazing world-class practitioners, harm reduction trainers, Stephen Hwang from MAPS, just incredible factors. that people get to learn from. We have a standard operating procedures. It's really an amazing

Starting point is 00:52:28 program to teach people how to take their clients through a microdosing protocol. And in the past month, since we've launched the program, we've had over 10,000 visits to our website from 59 different countries and 48 different states. So it's really, we're seeing a huge interest in this program. We have incredible people that are signing up. If anyone's interested in wanting to, the psychedelic field as a practitioner. This is a really great way to enter the field because you get to teach people how to microdose on their own and change lives and really impact the world

Starting point is 00:53:06 in an incredibly powerful, positive way. So if anyone's interested in joining that program, we can put it in the show notes, and then psychedelic recovery, psychedelic recovery.org. We have eight online psychedelic recovery recovery groups a month where people can come and process their experiences around psychedelics. It's also a group for people that are an active addiction. We have a training program once people have been involved in

Starting point is 00:53:33 that group for some time where they can learn how to facilitate the groups and become a leader of psychedelic recovery. So that's really exciting. I'm also going to be working on a research study in the community around psychedelics and addiction. I'm not going to give too much information out yet because that's not solidified, but we're really excited about that new project. And then with the Psychedelic Society of San Francisco, we have our event series that's in person in the Bay Area. And then we also have a variety of courses and classes on our website, psychedelic societysaf.org. And then I also work one-on-one with people. I'm a psychedelic guide and a microdosing coach. I teach people how to integrate microdosing into their lives for spiritual

Starting point is 00:54:16 growth and personal empowerment and transformation. My specialties in addiction and helping people get off of psychiatric drugs. And I also work with a variety of different executives, provide executive coaching and helping people integrate psychedelic experiences into their conscious reality to help them get to states of complete joy and liberation and transformation in their lives. It's amazing. I can't, I can't wait to see the continued work, the continued journey, and just to see the world unfold, hopefully continue to unfold in the way that it is now. I think we're really on the cusp of some really great change out there. And well, hang on briefly.

Starting point is 00:54:57 Can you get the name of the website again? For the training? For all of them. So psychedelic society, sf.org is the psychedelic society website. And then psychedelic recovery.org is the psychedelic recovery website. And then flowstatemicro.com slash microdosing facilitator training or just flowstatemicro.com is where you can find the microdosing facilitator training. Fantastic. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're watching this live, if you're listening to a podcast or you're watching on a platform somewhere else, reach out to Danielle.

Starting point is 00:55:36 She's doing some incredible work. and I think that we are on the cusp of changing a lot of lives. Daniel, hang on briefly afterwards, but to everybody who hung out with us today, thank you so much for your time. I hope you have a beautiful day. Aloha.

TrueLife - Recovery, Revelation, & Revolution - The San Francisco Psychedelic Society

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