TrueLife - Spencer Hawkswell - C.E.O. at TheraPsil

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. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

Starting point is 00:00:40 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's having a beautiful day. I hope the sun is shining and the birds are singing. The wind is at your back. We have with us today an incredible guest.

Starting point is 00:01:16 Spencer Hawkswell, he's the president and CEO of Theresell. For those who may not know Therisel is a nonprofit and training organization advocating for legal access to psilocybin for those in medical need. Additionally, additionally, they are home to Canada's leading psilocybin assisted psychotherapy training program. Spencer, there's a lot more I could say about you, but I think the most people in this space know who you are. And if I left anything out in the introduction, please feel free to let me. know about it. I want to get into all the things you're doing. But before I do that, I just wanted to say hello and ask you how you're doing today. Oh, I'm doing really, really well. I'm calling in from Toronto. I'd normally live on the West Coast in Vancouver, but I'm home visiting some

Starting point is 00:02:01 friends and family this weekend. So yeah, I couldn't be better. I'm doing great. Thank you. Nice. Absolutely. I, um, you know, prior to us starting this conversation, we had talked a little bit about your trip to India out there a little bit. And you have this amazing picture of you on this motorcycle and the mountains out there. And it seems that so many people that have been in this space or so many people that have actually made the pilgrimage or been lucky enough to go to the far east to kind of figure out a little bit about themselves and about the space. It seems like that trip was pretty amazing for you. I was wondering if you could tell people. I think that would be a little bit of a background people could learn about.

Starting point is 00:02:45 Can you tell people about what that trip was about and maybe what you learned over there? Yeah, for sure. I mean, for me, it was about an expansion of, you know, my perception of the world, right? Like, traveling certainly is something that, you know, not everyone gets to do. It's a real privilege. But, you know, the traveling I didn't think it was pretty, pretty on the cheap. I mean, that's somewhere almost anyone can go. I did a lot of Southeast Asia.

Starting point is 00:03:09 and I absolutely love theology and divinity and world religions. So I needed to go check out India. You know, really just the birthplace of so much rich cultural culture and history. So I wanted to go there and sure enough, you know, got a really enriched view of a completely different world that I think everybody, they don't have to. India, they can go anywhere, but everybody should get out of their country when they're young and in order to have a real understanding of how the world works because it completely changed my view on so many things. You know, I would say in Canada, North America here in the U.S., we really live in a bubble.

Starting point is 00:03:56 We think that everybody thinks one way and that that's how it works. And the second you head somewhere else, you realize that not only is there a whole different world of religious belief and cultural belief, but that, they're interconnected to the world that we live in. They've got a completely separate view of world events and how we view ourselves. It was the best thing I ever did. It was the best thing I ever did, yeah. Yeah, it sounds amazing.

Starting point is 00:04:21 You know, there's a great book I was just reading. It's called Storming Heaven. If anybody ever is looking for a good book, this book right here is called Storming Heaven. It's by Jay Stevens. And it's just about the 60s. And it talks quite a bit about this integration of the East and the West and theology and divinity. And I'm wondering, after going over to India and coming back to America, the Americas, you know, was there like a, was there like this bridge that you crossed where you began seeing the world in a more holistic view? Because it seems that that's sometimes what happens is like all of a sudden you're introduced to all these new ideas.

Starting point is 00:04:58 And then you're you come back to this place where you used to live and you're able to incorporate and maybe see things from a different perspective. Is that something that you encountered? Absolutely. It gave me a whole appreciation for my own life and upbringing and my own heritage and culture. I had always been interested in, you know, Alan Watts, right? And Carl Jung and all these people who had done, you know, a significant amount of traveling and looking into psychology. You know, I think it's Alan Watts psychology East and West or Psychotherapy East and West. And, you know, yin and yang, right, to Dharma, karma, like all these different, you know, old. old philosophies that actually made me have a whole new respect for Christianity, which I was born and raised Christian. I went to a Catholic school. And yeah, all of these things that were right under my nose, all of these belief systems that we have that hugely impacts the world I live in.

Starting point is 00:05:56 Also living, I lived in Toronto for a long time, and now in Vancouver, these are like, you know, it's pretty much like everybody in Vancouver is from every single part of the world. right it's so multicultural so yeah you go to these places and you go ah i get it you know i understand why there are so many uh Sikhs living here and why there's such a rich chinese community here and and i understand how they better not fully but better how they operate uh so yeah absolutely it made me also then realize that you know how i had been raised has is just as important and special and amazing um yeah increases conscientiousness in all i'd say Yeah, that's so well put.

Starting point is 00:06:39 You know, it reminds me of like a rite of passage or a ceremony or a ritual for someone to leave everything you know. And you could see it in like different scriptures like the prodigal son or, you know, you hear just different types of, if you read Sadartha, the same thing happens in there. And, you know, you see this leaving everything you know so that you could become the person you're supposed to be and then a return back to implement some of those ideas. And so after you come back, how do you, how do you transition from this person who has gone out and made all these self-discoverys? And then all of a sudden, now you're the CEO of Therazil, which is in a really big fight to help legalize or get people in Canada the right to medicinal psilocybin. But how do you go from one person to this next person? Was there a vision? Was there a path that you followed?

Starting point is 00:07:32 Was there something that inspired you? or what was that road like? Yeah, you know, I was inspired by every single story that I have read growing up, right? I mean, I'm a kid of the 90s, so I think of, you know, the legend of Zelda, right? Which is like Nintendo 64, Legend of Zelda, right? Like, I would lie. I'd be lying if I said that those stories, which, again, come from rich mythological stories, you know, far beyond anything Nintendo ever made up.

Starting point is 00:08:03 These are all like age-old archetypes of the hero going off and heading to different distant lands, you know, to discover what the world is. And in the same way themselves, too. It's the hero journey, which will likely bring us back to. We'll probably talk about that later on, right? Because that's something that people refer to in psychedelics all the time is this hero's journey. And as far as I see it, like the goal really should be, I think, to explore the unknown and to overcome. and all the fear and anxiety that comes along with new places and and doing new things, right? Fundamentally, that's what humans do, right?

Starting point is 00:08:43 We take chaos and we turn it into order. That is the hero's journey. That's their story. So the parallels say, yeah, are amazing. And I think that's the basis for a lot of, a lot of at least my travels in time. So, you know, coming back from that, what do you see in every single one of those instances? is the best thing that you can come back to do is take a bit of responsibility.

Starting point is 00:09:09 And that's what I wanted to do is come back to Canada. I saw in my time traveling. I experimented with a lot of psychedelics. There was a lot of publicity around Michael Pollan's book and a lot of the research that was being done. And I've been working in sales prior and finance at RBC and TD, and I just thought I don't want to go back to that. I want to come back and do something really important.

Starting point is 00:09:36 And it was just the right time. You know, so often, you know, what people ascribe to luck is really just skill and opportunity. And that was my opportune moment to work in this field. And so when I came back, I thought, how do I do this? My mother was hugely supportive as a palliative care nurse. And upon, you know, a couple days of research, I found Bruce Tobin, really the founder of Theracill and, you know, the rest is history.

Starting point is 00:10:02 But let's talk about it. Yeah, that's, it's amazing to me to bring up the idea of the hero's journey in psychedelics, because it is. It's this moment where, you know, those myths have been ingrained in us since platonic times. You know, that these are things that we harken back to. Or if you read Terrence McKinney, you read the stories of the archaic revival, this idea of going back to a time where we kind of had direction, where we knew where we were going. And sometimes you have to go back and face the threshold guardian, Joseph Campbell would say, in order to make it to the next level.

Starting point is 00:10:39 And so I love to hear that. And I'm curious. So you meet Bruce and then all of a sudden you just meet them and you're like, hey, I want to see what you're doing with there. So I'm interested in this. Or do you tell them your story or your vision or how does it proceed from there? Yeah. I mean, at the time, Bruce Tobin had a group of, you know, four or five other clinicians in Victoria. so Vancouver Island, and they were asking for permission from the Canadian government to essentially redo the Hopkins experiment, but less in the context of the experiment, more just in medical access.

Starting point is 00:11:14 Because if 80% of patients are seeing clinically significant decreases in anxiety, depression, in, you know, wherever the studies are being done, why not Canadians? And here's the kicker. Why not Canadians who recently, at that time, 2017, had been given the right to die with medical assistance. and dying, which we call made in Canada. And so, you know, this is where we were, he really ran into this, let's just call it constitutional or we have a charter in Canada, logical inconsistency, where the government says you have liberty over your body and the right to safety and security of your persons to essentially, like so much freedom and liberty, you could actually end your own life. But don't you dare try a mushroom, which in these clinical studies,

Starting point is 00:12:02 has been prudent to be very back. Bruce thought I'm going to ask, and then if that doesn't work, we're going to sue the government. And so I had messaged Bruce, and I essentially said, man, I love what you're doing. Any chance I could come work for free for you and just get into the world. And he just sent me a message back saying, Spencer, nice to hear from you or meet you. I'm heading to Mexico in seven days. I head there for the winter. If you want to meet me before then, come do that.

Starting point is 00:12:29 And so I literally hopped in my parents' car. and drove out West the next day. And that's how we met. And I guess from there we just hit it off, you know, really hit it off. And I started working for him, raising money. But almost instantaneously, I met a couple people who had been working with cannabis. And it became very clear that we just, we had to change the tactic a little bit, that we could go the legal route. Or we could change.

Starting point is 00:13:02 the request from, you know, a doctor asking for access and instead focus on patients and see if we can get the Canadian public behind us to support us. And so that's when, you know, Bruce and I working on the challenge trying to raise money, we met Thomas Hartle and Borgs. And those were two patients who eventually we went public with to the public and said, look at, you know, these two Canadians have the right to die but don't have the right to try psilocybin. And we requested that exemption again from the minister and the minister at the time actually granted it and that really was the first time that I would say we gained any real publicity we got the first legal exemptions for psilocybin in Canada since it

Starting point is 00:13:43 was maybe legal you know 50 years ago that's so awesome yeah it's yeah no I'll leave it there all the chess yeah like you got to you got to watch me I'll keep on talking forever if you let me so no it's all good I I'm curious to hear all about it it's it's it seems like a huge win. I love the idea of switching tactics. You know, it's almost like you're, you're harnessing the wind from another angle when you switch from, from the doctor to the patient.

Starting point is 00:14:14 Maybe you could, what was it that caused you to have that change in strategy? You know, it was a person, honestly. It was one of our, it was one of the people who had, who had worked in government and done it before,

Starting point is 00:14:30 back in the early 2000s for cannabis and said, hey, just so you know, politicians don't give a shit about doctors and therapists and nurses, at least not as this, you know, obscure kind of class of healthcare professionals, right? They care about individuals. They really do. And the Canadian public does too. And they really care about patients, right?

Starting point is 00:14:54 Whose rights are being violated? And so that was just like, well, duh, right? Dr. Bruce Tobin's asking for this access, we're going to sue the government. It's like, that's like a back of the, you know, that's like you send that to the back of the table, back water government, kind of like, somebody deal with this.

Starting point is 00:15:10 But when we bring Thomas Hartle and Laurie Brooks forward, two people who are suffering and are now trying to decide, well, do I end my life with medical assistance and dying, or do I access psilocybin? Let's let the Minister of Health figure that one out. And now the Minister of Health is going, Uh-oh, right? In a way, it's like the blood is on my hands.

Starting point is 00:15:32 Right. If I don't respond here. And luckily, we had an incredibly compassionate health minister. Her name is Patty Hajjou. She's now moved away from being a minister of health to the minister of indigenous affairs. And we've got two new health ministers. To go back those two exemptions approved, we went on to get another 50 exemptions approved, as well as many for health care professionals too.

Starting point is 00:15:59 So, you know, once the patients got the access, it was like, okay, well, how are patients going to access psilocybin assisted psychotherapy if we don't have trained therapists? Now, obviously, those therapists could just train illegally, but we wanted to make a point of, no, this should be legal. And so we requested access for those therapists and doctors to use psilocybin in the context of training, and we got the approval.

Starting point is 00:16:23 And that's the launch of our training program. now, you know, we're in this point of 2020 or 2021 where we've got patients accessing psilocybin seeing amazing, amazing progress in their mental state, right? Like going from absolute depression, demoralization, hopelessness, struggling with, with even getting through chemotherapy and waking up each day to like becoming these vicious advocates who are doing so well and are happy are full of hope and so much better after their single psilocybin journey. You know, things are going so well. And then Trudeau, you know, Justin Trudeau got reelected and changed his cabinet over.

Starting point is 00:17:10 And we got a new health minister, actually two new health ministers. They replaced Padilla Hadou with both Jeanette de Clove and Caroline Bennett. And the second they got into power, they shut the whole program down. and that's brought us pretty much to this date where they made a small amendment to allow access through this thing called the special access program, but like its name suggests, it's very special. It's, you know, not everyone gets access. And so we're now at the point where we're a charter challenge, right, going back to the original

Starting point is 00:17:44 strategy is really the only option we've got. And so we've pushed that forward incredibly hard. you know the reason for changing tactics is just you have to right you have to be you have to be willing to to explore new ways right and just like you said the campbell what you call it the guardian and it's like right when you think things are going well and you've got a strategy the whole world conspires you know to to to essentially say well too bad right now you got a new problem right You got to overcome that. So it really is this continuous journey of how we, how to fight active political campaign

Starting point is 00:18:23 that wants to do everything you possibly can to stop people from accessing psilocybin. And that's what's really become clear. I don't know whose agenda it is, but it seems like everybody within the government is doing everything they possibly can to stop legal access to psilocybin. Meanwhile, it's never been easier to get it unregulated and access. So maybe we could talk a little bit about that. Yeah, absolutely. You know, this is just speculation on my part, and I don't know, but it seems to me that a lot of politicians, at least in the U.S., are get donations from like Pfizer, Big Pharma, or something like that.

Starting point is 00:19:04 And it would make sense that these large corporations that have, you know, help create the curriculum in different medical schools or have different contracts with different, hospitals, it would seem that they would have a lot of money to lose if in fact, you know, you could have this type of psilocybin treatment, you know, this mushroom that grows in the ground for free versus this long, extensive, you know, lifetime subscription to drugs, at least until the end of your life. It seems like there could be some of that going on in the Canadian government. What's your thoughts on that? Oh, I mean, without a doubt, right?

Starting point is 00:19:46 This is a personal problem I have with the way that our government works with pharmaceutical companies right now is, you know, pharmaceutical companies do amazing work sometimes, right? They bring drugs to market that are like incredible. I think the best thing, though, is when individual researchers find these things. Like I forget his name right now. He's from Toronto or happened in the University of Toronto. You know, this is where we discovered insulin for diabetes.

Starting point is 00:20:16 And that was not, you know, there was no patent put on that, right? The right thing to do was like, I just found this miracle drug. Let's share it with the world. Let's not patent it. So, you know, at the end of the day, if there's this radical, you know, treatment option for depression and hopelessness, anxiety, you know, who's at jeopardy? And the answer is shareholders of pharmaceutical companies and the pharmaceutical companies themselves. what's it worth to them? The answer is probably like a trillion dollars over the next couple years.

Starting point is 00:20:52 So when you really think about like, what are we up against? We're up against people who expect to make about a trillion dollars from the SSRIs and different antidepressants that should psilocybin be as effective as it looks within these clinical trials. You know, will it compete those pharmaceutical companies? So you almost got to turn the answer to it around and be like, well, what would you do if a billion dollars or a trillion dollars was on the line? And the answer is almost anything because these companies, their goal as a for-profit company, their legal obligation is to get as many drugs into people as possible, right, to maximize shareholder value. And so I absolutely think for being counter-lobbyed by pharmaceutical companies. I think there's a lot of people who don't want to see psilocybin.

Starting point is 00:21:43 I get through. And if they do, hopefully it's their psilocybin. I've been, right? Right. A patented molecule. So yeah, that's pretty distressing sometimes. And I definitely feel it. The verb, you know, I feel that coming through the government because, you know, in Canada,

Starting point is 00:22:02 if you go outside, we were talking about this before, if I walk down the tree here, there's mushroom dispensary not too far from me. So the answer is like, or the truth here is anybody in Canada can access mushrooms. They can get it online. They can go down to the store and get it. But when it comes to medical treatment, it seems like the entire medical establishment in our government is conspiring to make sure that no one accesses it for medical purposes, which to me is just so backwards.

Starting point is 00:22:33 That should be the priority. If anyone's going to do psilocybin, it should be with a doctor, right? But here we are, right? It's 2023. and just like back in the early, or back in, you know, 2010, when there were cannabis dispensaries all over the place. We got the same thing happening with psilocybin. So the fact that there's not more attention paid to this

Starting point is 00:22:54 and that we're not looking into real solutions for these patients is absurd, but it certainly points back to some hidden agenda. Yeah, that's really well said. And you had mentioned this analogy to like the Wild West. And the more that I listen to the words you just said, it does seem like on some level, like the local government's like, look how much money and tax revenue we can do from here. Like how many people we can help from here. And then you have this push from like the above federal level that's like, well,

Starting point is 00:23:24 we have contracts with these guys, you know. So it does seem like there's this kind of shootout at the OK corral. What's your take on the whole Wild West? And if you were to dig a little deeper into this idea of you can go down the street and buy it. But if you're someone who's at the end of life, you can't even get a doctor to get it. Like, what? It just seems like such a crazy paradox there. Yeah, you know, but it does feel like the Wild West a bit.

Starting point is 00:23:49 And I've got my, I've got my reservations for the Liberal Party right now and how they're handling it. I mean, individually, I've met some of the most amazing MPs ever, right? They're so incredible, so many of them. They've helped us, Jenna Katwin, Hetty Fry, Marcus Polowski, Nathanelner's, Smith like these these politicians really really care about this but the unfortunate thing as far as I can see you know regarding psilocybin and many things in Canada is is the prime minister and the health ministers don't run the show anymore you know like the prime minister's office and the deputies behind them run it and I absolutely assume that they've got agendas and that's they are subject to

Starting point is 00:24:37 I don't know, political bribery or whatever it is. Maybe that's a hard way to put it. But yeah, like, who's setting the agenda? I don't know. You'd think it would be like the Constitution. You think that the health minister would be able to respond to a clear violation of patients' rights and just do it. But it looks like the health minister is completely ignoring this. And they've probably got direct orders.

Starting point is 00:25:02 Do not engage. Now, Minister Patty Hyju, right? She engaged. She was wonderful. She also got moved from her position. Imagine that. I'm not going to, again, I can't speculate. Maybe that's why.

Starting point is 00:25:16 Maybe it's not. But the new ministers certainly didn't follow suit, right? And maybe we're given orders there because they've completely ignored the issue. Like we've flown terminally all cancer patients out to Ottawa to the nation's capital twice, like a group of like six and doctors saying we need to. meet right these people are quite literally going to die they completely ignored us like that's unfathomable it truly is unfathomable and and that's happening right now so there is a say with certain level of confidence somebody within the prime minister's office is telling our ministers of help

Starting point is 00:25:57 shawne eclough and karen bennett do not engage right do not even do not even respond to uh to these people let it go to the courts or just ignore it. I think that's tragic, right? I think this is a complete abdication of responsibility. And when I zoom out even more, just very, very poor governance from our government who should be looking to either enforce the law or change it. Instead, we've got this absolute mess,

Starting point is 00:26:31 this wild west of like, you know, just disorder, if you will. You know, companies selling mushrooms and LSD and DMT operating with impunity, you know, practitioners having to work underground, patients moving underground, and our government just completely ignoring, ignoring the fact that this is happening, that there's the chartered challenge up against them, right? That they're being sued through the Supreme Court. And it looks like the easiest thing to do is,

Starting point is 00:27:04 is just ignore the issue until it's literally on their doorstep, hopefully, you know, in a couple years, right? But not today. Yeah, it's incredible. It's, I don't know how some people sleep at night. You know, I guess they sleep on a pillow made of money or something. But, you know, there's a quote that you said that I really admire, and it's that if the minister does not respond with compassion,

Starting point is 00:27:31 then the courts will respond with justice. And I love that you and the people on your team at Therasville are fighters. And you guys are doing everything you can to bring the face of compassion to the doorstep of the regulator. So the doorstep of the government say, look, look at what's happening. And when you do that and the people turn away, it speaks volumes of who they truly are. Like, you know, there's almost no words to explain the shame that those people should feel. You know, and recently there was a documentary with Lori Brooks called DOS. And I think that getting out there and showing the face of the people that are going through these end of life or going these tragedies and getting to participate, at least on some level in that experience is, like there's no words to explain how moving that is.

Starting point is 00:28:21 How did that come about to be? Can you talk about that a little bit? The documentary, me. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Dost 1, their original movie, followed a woman named Adrian looking to use, I think it was Ibogaine or Iboga. And there was some amazing success with using it. I think it was to get off of opioids or alcohol.

Starting point is 00:28:47 So naturally, you know, with the success of that original movie, it was like, what about psilocybin? And they obviously saw the amazing advocacy that Laurie was doing. And there is an amazing, beautiful story behind every single dose of psilocybin. I think one that, like, most people aren't ready for because, you know, what dose two, in my opinion, did is it took something that we keep talking about as just a medical treatment, right? Just a drug. And everybody who is opposed to psilocybin keeps referring to it as a drug.

Starting point is 00:29:17 It's not a drug. Like it is, but it's not. That's it. It's not what we're talking about here. We're not talking about taking a pill and expecting. change. Like it is quite literally a journey, right? It is a trip. And we call it a trip because like just like a trip, you got to prepare for it. It's going to be a while. It's, you know, there's going to be unknowns. It's going to be scary. It's going to be beautiful. It's going to be so

Starting point is 00:29:40 many things. And Lori's story of those two really delves into that to to everything surrounding, you know, the taking of this medicine. And quite frankly, the medical establishment, I mean, psychiatry is not ready for that. It's going to upend it. And I think that that documentary is the first preview into like, you know, what the future of psychotherapy could be or at least one avenue, right? And that is the the, the antigenic or the psychedelic avenue where people use substances to help them, to help change their consciousness and help them perceive, you know, themselves and all the hurts and their ego the pain in a completely new light and that's what it really is it's a tool for a much broader psychothera therapeutic journey or trip dose two did a really

Starting point is 00:30:35 good job of that and and i hope that we see more documentaries because there they're just as this fundamental misunderstanding maybe of what's going on how psilocybin's working that if I could say this, this is true for so many things. If everyone just understood it, you know, we wouldn't be having this conversation. It would be allowed. Yeah, that's really well said. And I'm glad that this kind of information is coming to the foreground.

Starting point is 00:31:00 There's another documentary called Peace of Mind that Nick Murray, who is, I think he's the CEO of Wake, and he has a place down in Jamaica where they took these, you know, athletes from Canada, Riley Coat. the hockey enforcer and a bunch of people that had traumatic brain injury and PTSD. And it was similar to the documentary dose, but with like a different flavor. You know, and I think that these ideas of psilocybin and psychedelics that are helping people, not only with psychiatric disorders, but actual traumatic injuries. And you could argue that end of life is both of those things.

Starting point is 00:31:42 And to see these medicines come out and change people's perspectives in a way, that is measurable. And by measurable, I mean, you don't need a bar graph. You don't need a sort of, you know, a brain imaging machine. You can talk to their family and their family's tears are proof that it works, you know, like these real, tangible things that can happen. And it, I'm positive and I'm, I am very thankful to see things moving the way they are. And the pushback we're getting, I think, is going to be pushed away.

Starting point is 00:32:21 I'm sure that there's a bigger fight coming, but it just seems like so many people are finding ways to reinvent or get to see themselves in a different perspective. And I do think when people take psilocybin, it's almost like you get a whole other perspective of your life. It's almost like you get to get in contact with this version of yourself that's always been there, but you've never known. And when you do, it's like meeting yourself for the first time. I'm curious as to what are some of the, I was talking with John a little bit ago and he was telling me that there are some other events on the horizon for Therasel.

Starting point is 00:32:56 Maybe you could talk about where you guys are at right now and some things that you have that are hopeful on the front lines coming up. For sure. So one of the things is we just, we went to Ottawa. We've got a little documentary coming out. Nice. A mini doc. It's like 15 minutes long, but I think it's beautiful. outlines the trips that we made to Ottawa because we had to go there.

Starting point is 00:33:21 I think I'd mentioned we went twice to go see the minister, and we thought there's no way in health. The Minister of Health is going to publicly, you know, what's a snub, right, patients and doctors who are flying all the way out to Ottawa to essentially say, I'm going to die if you don't give me this medicine. And I really, I've been working on the delivery of this because I think it gets lost on people sometimes but you know we often don't deal with things until it's too late right um let's just say that you know things aren't an issue until until like it affects you um you know uh a road closure in

Starting point is 00:34:00 Toronto here I think of you know like yeah the Don Valley Parkway's closed who cares right that's everyone's attitude until they're till they need to take that road and then it's like shit what the hell and so you know a lot of people in Canada are right now debating medical assistance and dying are our medical suicide laws that are due to expand they were supposed to expand this year to allow people so the provisions essentially say that medical assistance and dying is available for anyone with an intractable illness who for whom death is foreseeable so it's like you're dying soon there's nothing we can do you're

Starting point is 00:34:41 in a lot of pain. It's the humane thing to do, right? To offer that person, at least many people think so. And our constitution or our charter supports that. But then we had all these people arguing, well, what if death isn't foreseeable, right? What if I want to take, what if I want to end my life because I'm not dying soon, but I still am in a lot of pain? And so we thought, well, let's do that too.

Starting point is 00:35:03 And then it obviously expanded to what about people with severe mental illness, right? Like anxiety and depression. My whole day, I'm just depressed. I'm anxious. I don't want to live anymore. Why are you forcing me to and to take ending my life into my hands? Why won't you support me medically and help me do it painlessly? And so again, it was decided that we would make that change.

Starting point is 00:35:25 And that was set to happen in February of 2023, so a couple months ago. And we were going to Ottawa the same month to more or less protest and say, what the hell? right we're now at a point where we are telling people uh you know because you've tried all the available treatments and failed them we will now help you end your life we'll prioritize that for you but here's the kicker the same government is withholding treatments that could be very very effective in fact 80% effective in treating their underlying illness their mental illness depression anxiety. That makes me so angry, right, that that's what's happening.

Starting point is 00:36:11 That's the state of Canadian healthcare. We are prioritizing medical assisted death over medical psilocybin, right? We're prioritizing medical assistance and dying over medical assistance and living. Sorry, that's the way it is. That's the truth. We had gotten to Ottawa, and sure enough, many Canadians decided that they were uncomfortable, and they actually pushed the decision out a year. So while we were there, we actually got to meet with the made committee,

Starting point is 00:36:37 both myself and a doctor on our team, gave testimonies. And the committee who runs medical assistance in dying actually said and made a recommendation to the federal government that they actually expand access to psilocybin because of this. Here we are, you know, almost halfway through the year. Still no progress has been made. I just know if we're going to get to next February, right? And it's going to be like, well, do we expand this thing, right?

Starting point is 00:37:04 Do we let people end their life? And I dread the day that a single Canadian, you know, is helped with medical assistance and dying for treatment-resistant depression or anxiety before they're presented the option of psilocybin because I've seen it work. I still struggle to find the words for it. And it really just comes down to like, what if you're not? one of my friends or family members needs to use that road soon, right? How many Canadians are there out there who don't realize that that could be them,

Starting point is 00:37:38 that could be their loved ones, that could be someone that they know having to make this decision of like, do I take my life right now? Or is there a potential solution called psilocybin, right? Just, just one of many. There are obviously many other social determinants of health that are problematic there, right? A lot of people are looking to maid or medical assistance in dying because they don't have housing or are being pushed by not so great health care professionals who don't see any other options for treatment.

Starting point is 00:38:06 So there are lots of issues, but certainly there's this logical and moral inconsistency. And the government seems to want to prioritize medical assistance and dying over medical access to psilocybin. That's unconscionable. It's reprehensible, quite frankly. And that is on Justin Trudeau, Joni Thiclo, and Caroline Bennett. They're the only ones who can fix that. I can't imagine.

Starting point is 00:38:29 I can't imagine that the more stories that come, first off, I'm so thankful you're here telling the story today because I think that the more people who begin to hear this story, the more people that see the documentaries and the more people whose lives are touched by someone who's taken their own life or someone that has depression or someone themselves has gone through a depressive state, like it seems to me as horrible and as unconscionable as it is, I think it's a great opportunity because I think we're beginning to see

Starting point is 00:39:01 policy made from the ground up. And like, that's where the real change happens. It doesn't happen from the top down. It happens from the bottom up. And I think that yourself and Thrasel are a great sort of story. Like, you guys are the hero's journey. You are the guys taking the fight to the doorstep of the threshold guardian. It's like, hey, this is not right.

Starting point is 00:39:23 We're going to stand up. We're going to fight for this. And I don't care what great novel you read or what movie you've ever loved. Like this is something that everybody can get behind because this is our chance as a human culture to get behind a good fight that stands up for the little guy, that stands up for the little girl, that stands up for the person with a problem. And I'm thankful, is that what gives you the drive to continue on the fight? Like what is the mission statement that you and the team and everyone fighting with you are are rallying behind? it certainly is you know to continue this as a grassroots you know a solution to a crisis you're I think you're right on the mark here like you know let's just even say that innovation on

Starting point is 00:40:14 psychic innovation this is just the thing like like this little tiny like we don't even know what these things really do speaking medically and scientifically Western medicine like doesn't really understand them innovation doesn't happen in the lab. It doesn't. It happens that they're in the real world, right? Once we get this into the hands of psychotherapists and people who start experimenting, like,

Starting point is 00:40:37 and that's just a math equation, right? That's just a number of interactions and different, diverse, you know, procedures and protocols being used. We're just going to discover so much more once we give people the freedom to use and experiment this with psychedelics. So this idea that the government is going to help you, again is absurd absolutely absurd as first of all as an individual you're just a you know

Starting point is 00:41:04 you're a fish in the ocean right as far as I can tell and again I'm just speaking in my experience right I would love for people to to prove me wrong but also I just don't expect it I don't think that the government is there to hold your hand or to help you nor should I nor do I think we should want that right like we should want the freedom and to build the infrastructure to help ourselves you know that that is the point of becoming independent we allow you know our government should help us help ourselves and make our own decisions for us we don't need them giving us handouts or anything like that they should just create the conditions economically the health conditions where we can where we can really help ourselves and

Starting point is 00:41:50 It's not a defense government. I think government's wonderful. There are things they need to do, defense, you know, public infrastructure, right? I think of, you know, what really changed Europe and made it the way it was. Sewers, right? Like, we've got past this point of realizing that we need a government, a central authority, to put in sewers because one man's, you know, mess and cesspit is someone else's disease. And so the second we got sewers and plumbing, all of a sudden infectious disease went away. And what else did we see is like we also saw a free society come out of that, a liberal one that was very, very able to take care of itself and to self-organize and manage.

Starting point is 00:42:37 And so similarly here, we don't need the government to, you know, we shouldn't have the government telling us who can access psilocybin, you know, making it illegal on the basis. This is of zero scientific evidence, right? Where's the evidence to show that psilcidens harmful? There is none. We don't need them to do that. We need them to get out of the way and let doctors practice medicine, let people make their own decisions because they just don't care about you. They don't care about Janice Hughes.

Starting point is 00:43:05 They don't care about Thomas Hartle. They don't care about Lori Brooks in our experience. I can tell you that. They don't respond to their emails. They seem to be prioritizing medical assistance in dying, over access to a mushroom. The best thing they could do is create regulations to put this into the hands of doctors and therapists

Starting point is 00:43:23 so that they can help these people access medicine. And really that's what we're trying to recreate here. People and the infrastructure to bring psilocybin to patients exists. Right. It's the doctors and therapists and nurses who just need a legal pathway so that they can learn, get the training. That's why we provide training.

Starting point is 00:43:43 You know, it's all right in front of us. the government needs to get out of the way. They really do. I don't, what a strange world where a manager tells a doctor that the doctor shouldn't be doing something? You know, like, that's so bizarre to me. Yeah. I mean, in this special access program that I had mentioned, we had bureaucrats at Health Canada, unknown bureaucrats, not doctors, telling the doctor,

Starting point is 00:44:11 I think your patient needs to try electroconvulsive therapy, right, electric shock therapy, before they access psilocybin and the doctors said are you kidding me right it's like you try electric shock therapy and come back and tell me if that's a real option right like preposterous absolutely preposterous and quite frankly illegal that's my that's my claim it goes again the charter right it goes again so maybe not illegal but against the constitution right that's that's not right so it's just we have to prove that now um and really that's why these places are operating with impunity right now, you know, selling mushrooms across Canada is the government knows that they're going against the charter. They know that. Otherwise, they would

Starting point is 00:44:57 enforce the law. They know they can't because if they charge these places who are supplying medical psilocybin, they know that they will lose in court. Like, digest that for a second. The same government who's telling cancer patients and doctors know you can't access this. We go, well, why aren't, like, should we just go buy it on the street? Because if we can do that, why aren't you enforcing the laws there that go silent? Oh, yeah, we can't talk about that. I know the answer, right? The answer is, if they bring that to the courts, the courts will side with the people selling the mushrooms, right?

Starting point is 00:45:32 They know they've got a losing case. They're not dumb. And that's been part of the very interesting, you know, for me, it's been very interesting bringing this court case forward. is it's much easier to get charged by the government and have a constitutional challenge when the government's pressing the charges like they did with cannabis. It's much more difficult when you have to bring the constitutional challenge to the government, which is what we're doing. You know, we've got eight patient plaintiffs that have their own court case,

Starting point is 00:46:02 a constitutional challenge with Paul Lewin being the lead lawyer on that. We're probably fundraised about $150,000. always we're going to need money in order to continue that. But, but yeah, like, that's just the way it is. You want to change the law. Government's not going to do it, right? You got to fundraise the money and bring the constitutional challenge to them. Yeah, that's a great point.

Starting point is 00:46:32 For those who may not know the statues up there, can you explain to them? Like, why would the government lose to the people that own the storefront mushroom shops? For sure. So what became incredibly clear and any wordless of their legal knowledge base can understand that psilocybin and cannabis are similar. And even in some ways, access to medical assisted dying and abortion and cannabis are all very similar to. It all rests on the same case law. And you can go back and look at those cases, the Carter case. Parker case, a couple other skipper in my mind right now. Look up Henry Morgantaller, right? These are people who went to court and using actually,

Starting point is 00:47:28 so Justin Trudeau's father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, is the person who brought forward our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So I think it's ironic that Justin Trudeau is betraying his father's wish to have a constitution that's followed and is actively going, against it. I think the irony there is disgusting. But this charter has this closet in section seven that says every Canadian has the right to life, liberty and security of persons. And all of the cases that I've referenced, keep coming back to this. And it's like you have the right to liberty, right? Liberty to make your own medical decisions about about yourself.

Starting point is 00:48:06 You have the right to life. It goes without saying, right? Government says, we'll help you end your life and you go, well, what about my right to life? All I need is Bill is Simon. That one's pretty easy to understand. And then security of persons just means that you should be able to access your medicine without the threat of going to jail. That's not security of persons, right? So all that to say, using that same charter seven argument,

Starting point is 00:48:31 we've made the case that people have the right to choose to end their life with medical assistance and dying. For me after that one, it's like, well, you have the right to anything almost, right? Like that's just that's landmark. But it also applies to the right to make your own choices about your body with, with abortion in Canada and the right to medical cannabis for the same reasons. So the consistencies there are so obvious. Canadians have the right to access medical treatments that they want, right?

Starting point is 00:49:03 Especially when it's supported by their doctor, right? And anything to infringe them or to make it possibly unsafe or illegal or inaccessible goes against the charter. And so the government knows that if they try to charge these medical dispensaries who every time you go into one, you just have the same using this for medical purposes and you likely are, they know that if they try to bring those companies and people who are selling that to court, that those people will just get the lawyers that we're working with and say, how do I defend myself?

Starting point is 00:49:39 And the lawyer will go, well, that's easy. section of the charter. And they go, oh, crap, okay. So right now, like, I know the lawyers who are advising all of those people who are their clients saying, you don't have to worry about the police there. You don't have to worry about any of that.

Starting point is 00:49:56 You're not breaking any, like, you're breaking laws. Sure, but those laws go against the charter. So you don't have to worry. We'll defend you. And so that's the pretext of those businesses and of the decisions to sell civil society. is you're operating, you can operate with impunity because we know what the outcome of this of this court case would be. So in a way, it's like good for them. They're selling mushrooms,

Starting point is 00:50:22 and that's happening every single day. The government knows it as well. And I'm happy to be proven wrong on this. I mean, it seems the only way to prove me wrong would be like, well, then do it, right? Go get the government to charge you. And then there's a world, I think, where, you know, we get like a thousand people just to bring a bag of mushrooms to Parliament Hill and we demand to be arrested. It won't happen. It won't happen, you know? So I think there's something cool in that.

Starting point is 00:50:52 It might be that maybe a, maybe there's a future campaign where we do something like that, get a real march going. Because, yeah, like I said to you before, it's like, shit or get off the pot, right? Like, all we're doing is completely mismanaging the country. and that's coming from the highest levels of government. It's disgrace. Yeah. Sometimes I have this idea that psychedelics or psilocybin is like this Trojan horse

Starting point is 00:51:19 that all of a sudden, like people get on board with, like governments or pharmaceutical companies, they get on board with, whether they're trying to create a patent for it. And then they start using it and then they realize everything they're doing is wrong. You know, it seems that psilocybin or psychedelics have this property of dissolving boundaries. And I see that happening not only when I take them or people that I know take them, but I see it happening in society itself where, you know, once you begin seeing things from a different perspective, you start realizing like, God, look at this boundary.

Starting point is 00:51:52 This is not like a, if you think of a law as a boundary and the way that psychedelics are pushing up against those boundaries, they're dissolving those boundaries. People are beginning to see like, this law is kind of BS, man, or this is ridiculous. And it seems that this, maybe if we go with the premise of as above so below, the same thing that's happening in the fight with psychedelics is also happening in our societies. Can you see like this, can you see that happening too? It seems like this is something that's bigger than just psychedelics and laws. But it seems that there's a whole kind of boundary dissolution happening in our society.

Starting point is 00:52:31 Do you see something on a bigger scale happening as well? I mean, I totally do. That's not lost on me, right? There's an incredible amount of distrust going on in the world right now. People believing that institutions are lying to them. And that's unfortunate because that's not how society works. Society needs trust. It needs institutional trust.

Starting point is 00:52:58 And we need to be operating in a way that the people aren't going to fight everything and be against everything. And public health has suffered the greatest since COVID. I won't speak about, you know, whether or not COVID vaccines work or not our mandates, worker masks. It doesn't matter. What I can do is to say that whoever pulled off that whole thing did a terrible job. And it eroded a lot of public trust.

Starting point is 00:53:24 And I'm not saying I could do better. I'm just saying that it was done incredibly poorly and that people are more divisive and divided. We saw the truckers in Canada, you know, protesting. It was not a small issue. And so when our medical establishment acts in bad faith and gets caught, I have no remorse for them. It's like someone needs to be fired here and we need better people doing this. And that's what I'm seeing. Something I've got to explain and put out there is we actually have two court cases going right now. At times we have three. We're working with another. lawyer named Nicholas Pope who's been helping the hundreds of healthcare practitioners who had

Starting point is 00:54:08 gotten exemptions to use psilocybin or who had applied for the same exemptions that the first, you know, 20 doctors had gotten. I had mentioned that we started off under Minister Hyju getting these Section 56 as they're called. The new ministers have been ignoring them. And so there's about like 300 outstanding exemptions that are just being ignored. And so this, this lawyer, Nicholas Pope, is going, well, we can force them to make a a decision and we can actually get a judge to make a ruling if the decision goes against the constitution. So the decision wouldn't legalize psilocybin. It would just legalize it for those people. So we're only a couple months away from we've had our hearing and everything. The decision is going

Starting point is 00:54:47 to be made in the next couple of months. But this is the most amazing part is the evidence that we got to see because they had to share their documents with us showed us three examples of the government acting in bad faith. Like, live. lying, you know? And that is, the first one, is they made these claims that, you know, a clinical trial would be the best possible route for us, right, that the politician should go the route of clinical trials. Well, we got access to other documents and we had their internal specialists. So HealthCan his own experts saying clinical trials are impossible. You can't do it for this purpose. It just wouldn't work. You can't have a sponsor running it and it's unethical

Starting point is 00:55:28 to ask a question for which you already know the answer to or for what you already know the answer to or for which there is no need. So they lied on that front. They also lied and said that, you know, we, that it's, it's not necessary for healthcare practitioners to have access to psilocybin for training. Their own experts said we advise that you do this. It's unsafe and it doesn't follow any of the best practices of psychotherapy to, to not have healthcare professionals trained in the modality before they deliver it. Health Canada said there's no evidence or no, no, no suggestion. that you actually even need this. And then finally they said,

Starting point is 00:56:03 there's no evidence saying that Sylacin is safe and effective. And it's like, it's the most blatant lie of them all. There is so much evidence. And they ignored our question of where shows that they didn't provide any. So this is the same thing as like,

Starting point is 00:56:19 you know, this larger issue of like, how does any government expect to be taken seriously if they lie to people? This is, this is, you know, there are some days where I'm like, I honestly not that we need revolution but we need to fix this problem right we know how government should work we do we know how health authorities should work they should not act in bad faith

Starting point is 00:56:47 especially not health Canada yet they are that's a charge I'm making right that's the charge we're making in our court case and we're going to find out the answer to that really really soon as far as I'm concerned seeing all the evidence and with our lawyer we're going to in that case. I know we are. We're going to be proven right. And that's going to be embarrassing for the government. It really will be. And so when you say that, you know, as above so below, right, like we're seeing that these institutions are not immune from a scandal, from poor management. That's what we're seeing right now. The government is poorly managing these drug laws. you know, at least in the case of psilocybin, I've got a, I've got a view of that, right, that not many people do.

Starting point is 00:57:39 And it's unfortunate to see, to see the way that it's panning out. It really is. I really hope that we can bring some reasonable psilocybin regulations forward that might be a good start and prove that, you know, next time we need to do this, we don't need to go to the courts. The government doesn't act so shade. they actually work with politicians, with doctors and patients to, you know, bring forward regulations for new drugs that may be available through slightly different pathways, right? Maybe not through critical trials or through the traditional clinical trial pathway where you actually approve a drug that comes from a pharmaceutical company.

Starting point is 00:58:19 Man, I'm so proud, man. Thank you, Spencer. Theriselle, thank you. I mean, I'm so stoked to see people that are. in a way, this is the emerging fight that's beginning to happen everywhere. You know, in the U.S., we have places like Colorado and Oregon, and they have got their own battles. They're fighting.

Starting point is 00:58:39 But it seems to me that Canada is on the forefront up there, and they are shining a light on the pathway forward. And I'm so thankful that there's people that are out there fighting, that are strategizing, that are working together to bring solutions to people that need it the most and pointing out the hypocrisies and fighting the good fight. You know, do you think,

Starting point is 00:59:04 if you were to put on your hat for the future, like this could have long-term ramifications for the medical industry forever. Like, there's ways that this could change clinical trials forever. There's ways that this could change the relationship between governments and people and medicine. Are there some ideas that you think worthy about thinking about for changing the process of the medical and in relationships to to drugs and

Starting point is 00:59:31 people yeah absolutely i mean i think we need a restructuring of you know i think there is there is a need for restructuring the relationship of pharmaceutical companies and politicians and medical establishments i'm just going to say it there is a major conflict of interest that is not discussed um and and the the pharmaceutical industrial complex has far too much power, far too much political power. And I don't like that at all. You know, I think that the best thing we could do is take funding, you know, from NIH or CIOF funding, right, or government funding, and be putting more money into, you know, organizations such as our own that are trying to do real science and research on drugs like this without any need of,

Starting point is 01:00:25 of making a profit for ourselves, right? That's why we're a nonprofit. Now, it's not an attack on capitalism. Capitalism's great. It's just you need really, really good policies for ensuring that there is a barrier between private companies and government. I do not see such barrier when it comes to many

Starting point is 01:00:44 pharmaceutical companies in the medical establishment and the government. It's something that I would love to personally get more into. I would love to expand my career to take on that a bit more, right? I think that would be amazing. And then maybe just to wind it back to, you know, another solution I see.

Starting point is 01:01:04 Goes back to one of your original questions of like, you know, we were talking about this hero's journey, right? Like what can be done? We can't expect anybody else but ourselves to solve this problem. And I always go back to like, what do psychedelics tell you what is one of the greatest things is like it gives you the,

Starting point is 01:01:25 absolute power to, or what's the word, right word, it makes it very clear that you are the one with agency to change the world, right? At least your world and the world of people around you. So I think that that's something that psychedelics, I hope will bring to the world as this return to conscientiousness that we really are, you know, capable of. of massive, massive change in this world and that our votes matter, our voices matter, everything that we do matters. And if we don't look at the world through that lens, our society could very well collapse, right? We cannot take that for granted the fact that the lights are on every day, the fact that we don't have an authoritarian government, at least not yet.

Starting point is 01:02:21 and the fact that we have these freedoms, that we have a charter, like there needs to be a certain amount of gratitude for that. And letting things like what's going on with these patients who are trying to access psilocybin, letting these go unnoticed and not treating them with a great deal of seriousness is a perfect example of how, if left uncheck, that could just, that could just, you know, that could just cascade into into more and more and more civil rights issues where we don't even up we don't even uphold the laws that we've created to protect people.

Starting point is 01:03:00 So that's where I see this going. And I see it as every individual's responsibility in the Western, well, not even just the Western in the world to uphold the values of their society, of the U.S. Constitution, right, of the Canadian, harder. That's the world I know very, very well. And it's the one that I want to see continue to succeed. And if we're going to do that, people need to take on a lot more personal responsibility and need to realize that they are agents of change. They have agency to do that. I hope secular X will wake that up in people. Something needs to do. That's beautiful. I agree. I think that the way we move forward is by everybody becoming the best version of themselves. And the first step there is just having the courage to know that you can be better.

Starting point is 01:03:53 And then the next step is like, okay, I'm going to read this book today. I'm going to go for a walk today. Whatever that first step is, beginning to have the faith and courage in yourself to become the best you can lead you to the destination of like, we need to take care of the least among us over here because the people in charge right now on some level are the least among us, you know, and this idea of when we look at, you know, It saddens me to think, at least in my government, where I look and see people talk about, you know, corporations and government, but it's, and well, in socialism and capitalism and capitalism. And it seems that what we have is like this form of corporate socialism, where you just privatize all the profits and you socialize all the losses.

Starting point is 01:04:39 And it seems to me like that's one thing that's, you know, that's what psychedelics is bringing to the forefront. Like, look, this is just complete privatization. And we're seeing people in hospitals that, hey, you can have assisted suicide because that way you're no longer a burden on us. But you can't have this medicine that might make you better because then we're going to have to pay for you longer. You know, it saddens me to think. But I think when you wipe away the dirt from the screen or when you cleanse the doors of perception, that's exactly what's going on. It's that the people at the top have seen everybody down here at the bottom is like this number. Okay, fine.

Starting point is 01:05:13 You're depressed. Then just kill yourself. You know, don't take this thing that'll make you better because then you might have some. animosity towards us. I don't want to go too diabolical on everybody, but that's kind of the way I see it too. Absolutely. That's got to change.

Starting point is 01:05:29 And yeah, you know, I think sometimes, I think that one of the reasons that I've gotten so much more into, let's say, like, religion and divinity, not that I'm like a Bible thump or anything, but it really has become more interesting. to me is that, you know, in what I've read, like, that's a lot of what at least Christianity had to offer people was this idea that, um, that you have agency and that it's a virtue, uh, to take part in society and, uh, and to do your best. Like you said, to take care of the least

Starting point is 01:06:08 among you, right? That was, that was what Christianity professed to do was to be the religion for the poor, for the weak. Um, and, and to actually take care of. and that's i'm not saying it has to be through christianity or through buddhism or through islam i'm just saying that these are moral foundations that we all share whether or not we read a book right whether or not we we we will profess to be part of some um you know some religion um or some creed so i think there's needs there's a need for a little bit of return to that of of you know a moral philosophy that that allows us to all be like, hey, we've actually got a goal here. It is to help people who are suffering right now.

Starting point is 01:06:58 And if we aren't taking care of that, it doesn't matter how much money we have, you know, how could we possibly live in a world where we see people suffering the way they are, right? That should be one of the most important things that we do is take care of people who are in abject, and pain and suffering. really is the goal at the end of the day of Therissel and we're doing. People, as you say, have the right to die. They're suffering. Let's work together and help them.

Starting point is 01:07:26 Let's put up the profits aside for a second. Yeah. I'm glad that you brought up this idea of spirituality because that's something that seems to permeate the psychedelic experience. And regardless of what denomination anybody is, you know, I think that this return to spirituality is, in fact, the moral foundation we need to move forward. And it does seem to me that it's a spiritual event to see someone who was addicted to something,

Starting point is 01:07:53 take this substance that comes from the ground, not only get better, but then become an advocate to help other people that are going through that journey. And I see that a lot. Like I see the person that was on the edge or the precipice of the cliff ready to jump. And they get this spark in them, whether it's ibogaine or psilocybin or some sort of entheon. in and all of a sudden they're given the knowledge of how to fix themselves. But they don't just use it for themselves. They take that knowledge and then they open a center and then they become this guiding

Starting point is 01:08:27 light for other people. And that's the spiritual nature that I'm seeing. So like you said, it doesn't have to be Christianity or Buddhism. But to see that take place. Yeah, it's beautiful, man. And that's going to, I think that is going to be, it's like the hyphae that grows together on a, and when you're growing psilocybin, you can see our community growing together in a way that is spiritual in nature.

Starting point is 01:08:49 I'm wondering, maybe you could talk a little bit about, a little bit more about spirituality and the nature of it in the psychedelic space. Absolutely. I mean, I would just say that I don't think it's any coincidence that many of the people that we've treated, no matter how much of an atheist they are, end up having psychedelic experiences with Jesus. It's like, what gives, right? or God, let's just say.

Starting point is 01:09:15 And that's the word I want to start using because I don't think psychedelics or that I don't want to push anyone, you know, religious creed. I think it's just like God. I think that God, and here's my belief, not, no way am I pushing on anyone. I think every human being has a God-shaped, you know, either whole or peace in their heart. And that those without God have a God-shaped whole and they need something to fill it. And I see people become, you know, radical extremists of this belief or that belief, you know, always an ism or something like that, right? They take on the seemingly religious kind of zealicy of pushing their cause forward. And it comes back to like, I think that's what happens when you have this lack of spirituality, this God-shaped whole in your heart.

Starting point is 01:10:09 what is purpose and i do believe that in this statement that if there is no god there is no purpose i think that is a is a human fundamental to have a god i'm not saying which one i'm just saying to believe yeah that there is something greater in this life than waking up and making money and eating and having sex you know it's like there is something better and so again i think it's no coincidence that AA, right, is so heavily like God-based, right, is like believing in God and that there is a God and that there is like someone out there, you know, who's above you and might be able to help you. I think that that's necessary to have purpose in life and to believe in that because it's a motivation. I'm not saying everyone needs it. I know lots of

Starting point is 01:11:02 people who don't believe in God and they're doing great. But, you know, for thousands and thousands of years, like thousands of years, we've, there have been, you know, there's been a belief in God in a God or some spirits. And it's really served people. I don't, I don't think we're as smart as we think we are, where we just think we can do away with that and we'll be fine. I call BS. I think that this spirituality, that these age old golden philosophies, right, thou shall not kill, you know, and there are many, many, many other, right? You can look at the Ten Commandments for a starter, and I'm sure there's lots in other religions, right? These foundational beliefs, the golden rule, right?

Starting point is 01:11:47 These things are like thousands of years old, right? Just to throw them aside and be like, guy, yeah, it's a bunch of pagan bullshit, you know? That's ridiculous. And we've got to seriously reconsider that, you know, how we do that. it'll have to be done with grace, right? I would never want anyone pushing their religious beliefs on anyone else. But I can certainly see a nice diverse world where we all believe in different things and our,

Starting point is 01:12:12 and we honor that. And perhaps psychedelics will integrate its way into all of those, into those different religions or spiritual beliefs. So I see, I see God as purpose. At least it's played a huge role in my life. Yeah, I love the way you explain that. You know, for me,

Starting point is 01:12:31 You know, sometimes when I think of God, I think of Christopher Hitchens. Not that Christopher Hitchens is a God, but Christopher Hitchens wrote the book that God isn't great. And he argued so elegantly for like this not having a God. But I can't help but disagree with the point of like believing in something bigger than yourself, regardless of what it is, can tie you to someone in a different part of the world who also believes in something bigger than themselves. And even though those things may be different, the idea that you both believe in something bigger than yourself is something that should unite you. And it shouldn't matter your, you know, and that's the foundation, I think, for this idea of spirituality. And I think that that's something that brings spiritual out of the forefront.

Starting point is 01:13:17 And, you know, there's, if you look at biblical quotes, there's this great quote that says, without a vision, the people perish. And it doesn't matter what your vision is, but you've got to have this vision of something bigger because that's where faith comes from. And maybe that's why we are seeing the people at the end of their life on the front lines of this fight because they're closest to this transcendental object at the end of time. And they're somehow in communion with it. And they're bringing this thing back. The same way when you and I find ourselves on a high dose psychedelic trip trying to bring something back, so too is someone at the end of their life trying to bring something back. And it's this idea of sharing that thing. And I think that that's what Thrasail is doing, Spencer.

Starting point is 01:13:57 So I think that you guys are bringing something back from this space and you're using it to fight the good fight, man. I'm so excited for you guys. Thank you. And I agree with everything you just said, right? Like those without faith or purpose perish. I think that's totally it, right? I think we live in a society that is void of any hope, right? Of any meaning.

Starting point is 01:14:22 I think that's sad, right? It's like if you don't believe in in God, if you don't believe in this collectivism, right, that there is this purpose. Why not just be a nihilistic asshole, right? Why not just, why not just do everything for yourself and be, you know, Scrooge McDuck, right? Getting everything for yourself and for no one else. I think that, you know, I think that that's maybe what's happening a little, a little too much. It's permeating itself in the fabrics. of our society these days and and to just you know with without god or or any religious

Starting point is 01:15:01 philosophy claim that no i'm a good person i believe in these things because i discovered them it's like no you didn't it took humanity thousands and thousands of years to discover those things and get them right right right you stand on the shoulders of giants of your ancestors who died and fought for those values and you know suffered when they were lost and benefited when they were followed uh i really hope we have we have a return to that and again like yeah psychedelics are a return to that maybe maybe not if not done the right way if not respected greatly um and that is something i mean if you don't use them right sure work right you don't use them right you can be abused by your therapist if you don't use them right, it can send you into a terrible psychosis.

Starting point is 01:15:52 And so they're dangerous too. But if used right, they can be beautiful. They can return you to consciousness and make your life better and teach you amazing, beautiful things. I hope that that's what will come with them. Yeah, I do. And I'm reminded of when I think about psychedelics, I'm reminded of some things that, I'm reminded of some things that, I recently saw this thing with Ram Dass, and he was talking about how people take themselves really seriously. And it seems that psychedelics on some level are evoking the gods of humor, whether it's coyote or Hayoka or, you know, they have like their own sense of humor to them.

Starting point is 01:16:38 And it allows you to kind of laugh at the person that is like just accumulating everything. And they're like all bummed out. Like I feel bad for that person, but at the same time, it's kind of funny. And it kind of gives people the courage to fight against that corruption. When you see people in government that are like, I got this government contract. Maybe the answer to all this corruption is humor. And it may be a dark humor. It may be like, how can you look at these people and not, do you have any idea how ridiculous it is that you guys see all this in front of you and you have the answers and you refuse to do it?

Starting point is 01:17:11 But on some level, I think that there's, I hate to say, a dark side of spirituality, but like there's this dark humor. that forces people to laugh in the face of tragedy. And I think that that's another aspect of spirituality that psychedelics is bringing. Does that make sense at all? Oh, I love the example. You know, like me and my friends at the gym always used to, you know, whenever you're on the bench press, you're squatting. You try to make the other person laugh.

Starting point is 01:17:37 And the reason is because if you're laughing, your muscles stop working. They stop. And I think that's something that like I hope we study more. like, why is it when we laugh all of our organs, or not our organs, but our extremity, like, our limbs give out. I think it's, it's for beautiful reasons, right? I think it's because it's like, it's the thing that has evolved. I think it's no, it's no like mystery, right? It's like, that was an evolved thing to help us digest concepts that, that otherwise maybe were very difficult. And so the fool in the king's court, right, wasn't just the person who told the truth.

Starting point is 01:18:16 to the king, right? You did it in a way that was funny so that the king could laugh at himself. And in a way, he was the only one that was allowed to tell truth, right? Because sometimes that's what like all my favorite comedy is, right? Because it's the truth. And laugh before you even really think about it, right? People who like, you know, maybe totally, like their agenda is completely opposite to what you're saying. We've all seen it. Once they laugh, you're like, oh, I got you. And it's because it's like, you just did. Right. You just, you got them. And I think of myself, right, like, whenever I was young, that was my tactic on my parents. If they were ever really upset, I'd make them laugh.

Starting point is 01:18:55 But the second they start laughing, I'm like, I'm good, you know? Yeah, it disarms them. And we all see that, you know, I think everyone's experienced that at some point in their life. So I love that you said that laughter, right? Humor is the greatest way to disarm terrible things, right? if you bring someone and someone stops taking them seriously. And the truth is that, like, everybody needs to do that in a way, right? We're all too committed to the wrong things.

Starting point is 01:19:26 It's like, just relax. Take it easy. You know, stop taking yourself so seriously. You're probably wrong, you know? Yeah. Yeah, it's super true. It's, it is like the great equalizer. And I think that that's, you know, again, that's the here.

Starting point is 01:19:44 journey too is is getting to this point where you're on I think it was Alan Watts who said once you achieve Satori all that's left to do is have a good laugh right yeah like exactly Spencer I I love talking to you man and I'm so thankful that I got to spend some time with you today I'm going to be doing some panels in the future so you're going to be on my short list I'd love to have you come back and have a fuller discussion with more people where we could bounce more ideas off each other. But yeah, man, me too. And maybe we can, maybe we can start doing some practical jokes in the community or something.

Starting point is 01:20:20 But that would be a great thing to do, right? If there are any funny people out there who want to help us lobby the Canadian government and are good writers or anything, yeah. Yeah. Because I would, I think we could definitely use some humor in our campaigns. I know the perfect people. I know the perfect people. I'll hook you guys up

Starting point is 01:20:43 I know these guys that have like a meme page they're all about omnism and they have this meme page has like 80,000 followers and they just have constant memes and they're all super funny so I'll put you guys in contact and we'll move it forward

Starting point is 01:20:56 but before I let you go I know that there was a call to action you put out I'm going to post it on my page so people can make the videos but maybe you could talk about the call to action what you got coming up and where people can find you if they want to get

Starting point is 01:21:07 more acquainted with your campaign and what they can do. Yeah, for sure. You know, like I was saying before, if people started to realize how this would affect them, right, and how one day they might need this road, I would hope that I can communicate to them, that, you know, the opportunity to act is right now, right?

Starting point is 01:21:26 We've got the opportunity to put these videos together, and we kind of passed over this in the show or in the podcast. I really should mention that. I got plenty of time. Please, let's cover it. Wonderful. So, you know, the way that we got the minister, Minister Hajju or Patty Hajju to respond, we had a team of about six people.

Starting point is 01:21:48 No one knew who there so was. And we had that small kind of team, Bruce and is a couple clinicians and two patients. And we were just putting out videos. And over the course of 100 days, we put out a video every day. And the video would be like this. New minister, my name is, you know, I'm either a doctor, a therapist, or a patient. If I'm a patient, it's like, you've given me the right to die with medical assistance and dying, yet here I am waiting for, you know, 10 days, 20 days, 30 days, a hundred days. And for the doctors, like, my patient's been waiting 100 days, right?

Starting point is 01:22:22 And it was a count up. It was just little videos. These videos worked, right? Like, people saw these videos. The minister saw the videos. And I don't even think we, it's been many years of video content and videos are so powerful. So were we starting that campaign? It worked when we only had like six people.

Starting point is 01:22:41 Now we've got like thousands of people. And again, the great irony is now that I guess there's thousands of people, it's never been harder to get even one of them to put together a video. And I understand why. It's like that's like this, it's this fallacy, right? The more people dedicated to a cause, the more you just seem to think, us, someone else will do it. And it's like, that's where we're having right now is I couldn't tell you how hard it is to get one person

Starting point is 01:23:07 to show some public support for psilocybin or these patients and to make a video. So yeah, we've got this call to action video campaign. I don't want one or two people. I need like 3,000 people making videos. And if we could just get that, if we could get people calling out Justin Trudeau, Johnny DeClo, Caroline Bennett, just telling their story of why we need psilocybin. I get in like a 10 to 20 second or 30 second video. Once we start publishing those online, you know, politicians can't be.

Starting point is 01:23:37 ignore that, right? They can't ignore those kinds of things. When they're getting called out in video and it's all over social media, it's like, oh, crap, we got to respond. We can't just respond in a letter, right? We've got to respond publicly too. So keeping conversations public the way we are demands public response and that's what we want public response. So that called action. It should be on our website. If you're not a Therisil member too, I should mention like everything we do is funded through. Don't nations and it's just people becoming a member of the organization so they can sign up online I think we send this out to our members but we might expand it soon so yeah if any of your listeners want to support the way to do that is to become a member and to take part in this advocacy I think that I realize you probably have a lot of American viewers but kind of hint hint nudge nudge where we're working on a on a U.S. expansion of our overall program too. So we're hoping very soon we can expand our training, maybe even clinical access down to the U.S. Yeah, and I don't see any reason why someone who has a, who has had a incredible experience with psilocybin, couldn't make a video and explain it too.

Starting point is 01:24:55 I mean, I think that we're all in this together and the more, the merrier. And I love that idea. Like, this might be, well, I've heard about it before. The idea of starting a campaign where someone could take 30, seconds out of their day to make someone's last moments beautiful or to really have an impact. 30 seconds of your day is nothing. Just take 30 seconds, make a video. And then you could see it play out and understand how powerful you are as an individual. Maybe we could just stay on there for just a little bit longer. Like how did that campaign come about?

Starting point is 01:25:29 And maybe you could talk about the feeling you got when you started to see it work. For sure. So this was at a time when companies were fundraising. $60 million, you know, to bring psilocybin drug products, you know, to get people's treatment, right? Now, that's a lot of money. I started off working for free and we didn't have $60 million in top doctors and scientists and researchers. We had me, Holly Bennett, you know, Yasmin, Zedin, John, Natasha. We had like a couple people on our team who were working pretty much for free. And Thomas Hartle and Lori Brooks, couple doctors and therapists and we're like oh man like what are we going to do you know and you're

Starting point is 01:26:13 absolutely right it was this almost pathological belief that we would do it this faith right we will do this and for a hundred days we endured every single day people telling us oh this will never work let me tell you that feeling when we realized that no actually you know six six kids right and like a bunch of doctors and patients actually just did what an entire, you know, multi-billion dollar industry couldn't do. I think that just, yeah, that was amazing. We moved mountains with a very small team. And I can actually just say the bigger we've gotten and the more attention,

Starting point is 01:26:56 the harder it's actually become. So I actually, I think there's this beautiful thing where, you know, once people start taking that attitude, if they actually can change things, they can make a difference. I think the the short-term kind of like gains that you'll see right off the bat, kind of like when you're learning any sport, you know, like skateboarding or something where you actually get really good, really quick. And then it's the more you do it, the harder it actually gets.

Starting point is 01:27:23 That's the same. The same is true for just, I think, believing in yourself, honestly. You know, why do people love Ted Lassow, right? Like it's because that message is like, lost. Just believe, you know, do it. That's what we saw. So you're absolutely right. It's like anyone who doesn't think that a 30 second video can't change the world, prove me wrong.

Starting point is 01:27:44 Do it. Yeah. Proof me wrong. Yeah. Right. And it's fun and it's contagious and it's something that you can do for, I don't know, I think some of the most rewarding things that I've done in my life are times when I felt maybe, maybe I was feeling bad or something bad happened to me. And then I did something nice for somebody else. And all of a sudden, everything that I felt like that I was down about just changed in me.

Starting point is 01:28:11 And it's like, did I just made that person smile. And they come up and they give you a hug and I can't need of that. And all of a sudden, this pain that I had is gone. It's like you get rid of the pain and the sorrow by being the change you want to see happen in the world. Like, thanks, Gandhi. Like, that's all it takes, right? Exactly. No, you're 100% right.

Starting point is 01:28:31 Yeah. So, yeah, I, um, you guys heard it here. Let's start like a meme campaign or let's start a video campaign. Go on my page. Go on Spencer's page. Check out Thrasel and make a video. Make a good one and make it heartfelt, make it funny. Make it something that you know will help create change and be the change you want to be out there.

Starting point is 01:28:51 So just to get into clarify, Spencer, where can people find you? What's the best way to support you? And what are you most excited about coming up? So, yeah, people can find us at Theracil.com. that's a I realize our name's kind of confusing T-H-E-R-A-P-S-I-L-L-I-L-L-I-L-L-I-L-L-I-L-L-B. Twitter and Instagram, LinkedIn, we're on there. I mean, like, we run completely off of donations, so we need people to donate for us so that I can keep work in and our team can keep working.

Starting point is 01:29:26 But yeah, you know, the things that are coming up that are most exciting is like a possible clinical trial. We would need a whole other hour to even talk about. about that but hey if you ever want to chat again let's totally do that yeah let's set it up i would love to yeah and then the um the other thing would be uh this video campaign um you know addressing those videos to june fit clow and caroline bennett right 30 seconds being like it's unbelievably ridiculous that in canada you have the right to die but not try psilocybin change drug law do right thing.

Starting point is 01:30:02 Right there is what we need. That's like that small sentence. That's it. You get enough people doing that and you've gone viral, right? And now all of a sudden, everyone's calling them out and they have to respond. So I think that's the most exciting thing for me at this moment is just seeing if we can recreate what the beautiful thing that happened in 2020 when Minister of Health responded and actually made change.

Starting point is 01:30:27 It's time. It's time for something to happen again. We got to move to me. Yeah, I agree. And I admire what you and the team are doing up there. I think you're creating change and it's inspiring and it's something that everybody who's in this space can look towards. And whenever I see the comments and people talking about what you guys are doing, they're always so positive. And I think you guys are really paving the way for other people to follow. So I appreciate that. And I hope you keep up the good fight. And if I can ever do anything to help out of him in the team, please let me know. and we're going to schedule another. Let's schedule another one soon, and we'll get you on talking about the clinical trials, and we'll go deep dive on that.

Starting point is 01:31:04 So that'll be great. Sounds good. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for your time. Make the video, check out the site, reach out to Spencer, and that's all we got for today. Aloha.

TrueLife - Spencer Hawkswell - C.E.O. at TheraPsil

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