TrueLife - The Bridge Between Self Awareness & Mental Health - Matt Zemon & Shannon Duncan

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Matt Zemon:Matt Zemon, an unconventional visionary, penned the groundbreaking book, “Psychedelics for Everyone.” In this trailblazing work, Zemon takes readers on a mind-bending journey through the world of psychedelics, breaking down barriers and demystifying these transformative substances. With wit and wisdom, he explores how psychedelics can be a tool for personal growth and self-help, accessible to all who dare to embark on this cosmic adventure. Zemon’s book is a roadmap for those seeking to harness the power of psychedelics for healing, learning, and self-discovery, making these mystical experiences more approachable and enlightening for everyone.Shannon Duncan:Shannon Duncan, an introspective sage, unveils the profound insights of his book, “Coming Full Circle.” In this thought-provoking masterpiece, Duncan shares his own riveting journey of self-discovery and trauma healing. Through a blend of poignant storytelling and deep introspection, he guides readers on a path towards understanding the cyclical nature of life’s challenges and triumphs. Duncan’s wisdom transcends gender, offering readers a universal perspective on the human experience. “Coming Full Circle” is a heartfelt testament to the power of resilience and personal growth, inspiring readers to embark on their own transformative journeys of healing and learning.Matt Zemonhttps://linktr.ee/mattzemonShannon Duncanhttps://shannonduncan.com/ One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

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

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope everyone's having a beautiful day. I got an incredible show for you. I got two amazing authors, a bunch of incredible, questions and an incredible dynamic that's about to unfold in front of you that I think everyone's

going to enjoy. Although I need not give a large introduction to these two gentlemen, I will give a brief one for those who may not have read their bestselling, beautiful books. Let me just start with Matt Zeman, an unconventional visionary. He pinned the groundbreaking book Psychedelics for everyone. In this trailblazing work, Zeman takes readers on a mind-bending journey to the world of psychedelics breaking down barriers and demystifying the transformative substances. With wit and wisdom, he explores how psychedelics can be a tool for personal growth and self-help, accessible to all who dare to embark on this cosmic adventure. Zeman's book is a roadmap for those seeking to harness the power of psychedelics for healing, learning, and self-discovery, making these mystical

experiences more approachable and enlightening for everyone. Shannon Duncan, an introspective sage unveils the profound insights of his book, Coming Full Circle. In this thought-provoking masterpiece, Duncan shares his own riveting journey of self-discovery and trauma healing. Through a blend of poignant storytelling and deep introspection, he guides readers on a path towards understanding the cyclical nature of life's challenges and triumphs. Duncan's wisdom transcends gender offering readers a universal perspective on the human experience. Coming full circle is a heartfelt testament to the power of resilience and personal growth, inspiring readers to embark on their own transformative journeys of healing and learning.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for being here today. How are you guys feeling? I'm doing great. This has been looking forward to this. I'm ready for it. Yeah, I've been looking forward to this as well, Shannon. It's nice to finally meet you and George is the great connector. All roads lead back to George, and this is a sudden. We are. We are in some transformative times. And I think we just kind of jump right into the nest here. There's, there's some interesting things that are happening in the world of psychedelics. And both of you have interesting backgrounds. There's a question that's been dogging me for a little bit. And it's this idea of mechanism of action. We see a lot of money being spent on trying to figure out the mechanism of action inside the brain. I don't thoroughly

understand why that's necessary. If we have something that really works for people, although I do understand harm reduction and safety, it seems to me that the money we're spending. on trying to find ways of mechanism action are just, they're kind of wasted. I'm going to start with you, Matt. What is the purpose of this mechanism of action? Like, why is it so necessary? Why is it so expensive? Super interesting right now.

So right near me, I live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Up the street, like a mile, is Brian Roth's lab that's studying with the Department of DARPA's $26.9 million grant to kind of, as I understand it, to remove the hallucinogenic property. of psychedelics, just fascinating. And then down this way, a couple of miles, David Nichols retired. So he's just up the street.

So we have these two legends of chemistry around here. And David Nichols in particular, I think, has a lot to offer to this type of question. I think he would say, I know what he would say. He believes that the medical model is the way to bring this to the masses. And to do the medical model in a Calvinistic society, we need to have proof. And this can't be for fun and this can't be for pleasure.

It has to be for healing and it has to have a purpose. And yeah, science is trying to prove out how things work and to get better at figuring that out. So, and I look at that as, okay, it's beautiful. Great, wonderful. And while we're waiting, indigenous cultures have used psychedelics for thousands of years. We have a mental health crisis. We have a spiritual crisis. We have people fleeing churches.

We have a loneliness epidemic. We have a community of people hungry for community. And we have tools that historically don't cause a lot of harm. And I would love to see more of them being used. for good now. Shannon, I'm turning it back over to you. All right. Yeah, when you were first talking about that, I was, I was thinking, well, you know, you could also make sex so that you don't actually feel anything when you do it, but at least that could still reproduce, right? It's what these researchers miss and the reason they're pointing their microscopes in the wrong direction.

As human animals and all animals, we learn and evolve through experience. And it is our experience on the psychedelics that does the growing, that does the healing. We have a different experience of ourselves. We relate differently to the traumas that we've gone through. Instead of somebody that was abused as a young child, they store that in themselves and always have the perspective of that young child and no other capacity. And that's why they don't move past it. as an adult on psychedelics, you get to open that up.

You get to bring light and air into that dark room. And you get to have a different experience of what you went through and a compassion for the young person that you were that went through it. And that's how the change happens. That's how the healing happens. If you take the experience out of psychedelics, you take the part out that does the work. You take the part out where all the magic is.

It's just such silliness. to reduce the psychedelic experience down to something similar to an antidepressant. Well, here's a pill you take. It's going to change something in your brain. And for a little while, you're going to feel better and just keep buying pills from us. And you'll keep feeling better, sort of, except you'll lose 90% of your emotional range. It's just, it's just silliness. Okay.

So, yeah, if they want to go and try to figure that out, that's fine. But, you know, they're missing the very obvious thing that psychedelics let you learn and evolve and grow in the way that we're made to through experience. Two things on this. I completely agree when we're talking about the use of psychedelics in practice. And so, for instance, we've talked about the pump and dumps where they believe it's just a, and legal ketamine is what I'm referring to, and they believe it's just a biochemical reaction. We can put an IV in somebody's arm.

We're going to give them some ketamine, and that's going to change them. That's the same model that didn't work with antidepressants. That's the same model. It doesn't work with many of our medication. today, completely agree with you. I think George was asking though about the research around the mechanism of action. How do we figure out what is happening in the brain, what receptors are being triggered, how do we, how do we try to understand using fMRI imaging and the different techniques, kind of how these

medicines work so that we can deliver them more efficiently, more effectively. And I think that, so I have less of an issue with that than I do with people who it's just biochemical versus biochemical psychosocial spirit. which is what I believe psychedelics are. And I completely agree. These are catalysts. These are not cures. These are catalysts for change that help people experience,

to help people know in their hearts that they're enough, that they're loved, that they're wise, and that they can take that knowledge and move that forward, different than mechanism of action, I think. I'm not sure what George is going forward. Both great answers. And I think that there's a bridge here. The reason I bring it up is that it seems to me

searching for the mechanism of action is sort of like looking for the God particle and an accelerator or trying to find the name of God. Like we're never going to find it. We don't even know enough about the brain to thoroughly understand. Is this the TRKB? Is it the 5H2A? What's good? We don't know enough.

So in my mind, what I'm thinking is what a great way to keep the world of psychedelics contained in a medical container. Like I spoke to Brian Roth, fantastic guy. He's never even done psyched. And it blows my mind to think that someone with whom is a genius and I admire all of his work Has never really had the actual Experience of psychedelics and in our conversation when I began talking about psychedelics He began telling me about a Zen experience I've never really had a Zen awakening So it was very it was apples and oranges for us

But I felt there was this divide and on some level I could see what appeared to be a Longingness for the mystical experience with which he's investigating. And I don't think that we get people to thoroughly understand psychedelics, trauma, and the confrontation that happens inside by studying mechanism of action. So I guess my question to both of you is, I'll start with you, Shannon, is trying to find these solutions to what's happening in the brain just a way to contain psychedelics in a medical realm and not let it get into the rest of the world? You know, what resonates with me as you're talking about, that is trying to understand the mechanism of how it works in the brain outside of trying to bypass the experience, more how Matt was explaining it, which made a lot of sense, is the effort of trying to privatize it, the effort of trying to corporatize it, the effort of trying to pull this into the realm of big pharma, where it can be reduced down to tablets that you pick up at the CVS and you have these experiences.

That's, I mean, but it's also missing the point. You know, if somebody wants to go and figure that out, but it's, it's baffling to me. I was in this online conversation the other day. They were asking, should research psychedelic researchers have experience with psychedelics? I'm like, yeah, how do you, how do you have any grasp of what it is you're trying to understand if you've never done it? I guess you can. You can study cyanide without, you know, sampling it to see what it's like. But, you know, the psychedelic thing's a little different.

It's all about the experience. And back to mechanism of action. Sorry, I wonder. It's all right. We can go anywhere. We can go anywhere we want. Yeah. For me, the only upside of really understanding that in the near term is it's just going to be used to create.

restricted materials is going to, you know, make new pharmaceuticals over using what's already available. Already there's people, you know, privatizing 5MEO DMT coming up with patented versions of that. And I'm like, well, we have it for free. That works great. I mean, I don't understand what it is you're working towards here other than just more money. You know, it's a new niche to be exploited. I don't know.

I mean, you know, we learn a lot anytime. I mean, you know, what's the point of going into outer space? Well, we learn a lot when we go out there. So maybe through this research, some really cool understandings of the human experience and the human brain can come out of it. But, you know, my cynical brain says, you know, it's got big pharma fingerprints all over it. Yeah, I think so much of what you said just resonates, Shannon. And I would like to encourage all of us to try to look at this with an abundance mindset

and just say, okay. They are coming from, they're not coming out of malintent. They're coming out of unknowing. And in their worlds, they're trying to do the best that they know how to do. So when we talk about a patent to synthesize psilocybin, okay, great. You've patented some specific process to synthesize psilocybin. Does that stop anyone else from synthesizing psilocybin using a different mechanism? No.

but using that particular mechanism to create a specific type of psilocybin where dose is a dose is a dose helps to process along in the medical model and allows some research to continue. So again, I view all this with an open heart. It's okay, great, beautiful. If that's the contribution you can make to this, do it, do it. All of us on this show want more people to experience and to find to remember themselves, is to reclaim their power to know that they're not alone, to connect to a higher power, to connect to us,

to realize that we're not other. And I just think if we need to approach it all with an end and not create division, when we don't need to create division, great, research away. We love that. Tell us more. That's fascinating. And let me tell you more about how this can be done

in this or why you might want to, the example I'll give is we've had a couple of doctors come to ceremony lately. We actually let one come in just as an observer recently. And my goal is to help them see that there's a lot here that they can borrow and they can borrow and make probably more money than they are in the one-on-one model that they're doing by incorporating some ceremonial things into the medical world. And conversely, wide open. If you think there's things we can do our medical intake and our informed consent and our safety preparations on the site and our emergency action plans that we can do better, all means, tell us. But let's not, we've created this false division between, in the old days, there was just

healer, and the healer was a medical healer and a, and a doctor, sorry, and a spiritual healer. And now in Western culture, it's two different roles, pure science versus spiritual woo-woo. Okay. Well, if you were to say that psychedelics belongs in the hands of the spiritual people, it's a fair argument to say, no, no, no, wait a minute, they don't have the latest knowledge of the brain and my body to keep me safe. Fair enough. But if you were to say psychedelics belong in the hands of the doctors only, same argument. Whoa, whoa, whoa, psychedelics plays in all the spiritual realm and does all these other things that they're not familiar with and they can't

keep me safe. So we need a new reconciliation. It's an and between both worlds. And by doing that, we can find a new way that hasn't been done to get this to more people safely. I like it. It's well said. I think it speaks to, it's interesting, the gap between science and spirituality, between doctor and underground. And it seems it's that same thing. You know, if the same way some people in the underground, myself included sometimes, look at particular therapists who want to help people who have never done psychedelics, the same. way a doctor looks at a person on the underground and is like, well, how much is that guy projecting? How much is that guy's transference happening?

You know, and there's something to be said. If I was going to steal man the argument from the other side, you know, I would say that a therapist who has an amazing personal experience may overhype the treatment potential. You know, they may idealize things. So I think on some level, regardless of what side you're on, you can see the argument from the other side. And I like what you said, Matt. I think it's a both and, you know, and let me ask you this.

Since you mentioned the idea of ceremony, what are some similarities and differences between a clinical setting and a ceremony? I mean, it depends on the intention and the way the medical professional approaches it. There are medical professionals that do beautiful clinical work and have, in my opinion, again, they care about the preparation process and the intention setting. They respect the medicine as more than just biochemical. They create an environment that's comfortable for the patient that is full of love and full of warmth. And they care about the integration process and where the real work starts post-psychedelic.

And they're beautiful doctors doing that. And there are doctors operating completely legally that are more of the come out of the school of medical sedation. And they operate differently. I think the biggest difference between ceremony and clinical is the group. I think there's real power in the group experience when it comes to psychedelics for many people. Now, I get if you are actively suicidal, if you have severe depression, a group setting isn't the right, isn't appropriate. But for many, many people, seven on a depression scale, a group setting is incredible. My healing is your healing.

Your healing is my healing. energy moves around the room all the focus isn't on me it's on us and the after the ceremony the sharing of wow this came up for me and this came up for me and wow that made me think about that is incredible not taking away from it's different than therapy um but it's community and it's a shared experience and it's um yeah i think it's different shana what are you i mean you've talked you you've had unqualified guides as i read about in your book and you've had a How many full circle. Going full circle.

And what do you think? Well, I don't think that the division is purely between a medical model and a spiritual ceremonial model. My own guide, my own beautiful guide that I work with as a licensed therapist and highly, highly educated in working with trauma. But she also holds a very spiritual, energetic based space for me. And we work one on one in that way. there's there's a great time and place to work in a group um processing deep trauma treatment

resistant trauma isn't often it but it could be a place to start it could be a place to get your um your legs under you in the psychedelic space but it's really what what it comes down to to how deep you're allowing this work to go and how much you're allowing yourself to be vulnerable and exposed is how safe your psyche feels how how how safe you feel on an unconscious level at the level of where this wounding is. And, you know, I tried, I tried some group work, and it wasn't for me because I never really felt safe. You know, people who were abused very young often have this fear that if I am too vulnerable, I don't know how the people around me are going to respond. So building that relationship with a single guide, a single therapist is a really powerful.

It took, my guide and I were talking about this. other day. We just did a, did a journey last Thursday. Another big one. My journeys all go six to nine hours. They're just ridiculous. And there's always huge energetic releases. And it's just, it's this thing. But we were talking about it. She's like, yeah, it took us three or four of these before you really started to trust and let deeper stuff out. And I'm like, yeah, that's just, that's just how it works. It's, it's that level of safety. It's that level of felt sense. that this person that's watching me is taking care of all the things that I would otherwise need to watch for. I need to monitor my environment. I need to monitor my own safety. I need to worry about,

you know, if I'm going to purge, if I'm going to aspirate vomit. And with somebody there that you really trust and you've got that one-on-one connection, you can let go of all that. You can learn to trust and release and the medicine just goes so much deeper. The experience moves deeper and deeper for more and more profound healing. So when you talk about a medical, model, and I talked about this a little in the book, if you're in a professional office and there are other professional offices around you, your likelihood that you're going to feel safe to be loud if you need to is going to go way down because you're not going to know who's going to hear and how they're going to respond and what that's going to cause. You know, if you're sitting in an

office and you're in an office and you're in a, I see pictures of people in zero gravity chairs or on sofas. And it's like if you don't have the room to move, you're also restraining some. something. And so, you know, you could move the medical model into, uh, into an environment that's more conducive to deep work and what it really requires. Um, but on the, on the other hand, when you get people that don't have any background in psychology, they don't know to shut the hell up. Um, want to be guides, one of the ones that want to play therapist, always want to tell you, they want to reflect back to you, oh, this is what this means. This is your relationship to your mother. And that's why it gave you blah, blah, blah.

the stuff that real therapists never do, right? They just watch too many TV shows and movies, and so they just want to play therapist because it feels very powerful to do so. And that's one of the problems that you run into in the underground. And then the sweet spot, I think, are people highly trained in psychotherapy, but that are also working in environments

where they're not shackled by the red tape of the clinical trials and the legal settings. That's just my take on it. Yeah, that resonates some. It's interesting. Even in holotropic breathwork, I participated. I did the McGrath breathwork program out in Colorado. Amazing.

But they talk about if you don't have a guide with you, there's always a part of you that is protecting yourself. You need to have a trusted guide. So it's beautiful. I'll go here. In some of the ceremony communities that I work with, I like this. arc that I've been seeing used, where on day one, you get there in day one and you have a, you have conversation, you get to know the other people. On the first ceremony day, you do some breath work, some yoga, some meditation, and in advance, by the way, you do a preparation session,

intention setting, all that. You then move into a sassafras day, purely hard opening. One day, purely hard opening. And I look at that as like a practice day. You practice surrendering, you get used to ceremony, you get used to your fellow travelers. We typically have four to six musicians. that are doing a custom soundtrack based on the energy of the room. You get used to what does that feel like? We have a male and a female facilitator, so you feel the balance of energy typically. And you crack your hearts open,

and you feel love for yourself and love for others, and you remove shame, blame, and guilt. And then that allows that evening around the fire for people to start sharing, which then enables the next day. And the next day, again, breakfast, breath, work, yoga, meditation. and then you do a deep dive with psilocybin. And now you get the interconnectedness of all things.

You get the feel the earth breathe. You feel that you are part of nature and you're not other from nature. And in my experience, people can go deeper because you've done a practice day. You've done a heart opening day. You have that trust. And then you've also in advance,

also set up the rules. There is no, this is your inner journey. You can cry, you can laugh, but you can't talk to your neighbor. You can't touch your neighbor. and the facilitators aren't there. They're not therapy. They're not there to tell you anything.

They're there to hold your hand if you want your handheld. They're there to touch your feet or to energetically transfer some sound or some waves. But that's it. And then I find that to be beautiful. And then in some of the ceremonies, we then go on to offer Bufo, where if they now you've, now you've already done two. And unlike people who just drop into a five, five MEO experience with unprepared, you're prepared.

already done work twice in a row, a couple different days. And now, yeah, you want that 10 to 20 minute conversation with your higher power. And you're ready to let go and you're ready to surrender. And again, I know there's a range of way people react to 5MEO. In this model, it's like 100% are sitting Buddhists, pure bliss. And that's with people with significant trauma. I mean a range again not in active suicidal not in active high high high depression but again up to that seven or eight on the depression scale they do really well in this type of setting but it's it's a process it's an arc it's not a one day let's do let's get it all done it's a it's a multi-day multi-medicine ceremonial approach I'm curious why is a sitting Buddha experience on five the preferential

outcome. It's in a group it feels to me there's just a lot of comfort and that they're not, you're completely right. I mean, there are people who you need the body releases, the primal screamers, the shakers, the movers. I know, the perjers.

Yeah, we have, we just, I don't, and I've seen that not in this setting, but in this setting, it's, yeah, and I know there's a person in Mexico who does, like, he'll do five people in a row with five MEO and he has everybody on blanket. And is four people. And if they start to move, they just lift up a corner and they're moving in their

cocoon. And that's perfectly good. But I just haven't seen that with this particular arc of this type of ceremony work that I'm seeing, that I'm seeing. Interesting. It is interesting. I think that on some level, one of the problems that we see in this emerging space is the inability to measure subjective behavior. And a lot of times people want to know, like, how do you know what's working? I mean, you could look at the tears of joy coming from the wife of someone or the husband of someone. Like, that's probably pretty good evidence.

But we don't really measure that. Is there a certain, have you, have either of you thought about a way in which we can measure the subjectivity of these events? I can speak to my own experience. Sure, please. You know, and before I started all this, I was highly depressive. Sometimes deep in suicide ideation just to get through my day. It was like a coping mechanism for me to get through my day.

Highly reactive, I was easily pushed into overwhelm and I would have big anger come up to, you know, clear the decks to get whatever was triggering me away from me. And as I've gone through that work, that is all authentically diminished. Can I still be overwhelmed to the point where I start getting frustrated and, you know, and those old tools coming back into place? Sure, but it would take, it would take a lot. I would have to be really, really, really, really overwhelmed where before I would only need to be a little overwhelmed.

You know, I was easily overwhelmed and I'm not easily overwhelmed anymore. And it's that inner experience of the self that's very different. I have more of me authentically available and I operate less. from a place of fear and a place of overwhelm. How can you measure that? That's, I mean, that's purely subjective, right? And it's, I don't know. I think there's ways.

Sorry. There are ways. I think there are ways too, but I want to stick with this for a moment. I think Shannon brings up some things that tie back again to his book. You talked about having a deep experience with bullies when you were a kid, and that really resonated. I had that, I had a similar experience. I'm not a fan of bullies. And then I also had a father who was an alcoholic.

So he, again, loved me. And a fit of rage could occur between one sentence and the next. And I just never knew what was coming. And I'm curious. So you talked about your reactions. I'm wondering how you think that's impacted this part of your life. And how you deal with confrontation? That's a great question.

You know, this part of my life is so much more authentically calm. It's not a just after the Zen retreat kind of calm. It's like it's been enduring for years now and it only continues to deepen. I honestly avoid confrontation. You know, if there needs to be something worked out, I try to find some common ground to talk to speak from. where it used to be that I wouldn't take much to get me to lock horns with somebody. It's just that's authentically the like the last thing I want to have to do. I just don't.

I don't maintain relationships with people who are highly confrontational. I just keep my life as simple and clean as possible. That just feels better to me. I don't know if that's answering your question or not. I just seek out opportunities where I can just show up and be myself. and, you know, let other people be themselves. And it's just, you know, before conflict seemed almost necessary, it's almost like a part of me was, like, happy for it because at least then I knew what was going on. I was always afraid something was going to go wrong deep down inside.

And so conflict just let me have something to focus on. And conflict now just feels, I mean, sometimes it's necessary. You've got to work things out with people. But that's a different kind of than this belligerent locking horns, you know, that's so easy to get into. And it's just, that's just not really a part of my makeup anymore. That all makes sense to me. Yeah, I think for me in the medicine work, I went from, I'm the greatest compromiser ever. If we're going to get, instead of getting in a fight, Shannon, let's work this out.

What do you need? You need an apple. You need a banana. We're going to figure this out. out. Let's cut a deal. We're going to make it work. And I'm just trying to avoid the anger. I don't want the outburst. I don't want the anger. I just want to keep things calm. It's how I used to behave. And now when I feel my emotions rising, I try to pause and like, okay, I've created all of this. I created this scene where now I'm in conflict with this person.

What am I supposed to be learning here? Why did I do this? And how is this working for me? and because I'm the creator of this, not the receiver of it, I'm the creator of it. I can look at it differently and be like, okay, let's see where this goes and then decide how I want to move through this. But it's very different than just trying to suppress the emotion from emerging. Yeah. It's wonderful to me because on some level,

I think that that's what psychedelic therapy does, be it self-medication or with a therapist, is it enables you to not only confront something in the beginning, but then take that confrontation and see it from a third perspective, where it seems like modern medicine allows you to have a band-aid or a pill to get through the day, to cover it up with a blanket, where psychedelic therapy seems to, in the beginning, force you to stand in front of this thing,

but then allows you to look at it from a different angle. And it sounds like the thread that's binding all this. We are a culture that excels in moral preaching and medical sedation, and we spend no time or resources facilitating individual exploration of consciousness. We just don't do it. And we want people to get distracted in tasks and we want to numb the symptoms and we want to just keep them productive. And when we pause and we say, wait a minute, there's enough for everybody. There's just enough. There is enough. We don't need this much to eat.

It doesn't take that many calories to keep us alive. It doesn't take that much shelter to keep us warm. There's plenty. So this whole scarcity thing is just a make-believe construct. And these feelings are real. And numbing them doesn't make them go away. It just numbs them. So how do we take time and enable time for people to do this work themselves?

And find the source and reclaim their power and move forward. I think one of the bigger challenges, is that we've bred a society where discomfort is not allowed. Discomfort is to be avoided. I used to be a person that any aches or pains, I'm popping some Advil. You know, I'm just not allowed to be uncomfortable for very long at all. And I was actually musing about that recently. I just, I've got a buddy that's coming over and doing personal training for me.

So, of course, I'm waddling around with my legs not wanting to move. And it just never occurred to me that I should go take some Advil for it. It's just, you know, this just kind of, and I didn't have to go through any mental gymnastics around it. It's just like, yeah, I'm uncomfortable. I did some exercise. I'm just going to do some easy stretching. A couple days, it'll wear off. I'll be back to working out again.

And it just doesn't occur to me after having confronted so much, so much really painful, challenging, emotional material within myself that I should ever want to, reduce it. It's like now when I, you know, when I, when I encounter something emotionally challenging in a medicine work session, it's my turn my sails into the storm. It's just instinctive. This is my gateway and to go deeper. I don't want to avoid these uncomfortable feelings. I want to move deeper into them because that's where the parts that can heal are. And I don't know. I'm just, I'm just endlessly fascinated by all of this, by this whole process. And one of the things I was really hoping to bring a cross and coming full circle is that, you know, this deep healing, this real healing is available, but you really have to start working your mind around to the position that the discomfort,

the challenge, the fear, the shame, shame's the worst. I'll take, I'll take a Mount Everest of terror over shame any day. It just, it hurts so much to open that up. It's like, it's like trying to swim in a tar pit. But again and again, it's just like, even in less life, journey I did. I got, man, I got just punched in the gut with shame and I was just almost doubled over. And I'm just breathing and I just, everything in my brain just wanted to shut down and close off from my guide, from myself. I just wanted everything to get really quiet and want anything to perturb that shame anymore. And I have one of these big wheels that you can like roll your back over. It's bigger than a, than a foam roller. It's like this big wheel and I just got it out and I got my back on it, just opening up and breathing.

and my guide comes over and sits next to me and puts a hand on my chest, and we're just encouraging this shame to come out. Oh, my God, it sucks. It's just awful, right? But it just feels so good to let that out, to keep just allowing these things to have expression because that's where the healing really is. And it's this bringing in this fragile mindset that, oh, I can't ever be uncomfortable,

really limits the potential of what you can do with psychedelic healing work. And that's why, you know, the idea of being all up here in an expansive 5MEO experience, you know, and I've had those. I've had the connecting with God up here, 5MEO experiences, and they're beautiful. And I'm always in there. And I'm like, oh, my God, I can't bring what I'm seeing back with me. It's like I understand it all and none of it's coming back with me. So I'm just going to do the best I can to let it soak in right now. But then there's this other part where you let this door open and you'll let the 5MEO deep.

And then it's almost like, it's almost like a sieve and there's the sand of you is running through there. And anywhere that there's knots, anywhere that there's clots, man, it grabs them and starts working its way into them. And that's where you have these big energetic releases. And that's where that real deep healing comes from. And it's, I don't know, man. It's just incredible. It's incredible possible if you're willing to let it in. What I really liked about your book, and I'm going to search for some words here.

What I really liked about your book is over and over, you kept referring back to the work you were doing on you and how it made you feel and the things that happened in your past and how you were processing those things. And one of my concerns, as I think about how the culture in which my kids are swimming, the culture in which we're swimming, is there's so much attention placed on trying to change the way others interact with them. I'm going to be cautious here, but it's everything from I want you to call me this to I want you to make me feel safe. There's so much put on, what's the expression? It's like, it's like I don't feel well, so I'm going to go to the doctor and I'm going to ask them to write a prescription for my neighbor. It's that the focus is in the wrong direction.

I've had a very similar observation that we're teaching these newer generations to wrap themselves in bubble wrap and have an entitlement that nobody comes over and pops the bubbles. And it's this felt sense of fragility that's getting baked into the psyche that I can't tolerate these things. I can't allow myself to be triggered. If I'm triggered, the other person is wrong because I should not. never be made to feel uncomfortable. And, you know, there's, there's, there's absolutely validity and insisting on not being bullied. There's absolutely validity and insisting on not being harassed at work or not being touched inappropriate or at all if you don't want to be touched. But then there's something very different that's happening. And I share the same concerns of you about getting canceled,

but there's this, there's this other thing that's happening where it's like the world has to to cook itself or build itself around me so that I'm never uncomfortable. I need to live in this bubble and I'm entitled to this bubble. And this can only happen in a time in history when we're really not challenged by anything. Most of us aren't food insecure. Most of us aren't threatened by mountain lions every day or dinosaurs or whatever. Our lives are really easy. We lack challenge because if we were in the middle of a war, I mean, I guarantee you people in the Ukraine aren't thinking about this.

They're not thinking about it at all. They're hoping, God, I hope my children aren't bombed today. And so they've got other things that are very important to them, and they're not worried about being fragile. And it's a challenging place because my heart goes out to these people that are so fearful of life that they can't let life in. They have to manipulate the world around them to give them what they want. And you see this in social media all the time.

You know, you get a bunch of, I had a friend who's a teacher, and she said, she was at this party, and there are these teenage girls, and they're all sitting around bored. I mean, they're just completely bored. But then they get together and they take a selfie like they're having the best time in the world. And that's the image they put out to the world on social media. It's just like nobody's living an authentic life and allowing themselves to be vulnerable and changed by what comes by. They're living insulated in these shells of falsehood and projecting images for other people to respond to. And that can only leave you feeling dead inside, empty inside. I can't imagine the void inside that they're living with it is such a struggle,

that they need to try to keep filling it what it likes. I need likes so I can feel good about myself instead of, God, I got up and practiced music this morning and nobody heard me, but I felt great about it. And it's just that kind of difference in my mind. Couldn't agree with you more. This is, I think we should write a book like triggers are your friends. Triggers are there. Or triggers work for you. Like when you have a trigger, what is it that's coming up? How do you use that trigger to learn, heal, and grow and move forward? That trigger is your gateway to go deeper. Correct.

I say that right up front and coming full circle, I say, look, there's talk about right in the warning in the front. I say there's talk about child abuse coming up. And if you find yourself triggered about it, don't view that as a setback. Use it as an opportunity to learn and grow and heal for yourself. That's why I put it in there. I don't think we talk as a culture. We don't talk about what are emotions.

Like what are triggers? These are, it's your heart telling you. It's your heart telling you something before words are constructed around it. But there's something there to pay attention to. And it's not, don't make me feel this way. Nobody made you feel anyway. You made yourself feel that way. So why?

And where do you go with that? I view triggers as a defense of things that are wounded. So I have these insecurities. I have these emotional wounds. And when life threatens to trigger me to have to feel this, I have a defense that is triggered, whether it's anger, whether it's dissociation, whether it's going and watching porn, watching TV, whatever, grabbing some wine, eating, any of it.

Whatever. That's what I go do to get away from this feeling. And so if you realize that, okay, this trigger's coming up. I want to go get a drink or I want to go sit down and veg out and watch TV. but I can turn around and I can go into it instead, and that is my gateway into the insecurity or the unheeled wound to allow it to be explored, to allow it to give expression. And the more you allow it to give expression,

the less vulnerable it feels, and the less vulnerable it feels, the less need for defenses there are. So triggers get less and less sensitive over time. That is the path to growth as far as from my perspective. is there any difference between kids hoarding likes and adults hoarding stuff i mean aren't we doing the same thing we are all acting that we're forgetting that we live in this abundant world we're we're scared of not having enough so we are in this never-ending game of hoarding and we're building kind of financial legacies alongside emotional holes i think that i think that as a human animal we're

hardwired to want well we're hardwired to be a part of a tribe and a part of being a tribe as being approved of in the tribe and so interpersonal approval we can have this conversation and we have this mutual respect and I feel good in this conversation that I'm talking to you guys that you guys would want me to be here I feel a part of this tribe and that feels really good it feels authentic to me likes tend to be a fake it's a it's a pseudo form of approval in the same way that pornography is a pseudo form of connection, right? You get this illusion, this feeling of something you're lacking, and it kind of fills you briefly, but then it's gone. It's like trying to sustain yourself on rice cakes. There's no nutrition in there. And it's, so you're left with nothing

afterwards. Whereas a great conversation like this, I'll be feeling good all day about it just because it's, I feel like we're having an important conversation, we're getting to connect, and it's something real is happening. You know, the world of social media and I just my god I hate social media so much I'm just not a fan but I would never have met you guys and I wouldn't be here talking to you if I wasn't for LinkedIn right so I try to keep an open mind about it and I just try to limit my interactions to things that feel good to me but enlarge like you know Facebook and Instagram and all this is just it's just peddling in illusions to give a pseudo approval or pseudo sense of importance when what you need to do is engage in things, well, not need, but what would

actually feel much better is to engage in ways that gives you that for real. And that, you know, and but to do that, you have to risk also being hurt. You can't really have love and connection without also the risk of disappointment and being hurt or loss. It's a part of the package, right? But when you're just going for likes, if you don't get likes for something, you just post something different. You just keep posting until you get the thing that gets the likes, and then you do more or that and it's just this never-ending chase for an illusion. And then it takes courage to turn around and just start trying to go for these things for real to fulfill yourself for real.

You know, I think that I don't, I think that the likes, children hoarding likes or people hoarding likes is a degradation of people hoarding stuff. If you think about the evolution of our spectacle that is society, we've moved from being into having and from having into appearing to have. And it's the same thing. You know what I mean? Like it's this degradation. And it's,

I don't think that the children want to be bubble wrapped. I think that these are the unrealized dreams and insecurities of the people that came before them putting the bubble wrap on them. They didn't ask for that. And I think it's unfair in some ways to look at them in that way. Like they are forced to grow up in this world. like we're probably the last group of feral children. I'm sure in different parts of the world,

but at least in the Western world, where you were, you know, we were probably raised on latchkey kids and going out and playing in the street until the lights came on. And nowadays, parents are going to practice

and they sit at the practice all day long and wait for the kids. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but it's different than we're used to. And I think it echoes this idea from being into having and having into appearing. Like children today can have the appearance

of being the popular kid at school with all the likes. It's a simulation of it. And in some ways, it's lacking. So, I don't know, does that kind of make sense? Maybe this speaks to the idea of the psychedelics bringing us back into the reality. Like, oh, all these problems, these triggers that we feel are the world pulling us back into reality. Hey, the mental illness, if I pull up my copy of DSM-5, all the mental illnesses in there are not the illnesses of the individuals. The illness is society puts on that individual.

And it's weird. Like those are the things that bond us together. It's not my illness. It's this way I'm identifying with everybody around me. It's society's illness manifesting in me. And that brings us to this idea of us being together, right? Is that kind of a shot at the back? But what do you guys think?

There's a lot there. There's a lot there. I mean, you're, I just, I just, an agent call out that we're also, when we talk, when we, when we stay, I agree with you. George, as I often do. We grew up with latchkey kids and children of upper middle class and middle class people aren't growing up as latchkey kids today, but there are other kids who don't have parents waiting for them after practice. We do have a number of parents who are unaware

that they are putting their children up for indentured servitude with our college program and pricing that when you force a child to take debt to go to get an education, you might as well assign them. Then they've got to go work for somebody and life changes immediately when they don't have that freedom. It's because they've got to pay back the debt. And we don't talk about it as indentured servitude, but we have a lot of that in our country. So parents in one hand are trying, some parents are trying to protect their kids from harm

and other kids, they're just, they're doing the best they know how to do without being, being aware of the harm. Let's say one more thing. I'll let Shannon go. I, what's it, Anthony DeMello talks about, the difference between a criminal and you is only in what you do. It's not in who you are. We are all, I mean, our government does all sorts of bad things. We might not pull the trigger, but we're complacent.

We pay the taxes. We it's how these kids grown up with mass shootings with with with threat of nuclear war with the no concept of truth being a standard even if it wasn't ever real but the idea that there is there is that how do they how of course we should expect that to manifest in all sorts of things whether it's behavioral challenges or anxiety or depression or feel feelings of these things. Again, forget the diagnosis and the catch just the feelings of these things. Of course. Of course. When we talk about attention deficit or ADHD, yeah, we have an attention

deficit. We have one teacher in front of 30 kids. They don't have enough attention. It's, that's not how we're meant to learn. So then we can sedate some of the children. I'm not saying that, please don't cancel me. I'm not saying that all ADHD is not real. I'm saying that we are prescribing at a rate that doesn't seem to make sense. And then same with antidepressants. It never meant to be decade-long solutions that we're going to prescribe it and then renew it in 10-minute wellness visits. And then we're not going to tell people that, oh, here's a list of side effects. Oh, and by the way, this side effect of sexual dysfunction is a 73% chance of you having.

We don't tell them that. We just give it to them and they live with the side effects. We numb the symptoms and we never come back to address what caused the symptoms to begin with. Yeah. And, yeah, it is. I think I have a lot of have a lot of interesting. for children for the culture. It's not,

it's, again, not malicious. It's not evil. It's just unaware. It's an adaptation, really. I mean, given the environment they find themselves in, they've adapted to get their needs met in the way that seems like they can. We all have that need for connection.

We all have that need for approval. And when you spend most of your time, when most of your important feeling interactions with others, comes through social media and comes down to how you're perceived over who you really are, I think you get an ever-diminishing sense of self and an ever-increasing need to find ways to present yourself in a way to keep the flow of pseudo-connection, pseudo-affection, pseudo-approval coming in. And it's, you know, as we've been sitting here talking,

I've been thinking this may be the future of psychedelic treatment is helping this generation find themselves again after, you know, coming through their developmental years learning that it's how people respond to you that's important. It's how people, you know, respond to what you put out there. That's more important than who you really are. And they're going to come to this sense of this vapid emptiness. And it could be that the future of psychedelic treatment is really about these people coming in and rediscovering themselves, re-learning who they are, and coming back to a sense of wholeness. So, you know, everywhere in nature, things tend to break down before they start building back up again. And maybe this is just a part of that flow.

It's, I don't, I don't blame the, I don't blame the kids. And there's plenty of adults that farm for likes. I see it all the time on LinkedIn. It's just, clearly this is being posted because you're looking for a specific response back to you. It's not information. sharing this is about look back at me please not always but it happens and it's way more prevalent like on facebook and whatnot um when i released my uh swimsuit calendar last year that was just for likes i missed that all right all right send me a PDF I don't think I would give him any can you imagine I might get a lot of laughing face emojis would be fantastic to do that do, yeah, that'd be...

The men of psychedelica. We'd waste so much awareness. We made five dollars for the cause. But I think that is what, when I get excited about books like you're, Shannon, it's because you're coming out there and saying, I'm doing this for me. I'm doing this for me. I'm doing this from my learning, healing, and growing.

You can like it. You can not like it. You can not like it. You can get something from this. You cannot get something from it. That's all okay. I'm just going to tell you how this has worked for me. And I think that's really beautiful.

I think that's important modeling. And if somebody wants to ask you more, great. And if they don't, great. Yeah, the therapist, Taffy, my original therapist that I worked with, who's still alive and I'm still in contact with her. And I just adore her. And she was reviewing something. some of the book for me. And I'm like, God, Davy, I don't know if I can share this. I mean,

I've written it all and it felt really good to get it out. It was very therapeutic to write my story out like this. I got to release a lot just in the writing of it. And she told me a story how this friend of both of ours, they originally met in a therapy group. And this friend was just so raw and so human that it ended up giving everyone else in the group permission to be raw and human too. And that's the thing that really convinced me to go ahead and leave this intensely personal information in coming full circle, because if I give myself permission to just be raw and human in a world where that's not always well received or in a world where it can

make people really uncomfortable at times, but for the people who are ready, it can give them permission to also be raw and human and look at themselves in a very compassionate way as they approach their healing. because a lot of a lot of healing talk is very adversarial. I'm going to get this bad out of me and I'm going to bring in some good. And I'm going to go out and work on a soup line so I'm a good person. And it's just, you know, it's it's just about becoming more whole yourself. And there's infinite goodness in that.

There's all the goodness in the world. And with your flaws, warts and all, you're good. And that's what I was hoping to share. That brings up another de mellowism where he talks about there's two types of selfishness in the world. There's things you do for yourself to make yourself feel good, selfish. And there's things you do for others to make yourself feel good. It's still selfish. It's refined taste maybe, but it's still selfish.

And knowing why you're doing what you're doing, even before taking action is really an important thing to look at. Why are you choosing to do X, Y, and Z? Why do, yeah, period. So I like the soup kitchen thing, maybe think of that. It's, you know, I can't imagine a more important tool to cultivate for any individual than honest self-awareness. I mean, because all growth begins there. I mean, if you're not willing to be honestly self-aware and own what you see and work with what you got, there's really no room to move.

There's no path forward from there. And so, yeah. Just being aware, God, there was a, there was a writer, was it Richard Bach? The degree of your honesty is, it's something about your awareness or your honesty about your own self-absorption or your own selfishness, right? So it's, it's just this, I don't know, my train of thought derailed. Yeah, go, George, please, please, please, no, no. I was just curious. When we think about awareness and health,

like your second book that you recently just published kind of digs into that a little bit. Maybe you could speak to the ideas of that was what was it that and psychedelic science came, you're giving out this book for free. I think that speaks volumes of self-awareness and speaks volumes of health.

Maybe you could speak to that a little bit about the second book and self-awareness and health and how that came to me. You mean the journal? The journal. The trip? Yeah. I say all the time.

I don't believe psychedelics or a cure for anything. They're just a catalyst. They're just a tool to connect with a higher power and to do deep inner exploration. And then it's what happens afterwards. So I thought it was important to help put something out there to, okay, if you don't know how to set an intention, here's some ways to set an intention.

If you don't know how to take an inventory of your resources, here's some way to take an inventory of your resources before the journey. Then during the journey, here are some, these are some great things to just capture while you're in the moment, get it down a paper before it slips away. And then for the 30 days following the journey, when you're in this state of incredible neuroplasticity, when some research says when your mind's return to a child's mind and neurons are growing and you have an opportunity, well, here are four activities that you do over four weeks to help unpack. And then here's a gratitude journal. You do over 30 days because through the act of journaling, you're just paying more attention.

attention and you're just putting it down. And sometimes when I don't journal following a ceremony, I miss things. I know I miss things. So I just, those are just, there are things that have, it's borrowing a little bit from positive psychology. It's borrowing a little bit from wisdom traditions and just putting into a journal that's, again, that's not, there's some beautiful other, there are other journals in the world that are way better than mine and leather bound and super thick with all sorts of things in

them. This is, this is just a, this is a really good, um, start. point for a lot of people. Nice. I think it speaks to the idea of awareness. And I was working with Dr. Jessica Rochester. She has a really great segment that goes from self-awareness to self-love to self-respect. It's interesting how this idea of the self sort of goes hand in hand and steps up every time.

I guess awareness may be the first stage. But it's amazing how much you realize about yourself and a heightened state of awareness, be it through breathwork, be it through psychedelic. And I'm curious, I know Shannon in your book coming full circle, you talk a lot about self-awareness. You talk a lot about self-experience and what you've learned from that. In some ways, isn't it interesting that our self can be the best teacher? What do you think? Our self can be the best teacher.

You know, the whole proving ground for growth is going into your experience of yourself. It's looking at the things that. are triggering you. Look at the things that bring you pain. Look at the things that bring you joy. Look at the things that trigger emotion and you're starting to understand how your physiology, how your psyche interprets the world around you, right? You're taking in raw data that has no meaning whatsoever. You know, the light waves that come into your eyeballs do not convey meaning. The sounds that come into your ears do not convey meaning. What you smell has no meaning. your mind interprets that, you know, based somewhat on your, well, you know, a lot on your genetics,

but then after that, it's how experience through life has trained you and conditioned you. So you absorb energy from your parents, you know, you absorb way more from how they really are than the lessons they teach you. You know, but so you absorb your parents' is-ness. You know, you absorb their being, and it resonates in you. and so you become more and more like them or a combination of them, and then life experiences change that too. And, you know, the whole thing with psychedelics is it lets you step out of your everyday frame of mind,

step out of that usual meaning that you're interpreting life through, and just see it from a different higher perspective often. And so that allows you to question these things. It's like, wow, God, you know, anytime somebody's a little bossy with me, I get really triggered. And then you just step back and you all of a sudden realize that, well, their behavior isn't about you. And it's not this cognitive thing. It's this felt understanding.

It's like, oh, my God, that person is this way with everybody. This isn't personal. And you just kind of unhook it. It starts unhooking. It'll come back and rehook and then unhook again. But over time, it's less and less engaged. You're less and less triggered by something that was always triggering before. And that's really the nature of growth.

Or it's also, and it's also showing. Probably showing if they're being bossy. You're probably bossy in some aspect of your life. Yeah. What's expression? Show me a victim and I'll show you a victimizer. Right. Yeah, that can be true.

Yeah. It can be. In your book, you talk about the importance of finding the right person to work with. You say something to the effect of, you can't work with someone who hasn't gone deeper than then you can't go deeper than the person you're working with has already gone or something to that effect. It's, um, oh, sorry. Go ahead.

No, no, tell me, tell me. So, you know, the idea is that, and, and this was, this was written because there are a lot of people trying to find their niche in life by being a guide or a therapist for people while on psychedelics. It feels very cool. Lots of people. I just, I've heard it so many times. Oh, my God, I found my purpose in life.

This is what I'm meant to be doing. but they don't realize that they haven't done their own work. And they don't realize that the big expansive experience that's all up here, it's all cognitive, isn't deep work. It's profound experiences and it can change you, but it's not the same as going deep into your own shadows. And that's where, you know,

the real changes happen. And so somebody who's only gone this deep in themselves can only hold an authentic space for somebody else to go this deep in themselves. So that's the kind of the experience they can always. offer, like my own medicine guide that I work with, she's done really, really deep work. And so when I settle in to do work with her, when I settle in to do the psychedelics and she's going to sit for me, I don't feel any resistance to me going deeper. Like if I were sitting for you and you went into a space within yourself that was deeper than I'd gone into myself, I would start being triggered.

And while I'm sitting there for you and trying to be calm and trying to hold a safe space for you is not a time for me to be triggered. But I'm going to be. and the response is physiological and you're going to pick up on it. If it's not safe for me to go there, it's not safe for you to go there. And so where you can go and your journey is limited. I've felt that so many times working with a previous guide, you know, I would go somewhere and I would say something, and all of a sudden he'd be very still and kind of tight,

and I would feel it. It's like my psyche's registering, okay, that's not a safe place to go still. And so it's just important that anybody's serving as a psychedelic guide, especially for somebody holding space for trauma, that they've done deep work within themselves. Because one, you know, especially when you start getting into really deep,

really sensitive kind of stuff, like around abuse or whatever, the feelings that can be triggered are really unsettling. And a person's defense mechanisms to protect against those being triggered are really strong and they'll bring it front and center into the room. And, you know, so many people that are offering these services today just haven't. I mean, they went to Burning Man,

and they had a big five MEO experience. They had a bunch of mushrooms. And it was a big experience. I'll own that. I've had big psychedelic experiences, ridiculously big psychedelic experiences. And it's just not the same thing as doing deep work. And so many just don't even understand the difference.

They don't understand because all of us have this door. It's a door to the basement, right? And that door to the basement stays firmly locked because everything in there is dangerous. The psyche keeps it locked. And until you're willing to acknowledge that door and make the conscious choice that you're going to go through it and allow the psychedelics in, allow the psychedelics into your emotional body, nothing too much real is going to happen. It's all going to be on a cognitive level. It's like, oh, yeah, I saw how I'm an angry person and I really don't need to be, but now you're cognitively working on it like you do in talk therapy, and you're not going in and really unwinding it at its source. And that's really the fundamental difference.

And it's a difference that I would say the majority of people in the psychedelic scene don't seem to understand is there. At least the majority I've ever spoken to. They don't understand the difference because they've never gone there. And it's super important for those listeners who are trying to figure out who to work with. I think you had another line that's super beautiful. Something the effect of sometimes the call to help is actually a cry for help. Yeah. And as a consumer looking at, I mean, the world, I, I, I,

Again, these are beautiful people trying to do the best that they know how to do. So looking at, okay, how far can they go and what do I need, which actually brings us to a controversial topic that when I disagree with you about your book, you had a real vehement reaction against teleguides. There's no place for it, blah, blah, blah, blah. I have a slight disagreement, but why don't you go first and express how you feel about teleguides? Yeah, I have very strong feelings about teleguide. But wait, just take a moment, though, and take the compliment.

Sometimes a call for help is a cry for help. I love that line and just embrace that for a moment. I was awful proud of myself for coining that. So it's just right. Was that a line that, how good do you? Yeah. You knew that line. Oh, no.

I was just proud of myself for having written that. I'm like, hey, that sounds pretty good. I'm glad that stood out to you. I'll take the approval. Take it. Take it. There's a like. Two thumbs up.

Thank you. This feels real for some reason. So, teleguides. Where I first encountered teleguides was during COVID. And it was during lockdown. And it was people that were sitting with people in real life. But now all of a sudden, their income stream was cut off. And so they started offering telehealth.

So they'd be, okay, take your mushrooms. I'll be here on the phone. you the whole time or I'll be here on FaceTime with you the whole time. And it's like, are you out of your friggin' mind? You're inviting this person to take psychedelics in deep and they're alone. Or they've got their uncle or sister sitting there who have no training and handling somebody that is healed, is healing trauma or that's doing deep internal work. And even with ketamine, man, you can open terror. You can open. It doesn't, it's not dosing. It's not dosing. dependent. It's not really even psychedelic dependent. If the timing is right, you can go into

deep, challenging material. And if that person finds themselves laying on their own sofa, alone in their apartment with somebody talking to them through their computer screen, they have no support. They have no help. And that is where I have a problem with psychedelic telehealth, because you're taking powerful mind-altering substance. and telling this person that they have support. So they're supposed to be letting their defenses down more than if they were just alone. And all of a sudden, they're in a space where they need the touch of a hand. They need somebody there just saying, hey, you are okay.

Take a breath. Everything's all right. But instead, they've got a tinny voice coming out of their laptop telling them, it's okay. I'm sending vibes your way, even though I'm in Nebraska. I've got you. And that helps nobody. It's just that's,

my problem with psychedelic to help. So my challenge is where you're going with this and is, is it feels to me a little bit of a slippery slope. So I'm going to just push back. I'm going to nudge you back a couple. You've, you've had an extensive experience with Vapens. You've done solo journeys.

You've done many solo journeys. And you felt that you are, you know that doing with a guide is better than doing it solo. But there have been times when you've chosen to do solo journeys. I have this, I'm not looking, no shame, no bad, because I've done the same thing. My challenge with, my challenge with saying, this is bad, telling sitting should not be allowed. Teleguidings ridiculous. Tell sitting is bad.

Or having sitters who are untrained as bad is, it's, again, I know better than they know what's right for them. I know better than they know how they want to meet this medicine. I know better than they know what they can afford. I know better than they know what they have access to. And for many people, at least again, in my experience, ketamine is a, it's a starting point. They want to be met in a medical model. They want to have a prescription so they have source taken care of. They want someone to talk to them about set and their intentions.

And you can get that through telehealth. And even setting can be. that you can follow instructions and have setting, okay? Is it as good as having a experienced person? No, no way. But at, what, $200 a dose for Mind Bloom or New Life or any of those out there, it's accessible to a lot of people, and it's an injury way. And I just, I find, I just get, my hairs go up a little bit when it's like,

that should not be allowed, because I feel like that should not be allowed is what's led to, we're not allowed of psychedelics. Well, I never said that should not be allowed. I said my experience is that this is a terrible idea. Based on my experience, working with the medicines, you know, what I had done recreationally before and spiritually before I started doing real medicine work, I did that by myself. I did that hanging out with friends. It was never an issue.

But once my psyche was allowing the medicine to go deeper, that's where it gets dangerous. That's where it gets really terrible. terrifying scary sometimes and having somebody there to hold that space. And anytime you're inviting somebody to take medicine in a setting that's meant to be healing, you're inviting the opportunity that it's going to go deep. And my words in the book were, I think this is a bad idea. I don't think that this is something people should do. And I even say to the reader, I just wanted you to know this perspective so you could make this decision for yourself. So it wasn't me saying this this is the wrong thing for everybody.

This is me saying, based on my extensive experience of doing deep work, more than most, I think this is a terrible idea because I know how easily really, really challenging stuff can come rushing to the surface when you had no idea it was coming. That's fair. I get where you're coming from with that. Yeah. So is that going to stop psychedelic telehealth? No. Is me talking about that in the book going to stop anything?

No. but somebody reading it might have a broader perspective on what they're getting into and they can make an informed choice based on my concerns. And that's really anything I said in the book. You know, I speak in absolutes, but I'm just speaking as from my own experience. And I try to be clear about that is that I just, I think if you're going to go deep with the intention of going deep, you need somebody there to keep an eye on you. And I think like if it's 1,800 trip sitter and you just want to take some mushrooms and listen

to Pink Floyd and you'd like somebody there to. talk to, but you don't have anybody around. Yeah, maybe that's fine. I wouldn't do it for a lot of people with ketamine. That's, it's not, again, let's make an imaginary depression scale of one to 10. Yeah. Seven and under, you're probably okay with telehealth and ketamine. You get above that. You have significant trauma. You have suicidal ideation. No, it doesn't. I get that. Yeah. But there's a lot of people who it's a legal, it's a legal way to start. It's a legal way to process. It's a legal way to turn off that or narrator. It's a legal way to feel. You know, I sat with somebody or I was with somebody, I should say it that way,

that was, had never done any psychedelics, was comfortable with ketamine because it was prescribed. Okay, great. And she said, oh, my God, I felt the weight of the world, lift off my shoulders. I didn't know how much weight I was carrying. Yeah. Shift in perspective. Shift in perspective. That's a beautiful awakening that can lead to, hmm, maybe there's something else here that I should

be looking into, hmm, maybe I can afford more than $200 or a thousand, whatever, academy possession costs to maybe it is worth doing a deeper dive with someone who is more experienced and therefore more costly. Because, yeah, this is what else is important to spend money on besides my own health and well-being. Yeah. It speaks volume. The realization can just as easily be, oh, my God, I was molested.

followed by a panic attack and that that is where my concern lies and that doesn't doesn't happen to everybody not everybody was molested i hope but you know that's that's the kind of thing that can come to the surface and you don't get to predict when it does it comes to the surface when it's ready and if you're alone when that comes through you're alone in often overwhelming emotional sensations stuff your body has been protecting you from feeling like for decades. And that is where my concern that I voiced in the book, what's coming from, is you don't get to pick how deep it's going to go. You don't get to pick what's ready. You know, you don't know what the tectonic plates are doing in there. And this could be the big

Yellowstone super volcano as likely as it is, you know, just a level two earthquake here in California. You know, you just don't know. Which would you prefer? That's my concern. I have a preference question then. What would you prefer? Someone, doesn't do the case. I mean, I know this is a false question, but no, go on, do your things. Don't do any psychedelic because and just, or this could be a good, this is a starting point.

And then you have that volcanic eruption for whatever reason. Great, you created a volcanic eruption, but now you're aware of this new thing that you weren't aware of before. And you were just hiding behind your computer screen and your tasks and living a less fulfilled life potentially. It gets tricky, doesn't it? It's so tricky because I wouldn't want to deny anybody the opportunity to heal. And a lot of my, the fire I bring to it is my concerns about people missing their opportunity to heal,

working with unqualified guides, even if they're a licensed therapist or a PhD, they haven't done their own deep work so they can't hold the space. space for this. So this person's going and going through this whole process, but they're not actually getting what they could have gotten from it, right? Same thing with psychedelic telehealth. Yeah, maybe the volcano goes off. But when you push somebody into what's traditionally called bad trip territory, which are just feelings that are so big, your psyche doesn't know how to handle them, that in and of itself is traumatizing. And that can cause the original wound to lock down harder. I've had that experience happen.

I've had it happen with a guide sitting there because he wasn't checked in with me. He wasn't paying attention to what was going on. He was thinking he's going to Hawaii next week. He's thinking, I just broke up with my girlfriend and I'm really upset. And he's not watching that I'm in the worst space out of two years of working together that I've ever been in. And it was excruciating. And it was only because I had done two years of that,

that I could hold the space for myself and keep myself safe. But somebody brand new to this to have something like that breakthrough alone would be terrifying. terrifying and likely highly traumatizing. And that's really my only case. Is that likely on ketamine? On especially small dose ketamine, it's not likely. Is it possible? It is absolutely possible.

I think if people are just informed that some people have this concern about this, this is what they think the concern is at least they're making an informed consent. Because nobody doing the ketamine treatments is letting them know, you could have a frig bad trip, you know, what people call a bad trip. You could have an intensely unpleasant, overwhelmingly terrifying experience. It's improbable, but it could happen and you need to be ready or just, you know, accept that if that happens, we're going to be together, I'm going to breathe, you're going to breathe, we're going to get through it just fine, something, but people are going into it uninformed. And it's, that is where my concern is. So making an informed choice, then people

should do what they feel is right. Yeah, and you do go into good length, depth. in your book on the risks of unqualified guides. And again, it's not that you shouldn't work. It's like anything, there's a learning curve. And you're going to get people in the beginning of the curve and people at the other end of the curve. And you've got to kind of find your way through it. And what's super...

Right, is it's not a job people should be learning on. You shouldn't be learning how to be a guide by trial and error with other people's psychology. If you want to be a guide, you go and you get some basic psychology training. You learn how to listen. You learn how to be present. You learn what transference and projection is so you can recognize it and not get tangled up in it. You learn how to hold a space to allow somebody to come to their own conclusions, which many people who are not trained in psychology can't bring themselves that do. They need to justify their presence in the room so they want to

psychoanalyze. And it's just a mess. And then from there, you could go and you could work in groups as a, as an assistant. So you're working with actual qualified guides, but you're watching how this is done. You're getting an energetic education on what it feels like to hold space for another person. And then, you know, at some point, you can start saying, okay, now I'm qualified to work with somebody, maybe not with trauma, but we're going to start here, somebody who doesn't recognize it, they have trauma, and I'll start working my way up. There's a way to do it. But so many people are, man, Burning Man was awesome. I want to be a shun. and hang out their shingle

and all of a sudden they've got people coming in to sit with them and they're doing real damage. I've met the people offering this and I've met the people that have been damaged and it's real. It's a real thing. I think we are completely aligned with that and the Cs get degrees.

There are a range of people who come out of these programs that are better than others. And they get, and hopefully they get better over time. and it's not that they're not thoughtful and it's not that they haven't gone through the steps. They're just not taking to it as quickly as others.

And again, as there's so much to learn as a consumer of psychedelics, whether it's in the above-ground medical model, it's in psychedelic tourism, it's in a religious freedom church model. There's a lot here that we just don't, we're not taught in school about this. So it's a lot. And it's, I guess, I just want to be cautious in trying to put up any barriers, sorry, not any barriers,

but in putting up, when we start putting up some barriers, it's all of a sudden we've kept out, we've kept out a lot. When we start putting up some barriers, we were not only good. I mean, I would say that a good percentage of people practicing psychotherapy, just traditional psychotherapy, have no business doing it. There we go. They just are prescribing it. Of course, prescribing drugs for these things.

I mean, there's just, there's so much misinformed practice happening at the expense of the people seeking help. But it's just with psychedelics involved, the stakes get way higher. Defense has come down. People are more open. They're more easily affected. And they could easily leave the experience worse off than they went into it. And that's just, that's my big concern is let's, let's identify what qualified is and how you get there.

Maybe you don't need to be a legally licensed therapist to be a really good guide. I've met some that are. You know, my current guide is a therapist and is highly educated on handling trauma, but she's also done her own work, which makes all the difference. She sounds incredible. Yeah, she sounds amazing. But I guess I wonder about certification. Do we need to certify at the guide level or do we certify at the container?

Can we set up a process where the. container is what's important. Okay, so we're going to do X amount of people. And if there needs to be male and a female, there needs to be this. And these are the action steps. And we certify the container, which could make this process faster to get to more people. And it's less individually dependent. The one-on-one work is where it seems to me that it's challenging, because who the hell knows what's being said, who's being touched, what manipulation's happening on and on. group. Ceremony.

With multiple people, multiple eyes in the rooms, multiple facilitators, multiple guardians. I'm actually, you know what? I've been, I was compelled away

from doing any group work for a very long time. I've been doing deep guided medicine work for like four and a half years now, almost monthly. And in that entire time, I only did one ayahuasca ceremony early on.

and it it kicked my ass it kicked my ass and i don't know if it was in part not held well i thought it was held well everybody seemed to know what they were doing i knew some of the people there but it's not advised for trauma and i was clearly trying to process trauma but i've come around to feeling like i'm ready to engage my guide has been recommending to me for a while like when it feels right you know go try do some do something where you're less in control put yourself and so i leave in a month for a seven-day ayahuasca retreat in Peru. And I'm only going to this particular facility because I know somebody who takes veterans down to work with these guys. And so I feel very comfortable that I know what I'm walking into, had long conversations with one of the owners.

And so I feel good about going. And I agree with you. I think that there's great power at working at the group level. And where the one-on-one stuff is really most powerfully necessary is in really delicate, especially early life trauma. A lot of veterans are responding beautifully, beautifully to ceremony in groups. And my guide is a part of a group that is taking veterans through, and she got to help shape the program. So there's this lengthy process leading up to it. So they're all getting prepared. But they're also building a community. So this cohort, they stay together even after all the work. And then they come together and they do the work together. And then they do their integration online, but together as they're talking and working through things. And so they're

supporting each other, plus they have the support of the therapist. And it's just, it sounds like an amazing program. And I think you're right. I think to reach the most people, the group paradigm is going to be the one that is most accessible. And especially if you can get a sense of community and your community comes together once a quarter, twice a year, whatever it is that works. But there's familiarity. So when you go there, you feel more safe to open. You're not in a room for of strangers. So over three or four or five sessions, you're allowed to go deeper and deeper because you're more and more safe to do so. I think there's huge potential in that. And we're not talking about it. I'm not seeing a lot of discussion about the power group in the psychedelic conferences.

I'm not seeing certifications for container holding. I'm not seeing, I'm just not seeing a lot on this particular topic. And I think it's a, it is an opportunity for the medical professionals to make more money per hour and yet still bring down the cost to the consumer and it's an opportunity for the and it's more effective, I believe, for the participant. Let me jump in here real fast because I think what you're speaking to causes, I think there's a pattern that happens when the instrument becomes the institution, then the corruption sets in. And if we look at certification, right, like this, here's an instrument to make this thing work, but then it becomes institutionalized and now there's a lot of people coming through.

institution gets corroded. So with certifying the actual group, certifying the container, would the container be something that evolves? It seems to me that that would be a way to keep the instrument sharp instead of having it get corroded. You know what I mean? If the person sets up the instrument, the institution, and the institution evolves with it, does that kind of make sense? A thousand percent. And as best, as different best practices come out, you share it with the container. So it's not, you don't lose the institutional knowledge when one person, walks away, you still have the latest greatest medical intake form. You have the latest greatest informed consent. You have the latest greatest emergency action process. You have the latest greatest.

These are the safety things you have to have on site. You have the latest greatest. These are the way you deal supplements. You have the latest greatest preparation, integration process. But that's where the corrosion sets in because as soon as someone decides or the expert in something or as soon as we have someone set up, okay, this is the guy. All of a sudden, that's where the corrosion sets in. Like, shouldn't there be a process, like similar to the ceremonial setting where there's lineages or something, but it just seems, it just seems to me that as soon as we get something set in order, it's going to begin corroding instantly. How do you stop that corrosive nature from happening? Or is it even possible? I think that a part of certifying the container,

if you're going to have this group process, is that the guides themselves are the people, you know, because you'll have, you'll have actual guides, but then you'll also have, helpers who are maybe aspiring to be guides and they're there to learn or they're in support. Right. But the, the qualification of the guide in a, in a group, I think, are just as essential because the same narcissism can creep in, the same guru stick can creep in that it does with one-on-one guide. And, you know, healing with psychedelics is, isn't medical.

It's, it's a soul healing. It's a soul to soul healing. And, you know, people are wounded often in relationship. And it's in relationship that healing happens. And if you've got somebody unheeled, holding space for you while you are so vulnerable, you're vulnerable to their wounding. You're vulnerable to being impressioned by their wounding. And so for me, just, I love this idea of the group model, making it all very accessible.

But it's, we need a way to make sure that these people that are holding, it that are serving the guide have themselves done their own deep work. It's not enough to be highly educated. It's not enough to have done a thousand ceremonies. What have you done in yourself? And how do you bring that energy into this container? And that's really, I think, one of the most important parts. And that is what keeps it from corroding is that these people continue to do their own work. They work amongst each other, whatever it is. But nobody is being set up as the the guru. Nobody is being set up as the expert. The healing is not happening because of anybody who's facilitating this. The healing is happening because these people are facilitating a psychedelic

experience and holding a safe space for these people's, these humans inner healers to do the healing. The corrosion comes in. The corrosion comes in with the ego. The corrosion comes in with the ego. The corrosion comes in with money. And so when the ego or money are the most important thing that's when it's going to start to corrode, when the healing of these individuals, that show up as the most important thing, you have a free flow of opportunity and possibility. The Sacred Plant Alliance is doing some beautiful work with their members. And again, they're not taking new members, and it's tricky.

But one of the things that they do is they, one of the conditions of being a member of that association, as I understand it, is you agree to put a phone number, make a phone number available to all members that should they feel like the ethics were violated in the delivery of that ceremony, that here's a number you can call and you can report it up. And I think that notion is really powerful. I've been advocating for a, I've been advocating that someone needs to create a psychedelic arbitration association.

That we need these, and it doesn't need to be one. Have four, it doesn't matter. Let's have four ethical bodies. But I like the idea that different containers have, one thing is you agree, one of the best practices is yeah have an extra set of eyes on this and if i'm doing things above board i'm not corroding and i'm not getting into the guru stick i should have no issue with that yeah but when i don't want the extra set of eyes i'm afraid to have a number to call up what are you up to yeah exactly so i like i love that and i hope it happens in the dark it happens in the dark and i

hope that i hope that i hope that they continue to do more beautiful work and i hope that they're able to expand that work out, and I hope that someone else listening to this is like, oh, well, I can create an ethical hotline and be a resource for some other people. There's room for more, I mean, it's so young. This is so, it's how we're coming out of a prohibition. There's so much opportunity to play a meaningful contribution in the evolution of this. We haven't had anything in mental health since the invention of the antidepressant. And again, I agree with you, Shannon. This is not medical. This is this is internal self-healing process, but holding that space and holding that space well is so, so important. So important. Yeah. It's fascinating to me. Yeah. If I shift gears for a

moment, it kind of take us on this other little tangent. I was speaking with Dr. Erica Dick about some of her work and the historical nature of psychedelics. And we touched upon Huxley, but we also touched upon this weird sort of relationship between eugenics and psychedelics. And when I begin, like on some level, these things seem to rise together. And when I start looking at modern medicine about, you know, the CRISPR and the idea of, you know, custom babies and all these things, isn't it interesting? This technology seems to be arising with psychedelics again. And like there's no real connection, but they seem to rise together. I wonder if you guys have any thoughts on that.

Well, it seems like they hinge on, you know, what's the maximum potential of a huge? human. Yeah. You know, if we, you know, if you have these wounds and they're holding you back from what it is you can really do to heal is to allow more of your potential to be realized. Eugenics are tricky. You had posted about that on LinkedIn and I had some talk about it. It's like, you know, I don't, I don't know how I feel about humans being bred like prize poodles, but maybe, maybe gene therapy has something to offer. And it's, I don't know, it's just such a, It's such a interesting thing because you could definitely bring out the better traits that allow for better survivability or better adaptability. But I don't know.

Who gets to decide what eugenics are applied? I don't know that I want to hand those rings over to anybody. I think I'll just keep rolling a dice and seeing who's born and making the best of it. Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, tell me, George. Are they, is it two sides of the same coin? You know, when we talk about science versus spirituality, on some level, it seems to me that eugenics, at least in the lab, is trying to do what psychedelics can do for us organically. You know, when we, when we try to use eugenics to get over different types of diseases, you know, not all diseases, but it seems a lot of the diseases are on some level, you know, made through society.

I think maybe second dose can help us get over those problems organically. So I'm wondering maybe that's the connection. So let's maybe take a slightly different angle on this. Sure, sure. If we believe that we are spiritual creatures having a human existence and that I am not my body, I am not this, is there room for scientists to figure out how to make my body live longer, how to make my arm stronger, how to make my sight better. Sure. But that's not me. That doesn't change the way I feel in the inside. We, uh, whereas a culture, we spend so much time worried about what we're going to

need financially when we enter this active dying process. So much we have to say, we have to say, we have to, what's going to happen in those final piece that we choose not to be alive when our bodies are most capable of living. can this um yeah i think there's a play again i think it's another and great and you you can find a way to help keep my body stronger lasting longer that those pieces of me uh less disease beautiful and a lot of people in this community who are doing this type of work are feel to me to be healthier than the average american kind of we kind of know it's like maybe we should eat some more salad.

Maybe we should take a few more walks. Maybe we should. We don't need to be tense every moment of every day. We don't need to butt heads and to approach everything with confrontation. We don't need to believe anybody's attacking us. We don't need. I think there's all sorts of benefits from that as well. So again, I just put in the and category.

If someone else wants to make their contribution to the world and gets excited about slicing genes and trying to figure out those things beautiful. Great. Do that. Amazing. Have you thought about who you are? Yeah. I think they can work hand in hand.

And one of the things that I like to use in my journeys is psychedelics and human growth hormone. And on some level, you can look at HGH as a form of eugenics. I think the two go hand in hand. And when we think about body and spirit, we often hear those things together. We often read the literature, whether it's in sacred text or whether it's in a bodybuilding magazine. You know, these two things go hand in hand. And I think that it's something for people that are beginning to try different modalities in the psychedelic experience. And of course, I'm a truck driver.

So just let me throw that out there right now. I think that HGH is something that people should be looking at to layer with psychedelics because I think that you are somehow comprehensively enhancing what psychedelics are already doing. And that's just based on stuff I've read. But I think it's a way to look at eugenics and psychedelics walking in harmony instead of at odds with each other. And I think that there are more solutions like that. Maybe they can work together. Maybe the chemistry are working together in some way. So I wanted to bring that up and just kind of throw that out there.

It's not an angle I've really looked at. I've been layering in GHB with other medicines as a matter of practice. It used to be ketamine, but like this last journey I did was GHB, with a strong dose of MDMA, about 200 milligrams of MDMA, with a 50 milligram booster and then some vitamin EMP in there. And, you know, not only does the GHB calm down the, you know, so I'm not all cracked out on the MDMA with the amphetamine effect. So it calms it way down.

I stay very clear. But GHB is supposed to release human growth hormone. It's why bodybuilders were getting addicted to it. It was they were using it all the time to get the, the HGH release. But I wasn't doing it for the HGH, but I wonder now it's making me curious what possible benefits might be getting,

might be coming from it just inadvertently. Yeah, it would be interesting to have some of Matt's background and what's going on in the brain and maybe some people at Imperial College or something be looking at these neural feedback. Because I do think that those things got to go hand in hand. Shannon, you must be one of the most experience people when it comes to layering.

When I read through the book and I listen to some of the things you're saying, you're one of the most, in my opinion, you're one of the most well-versed people on this idea of layering. Maybe you can speak to some other ideas about layering. Is there a certain particular layer that you have found to be effective for your trauma or certain types of traumas? Well, it's, you know, it started with my first. guide. So, you know, we started with 5MODMT and then we did MDMA, worked with some mushrooms.

Then we went back to MDMA and I did some 5MEODMT on the way down. That was my, my first experience of layering was, I think I had actually insuffulated at that time. So I got a nice long experience with the 5MEODMT. And it was incredible. And it started teaching me that, wow, when you layer these things together, you get a new experience. So you're creating a new drug almost. It started to become commonplace that I would do some sublingual ketamine and then take the MDMA or the mushrooms or whatever I would do. And the ketamine would open me in a way that allowed those medicines to go deeper and give me access to areas that I didn't have access to before. So it was a really powerful experience. And I've continued... You give an example of that? I'm sorry to coach up, but can you

just for the people who are like, can you give an example? of like something that opened you up where you couldn't go deep before like what would that yeah you know ketamine with mushrooms you know to have keep your arms and legs inside the car at all time so the roller coaster comes to a stop because it's I remember that I was on the mushrooms the first time we did it I was on the mushrooms and I would I wasn't used to ketamine so it was dropping me almost into a sleep state briefly and it would open something I would feel like I was coming up to a door and then terror would push me back away from the door. So I was like,

and I was just like this back and forth, this back and forth until finally the door opened. And it's like, oh my God, here's all this fear. Here's these things I fear. And oh, my God, I think I was molested. It was like one of the first times that door got kicked open where it was just really clear to me that, holy crap, this was a real thing. This really happened. And it was walked away in a really profound way.

and mushrooms by themselves hadn't gotten me close to that door. MDMA by itself hadn't gotten me close to the door, but something to deeply relax my body to allow the muscular armoring to relax, allow the mushrooms. I do this, that's mycelium, by the way. It allows the mycelium in deeper. And it's just a powerful experience. You know, MDMA is such a beautiful tool,

but do too little and you don't really get in deep, do too much. the the amphetamine effect of it is overpowering. And so you put them together and all of a sudden you've got this incredible heart opening, but your heart's not racing. You're not gurning and clenching your jaw so powerful. You're not talking a million miles an hour so you can actually settle in and do some work. My most common routine for doing my own medicine work is I'll have some kind of a grounding base. So I'll either have GHB, which is a shamefully underutilized medicine in the psychedelic scene.

I'll talk about it more if you want me to, but that are ketamine, which calms my body, doesn't quell fear. It's not like taking a Xanax. It's not about hiding from anything I'm feeling. It just opens me. It opens me in the face of fear. And then I'll take either MDMA or mushrooms or I'm a big fan of 3MC, 3MMMM, is a less known psychedelic that is very similar to MDMA, but your brain stays way more clear.

You're present in the room with the heart opening, whereas with MDMA, you're in a fog. You're just in a foggy ocean. You're riding with swells and what happens, happens, and it's fine, but 3MC is this incredible medicine. So ketamine and 3MC, I'm just open and I'm talking, and I just, whatever my intentions were for the session, I just laser focus.

I always go there. I don't have to think about it. Just all of a sudden I'll start talking about these things and having these emotional releases. And then usually as everything's starting to calm down, is over the peak and coming down the other side, I'll usually work with vape pens of 5MEO. And that is just whatever was left

that was wanting to release that day gets released. It's always powerfully energetic, you know, almost always purge, almost always have a lot of movement, almost always have a lot of verbalization. but I always know at the end that, you know what, what I set out to do today, I got to. And so it's just, it's a really powerful way to work.

It's not for the uninitiated. It's something you want to work up to. You want to be really familiar separately with everything that you're working with, but then you can understand how they're working together and what is giving you. Matt, you've been, you spoke earlier about a process where people come in and they have a day of holotropic breathing. And then they have a different ceremony with, with mushrooms. What is your ideas on layering? And what are some specific incidents that you have found to be beneficial?

If you were going to ask me what I would recommend for my sister. I think a multi-day, multi-medicine, sticking to one medicine at a time and just kind of working up, starting with MDA or MDMA, if you don't have access to Sassafras, moving into psilocybin, moving up to Bufo. Just a beautiful arc. I agree. I also think there are times when that's not that much time, that much commitment is not accessible. And I do think the combination of psilocybin and MDA or MDMA,

they work really well together, whether you take the longer acting first and then you throw in the others or vice versa. It's just it's a beautiful stack. I am my knowledge of this. I've seen practitioners stack without telling people what the stacks are. Don't love that. I'm hesitant to get too much into the stacking world only because it's already, I believe, and I'm using the church model, the 200-plus psychedelic churches, it's hard enough to say, okay, we are standing your grounds. So we're doing this as religious freedom.

We are doing this not as therapy. We are. There's a history of these medicines for spiritual connection. And I think when we get into the kind of serious advanced skiing that Shannon's referring to, it's a different level of a, it's just it's not for the masses. And I believe these ceremonies are for communities and for many, many types of communities. And there are also, and then there's one other point I'll touch on as much as I love Cilost. cymbin and MDA or Sassafrasa or MDMA, it also excludes people from with different

medications they might be taking from participating in those. Many people on an antidepressant can take psilocybin, not so much with MDA or MDMA. So again, when you talk about community ceremonies, how do we think about accessibility, how do we think about access, how do we think about making everybody feel a part of this? So just those are things I think about in the spiritual place. I guess those would all go into certifying the container too like those are all brilliant ideas that would be in that landscape of trying to certify a container like that

like it sounds like it's done a lot of thinking on that I'm sorry I'm sorry John oh I was just going to say for people just waiting into exploring themselves with psychedelics I really like the sound of this where you do you walk them in slowly and you give them the

layered experiences and there's there's no way I would layer up somebody brand new the psychedelics I mean one psychedelic is a life-changing nuclear bomb going off in your brain right and I only do this layering because I do very nuanced work and I've developed a level of self-awareness to know exactly where what I'm doing and where I'm going and you know I only talk about it in the book because it's it's interesting right and it's just it's where I've come to and it's a place that other people might come to and most probably never will. Most will never need that in order to keep going deeper past just increasingly intensifying defense mechanisms. But if I were going to recommend somebody that I care about that's interested in a psychedelic experience,

I would send them to something like what Matt is describing because that is a powerful way. And being in group and establishing a relationship with the group and wading into the altered experience. I think is a beautiful, very safe way to do it. And not giving people overwhelming experiences is the key for them learning how to navigate that space to be able to move into more overwhelming or challenging experiences later. Johns Hopkins has actually done some research on the combination of psilocybin and MDMA specifically. And they talk about how it reduces the more challenging trips. Now, I'm not sure we want to reduce the more challenging trips. That gets into a whole different discussion.

But it does, it can make for a more pleasant trip, which again, as we're talking about people's first experience, people's second experience, it's kind of a gentle way to wait, more gentle way to wait in the water. And of course, this goes with all the caveats, there's risks to all of this. And then as Shannon said earlier, we don't know what's going to come up and we're all doing the best we can.

And the person needs to come in with eyes wide open. And if it's not enthusiastic, yes, it should be a no. and all those disclaimers. All those disclaimers. Yeah. It's interesting. Go ahead, George. It's interesting.

A lot of us are speaking to this idea of using psychedelics to heal trauma. And when I've read both of your books, both of you have overcome a lot of trauma. You found these medicines to do it. But I'm wondering, might there be this new thing? It seems to me when we look at the landscape, there's a large portion of people who need it not to do it. deal with the trauma that they've already faced, but trauma that they're about to face and that the end of life seems to be something very beautifully used for these particular medicines. Can either of you speak to that?

I mean, I know people that are facing this and would probably really benefit from a psychedelic experience, but I don't know how to get involved with them or move it forward or really anything about that. Do you want to take that one, Matt? I'll say I'll jump on that to start. So we have this beautiful, there's a beautiful event here in a small town outside of Chapel Hill called Pittsburgh. And it's called Death Fair. And it is this beautiful celebration of death.

And people, thousands of people come and they talk about grieving and they talk about healing and they talk about green burial. And they talk about all things around death. And I'm speaking out of this year. And I'm speaking on two perspectives. I'm speaking about the research that's been done with psilocybin. people in the active state of dying and how beautiful this can be. It doesn't change the diagnosis, but it changes the way they experience this final chapter of this particular existence. And I speak about it. I'm going to speak about it for the people related to the person and friends

with the person and how powerful psychedelics can be for them during their friends or loved ones active state of dying. And then the third way is for people who've already lost somebody, and the use of psychedelics as a way to process what's happening. I think there's so much here in this population doesn't have time to wait and see if an antidepressant's going to work. And even if it did work, again, we're back to you've numbed a symptom. You haven't changed an outlook on this existence. You haven't changed their belief in whether, potentially their belief on whether there is

a life after death. there is this a one in warm food or is there a continuum here there's so many things that psychedelics can open up for again people in the active state of dying and the people that love them and i i'm i'm a i'm a huge fan of that work and i think i think more of it needs to be done and i wish that um i mean there there's a there's a death dula or a community that i know does a lot to work in the space in a way that hospice can't, but maybe I wish they could. I hope they can at some point in the not too distant future. It would have been, I mean, I just can't imagine when my mom was dying, I just can't

imagine what this would have meant for her to have had an experience with this. And I can't imagine what it would have done from me and my sister and my stepdad to have been able to have a different understanding and to not, I did not realize it, not believe that she has gone forever to not believe that there is no God because who would do this, did not pull all the stories, the narratives that I told myself for 30 years.

Yeah, I think it's super powerful medicine in the death and dying community. There's that saying that's something along, he who dies before he dies never dies. And when I see people I love, when I look about my mom, she's made it, she's accomplished so much. And she's secure in all these things,

but she's so worried about the people around, obviously people around her age are passing away. And she's so worried about death that she's failing. It seems to me on some level she's failing to live out everything she's earned. And so when I think about that phrase, that he who dies before he dies never dies. It seems to me psilocybin or some of these experiences can give them the rest of their life back.

You know, I don't know that. I'm not at that doorstep there. But it seems to me from some of my particular journey is that people that find themselves with a lot of anxiety, be it death or the death of a child or uncertainty, you know, it seems to be something that gives their life back. And I want to learn more about it. Thanks for bringing up those things. I'm looking forward to looking into them. Shannon, what do you think? Yeah, I don't have any direct experience with working with anyone or doing that specific work, but I can tell you that it's a part of the reason that I want to go to this

ayahuasca retreat. I feel like I've come to a level of healing within myself. There's still trauma stuffed up to dig. There's just going to be, right? But it's not like it was. But I'm starting to also have a lot of existential questions. I'm also starting to, I've been very mindful not to allow my psychedelic experiences to turn into a spiritual bypass where I just latch on to notions of the divine and ignore all the stuff that's unhealed in me. I wanted to heal first and then open up into whatever spirituality I'm going to find myself in, whatever sense of my place in the universe I'm going to find myself in. And this, this ayahuasca retreat is meant to be a part of that. It's me re-engaging the world after having been so myopic in my personal growth work. And so I think it's

beautiful work. And I'm very curious what I'm going to learn for myself about death and life and my place in the in the flow of it all. And I thought, just, that's really interesting that you're going to speak at that conference, Matt. I've understood psychedelics to be a powerful tool to that end, but I don't have any direct experience with it yet. Yeah, I'm so looking forward to it. And I love going back to the community into, again, one of the other reasons I'm a huge fan of a of community experiences is like the intergenerational work done in group settings is healing for everybody so I've seen a few ceremonies ago we had an 80 year old dad and a 79 year old mom and a 50-some year old son and then we've had 18 year old sons and 50-year-old

dads and it's just it's just beautiful and to bear witness to someone else going through that process and to have again to hear they hear the perspectives and i i journeyed once with uh with one of my nephews uh 22 and um and afterwards and again in the community and in a ceremonial setting i said him you know i've looked past you a thousand times as just a goofy kid at thanksgiving and i didn't respect you i didn't see you on your try i didn't see you as a fellow traveler i didn't see you struggling and he put in so much work in this uh ceremony it was so beautiful to watch but I think we yeah we learn and watching

these different generations we can become more aware of ourselves well my again my healing is your healing your healing is my healing and yeah we are all connected we are all might be different waves but still the same ocean how do we I love all of this

I like that different waves same ocean that's great yeah nice it's bathroom well gentlemen we're coming up on two hours here. Both of you, amazing, man. This flies by. I'm so thankful to get to get both of you in one room and have this conversation. Before I let you go, though, let me start with you, Shennan, we'll move to you, man. Where can people find you? What do you have coming up and what are you excited about, Shannon? You know, mostly I'm just promoting the same message from the book.

I just want people who bravely seek out help in the psychedelic realm, that one, who bravely seek out help in the psychedelic realm to be met with actually effective help. And that's, that's my big push is consumer education, but also education on the level of the people who are, the people who are serving as guides and offering these services. And truly, I only desire to be of service. You can find me, I'm on LinkedIn, as you guys know. I'm on the other social media platforms, but I don't do any of that. Somebody else does that for me. I can't bear it. I'm at shannon-dunkin.com.

You can reach me through there if you want to. And the book, audio book and e-book are all on Amazon and all the major platforms, if that's of interest to you. And if you run a school or something like that, I've been donating a bunch of books to schools that are better certifying people, just they have this message also to consider in their curriculums. So if you're running a school or some kind of training program for guides, you'd like me to speak or you'd like some books, I'll ship you a few cases of books, no problem. Free of charge.

That's beautiful. Very generous. Yeah. I'm going to do that on footnote you. That's a shout. Awesome. Matt, you have the one event coming up that you spoke about briefly, but maybe you can speak to what you have, what else you have coming up. up and what you're excited about where people can find you.

Yeah, I'm, I am trying to normalize this discussion as much as possible. And I say this discussion, it's these discussions. It's the discussion on mental health. It's a discussion on the prescription epidemic that we live in. It's a discussion on psychedelics. It's the discussion on drugs. It's all of these discussions. And to normalize it to be just, I'm not a, I don't think I project as a typical.

regular drug user, and I am. So I'm speaking at Wonderland and hosting a panel of people telling transformational stories, and these are people who, I don't think there's a woman who there's a woman who started a group called Moms and Mushrooms. There's another woman who lost her husband unexpectedly and went through a psychedelic ceremony

11 weeks after his death. There's a technology, chief technology officer of a large company who's really found his voice and fought imposter syndrome using connecting, reclaimed to spiritual connections and another person who was a banker for many years and ayahuasca transformed him and he ended up getting involved in all sorts of things, ayahuasca 20 years ago and it's completely changed his trajectory. So it's just this beautiful panel of people telling their stories.

I love the speaking. I did I was speaking at the mental health marketing conference two days ago. I'm speaking a bunch of like entrepreneur groups and just anyone who's looking for information on this. I'm happy to come and speak and to share this knowledge and to create conversation around this. I try not to be so didactic that this I know the way. No, these are just things to think about as you're going through this process. Matt Zeeman.com is my site. I do answer anybody who writes me through there.

I love it when people reach out and ask, questions or ask for assistance as they're figuring out their journey. I'm LinkedIn as I'm very active on LinkedIn. There's a lot of Instagram activity. I do get the questions that are asked, but I kind of stay away from the actual platform from Shannon, or like Shannon was saying. Yeah, so that's kind of all things with me.

And then I have the two books. I have psychedelics for everyone. And then I have Beyond the Trip, which is a preparation and integration journal. And there's an audible of the psychedelics for everyone, which wildly, Shannon, I don't know if you've made an audible yet. It is out. I mean, it's wild to me. Every month, how many people are doing the audibles versus the print books.

I just, I didn't know who would do that. I actually got the audible of yours. That's how I went to a studio and recorded the audible for coming full circle as well. It's wild. It's wild. How many people choose to read that way. It's great. Amazing.

People like the audio books. I like the audiobooks. Yeah. And George, you are, again, what a treat that you organize this and connected Shannon and me together. And I just appreciate your questions, your enthusiasm, all of this that you do, not just for this call this show today. But, I mean, you're just show after show. You're asked great questions and you bring information to light that that wouldn't be there. So it's so grateful for you, my friend.

Yeah. You're just saying that because it's true. It is true. Man, I love you guys. I'm super stoked that you spent time with me today. I know you guys got to go. Everybody, go into the show notes. Check out both books.

There are wealth of knowledge. Go check out each individual site. Listen to what they're saying. Listen to their journeys. You'll learn so much from both of them. Such a wide range and such a wide grasp of not only where we've been, but where we are. And I think it foreshadows where we're going. I'm really excited for the future.

And I think that both of you are playing a gargantuan role in it. and I'm stoked to get to be here with you today. So thank you both very much for your time. Hang on briefly afterwards. I'll speak with you briefly. But ladies and gentlemen, I hope you are as mind-expanded as I am today. I hope everybody has a beautiful day.

And that's all we got. Ladies and gentlemen, Aloha. Oh, I never ended it. Dang it, George.