TrueLife - This is Your Brain; This is Your Brain on Drugs. Any Questions? - Matt Zemon

Episode Date: February 11, 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/You can connect with Matt in the following ways:Main Website - https://www.mattzemon.comHappyy Website - https://www.happyy.meLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattzemon/Instagram - @matt.zemonBook “Psychedelics for Everyone” – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BF36K4RLTodays talk with bestselling author Matt Zemon, will be a walk on the wild side. Matt’s many accomplishments, as well as his background in psychology, neuroscience, and mental health make him one of the most sought after consultants in the world of psychedelics! Here are but a few of the areas I look forward to investigating. As a neuroscientist:Long-term high dose of psilocybin can lead to changes in brain structure and function, specifically affecting neural plasticity, synaptic connectivity and the regulation of neurotransmitter systems involved in cognition and emotional processing. However, there is limited research on the long-term effects of high dose psilocybin use and more studies are needed to fully understand its impact on the brain.Spiritual Leader:From a spiritual perspective, psilocybin has been used for centuries in spiritual and medicinal practices to promote insight, self-awareness and connection with the spiritual realm. Long-term high dose use of psilocybin can lead to altered states of consciousness and changes in perception that can impact behavior and worldview, potentially leading to spiritual evolution.As an ethnobotanist:From an ethnobotanical perspective, psilocybin has been used by indigenous cultures for centuries for spiritual and medicinal purposes, often as a sacrament in sacred ceremonies. The long-term effects of high dose psilocybin use in these cultures have not been well studied, but it is believed to play a role in shaping cultural norms, beliefs and practices. Further research is needed to understand its impact on cultural evolution.I realise that no one individual can have all the answers but I’m really looking forward to this conversation! One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

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

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. We are here with an incredible individual, one Matt Zeman, he's a best-selling author, CEO and co-founder of Happy, psychedelic medicine advocate, collaborative leader, entrepreneur, recently won the True Life podcast award for Best Book of 2022.

He's father of the year. I didn't even know that. Look at that. Wow. Husband of the years. Yeah. And I heard you recently helped an older lady across history with her groceries, man. Congratulations on your success.

Thank you, my friend. Thank you. That means a lot. Coming from you means a lot. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. You know, I wasn't sure where to begin, but I thought maybe we could begin with

what is it like? Now that you've had this book out for a while and you've had really tremendous success at it, and it's well-deserved. You've put your heart and your soul into it. You've been touring around. It seems like on every podcast. And what I've enjoyed so far is that it seems to me the majority of all the podcasts have been authentic and you've shared great stories in there about your family that

probably weren't easy. But what have you learned so far? Now that you've gotten the book out and you've begun to tour, what are some of the things that you've learned so far? That's an interest. That's a good way to start this discussion, George. You know, I think I keep forgetting the range of knowledge that people have coming into this process. And it ranges from I've never thought about a psychedelic other than avoiding them to I've done a ton of. I've done a ton of recreational psychedelics and what am I missing and a million things in between.

So I think approaching kind of each discussion trying to meet that person where they are. I think the other thing that's interesting is not every, but many of these podcasts, it's like, why did you book me? Like what's going on? What's interesting to you? And what's resonating for you and trying to get to that has been kind of fun. And sometimes it happens on the air and sometimes it happens off the air. But it's like, all right, what's going on? How are we connected?

And how did I make you appear in my life and vice versa? I like you. What about you? I mean, you've been doing a ton of these, George. What have you been learning in this process? Well, it's a great question. And thank you for asking. And I would almost-

I recommended the question. I would almost echo your sentiment in that. I think it's a giant exploration of all the things you are interested in. You know, and it's weird how when you begin, when you set out on something, whether it's writing a book, whether it's starting a podcast, when you begin to fan the flames of passion, the fire begins to grow. And it sucks in oxygen the same way it brings in people. And it's so interesting. When I talk to you and I listen to some of the podcast you've done, like I like to think that I see a. different thing in you that no one else does. But maybe that thing I see in you is just

a mirror image of me. And maybe that's why it's so attractive. You know, I like, I'm a big fan of Carl Young. And I've, I always go back to this idea that the thing we recognize in the other is us. Wehoo. I'm over here. You know, the same way that the ocean produces waves, the earth produces people or an apple tree produces apples. And it's so interesting. And maybe this sounds a little bit, oh, I don't know, maybe a little obtuse, but I think that there's something beautiful about recognizing the good and the evil in others as yourself. Does that seem too far out there? Does not seem too far out there. A couple things. I mean, I like where you're started with this, which is the, I think it's recognizing that we're all connected. I love the analogy of,

since you're down in Hawaii, of the waves. And we can see a wave, but we know at some point the wave returns to the ocean and that wave is connected to the ocean and one wave is not really any different from another wave although it looks like it for a minute and yeah so i think that's part of the the attraction and the mirror and things you're attracted to positively and negatively it's it's all about yourself and oftentimes it's about yourself yeah and then the evil question is one that just it just jumped out of me because i just i have a challenge with that um i have a challenge with this George. I don't know. Okay. I can, I'll share my challenge. My challenge is how do you, if I believe in evil, then how am I able then to look at everybody with compassion? Um, or is that fundamentally

judgmental? So I can, so I think where I've, where I've landed for today is I believe in misguided energy. And I believe in people who are, um, yeah, not living up to their highest self at that moment. But I don't believe in evil because I'm afraid it separates us from others and allows us, allows me to create yet another, another dividing line between me and that person. How would you define evil? I think when I've thought about what could evil be, it is truly a, a dark power of some sort that is specifically acting intrinsic. against the um

against the the higher power and i just i don't think that happens i think there are people who do things that are not ideal and that are misguided but that is not their core being that is causing them to behave that way what have you i mean you've thought about this what is what is what are your what are your thinking on evil well i think that words fail and ultimately i think i've learn that from psychedelics. I think that words are this compressed code we use to translate our emotions into vibrations and try to put them in someone else's head. And that, you know, emotions are very tricky. And sometimes when we try to translate these emotions, we feel a lot of pain. And so we try to use a symbol like the devil or, you know, something evil. We try to

translate that into, I am feeling so much pain. You don't understand. It's evil. You know, And so I think that evil exists for some people only because that's their idea of pain. And I think that the world would be such a better place if in every conversation we took a few minutes to define our terms. And I think most people. Oh my gosh. I love this. Hang on. Let's talk about this.

Before we can go any further, what is your vocabulary? Or even just a little bit of when you're talking to someone and they use a supercharged word like that, then you say, what do you mean by that? Because I might think the exact same thing, but here's the way I use it. And I know because people have done that for me. And it's almost like sometimes in my language, I feel like I've been using this hammer when I needed a wrench. And someone's like, hey, George, that's the wrong tool. Use this wrench over here. And I'm like, you're right.

That person's not evil. They just need to be turned over a little bit this way, you know? And so I do. I think that it does exist in that fashion and that people believe in it. And so I guess that intertwines the idea of beliefs and actions. And so, yeah, I would say that it's unfortunate to me that it exists, but it does exist, at least in the minds of other peoples. And then if exist in the minds of others peoples, who am I to deny it, even though I don't love it? That's interesting.

That's, yeah, that gets really complicated really quickly. So, okay. So then we go back to the whole, I've created everything in my universe. I'm 100% accountable. So now I've met somebody who believes in evil. Why did I create that person who believes in evil? and vice and I know we're talking with separate entities. I know we're getting really out there very quickly, but it's, yeah, that's interesting.

So then is that a mirror to some other piece of myself that's having doubt or that's not a, what am I looking at when I'm listening to that person, talk about their pain or their evil? Yeah, I don't know. I don't have a great answer for that today. That's, it's really interesting to think about, though. Yeah, it is. I don't know what that says about. Maybe that means I'm a little evil.

Maybe I haven't. I don't know. You know what? I once heard a good quote that said, the world is not only stranger than you imagine. It's stranger than you can imagine. And maybe these concepts, we can't thoroughly understand

until we've done enough psychedelics. That is a, it amazes me that after journey after journey, how much more is unveiled. And, yeah, because again, I think when you start, when you first start out into, or at least for me, when I first start out into this psychedelic path, it's like, well, first of all, fundamentally I thought I was fine. I'm fine. I don't need anything. I'm fine. And this is an experiment, and it's going to be interesting, and I'm still going to be fine. And then it became like, oh, well, maybe I need to look into these things. And then it was what maybe I need to look into those things. And all the way down to, what is language?

Yeah. What is this last retreat I was at? I had this just complete experience about stories and that everything down to the molecular level is a story on top of a story on top of a story. And how freeing it is to kind of think of like, well, wait a minute. What do I really have to do? I don't really have to do anything. All this pressure to do something is about the stories that I've believed in.

What specifically to do are stories that I've believed in. How to do. them, stories that I've believed in, and on and on. We could look at credentialing. We could look at, it's kind of wild. And it's all stories that separate us from who are we intrinsically? What is the wisdom and the beauty and the power that every human has fundamentally, regardless of they know how to program or drive a truck or sweep a broom?

what is that that they have as humans? And I love that. I loved seeing that and spending time swimming in that feeling and realization. That is awesome. I think at the heart of society, we're all storytellers. And if you are not happy with the life you're living, then tell yourself a better story, right? Like the internal dialogue that we have.

So often we're answering and asking questions all day long. I know for me and some of the people that I talk to, sometimes we ask really dumb questions of ourselves. Like, why am I so fat? Why can't I get this done? And your brain doesn't care. Your brain just like, you're fat because you're lazy. It'll give you an answer.

You know what I mean? But if you ask, it's like chat GPT. You got to prompt it the right way. You got to give the right question. Hey, what can I do to be the hero of my own story? You know, and I do think that if you begin to see your life as a beautiful work of art, maybe a painting or a story or something, then you can begin to try and get the author's attention,

whether you're the author or you believe that there's a different author, but start doing things to get their attention. Start helping, like, I'm going to help this old lady across the street. I'm going to go out and help my neighbor. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go do this other thing. I'm going to become the hero of my story, and you can start small. You can start with little things.

And all of a sudden, the author starts to notice and, hey, look at this character that I've been, you know, it's almost like the author begins thinking about you. this guy should be doing more. I like how his story's building out. You know, and it's an interesting way for you to do more in your own story. And then, I don't know,

I love the idea of a story. What is your take on the relationship between society, psychedelics, and their relationship to mythology? I think that those kind of intertwined together. Well, hang on. I want to stick on where you're just at for a moment. I mean, it is,

I think, and I guess this ties to your other question, too, then I think with psychedelic. it is for many people the first time that they've realized that they're totally fine without doing anything. They are enough. They're enough. And they're beautiful and they're loved. And then it's, okay, so now that I feel this way, which I might not have felt before or might not have felt like this for decades, what am I going to do with this information? Now that I remember, I can feel loved and I can and I'm enough what do I do next and then that takes you to the story which is okay what do I want to do not what have I been told to do not what did my parents tell me to do not

what my teachers tell me to do what I want to do and um and I think the other key piece here is when you land on the part that you cannot fail you're only you're either alive or you're not alive everything else is learning, healing, and growing. So I think that realization, which comes from psychedelics, I'm sorry, can come from psychedelics, is a pretty big realization of like, oh my gosh, okay, I didn't fail globally. I didn't achieve a task, but I'm not a failure.

I learned something through that process, and now I'm onto something else. And then I think to the mythology, it's also that step back. it's, oh, I'm a 100-year entity in a multi-million-year planet on a multi-year, whatever year system. So in the grand scheme of things, none of this is that important. But what is important is I like the way I feel right now.

I like this love. I like feeling that I'm worthy of it. I'm like feeling that I can give it. And how do I do more of that? And then that can look like a million things. There could be a million stories that's all about love. And it can look like, oh, I want to be the CEO of a company. Great, do that.

I want to be a pretzel salesman on the street. Then do that. And it's all okay. Did I just go and rant? No, it's beautiful. I can't help but think it's somewhat autobiographical. The first time you do psychedelics is the first time you feel safe. You feel love.

Is that, is that, is that, is that what happened to you the first time? I think, I think so. Yeah, it was a pretty big realization for me. Like, oh my gosh, I feel loved. And wait a minute, when was the last time I have felt so safe and complete? And this is, I mean, not, I'm not an unusual person. I've been married 23 years. I've got two kids.

I've had a lot of really great things. But it didn't feel the same as that complete love that came in that very first psychedelic experience. that connected me back to my mom, that connected me to my ancestors, that connected me to you, that did all of this stuff, and just one compound to completely change the way I look and interact with the world. That's incredible. Yeah. You know, it makes me think, psychedelics make me think, first off, but might it be possible that some of these psychedelics, you know, some of the plant medicines that, found in the natural world, we're looking at them with these weird labels. We're back to words.

We're back to describing. But might they be better described as like an exogenous neurotransmitter? It's like something we've been without. You know what I mean? Like, why not? Why can't we call it that? And if it was that, what would that mean? Well, that would mean that we are part of this planet. You don't come into the world. You come out of it. And wouldn't it be interesting if you could talk to the plants by taking this substance? And I don't mean, of course, you can talk to them. you can learn from them, communicate to them. If you can take this plant medicine and talk to the planet around you and interact with it. And for those who haven't done psychedelics, they probably think I'm crazy right now.

But it's true. I think it's totally plausible. And I've done tons of experiments with myself and with the psychedelics. I think we're on the cusp of changing medicine and changing our language and changing our relationship to the world. What do you think? I mean, you're touching on a bunch of things. You're touching a little bit on McKinness theory that, and let's just stick with mushrooms. That mushrooms are some kind of alien beast that has been dropped down here.

And they have, I actually love how he, I love the way he actually wraps this whole, this whole container of thought where it's like, okay, why are we so arrogant as humans that we think an intelligent life form or something more intelligent than us is going to look like us, that they wouldn't evolve into something more efficient. And they said, let's look at mushrooms. They can, they can live over massive amounts of land. They have almost Buddhist principles of sharing and communicating. They're essentially indestructible. And they have tremendous amount of information that they share. And then he goes so far as to say so that when you eat a mushroom, it's potentially that you are communicating now with this other creature,

and that is the way of knowledge share. All right. That's cool. Fascinating. Take it, don't take it. Then you get into that whole other thing of we are nature, which I really like this idea that we're not apart from this earth. We are just another piece of nature on this earth.

And then we get into, so then everything we have built is actually nature just in a different form. And then we get into, and when we're in psychedelic world, and we have melted into the energy of the universe. We are feeling the waves of the clouds. And we are, we are recognizing that there is no me or you or body. There's just energy. I think those moments that occur are a communication. I certainly have felt that they're communication.

And then we get back and then it's okay, how do we remember? How do we integrate this? How does it change our lives? but yeah I mean especially on things like when we talk about Bufo or 5MEODMT or even DMT I think more so in Bufo. It's pretty dissolving. Has that been your experience? Yeah. I love the idea of dissolving.

I love the idea of getting to see yourself outside yourself. And I think that that is one of the most therapeutic parts for humans. for people is getting to see that they're more than the sum of their skin. I think that's how you, at least for me, that's how I've been able to mend relationships. That's how I've been able to forgive myself. That's how I've been able to forgive people who did the best they could with what they had at the time they had it. You know, if you, it's just, it's such a place of contentment, like in, in enlightenment.

And I shouldn't use that word, but, you know, it's, it's. Because that's a word that everybody has different definitions of. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. You know, it's a place. I like the description of dissolving. I agree with that.

And I have found that to be part of it. Another element I would add to it is that I think that when you, to borrow MLK's idea of going to the mountaintop, I think you do get to go to the mountain top and maybe look over the edge at the peak of a psychedelic experience. But your job is to come back down. And I think it's similar to tragedy in that. tragedy and the psychedelic experience are experiments for you to go and play in and then come back and teach. You know, the greatest tragedies we have in our life, although painful, and some people may not make it out of them, they can become your greatest gift. And I think that there's something

to be said about the psychedelic experience, but a gift is made forgiving. So once you've gotten that gift, whether it's pain, whether it's insight, whether it's a download or a thought or an experience, the job is to go and share it. Like maybe someone would have this incredible insight and they would do all these things and then they would start like a company called Happy and they would go out and try to help you. But hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.

I like where you're headed, but hang on for a moment. So we've got to be careful here. And there's also this notion of no unsolicited advice. Oh, okay, break that down for me. Well, we've had these experiences and there is an inclination.

So what I'm trying to, to be at least aware of for myself in this process is this is the um the the risk of psychedelic narcissism or a messiah complex that occurs for some people as they come out of these experiences that oh well now i know and all of a sudden it's now i'm i know more than you and now again created separation what i think what i'm trying to wrestle with is there's no doubt that there are there are things that have been um there's wisdom that can be shared when there's advice that can be shared when asked there's breadcrumbs that can be laid as you're as you're communicating but i think the greatest thing you can do is just be in this new state and as often as you can in this heightened

sense of awareness and this heightened sense of compassion this in this different state of empathy and lead by that and then as and then as it questions come well what happened what's going on what do you and then dive into these conversations. That in itself is different. No, we're not going to talk about the basketball game tonight. We're going to talk about what's going on with you and your spouse. We're going to talk about why you're 20 years into a job you hate and you're still doing it. And what does that impact on your kids and on your family and on yourself?

But it's tricky. It's like there's definitely wisdom to be shared. and there's definitely just being and being a being a this better version of for me a better version of myself than I had then I had acted on or than I had appeared previously does this make sense you're knocking on the door right here like hey let me in you know I think it's difficult and especially I know for me and my wife and so many of my friends and family like let's say you're somewhere you don't love to be every day. Let's say you've been there for 25 years.

Like you've got tuition for your kid, you got a house payment, you got all these bills. You know, and you have in some ways fallen into the identity of your job. You use that as a label, right? And you understand this relationship. And in a weird sort of obtuse way it's become comfortable for you. That's very difficult to leave.

It's like being in a deep groove that you've made for yourself for 25 years. And then you begin to have a psychedelic experience. And you realize, you know what, I'm okay doing this stuff, but I don't love it. What would somebody do at that point in time? I mean, like, people get stuck there a lot, I think. Yeah. So let's just, let's just stretch one, a piece of what you said out for a moment. It's the psychedelic experience, in my opinion, is the catalyst.

It's the remembering. It's the glimpse. It's the, what do you say? It's a top of the, it's a view from the mountain top. Yeah. So you've had that experience, and then what do you do with that experience after that experience? So now you've become more aware of whatever you just said. I have these obligations and these grooves that I feel like I'm stuck in.

But hopefully now your neurons are firing in a different way, and maybe what you have valued has shifted, and what you prioritize has shifted. And then this is the true work of the integration process. It's like, okay. So again, no sudden, like within a couple weeks of doing a psychedelic, maybe hold off for the big decisions. But then it becomes, all right, are you still feeling this way? You don't value the X, Y, or Z.

Can you retell the story? All right. Well, I guess if I did this and then this would happen and then my kids would get a different type of need-based aid. That's not the end of the world. or if I did this and did this and then I downsized, well, now I'd have all this other, these funds to do X, Y, and Z with.

Or maybe I do need to go talk to my estranged parent or brother or uncle or sister. And maybe it's time for me to do that because it's not this feeling of whatever is not serving me anymore. So I think those moments of class, that occur with the catalyst of a psychedelic can then lead to really beautiful actions, especially if you have someone who you can work that process with. You brought up Carl Jung a minute ago, and I'm feeling like I'm surrounded by him these days. So I just finished the book.

There's a book about him and Bill W. With 12-step programs, and it's some of the documentation between him and Bill W. in the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I didn't understand how much of his philosophy was incorporated that it was really a spiritual practice that was an adopted to, as Bill W. would say, to cure drunks, which I thought was just such a funny language choice then. But I could see that in the 30s.

That's what they call people. And then how that has spread out to be all these other things. But at its core, it's really a spiritual path that is used for different purposes. And then why was, I didn't understand, I knew Bill W wanted to use LSD for alcoholics and Opsis. I didn't understand why until this book. And essentially, he felt that LSD would be a forced spiritual experience for alcoholics

who couldn't get there on their own because that first tenant of, I'm giving myself to a higher, I recognize that I can't, I'm not, I'm weak to this, to this out of control with the, the alcohol and I'm giving myself to a higher power. And he felt that LSD would get people there faster. And I was like, oh, that makes total sense, which then brings us all the way back in this conversation to words and language and descriptions. And here we are in 2003. And we have this, we have this medical model. And that's all, there's a whole path there.

And then that's different than the human optimization model. If I want to be the best of me, I can be, which is different than the decriminalization model, which is different than the religious model. but they're all four ways of people saying, I would like to have psychedelics in my life. And then it becomes a question of how do we describe it to get through all of the consensus reality bullshit that we live in? And that becomes a, yeah, I think of the challenge for us working and living in the space today.

And how do we create a language that allows people to have access to this powerful technology for whatever purpose they are thinking they want the access for because we know once they have the access, all sorts of wonderful things happen or can happen. But why, meeting people where they are

in a language that they can understand is, yeah, I think all these things have a role. Some people only want to hear the medical. I need a doctor to prescribe it for me to do this. Okay, we can do that. I'm only doing this if it's communing with God and it's got to be religious. That's beautiful.

Let's do that. This no plant should be illegal. DeKrimm nature. Great. I'm with you. Let's do that. I want to be the best version of me and live to be 120 and I'm going to biohack the shit out of my life. Great.

Let's do that. Place for all of it. That's beautiful, Matt. I love it. It's well said. Thank you. It reminds me. of the way mycelium grows. It grows all these tendrils to connect to wherever it can, right?

It's moving the nutrients where it needs to be. It doesn't, it's not judging. It's just like, yep, I'm going to get some oxygen over there, some chlorophyll this way, get right over there. It's all working together. And it does. It, it, it puts a nice bow on all these small little disturbances that people in the space have over clinical trials or big farmer decriminalization. You know, I think for those who are also Carl Young fans, the Red Book, which is a recreation of the Brown book, I think that the drawings in the Red Book was, I think I read somewhere that that was Carl Young's experience on Mescalin and some other psychedelics. So if you go and you look at this giant manuscript with all these amazing paintings in there, you know, it's fascinating to look at it. And if you're like a mortal human like me, you have to get the Red Book reader. so that you can understand the Latin in there,

you know, and try to read it and make some sense of it. I mean, I don't have the cognitive horsepower of someone like that, but it's fun to read and it's fun to make your own sort of ideas about and stuff. I do enjoy it. And I wanted to touch a little bit more on this idea of it's okay, regardless of your understanding of psychedelics and whatever you want to do. there was a really beautiful, intelligent young entrepreneur that I spoke to named Tess Bersenski. She's a cultivator.

She's been growing mushrooms and she's doing all this cool stuff. And one thing that we talked about in the wellness program, and I think this is a beautiful idea, is the idea of teaching people to cultivate mushrooms, to cultivate a better life. And I think that there's some, you know, when you grow mushrooms, sometimes they get contaminated. And you're like, for me, at least, I'm like, man, it makes me think of maybe things in my life that are contaminating me and how easy it is to get contaminated and you got to throw that batch away and it contaminates everything else. But, you know, it's just a beautiful, I understand of as above, so below, like you're trying to grow your own medicine and you realize if you don't treat the

medicine right, it's not going to work right. And then there's some sort of graduation that happens where once you've gotten the spores to inoculate the jars and then all of a sudden they begin fruiting. It's almost like it's a meditation where you've grown into this place and now the medicine is ready for you to take. It's almost like you have spent, say, six weeks thinking about the issues you want to solve. So you've seen it from a few different angles over here. Maybe you've gotten rid of some contamination and you've gotten the conditions for change to be ripe. And now here's the medicine. And I just, I thought that that was a beautiful way to try and integrate cultivation into wellness. What do you think? I think it's beautiful.

Beautiful. I think I think I would play with it and just do a little twist, which would be okay. What if we, what if fundamentally you are the medicine and you're now cultivating this other piece of you, the mushroom, so that you can have a have a specific experience with it. And that is helping. I guess we were to go back into almost like yogi terms. It's like, or the sutras. Well, if we let what we think and what we eat. eat and what we look at, all of those are contaminants, potentially. So if we look at a bunch of violent images, we're putting a bunch of violence into our body. If we eat a bunch of processed food, we're putting a lot of that type of food into our body. So, I mean, it's this constant piece of how do we optimize this experience, how do we cultivate the medicine, us being that medicine, and then trying to look at it from all directions. What am I hearing? What am I seeing? What am I allowing myself to see? What am I allowing myself to hear? What am I allowing myself to eat? What am I allowing myself to touch? Is all part of our

cultivation. And I think the mushrooms is just a beautiful way to look at it. Oh, okay, I didn't clean that a syringe properly. And now of a sudden I've got bacteria in here and this is not going to be a good flush. Or it's not going to be any flush. But it's a constant opportunities for our own cultivation as we look around. What else can we do to make sure that things we're giving ourselves in every direction are helping us cultivate into the best medicine that we can be? Man, just as butter exists in milk and liquidity exist in water,

so too do we exist? Do you look at yourself as medicine, and did you see the things that you do as a form of medicine for other people? Of course, yeah, and I think what they do for me is a form of medicine for me. My healing is your healing, your healing is my healing. We're all connected. So the stronger and the more I can, again, sit in this soup of healing,

yeah, I think the better we all are. And then again, no bad anybody. No bad. But it's just there are people in different paths and those. And then again, I can come back to, I manifested. As they come into my awareness, I manifested that. And that's there for some reason, some path that I'm on. So it's not that it's any better.

It's just, yeah, just maybe different. But that's, I think that's all okay. Do you think it's similar? Like, let's say we go down the idea of manifesting your own problems in your life. Like, let's say that do you see that synonymous with or similar to difficult parts of a trip? Like, let's say that you have a difficult thing in your life. Like, maybe someone dies or you have like a relationship problem. Would you apply the same tools or at least a same framework to solving that problem as you would confronting something in a psychedelic trip that was uncomfortable?

me if i'm if i'm aware um i'd like to say yes but i don't always do it but sure um and one of the people i study with talks all the time of your the people you have the most friction against are your best workout partners you created them for a reason and um and it's not because they are inherently bad you create them for a reason so what is it that's going on that's causing this friction. Look deep, look deep, look deep. And then how are you going to change this relationship through your actions? Yeah. So I think you do. If you do subscribe to, I've manifested everything, including my problems. It gets hard when you start talking about things like, all right, so then I created my mom's death at some level you did, just like at some level you picked

your parents. Okay, that's interesting. It's hard. And you can see how that can, it can be a very challenging philosophy, unless somebody's deep into this particular work to be like, no, I'm not going to accept that whatever happened to me. But I find it for the most part freeing to remove any notion of victim. It's all manifestation, which is, or creation. So, it's all my story. And just some of it goes back. I mean, you talked about it. I'm curious actually what you're like more information,

what you're referring to. We talked about how you were able to understand that people are doing the best that they can knowing what they knew. And I've had an experience in this world, but tell us about that. Well, I think like most people, I don't have the ideal childhood,

but that is a way in which we learn. But it's difficult when you're young and you don't know. For me, my parents got divorced when I was probably 11. I was sexually abused when I was like nine. And there was a big cycle of abuse in my family, verbal, not so much physical. There was sexual abuse throughout one part of my family. And then on top of my immediate relationship, there was a cycle of, you know, verbal abuse in some ways. Like, the relationship between my parents was very similar to the relationship between my grandmother and my grandfather and my great-grandfather and my grandmother and my sister and her husband and my niece and the man that she chose before she passed away.

And it was very, very difficult for me to confront that. And because psychedelics, I did. You know, when I went back and I was so proud of myself, Matt, for finally coming to the, conclusion of why I had left everything in another state and moved somewhere else. And I, you know, I had gone to the process of like, did I run away? Why did I leave? How do I integrate this? What does this mean about me? Am I a bad person? What the hell am I doing with us? I went through so many questions and not all at once. Like it takes a, you know, I'm 48 years old and it's probably taken me 45, 46 years. What's taking me 48 years to get

where I am, you know? Of course. And so I remember going back and, with my daughter and sitting down with my family and sitting down with my mom and my sister and saying, you know, I love you guys. There's a big problem here. The way that the men treat the women in this family, it's unacceptable. And I can't be around it. I brought my daughter with me and I don't like the way she's being treated here. And I'm not, it's unacceptable.

It's not going to happen. And they looked at me and they said, you know, George, we think you're the problem. And I was like, what? What do you mean? I'm like, no, no. Let me just show you here. You see, it happened with great grandma. It happened with grandma.

Here's the men. It happened here. Here's what was said. It's happened here. The path is clear. The cycle is clear. And I can even show you going forward. And they go, no, George.

We think that you are the problem. And I was so blown away. I cried. I'm like, you've got to be. be kidding me. Like, I'm showing you guys this. Like, it's taken me 40 years to figure this out. And so, you know, I ended up leaving. And I told them, I love them. And I'm like, look, I love you guys. But I just can't be here right now. This is way, I can't believe you can't see this. But I love you. I'm going to go back to Hawaii. I'll probably, I'll come back next

year. We'll hang out. We'll have some stuff. And so I come back to Hawaii and I tell my wife and we wake up. And the following day, you know, I had some friends that were coming over to barbecue. some some of a little family that I had made over here we're barbecuing and I get a knock on the door and my parents are here and they're like hey george we're real worried about you i'm like you're worried about me why like well we we just think that you're like depressed like you come over and you tell us that we're that we're that we're that we're there's all those problems with abuse in our family and i'm like there is but the problem i have with you guys is that you you won't see it no matter what i say no matter how much i tell you i love you no matter how much i point out

exactly what happened. Like, you won't see it. And so for me, that was me getting to the point of, I can't change them. I still love them. More than anything in this world, I love them. And, but I can't be part of that cycle. I can be around them and I can hang out with them. But I can't ever change them.

And I can't blame them. What does that do? But I can learn from them. Then I can make sure it doesn't happen to me anymore. and I can celebrate the fact that I'm no longer in that cycle, and I can celebrate because they went through that, I don't have to. They taught that to me.

They showed me this is what happens if you stay here. You know, then this happens. You have to come over here. And like that's one of the greatest gifts they could give me. Even though they failed to give themselves that gift, they gave it to me. They went through all that heartache, so I didn't have to. Even though I went through it as a kid,

I got to get out of it because of them. And they didn't have that chance. their parents didn't provide all the things they did for them. And so the way I look back on it now with a heavy heart sometimes, I think to myself, you know what? They did the best they could with what they had and the tools they had and they love me. And I can't change it. And in some ways, I'm proud that I've got to move forward.

So that was kind of a lot there, but what do you think? I think that's, first of all, thank you. And not just thank you for sharing, but thank you for going through this whole process. I mean, that's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. Yeah, it's hard. Uh-huh.

And it sounds like what I heard you say was that this technology helped you see see clearly where this cycle of abuse was in this family dynamic going back multiple generations. Yeah. and that your first priority was to stop that cycle with your wife and daughter. And you did that. And then you took the time to share that experience with your parents and try to show them. And they didn't react the way you expected them. How long ago was that, by the way?

Oh gosh, maybe six years ago. And they're still alive? Yeah, yeah. My niece, my niece died. She, she, my sister found my niece. She had overdosed. She was, she had some Coke and was fentanyl in there. And my sister walked in and found her just dead.

It's awful. Yeah, it's, it's so horrendous. Yeah. horrendous, you know, and like on some level, like this is, you know, on some level, I see it is the end of suffering, the end of the chain in a weird sort of way. And it's hard for me to say. But on some level, it's the completion of the circle, but the end of it. With the niece's daughter's dying, you mean? With my sister's daughter. Your sister's daughter, not your niece, don't? Yeah. Yeah, I, it's sad.

You know, but it's like a, I don't know, I think at the end of your life, when we get back to your idea of a story or the life you live as a story, every, I like to think that in a dream at the end of your life, and I know this is pie in the sky, but I like to think at the end of your life, you're surrounded by everyone around you and you're shown this film of your life and you cry, all the tears, you see all the people you've, touched and you get mad and you cry but then you stand up and you cheer and at the end of the movie it's just a standing ovation because of everything that happened and everything you went through and you're surrounded by all these people and like you get it you know and i every person's life is the greatest tragedy every person's life is the greatest comedy every person's life is the greatest story ever told and if you can just be in it especially when it's hard you'd be better you'd be thankful for it Yeah, I think that's beautifully said.

It is interesting that we think about a milestone like death as the opportunity for everybody to kind of cheer or that that's when everybody's around us. And I know for myself, it's like I've got to remind myself that, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm swimming in everybody around me right now. I don't need to wait till then. I liked what you said about the greatest tragedy, the greatest comedy. there are yeah everybody has challenging experiences and it's relative to their pain threshold into what they've they've experienced and it's interesting think okay so now you've lived this you've had this experience you've now looked back at your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents and at your sister and at your niece and at your daughter

and I don't know. I think the one thing that I'm just curious about is this notion of you can't change them and I just wonder if the timeline that you're thinking about is too short, potentially. It's only been six years. It's not that long since you've talked to them. Well, I mean, I still talk to them.

The work you're doing is multi-lifetime work. It's multi-life time work. So, yeah. I have got to believe, my friend, that you're making an impact on them. Just the way you're living your life, what you're doing here with your every day. They see it. They feel it. And they know.

They know what's truth and what's not truth, whether they say it and admit it out loud is a whole different thing. But they know. So I don't know if what happens in six or 60 or 600 years. if this breaking of the cycle didn't make a difference. My instinct is it did. My instinct is you were the first one in your family to say, that's it. This is where it stops.

Thank you very much. And now your daughter is going to have a different experience. And she's going to have a different experience because of how you raised her and because of what she knows that you went through or what she hears. And I don't know how many other people listen to you and interact with you and that other family that came to your barbecue and how many other people

are impacted by this work you're doing. I think you're changing a lot of people. Thank you for that. I really like the idea of the long timeline. And it's something I've begun to think about only recently. And I think there's, for me, there's a lot of help in there because it, you know, I think it helps to understand. And how much the people that came before you have helped you, even though they may not have done everything right? Like, how could they have done everything? Right? They didn't know.

They didn't know. They did their best. And because of them, you're here. And you have the opportunity to break the cycle. In some ways, all those things. And this gets back to like maybe the longer timeline and manifesting things in your life, whether it's challenges or friction or people. All those things were necessary. They had to happen in order to be perfect and not okay in the same sentence.

I've never heard that before. Can you break out some more on that? I mean, we can talk about dysfunctional. There are things that my parents did that were just like, are you out of here? Like, what were you thinking? But had they not done that, I wouldn't be who I am. Right. And so it's, it was what was perfect for the moment.

moment and not okay to do. And that doesn't mean I need to do. Actually, part of this work, I think, is taking that human inventory of, okay, well, these are things my parents did that are awful. Okay, well, how many of those traits do you embody? And I was shocked, hundreds. I was able to document hundreds of traits that I did not like in my family that I might have switched the name or switched maybe how it manifested, but it's the same thing. Yeah. And I was and am, I shouldn't, cleaning as much up as I can, of course, but raising my kids with those same things and just didn't see them until this process with post, with and post psychedelics helped make it clear. Okay, wait a minute. This is your, this piece of abandonment is what you're doing every time you take an unnecessary business trip.

just looks different. And you're getting rewarded because it's, oh, it's business, it's work. Is that really that much different than just hiding over here in a bottle? It's where a funny culture on the things. Actually, a really interesting discussion the other night with a really good friend whose daughter is experiencing some pretty heavy, a pretty heavy depressive period and has no motivation. And we were talking about that.

I was like, you know, so I think it's interesting. Here we are talking about her and, oh, she has so low motivation. And I think about all the times where I've been obsessive, had tons of motivation, but what I was doing was nonsense. And that's okay. So as long as we're in motion, we as a culture, that's okay. Oh, he's getting a lot done. But it's, I don't really see what the difference is, whether you're not doing anything or

getting a lot done that doesn't matter. You're not moving your life forward. you're just staying busy, which is just a different way to hide. For me, it was a different way to hide. Does this resonate? Yeah, I think that, you know, it's the spectacle of society. You know, it's this separation of image from reality. Like, we have these ideas of what we should be.

We've been trained ever since you're, since you begin going to school or maybe even before then, like your culture is not your friend. You know, I'm reading this really good book somewhere around me. It's called The Spectacle of Society. It's by Guide to Board. And he talks about how this, I, like, we've gone from being into having, and from having into the illusion of having. And the way he breaks that down is that you get up and you are.

Like, I'm George. I get up and I do these things. And, you know, I am. I'm being me. But then I get caught up in the idea of, having things. So now instead of just going out and driving in my, you know, 2000 truck and feeling fine, all of a sudden you feel like you want to have a nicer car to be George. You want to have a nicer house. You want to have these things. And then you can be George. But then he gets to a

point where you don't even need to have them. You just need the illusion of having. We don't need to buy a car. You can rent a car. You can lease a car. You know, and like we're falling down this slippery slope of being into having into the illusion. of having something. And my hope is that that slippery slope leads into the pond of awakening. Well, sure. I mean, this is, I love this. I mean, what, this goes back to what a great time to be alive.

So for how much of human history, I'd like to say, oh, they were being, but everybody's focused on food and eating. Like, how did we get enough food on the table? And it was hard. We are now in a point of time where we can focus on, I want this, or I want to get myself in trouble here with this, but it's a, we can focus on, I want to be called this. I want this pronoun. I want this name. I want it's, and that's all beautiful.

It's fine. But we have this time now that we're able to rethink. And I think in many ways, this consumerism that has happened, this next generation coming up knows, I can't buy that house. I can't live in that neighborhood. I'm not going to make that much money for a long time. So either my parents give me a leg up or I need a different gameplay. I need a different rulebook. Okay, that's really interesting.

Oh, and the climate's going to shit in a handbasket. Hmm. Well, this is really interesting. So what happens then? All right. Well, now I get to take this moment in time because I can eat to think through, who am I? What do I want to be? What do I want to do?

What matters? And then with that, hopefully we're now, we are raising consciousness. We're changing the way we interact with each other. Hopefully we start to see these lines, these trends. And on top, let's throw a couple other things in here. Let's add cryptocurrency. and blockchain technology. Let's talk about global economy.

Can we see a world where some, not all, but some of these walls between self and other starts to drop, and some of these walls between mine and yours start to go away? I think so, and I think we needed to get here. So yes, there is a spectacle of society, of course, and as the agricultural and industrial revolution led to all sorts of unintended consequences, yes. And there's enough for everybody. We have more food than we need to feed the world. So how do we choose to interact with each other? And I think this next generation,

combined with some of us in this generation, I think can make a really wild change happen in the world for the positive. So I am so optimistic about the future. Do I think we're going to be eating the same fish in 20 years that we're eating today? No. But that's okay. We'll be eating a different fish and we'll just adapt to this new environment. We'll be hotter? Sure.

Will we have better air conditioning probably? We're going to figure things out. But what a great time to be alive and what a great time to be asking these questions. And what a great time for this technology to becoming more widely available for it to help people along this path. and again whether they approach it because oh we've had a rise in mental mental health issues we have all those sorts of depression anxiety great do you want to approach it from a medical perspective great oh wait a we have people coming back and set back in touch with their with their religion and they want to have a they want they want this they want a different type of organized religion and they want a more direct experience of that connection with god whatever that is to them great and maybe this supreme court for as is greatest Supreme Court for this type of religious freedom that we've ever imagined. I think this is super interesting. What an interesting time that we're here.

Yeah. It's a pretty optimistic these days. And right, you should be. I often think this is what freedom looks like. And if you start looking at the world from like a demographic point of view, there's 10,000 baby boomers retiring a day. And if we can agree that the way we feel about ourselves affects the world, then we can also agree that so many people who are beginning to embrace the mortality experience are probably filled with anxiety. What does that do to the world? And in some levels, if you'll allow me a metaphor of a caterpillar in a cocoon breaking through the detritus, it breaks through in the spots that are the weakest and emergency.

as a new form. And you look at education breaking down. And you look at some boundaries being breaking out. If you squint your eyes, you can almost see us evolving as a new form. And it's the children you've talked about who are looking at the world and being like, yeah, I don't think I want to do that. Yeah, this doesn't really fit for me. Yeah, I don't think I want to learn that. I think this, you know, and we are emerging.

And for those of us who may be, you know what, here's another way to look at. I like, when you look at all these isms, whether it's populism, socialism, materialism, you know, capitalism. I like to think of them as scaffolding on a rocket ship.

And we are this rocket ship and these scaffoldings are falling off, right? And we are emerging as the, some of us are becoming the fuel, some of us are the nose-tone, some of us are the people inside.

But we're one unit and we're beginning a new journey into a new world, the same way that people sailed across the ocean. So too are we sailing into the world of interspace and figuring out who we are.

But I do. I agree with you. I am really optimistic. And I hope people listening to this are because everything is changing. And there's never been a better time to be at the forefront of psychedelics, science, history, geology, all of it. Like all these new ideas. Like, what does it mean when you change the language? Well, that means you can reimagine everything, now that it's a good idea, but I mean, you can begin to have the freedom to not only reimagine the world around you, but reimagine your story. I'm optimistic too, man. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, It's nice to talk to you about that. What are some other areas that you are very optimistic about? I can stick with what you're just talking about for a moment. This phase shift in humanity, things are painful. I can't remember if you gave this analogy, but someone was talking about if you were to look at a pregnant woman and you didn't know she was pregnant,

you would think, like, oh, my God, this person's going to die. They have a parasite inside of them that's eating, and it's making them change their shape. in, oh my God, what's going to happen? And then there's a phase shift and one becomes two and it's beautiful. So it can be painful. All the stuff can be painful. Yeah.

And yeah, but it's, I think that's what happens when you become, go from Caterpillar to Butterfly. Yeah. The kids, I love the kids. This next, this other generation saying, nope, I don't want to work. 60 hours a week, five days a week. I'll do four days a week as a birthday. Krista. I'm fine. I'm sorry. It's not worth it. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong. I don't want to go after a house. I want to live in a van. Yep. Okay. Different choice. Different choice than your parents made. I don't want to be a low level, go through a four-year program to become a low-level job. I want to use my hands. And wait a minute. How many vocational jobs pay six figures a year? and you can be your own boss?

Well, maybe this whole no child left behind was just a big bunch of crap that, and really a mean, unnecessarily mean, ignorant message. You're left behind. I try to get a, we had a freeze over here with pipes break the other day. Probably pretty good time to be a plumber.

There's a lot of, there's a lot of good jobs that you can make a meaningful contribution and you don't need a college degree and you don't have to be latched on your email while you're on your vacation and on your weekends and on the nights with your family. And I think this next generation is seeing it and calling out to us and on our bullshit and saying, no, you guys are insane. We're a bunch of greedy, whatever. Yeah. I'm not going to do it. And then I don't want to also lose sight of this 10,000 people a day, 10,000 baby boomers.

I haven't heard that stat, but that's beautiful. But the, okay, so now we've all these people who were part of the, many were part of the 60s movement and then change their direction in some cases and now are coming out saying huh what do I want is my relationship with my grandkids what do I want for this world now that I have now I'm not so scared about accumulating what is this next chapter and this next chapter is long it's 30 years it's a long chapter and there's only so many games of golf you can play. Yep.

So, yeah, it's interesting, interesting times. Yeah, it really is. You know, one area I've began to see some exciting breakthroughs is this idea of medicine a little bit. And I'm not a doctor by any means, but I do think that, you know, with all these wellness centers, with all these psychedelics, I think that there's a better way to do medicine. Like I, you know, what I think about clinical trials. And I think about the decentralization of clinical trials. Like sometimes it becomes so difficult and so cumbersome and so expensive to do clinical trials.

And you look at it and you're like, yeah, they're looking for objectivity, but they're just kind of getting subjectivity. Like they're kind of getting subjective results. You know, they can alienate this or they can put this over here, but it's still kind of subjective. And if we take psychedelics for it and shoot me, shoot me. straight when I finish her because I'm really been thinking about this. If you look at the phatamin, you know, the phatamin protocol or the stamets, Stamets protocol or the true life protocol, you know, whichever one you want to do, there's so much information about there, about so much information out there about microdosing.

Like don't we kind of have enough to know that like this particular thing works? Like it's been around for hundreds of years. Do we really need a clinical trial to prescribe this kind of stuff to people? Like, isn't this like a better clinical trial? Like, Sasha Shulgin, like, shouldn't you be trying it on yourself first, at least in the ideas of mental illness? What do you got? I think that's a really good question you're asking.

So we're back into into which framework do we want to live? So if we're living in the medicalization model, the medicalization involves a level of testing. and proving, which arguably doesn't always prove, but of documenting that gets a certain type of stamp of approval. And if we look at microdosing as an example, yeah, there was, the research, the literature on microdosing specifically has been kind of mixed. There's been things that are like, oh, it's about the same as a placebo.

And there's others that are more positive. I don't think there's been any that's like negative. I think it's either neutral or positive. But I might be wrong on that. But then you have, I know, I was just in, when I was in Miami at the Wonderland Conference, spent some time with Paul Stammats. And actually in his presentation, he was talking about how there's a bunch of research coming out where he believes that when you microdose with the combination of psilocybin with Lyons, Maine, and niacin, that you create gunpowder. That one plus one plus one does not equal three, it equals 30.

and that the results on cognition and on dexterity, I believe, was the other one, are pretty tremendous, and that there's research coming out that's going to show this. And then to your point of decentralizing clinical studies, I mean, he did do this whole kind of volunteer opt-in study on psychedelics where people were able to, on a daily basis, log in and log in a number of variables. does it have the same scientific rigor as a as a as a as a proper clinical trial no but there's a lot of good data there and then fattenman always talks about the citizen scientists so yeah and actually one of the examples I love is he talked about like either the bipolar communities and the autistic communities he's like there's nobody no researcher very few researchers are going to tackle psychedelics and bipolar psychedelics

and autism. It's just too hard. It's hard enough to take the study as it is. So you've got these little small things out there, but nothing big. He's like, but if you go into Reddit, you go to these different communities, you'll find subgroups of people

who are sharing information and they're citizen scientists and they're doing, they're sharing the best that they can. And at least, and again, bring us back to where time where we're living and we're in a time where we can find that information.

Yeah. We have, I can't think of his name right now. I'm blanking on it. There's a person out there who just has a couple different books on autism and psychedelics and tells these really beautiful stories of one of a person who had a hard time reading faces, autistic person, and LSD opened that up for him. And another person who had hard time understanding emotions and psychedelic opened it up for.

Psychedelic opened it up for it. Again, those are case studies, case reports, but there's something there. There's something there. And then we can access it now, which is very cool. A couple Google searches of psychedelics and autism, I'm sure we'd find, find. that person I'm talking about pretty quickly. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I've often, and I'm sure not just me, but I'm sure a lot of people see this thing as, and I realize psychedelics aren't for everyone, even though there's awesome books that say, Take it Oaks for Everyone. I get out of this point. A couple books to say that. Yeah. And it's true in some way. Including mine.

In a lot of ways, it's true. In mine, too. Like, I, like, I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's saddens me that potentially some of the people that could benefit most from psychedelics are excluded from being in those groups. And I understand the risk factor. I understand why. But it saddens me to think that they would be excluded when this particular thing may be the best thing for them. And I think that that's, we get back to citizen science in Reddit groups and the Fateman protocol or the Stamunds protocol. I really like the way in which these things are responsibly leaking out.

Yeah, I do too. And I certainly have, and I'm against stigma with bipolar and autistic that certainly have met people in my different paths that fit into those categories and psychedelics. I've seen the impact. And again, just what it's it's just it's it's there's all these different paths. How do we open up more of them to make more things accessible? Even let's just back up one more thing. We talk about look how long it's taken. for something as obvious as MDMA for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Like $150 million raised over, when did MapStar, 86? I think so, something in that zone to bring this medicine back. And the results are tremendous. So it's, I would, I'd like to, I'm hoping that there becomes a better way. I'm hoping that when the government of Australia legalizes psilocylusi. for different things. And we see ballot initiatives in Colorado and Oregon that some of this starts to shift faster than we hoped.

And then again, there's that whole religious thing as well. That is there with good reason, maybe another path for people. Yeah. One groundbreaking study that was recently done, I think there was a couple of them. They were done this year, I believe. One was by DARPA and one is by this beautiful doctor from. Dartmouth. I can't remember her name. She's amazing. And they are using psychedelics to see if the neuroplasticity and the positive changes in brain chemistry happen while one is anesthetized.

Did I say that right? Anesthetized. Yeah. And it's a fascinating idea because at least in my mind, it helps with traumatic brain injuries or maybe some neurodegenerative diseases. And like, I don't know if it's going to work. Part of me doesn't think it's going to, but I've spoken with some people that I look. It only has to help a little bit. But what are your thoughts? Have you seen these studies? And what are your thoughts on it?

I've seen some of those. And then just down the street from where I live, University of North Carolina, got a $27 million grant from the Department of Defense to remove the hallucinogenic property. Again, I don't, I guess I know enough to say, I don't know. I like, I would, my belief is that the journey is part of this process. Yeah, I know. Is my belief. Why would they do that?

I don't know. But to your, but someone believes that they can, or they wouldn't put $27 million into it. But do you, but if you, if you subscribe to the, this is a biochemical reaction. Yeah. Model of medicine, which a lot of our medical world subscribes to, then yeah, I guess it's worth looking at and maybe it can help a little bit and maybe it can help a lot. I don't know. I'm more of the, it's a bio, psychosocial, spiritual experience and it's a catalyst, not a cure. So it's not like, oh, you took this medicine and it relieved depression forever. No, it helped

rewire the brain, it helped start some neuroplasticity. It helped increase synaptic strength. And it helped connect you to a higher power, whatever that is for you. And it helped you remember the way you used to think, potentially, that you were enough that you were loved, and then that glimpse helps you move forward. So, yeah, I don't pretend to know what's going to happen with the science, but my inclination is, the trip is a pretty important part. That being said, if you can do it in an anesthesized state as an example,

and have an experience that somehow behind the scenes is doing a lot of these things, not all, but some. That's pretty cool, too. And it can be an and. Okay. It's not how I would love to. It's not how I would choose to do it. But I'm also not in the situation of that person.

And this is as far as they can go with this medicine. Okay. That's okay. The difference between, what's the expression? The difference between medicine and poison is dose. So different people need different things. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point.

I think on some levels, like I think we're all thankful for some of the things that the pharmaceutical industry has created. They've helped out a lot of people. They've done a lot of cool things and we're really fortunate to have them. And I can only imagine what's going through some of the boardrooms as far as patenting and trying to find a way to make it more profitable. And my advice to the big pharma companies would be like, don't worry about isolating the molecule or shape. adding a hydrogen molecule or something. Why don't you use it as an additive? Like use it in conjunction with something else.

And then you can patent it. Like add it with your SSRIs. Like put it together and now you have something new. Instead of trying to take things apart and then add something superfluous on there, just add it to what you already have. Like you already have a stable of drugs that's semi-work. Why don't you just add this to it? Because it seems to me that the world of medicine that is emerging,

is moving from a coping strategy to a strategy of overcoming actual problems. You know, if you look at the way in which we use SSRIs for someone who has depression or anxiety or something like that, they still hate aspects of their life, but they take this pill and they can continue to go do the shitty job they hate. Or they take this pill and they can get through their day. But they don't stop hating. They don't stop being depressed. they just get enough to get through.

Yeah. But if you take psychedelics and you can see this particular strategy happening with PTSD, anxiety or depression, people are confronting that which is blocking them. And they get over it. They move it. They get through. They go over the obstacle.

And that's a better, more true form of medicine. And it's also something I think that we spoke earlier about the future becoming better and brighter in having a life worth living. medicine is moving in that direction, especially when it comes to mental health. Do you see it moving in that direction? It's pieces of it moving there. I think our culture is so scarcity-based, and I actually think this is a scarcity versus abundance discussion. I like that. I think there are aspects of our medical, industrial complex that is very territorial.

I'll make a Let me stick with this and I'll come back And that is very Concerned about not losing ground Versus creating new ground and doing what Doing what I think many of them set out to do when they were kids So where do we see this? I'll give some silly examples in the psychedelic space Let's just look at ketamine

The only legal psychedelic There are anesthesiologists who are like no We're the only people trained and work with ketamine all day, every day, we should be in charge of how this is delivered. And then you have psychiatrists saying, no, no, no, no, this is a mental health prescription. We're the only ones thoroughly trained, and we should be in charge. Then you have psychologists are like, well, it's not really just a ketamine, and you really need therapy, and you really need us involved, and it's really our place.

And then you have non-licensed coaches and guides and even facilitators and then ceremonial leaders saying, whoa, whoa, no, no, no, no. this isn't a medical model. This needs to be delivered with the same type of care and that you would deliver traditional classic psychedelics in. And the fighting between the groups is pretty hard. It has to be IV.

It can't be oral. You can't trust people to do this at home. Oh, my goodness. What about diversion? Oh, my. And on and on and on. And it's turf force. As we look at, if we now take a broader look in medicine

and say, okay, so yes. Are there, are there, if we say antidepressants don't work in roughly 40% of the population, that while they still work on 60, so there's still a big group here that will probably choose to take antidepressants for a number of reasons. If we kind of know we have a set it and forget it mentality with antidepressants, oh, you've been prescribed it, now you've got a lifelong medicine.

We know that's not right. we know that's a lazy that's a lazy medical solution um so that's that's there always going to be new things that need to be cured and new things where the met or the medical industrial complex can make money sure so maybe you don't have to make it on everything so on these on psych so there are pieces of psychedelics that if we're going to do a medical model they do have to be standardized and this is a this is a this. And there are all going to be companies who step up to do that. Great.

But that doesn't mean we should lobby against other methods for people who choose to go and grow their own mushrooms or pick their own mushrooms and that they shouldn't have access. Or people with terminal illness and not the right insurance that they should only be allowed to take it in this medical model and not be allowed to solve their own problem in a grow-it-yourself model. Just picking an example. So I come back to scarcity versus abundance. And I think at the end of the day, all of these industrial complexes are people. And people in a scarcity culture are afraid of theirs, losing theirs.

And I'd like to think that I'd like to think that more and more they can see there's enough for everybody. Okay, you're not going to make as much on this, but you'll make tons on that because you still got great people working for you. and there's still a need for what you do. Alcohol and tobacco industry and the lobbyists against some of these things. Sure, yeah, people, but people are drinking less for a number of reasons. You can't have people on how many of this next generation are all in antidepressants and other medications and really shouldn't be drinking. That's impacting their bottom line, much more so than I think psychedelics.

If anything, psychedelics might open them up to where they're now off that medication. If they choose to come back to you, they can. But there's, I don't know, I come to, I come from this philosophy. There is enough for everybody. And if we can keep just shifting as little, little shifts from scarcity due to abundance, scarcity to abundance that, uh, that good things will happen. And I'm hoping that when it comes to access to psychedelics, it's not just, it's all of these complexes, um, freeing up in different pieces to allow more access.

Yeah, it's, it's interesting to me. Like some of the biggest corporations, their profit model is based on excess consumption, but they're worried about scarcity. Like, you know, like, this doesn't fit. Like, how are you saying all these things? Like, you know, you care about this, you care about that, but your profit model is based on excess consumption. Like, it's just, it just doesn't. And fear.

And fear. And that combination. Yes. That we need to keep people scared that, uh, and keep them divided. and keep them having excess consumption. And I guess that's what leads to excess consumption is this whole idea of the giant stick, this invisible enemy that's always right around a corner

and getting ready to get you. Well, but then that also... So then we also come up to, like, you and I've grown up with nuclear weapons pointed at our heads our entire lives. Yeah. At some point, there is a big stick that might get us that's out there.

And yet we wonder why we've had an increase in anxiety and depression at some level. If I came up to somebody on the street and held a gun to their head, oh, that's awful. That's so scary. Don't we think at some level we know that we have these guns pointed at our head? We just pretend that's not happening, but it is. And then we get into things like with North Korea or with with Russia. I'm like, oh, wait a minute. Maybe this war is going to be the one that's going to trigger a new.

a bomb. We haven't had that type of discussion out loud in a long time, but it came out loud last year. That's got to impact people, whether we talk about it or not at some level that they can see people carrying anxiety for that. Yeah. And I would argue that it's the language of imagery. You know, I've been thinking a lot about this lately where, you know, in Hawaii, we don't have billboards. stuff so we're not constantly bombarded by the pornographic imagery of fear all the time but it seems to me if you turn on television or you turn on the radio or you listen to an ad you know there's so much fear based out there and i think it was marshal mcclouin who talked about hot mediums versus cold mediums a hot medium is something where you don't have to do any thinking you see an image

and you see the meme and you get it and you don't have to think about it you know cold medium would be like radio or reading a book where you have to stop and like create the own image in your head. And we've gotten so good at putting forth advertising or imagery in the minds of other people, whether it's through COVID or Pfizer or through war, the military industrial complex. That gun that used to be aimed at our head from a thousand miles away is now aimed at your head at every street corner. And so it's like you can't even have a few moments of clarity to clear your mind without that you know, that threat on each corner. And I think that that is another thing that has led to anxiety.

I think we've gotten to see, I would love to see, I'm sure somewhere, if I put on my tinfoil hat, I'm sure that there is a lot of, I'm sure that there's a lot of incredible information on psychological profiles of people that happen during the pandemic that's held by these social media companies, you know, what they saw in their feed. I bet you they've compiled lists of people that think certain things and they probably learn so much about society. It would be fascinating to read. I know it's kind of all out there, but what do you think? But yes, I think you're right. I think again, so we have this incredible technology that's able to mine our behaviors at a level of processing that we aren't capable

on our own. We couldn't possibly keep track of all the different things that people are doing. And I'm sure there's a group of people way smarter than us who are looking at that and finding similarities and connections and all sorts of things. And my guess is they probably don't want us to understand that how bad on our mental health these free tools are. Yeah. And going down a rant, I mean, I keep finding myself going through these different periods of recognizing how addicted I am to my iPhone and then trying to dumb it down.

Like I just went through another process where, okay, I put on the Freedom app. So now I don't have every week at the beginning of the week. If I know I'm traveling, I will unlock my phone for that day or those hours. But I lock my phone down now for no email, no social media. It's all black and white. Just trying to stop looking at my phone every 10 minutes. And it's hard. It's such an endorphine.

hit with the with the phone so uh yeah these these i know the challenge i we all have to use social media from time to time but it's uh but it's so addicting it sucks you right in and the news sucks you right in and oh my sister's playing this new york times game and don't i want to play it with her and all of a sudden now i'm wasting time every day playing some stupid game so but um and then that takes me from that to oh let me just read the headlines to now I'm deep in an article that I don't need to read this and it takes us fully back to what we watch and what we think about and what we hear and what we touch impacts who we are and just it's so hard to keep those things pure really really really hard in today's world when our GPS and our our music library is all connected. did the same thing that connects to the internet and to the news sources and to the social media. Yeah. It's interesting. On some level, we're breaking down, when you break down barriers,

you kind of lose yourself. And sometimes that may be good, but sometimes that may be bad as well. Well, that gets in a whole different discussion of what's good, what's bad. That's a great point. Great point. But it leads to behaviors that are probably more not eternally based. They're more of the now versus of the greater us and things to work on. Opportunities for us to say, okay, well, and I guess probably then we go around around, okay, so what else are we doing? And now we've noticed this

about the phone, but what does that mean about really myself and my relationships and why am I feeling like I can't get enough out of George, out of our conversation, I need to take a minute to look at my phone. Or what am I afraid of losing by not looking at my phone? Yeah. And as far as we go on the path, it's like, it's a reminder of, yeah, you're not that far in the path, my friend. You're still checking your emails because you're afraid of something.

As much as you say, you're not afraid. It's fair. I get that. Yeah, it's a great point. It makes me think a lot of different things. And I have been reading quite a few different studies. And I wanted to get your ideas on this one here. We know that psilocybin connects to the 5H2A receptor.

Yeah. But there seems to be a lot of those receptors in the gut as well as in the brain. And we hear a lot about neuroplasticity and, you know, changes in the brain, chemistry and structure. But what effects does it have when it attaches to the receptors in the gut? What is that relationship

like between serotonin and the gut versus the brain? I think we're over my skis now. What I would encourage, actually have you been to the spiritpharmacist.com, Dr. Ben Malcolm's site? No, but I will. Can you say you in the

Spirit Pharmacist? Spirit pharmacist. This guy, this guy, he's got a farm D. So he's a, he's a, um, pharmacologist. And he does, so a couple of things, but he does, he does consultations. So if you're taking XYZ medicine and you're thinking about taking XYZ psychedelic, he'll do a consult anywhere in America for, I think, $300 and give you a full report. It's not encouraging anybody to do anything, but he'll say, you're on this and this and this, maybe you should taper off of this

or this won't have a contraindication or this is fine. So he does that. That's part of his business. Part of it is when you join, if you become a member of his site, so I think it's like 280 and then $99 a month or something.

Included in your membership is a psychopharmacology course specific to psychedelics. And it is awesome. and he goes through kind of what is the anatomy that you need to know, how does the brain work, what are the receptors, and then dives into multiple different compounds and specific things that you should know about those and contradications, and then dives all the way into, does a whole course on antidepressants.

How does one taper off? What are the things you need to know about? What are the real risks of serotonin syndrome? where are they not really risks. Just awesome. So what I didn't realize about him is, I think a number of his clients aren't just people who are interested in psychedelics because they're as individuals. I think it's the medicine community who aren't doctors.

And they're, so you have a reputable retreat. And one of the things they're doing is doing a medical intake, great. But it's more of a ceremonial leader. Well, they can turn to a person like Dr. Ben and have them at least look at. the medical intakes and say, hmm, this is, you have some contraindications here,

here and there. So I'm highly recommend. Spiritpharmacist.com. It is awesome. And I am sure that, uh, he would be an interesting person if you to talk to and specifically to dive deep into this.

Because I'm, I'm just hesitant to say anything that's not, uh, that I'm not confident on. And it's, I think this is a different level of, uh, medical expertise that,

uh, that he has. I'm going to reach out to him as soon as possible. It sounds amazing. And what, amazing. Yeah. It does sound like.

like that. Here's another one I was. This is kind of an idea that I had while I was on psychedelics. And I've always found that every now and then you drop your net down and you can bring something back. And here's a little gem that I found. I would love to get your opinion on it. So it seems to me that on LSD, at times on psilocybin, the pupil is really dilated. And you know, you see the world breathing and maybe you see the world as it is. But my idea is that long-term pupil dilation allows for more of the information to get into the processing unit in here. And I think you begin to have, you begin to see more. You process more.

And that may be what is causing the neuroplasticity. That may be what is giving you the insights. It's not, even though it's a, it may lead to different things. I think there's something to be said about more light getting into the pupil and more information getting into the brain. In a nutshell, what do you think? I don't know. It would be my short answer. Me neither.

Me neither. So it's interesting. I think, I think for a number of people in psychedelics, like once in their life is enough for them. A couple times. They've been initiated. They see it. And they've kicked off a neuroplasticity process. And they remember.

and now they are in a path of awareness and growth and learning, healing, growing in a different way. And I think there are other people who say, I'm just going to meditate for years and I'm going to try to find my awareness that way. I'm going to focus on a single object and train my brain to be better at that. And then through that, I'm going to become better just awareness in general and have my equal dissolve that way.

So I guess I'd be hesitant to say it's the number of times your pupils have been dilated that leads to this because I've got to also believe there's a bunch of people with eye disease. who have their pupils dilated all the time who don't have a level of awareness that this process gives. I don't know. I think it's an interesting thought. That's all right.

Yeah, I kind of think you're taking back, you're remembering an intrinsic wisdom that you have. And then if you can practice that awareness, once you've seen it once, you can practice that awareness without the psychedelic and keep it going.

And then that's the piece that allows you to keep seeing more and more and more and more because you're more and more aware. And it builds on each other. Oh, I'm aware a little bit more today than I was yesterday. And in this heightened state of awareness, this happened. I'm a little more connected. And I freed up more time today. So we could have a longer discussion than a deeper discussion. And now that's going to lead to a different rest of my day and your day because we had this connection today.

Yeah, so I guess that would be my gut versus a, versus I'm sucking more energy or more information in through my pupils and it's bouncing off there somewhere. But it could be, George. I could be. I don't know. It's like camera wrong. It is fun.

The aperture is open. It's open. You're getting it all in there. But let me ask you this then. And I would push back on this part a little bit. Not the whole camera raw thing. But don't you think that prolonged use of psychedelics? Like it continues to strengthen the connection between.

different brain networks. It's like if you go outside and you explore an environment once, you may know where the tall tree is, but if you go and explore that environment multiple times, you might know what's beyond that tall tree, and you could walk to that tall tree backwards. Like, isn't that the same, like the same way we recreate memories all the time, is like we're constantly recreating this bridge to get to this image?

And like, I'm not a scientist. I'm just throwing this. I don't even know if this is true, but it seems to me that you would build, stronger connections if you if you continued to use psychedelics on a frequent nature is that is that true or is that false or is do we not know or what do you think about i think we don't know so i think there's there's a receptor theory that says okay you should only take these psychedelics every so often because you run the risk of burning out your receptors um dm a would be a good example that there's i think if

i heard a doctor once say okay if you're if you're playing to mdma for 20 years you're you're you're playing to MDMA for 20 years, maybe once every six or eight weeks is probably your maximum. If you're only going to do it for 10 years, yeah, you could probably do it once a month. But it's a, I don't know, but I think, so you run a receptor thing. You, I don't know. Let me think through here. I also, I guess it ties back into what's your purpose and how are you using. Let's talk about this.

It's a technology. Let's get the words medicine or drug and just technology. So you have a technology. And this technology can do a number of things. It can do a biochemical thing where it's having neurons fire and creating synaptic strength and increasing BDNF. And those are all kind of biochemical things. And then it's doing this communion thing where you're connecting to this higher power.

And as the neurons are firing, it's making you think in different ways. So like for me personally, yeah, I don't know what the definition of frequent is, but I would imagine I'm in that category. But it's also, but I can see why some people would say, I think I've had enough for now. And I just want to work on these other things. I've got enough to work on. And then I'll come back when I come back.

I think maybe the more, like for me, it really is a spiritual. experience. And I don't know of anything else that allows me to connect with this higher power the way that this does. So I feel there is a need to come back to the medicine. And I also feel like almost, I'm still at a point where I'm learning all the time. So between those two things, I'm drawn to doing this more and more. What about you? I mean, what is, what is your take on this? Is this a frequent that you see the power of the frequency or where are you landing? Well, I've tried multiple different routes. You know, I went for years.

Like the first time I experimented with psychedelics was when I was a teenager. And I remember having this feeling of like, wow, I got it all figured out. And it was just a passing glance, just, you know, like you had this feeling of wholeness and this. feeling of beauty. And there was also a lot of probably masking that was going on at that point in time. So it wasn't purely for like a existential understanding of the environment, you know, but there was a lot of recreational use. And then there was a long period of time where I didn't take any psychedelics.

And then I began using psychedelics in a different way, probably seven years ago. Imagine that. Around the time I started figuring some things out. out. And so it started off with just one dose for, like maybe every three months, I'd do like maybe seven or eight grams. And then I thought, you know what? It would be interesting. Let me try this whole microdosing thing. So I tried that for a little bit and I got away from the bigger doses. And then recently, about a year ago, I tried this new protocol that was about between a half a gram and a gram a day for 30 days. And I found it pretty profound. I didn't really,

it made me rethink the ideas of tolerance, at least for me. And these are all subjective. You know, they don't, I'm not a, I don't have a lab or anything. These are just my subjective results. But I didn't really feel the tolerance that I thought that I would. And maybe that's confirmation bias. But I did feel in communion with my ideas and myself. And I felt all around, a great sense of well-being. I got sick at the end of 30 days, so I stopped that routine. And I don't know if it was maybe a compromised immune system

or something like that. Or you manifested that to stop. Yeah, maybe I did. Maybe I was like this enough. I like this too much or I'm getting kind of weird or for whatever reason. But I like that program. And then from that point forward,

I would go, I would microdose and do a big dose. but I find that it kind of the same way that psilocybin comes in waves, like it comes up and then it tapers off. That's the same way I use psilocybin. Like sometimes I use it a lot. And then I'll wean off it for like four months, five months. And then the next three months I might microdose or do a 30-day regimen or I'll do it, you know, two big doses a month or something like that.

And so the same way that it comes in waves, I have found that it comes to me. But I think that it's important to say that sometimes, the insights that you get at the height of experience rival the the insights you get when you're not taking it. I think that there's things happening when you're not taking it. And sometimes you have to allow that medicine

a good couple months for you to thoroughly integrate what happened. If it's a big dose and something big happened to you, that means you probably take a lot of time off, at least for me. Because that means, like, I need to figure this thing out. Like, what happened there? And I have found that,

on those bigger doses, there's so, you know, sometimes four, five, six months, you're figuring things out and you don't catch that insight until the fourth month. And then it calls back to you. Okay, now you're ready. So that's how I use it in a weird way. And I feel like I have a relationship to it and that we, we communicate to each other. And when it's ready, I'm ready. And when I, when I feel the world around me beginning to send me signs, then I know I'm ready. So there's there's the expression when the pupil's ready, the teacher appears. And I know it's not typically used about the psychedelic, but why not? Yeah.

I think it is important to kind of remind the listeners that for the most part, the classic psychedelics, including psilocybin, are anti-addictive. They, you really don't want to do them a heavy dose all that often or in a row. Even the half gram, and part of why, and I'm a little surprised, and you're, again, it's a case study one, though. the half gram to a gram, it should build up tolerance pretty quickly, that you shouldn't have the same feeling of a half gram to a gram on day five, as you did on day two. The fact that I could feel a half gram on day seven is amazing. Yeah.

But maybe that's confirmation bias. And I can make sure your body metabolizes the psilocybin. That's all. But in the animal studies of like food versus drug, the animals are not taking psilocybin. cybin over food. And so I think for the classic psychedelics, we have some, there's less risk of an addiction for a physical addiction. Ketamine, again, as a reminder, it has recreationally, that thing can spin out of control quickly. So really watching your dose and your frequency when it comes to ketamine is important. Animals have been known to hit the ketamine button.

And then I do, I can hear what you're saying in terms of there are times when it's like, okay, I am ready for a little more, I'm ready for some more. And there's other times like, I'm still processing. I'm not ready. And that's okay. And again, I think surrounding yourself with a community that is also keeping eyes and pulse and saying, okay, yeah, this, you might be pushing a little bit hard here or have you really unpacked everything from that last one before jumping in here.

And again, and even saying that, I'm almost saying it's doubting of. the knowledge of the person. But I feel that more of a checks and balances. If you as a person really feel strongly, then you should do that. But having a community that's also in this work and can recognize some behaviors that might not be in the consensus reality best practice is also something to, I think it can be a valuable thing to have around you. And again, going back even to having on the larger experiences as to having a

an experienced facilitator there can be super helpful for people. Have you heard any stories about people taking large doses of psychedelics and having heart problems? Having heart problems. Yeah. Again, I think this would be a much better question for Dr. Ben. But yeah, I think there are. So there are psychedelics that can increase your blood blood pressure.

It's ketamine. So if you have unmanaged high blood pressure. unmanaged high blood pressure, ketamine's not ideal. If you have a managed high blood pressure and you're at a normal range for yourself, as you can, that's probably, it's probably okay to start ketamine. Then again, I'm not telling you, you should talk with your doctor, but that's my understanding. I know one of the, quote, trick questions for people who have, who have some cardiac challenges,

and they're thinking about doing psychedelics, a question that they can ask their cardiologist without revealing what they're trying to do. So let's say you don't want to tell your cardiologist, I want to go do a high dose of MDA. Well, you could ask your cardiologist, hey, I'm thinking about going on ADHD medicine. Do you think there'd be a problem with that?

And if the cardiologist says, no, it'll be fine. Well, okay, if they're willing to give you that stimulant, you can probably handle the MDMA stimuler, MDA stimulant. So, but I don't, I think, so I don't, so that's the short answer. And I don't know of any long-term heart problems or research that I've read with that with regards to psychedelics. Am I missing a study? Is there something you've read, George?

I have heard whispers of it. And I had had a friend, a really good friend of mine that did a really large dose of psilocybin. And he ended up having like a heart attack. like the next day. And, you know, I don't think that he was mixing, you know, antidepressants with, you know, I don't think he was mixing things. But he, it was a, it was kind of a surreal moment, you know, and the people came and they, they shocked him a bunch of times and he went in.

But this was the day after, correct? The day after, yes. So I think this, this is actually. when we think about like why do you need a why do you really need a guide or a facilitator with you it's not so much because the psychedelic themselves are physically dangerous but it's that life happens 24 hours a day anyhow and when life happens and you're in a non-ordinary state of consciousness let alone in a legal non-ordinary state of consciousness life gets complicated So I don't know what happened to your friend.

I'm sorry that he experienced that. Yeah. But it's very possible that he just had a heart attack. And could that have happened the day he was taking psilocybin? Absolutely. So having someone with you who's sober can help navigate those situations should they exist because they do happen because life happens. It doesn't mean you shouldn't take the psychedelic. It doesn't mean the psychedelics are inherently dangerous.

even something as silly as I'll give the ketamine example. I think the most dangerous, assuming you screen out for the contradications, the most dangerous part of at-home ketamine is someone falling on the way to the bathroom. That's the most probable bad outcome. So having a session companion who can walk you to the bathroom should you go and having instructions that remind you, hey, you probably should pee before you take this. Um, those are helpful. But life happens and, um, and having that sober guide, if you're going to enter a deep

non-ordinary state of consciousness, having someone there can just help out in case life happens is, is super helpful. Whether you're the most experienced cycle not or not. Oh, I can handle the drugs. Great. I'm glad you can handle that. Awesome. But what if there's a fire?

What if there's a flood? What if there's a, a car runs into your, who knows? Yep. Having someone there is, is, is, is, is. That's, yeah, that's a good reason. But no, I have not. So long story short, I don't know of any studies on any of the classic psychedelics that say there's a long-term physical risk.

If anything, if you look at the David Nutt, the, the nut study of a harm to self and others that came out, I guess they had its 10-year anniversary just a couple years ago. Really nice. It's really well done where he takes all these different psychotropic drugs and says, okay, what's the harm to self and others and forget how things are scheduled? Let's just look at it rationally. And on the far left-hand side is alcohol. And it's like a 72 score on a 1 to 80.

Great harm to self, great harm to others. And you go all the way to the other side. And the farthest one, the right-hand corner, is mushrooms at like a 6. Maybe it's a 7. It's like, you look at that. And it's like, okay, these are not. The literature says this is, is anything 100% saying, no. But relatively, if I want my teenager doing something,

would I rather than be doing drugs or being doing alcohol and tobacco or would I rather than being doing mushrooms? This chart kind of says much rather than be doing mushrooms. Yeah, I would, in that vein, I recently reread the book, The Island by Aldous Huxley, which is sort of a, sometimes I wonder if, if, I'm sorry, I go down this rabbit hole sometimes. So if you read Brave New World, the people at the end of Brave New World, they end up going to this island because like these extravagant people and they're like you guys cause too much problem in this corporate world over here.

You go to this island. So I've always wondered, is this the island that Huxley wrote about in Brave New World and now he's expanding on what's happening here? It's probably not, but it's fun to think about. Long story longer. Yeah, right? Like maybe it is. I don't know.

I mean, it's been from the same guy. That guy was eating a lot of mushrooms where he was trying mescaline in Hollywood and, you know, he had some fantastic ideas about things. And in some ways, they might have been coming true right now. which is probably pretty frightening, but that being said, in the book the island, you know, they talk about using the Moksha medicine as a sort of rite of passage. And when you look at that right of passage, we can see it in mythology, whether it's the time et alusis or some Native American Indian tribes using it. And I've often wondered to myself, might that be where we are now

is a right of passage? We're seeing this medicine reintroduced to all. of us, you know, and it's weird to see it come full circle like that. What do you think about using psychedelics as a rite of passage? I think that's such a beautiful concept, George. I would, I'm trying to figure out how do you make that actually happen. So I have a 17-year-old, now 17-year-old son, I have a 19-year-old daughter. And we grew up, my mom was Catholic, my father was Jewish, I kind of grew up, and I raised our kids in a Unitarian experience.

there really isn't a right of passage for for my kids and there's not a right of passage for a lot of kids in our culture um i think i told you last time we spoke like i my son asked if he could go on one of these psychedelic retreats with yeah and um and i and i want if he wanted to do psychedelics and no i just want to see what you're up to and we just we had this incredible incredible experience um and i hope when he is ready that he comes to me and that we have an experience, we get to experience this together at some point. But I could see how amazing could this be for this,

a generation who's looking for, who recognizes that the culture is not, is scarcity-based, consumer-based, not connected and spiritual. and what a way to introduce them into adulthood. I'm like, okay, you don't have, all the things, you, you, you, you, you can see it a different way. Yeah. And I would love to be a part of making that happen for, for people. I've seen beautiful family, and some of these retreats have been, there's been, I have seen a bunch of families come, come through it. And what that's done to their relationships.

And I've not only seen it with kind of older teens and young 20s, but I've seen it with 40s and 60s, like older parents. Yeah. When I'm going to an experience ceremony coming up where one of the participants is 50, his parents are 75, 75 and 80, I believe, and they're going to do an experience together, ceremony together, and I just can't wait to just be able to bear witness to this. Yeah, I'm really excited about that.

one really excited how come you don't just take your son but let we're going to do this right now we're going to go to hawaii i know this guy george go there it's going to be there hang out i want it will you want it is ready when he's ready he will do this um but to your point i'm wrestling with this i'm wrestling with is there a way to create a uh a coming of age experience Yes. And then I'm also wrestling with the why. Why would? So this is if fundamentally, again, I'm trying to be careful of this Messiah helper,

hero. I'm doing things because I can do things. I'm doing things because I want the accolades of my actions. I'm just trying to be careful with that. So yes, am I capable of organizing experiences for transitions into adulthood that involves psychedelic medicine. Absolutely, of course. How is that helping my learning, healing, growing journey?

I want to have that really present versus I'm doing this to collect resources or I'm doing this to be a hero. And I'm just trying to be really cognizant of my tendency to act. I'm a really good doer. And I just want to make sure I'm acting with purpose. I did take my nephew to a psychedelic experience. And that was beautiful, where he was 20 and kind of partying like a rock star and not doing well in school and did not have a, was not speaking terms with his father. My sister is, yeah, just a tough relationship at that point.

And it was really beautiful to watch we journey together. And as he came, he came on, the medicine came on him first and him walking around saying, I love me. I love me. But by the end of that weekend, he said, you know, I didn't, I thought that life was a joke and therefore my life was a joke. And I'm leaving here, believing that I can do more and that there is a higher power. And I'm going to do it. Sure is how he's doing it. He went from community college, gone to all three colleges he applied to. use that experience as his essay. Dean's List last semester, just great, back to good relation.

Him his father just drove from here to Florida together to do a project. It's just been beautiful to watch. And I've just, that was his work. I might have led the breadcrumbs, but everybody has, there's no, you can't give anybody a breakthrough. But I do believe this technology for those that are ready,

can do amazing things and a coming of age thing could be amazing and I'm sitting with what's my role in that, if any. Certainly there's a role in that for my son, George.

So you might get a, if we're going to be knocking on your door. Open invitation anytime. Open invitation anytime. And I love it. I really think that, you know, I love the idea of elusis.

And, you know, when I read about it, you know, they talk about, here's this, you know, Roman senators sitting with like some regular Roman slave because anybody could go. And imagine being under a light dose of like, you know, like an eighth or something like that,

three and a half grams. And you're watching Persephone and Demeter and like, you know, the death of a child. And you're like, oh, you feel the death. Like it transcends language because you're sitting there next to someone, but you're perceiving this thing together. Like it's such the right of passage in the way. is something that has been lost to us. And when you lose the right of passage, you lose your way. And it just seems like we've lost our way.

And when you read the island and they talk about the younger, you know, kids on the verge of adulthood, finding a mentor, climbing a literal mountain and then going into the church to have the medicine. And, you know, it just seems to me like there's really something there. And I would encourage you to think long and hard about. maybe what is calling you to set up right to passage. I mean, if you're thinking about it, you know, maybe you have to sit longer with it and find out your why. But if it's calling to you and we're talking about it, maybe that's another way of it calling to you.

I think it could benefit a lot of people. And I don't think that you have these symptoms of the Holy Man syndrome. You know, the fact that you've been through tragedy in some ways, inoculates you from some of the worst parts of it or at least makes you aware of when it's coming on, I think. I don't know. Again, I'm trying to have wise counsel. Yes, yes.

I appreciate your perspective. One more, and I know we're running close in time here, but just one more thing on the, it's interesting also in our culture how in many other parts of the world, 16, 17, 18, You can be married, you can be working. You're an adult. And in our culture, it's no, parents are still checking in on their kids' teachers in college and grad school. We hold our kids close for a long time. And again, it's just something I'm trying to be cognizant of as I'm watching my kids.

I'm like, ooh, am I holding them back by trying to smooth the road in front of them? Are they old enough for their own decisions? Are they old enough? I get questions sometimes about what about the, what's the risk on the teenage mind? I don't know. What's the risk of when you were drinking in high school on your mind? These are, in many other parts of the world, these are adults.

Again, I don't know this, all the science, pretend to know it all, but it's just interesting. We hold our kids as kids long past when any other point in history or many other societies would say they're still kids. Prolonged adolescence. You know, like Keynesia is at 15. It's when a woman, you know,

that's in some areas, that's when a girl becomes a woman. You know, if you read back, there's like this long, there's something happening in the world of literature that kind of bothers me, and it's that there used to be people would publish letters. When someone would die,

you could read like Marshall McLuhan's letters or like the letters from the Turkish embassy of 1915, you know, and there's all these letters of people. And when you read some of those books, you realize that I just, I just interviewed this guy Joseph Sassoon,

and he's talking about the family of the Sassoons, who was this incredible family that came from the Middle East. And the Patriarch was like 14 touring Scandinavia doing business deals. You're like, oh. And the letters are beautiful. And he's like, you know, my son, you have this much money.

Don't waste it. Don't, you know, he doesn't use words. Like, don't be a dummy or something like that. But he's essentially saying, like, we have entrusted you with our family wealth. What are you doing? And I'm like, wow, this is a 14 year old, you know? And I look back to some of the things. I remember my father sent my sister to swimming camp when she was like 14.

And he's like, okay, just going to get on a plane, you'll land in Texas. And when you get to Texas, you got to find a plane. You got to find a cab and get to the Olympic Center over there. And my sister called us like, hey, I'm in the airport in Texas. What should I do? You know, and I think about that now. I'm like, I would never send my 14-year-old daughter on a plane by herself to another state. My dad's like, what are you talking about, man?

She's 14 years old. She could do it. But yeah, with this prolonged adolescence, it doesn't seem to have the best outcomes for a society later in life. You know, and how much of holding on to our kids is our selfish behavior? How much of holding on to our kids is us not wanting to let go. It's not so much them holding on as it is us. And now we're back to attachment and holding on. And we could do another hour on attachment.

Matt, I love talking to you. I can't tell you how thankful I am for you to come back here and speak with me. And it's so much fun for me. And I really admire what you're doing. I really admire talking to you. And I think that you as a medicine have helped a lot of people do a lot of things. So before we go, is there anything else we haven't covered? that you want to talk about?

Oh, there's a thousand things we have to talk about you, George. This is, I mean, I am, it is such a treat to, to be able to just have this time with you. And I know you're constantly, you think about so many different things, and you dive into so many different types of literature and ideas and come up with all sorts of different ways to look at it, and it's just a treat.

And I love what you, so I appreciate you have me on your podcast, but I also appreciate what you're doing with these conversations. and these different types of people and these different knowledge sources that you're bringing out there and how you, just even how you approach it is just beautiful. So yes, this is a conversation number two of many. And I definitely, certainly if you're in the North Carolina area, but I would one of these days, I'll take you up and meet you down there in Hawaii. I would love that. Please. Love to have some time with you in person.

It'll happen. Absolutely. Absolutely. Or maybe I'm hopeful that I'm going to be doing some traveling. You know, I've decided to tell myself this new story where I take the podcast on the road. So it's just a matter of time before I begin doing that. And if that happens, it's just a matter of time before I start calling people and figuring out where they're going. Oh, I bet you Matt's traveling.

I bet you's over there. I bet you I can go over there. Right. These four people are there. It'll be perfect. You know, so I can, as I envision it, I'm beginning to manifest it. And so it's a matter of time. I'd love to put somewhere you are.

I'd love to put a few people together to have one of these. multi-hour conversations of uh yeah yeah i could i could see how that could be fascinating i know right i'm so hawaii too like uh shout out to clarity hawai who is now going and lobbying the board and the governors and the state to get our our hat in the game for legalizing or at least decriminalizing medicine for people with mental illness so we're starting to move our own way forward and Which is beautiful. And I love that we're seeing all these different starting points. And that's great.

It's all part of this process. And I think we're seeing other people becoming braver in the states and things that aren't doing and saying, you know what? We need to have this year too. And that's all, it's all beautiful. Lots of paths. And hopefully it continues to work out for those who are practicing with intention. And for everybody else. It is working out.

That was an awful thing to say, actually. I shouldn't separate one group versus another. I take that all back. It works out for everybody. It does. In the end, in the end, it works out whether you believe it or not, I think. It does. Everybody heals at some point.

Yeah. That's what I got. Matt, again, I love it, man. I love you, brother. You're an amazing person. I love what you're doing. I love the book. I love the podcasting.

I love the speaking. And for those who want to learn more about Matt, I'm going to put everything where you can find him in the show notes. Check out his website. Check out his company happy. Reach out to him. Read his book. It'll make you a better person. And where can people find you, Matt? And what do you got coming up? Yeah. So Matt Zeeman.com. ZE-M-O-N is the best place to find me. I've got some videos and some other things. But for your, I think for people who are listening to this podcast in particular, I'm, I just, I'm accessible. So if there's anything I can do to support their journeys, just ping me on Instagram or LinkedIn or through the website.

And I'm told, this is what I'm here to do. I'm here to support. So anyway, I can be of support. I'd like to extend that offer out there. This is not how I generate resources. It's just about supporting. So let me know how I can help. Man, what does see?

Do you see that, ladies and gentlemen? That's why we love this guy. George, you're a good man. Thank you. This is awesome. So much fun. So much fun. Me too. I really appreciate it. And I'll shoot you over the links and stuff when we're done.

So that's all we got for today. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for being here. Aloha.