TrueLife - Triumph over Trauma - Randall S. Hansen, PH.D.

Episode Date: February 22, 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/http://www.triumphovertraumabook.com/randallshansen.comPsychedelic Medicines are helping people heal their trauma, change their lives and grow their spirituality. Dr. Randall Hansen has compiled a tour de force of healing wisdom. A series of transformative stories to help lift even the most stubborn of us out of our cognitive Kansas.This truly was a heartfelt conversation. One that was underscored by love, encased by tragedy, with highlights of transcendence. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. The proceeds from this book go to help those in need! https://www.linkedin.com/company/heroicheartsproject/https://www.heroicheartsproject.org/ 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 scar's my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, furious 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. Well, well, well, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen to the True Life podcast. We have a guest that everyone has been,

George, when is Rand coming on? When is Rand coming on, George? And most of you have posted about this book. I know I have just recently got my copy. I have sitting next to me here. The book is called Triumph Over Trauma. It's a healing, spiritual, and personal growth series of stories. Ran is the author.

You have done a tremendous job. And I'm so thankful that you wrote this book. Before I turn it over to you, I want to talk about the cover, but I was amazed by the editing in this book. Who did the editing in this? I have to give major props to my partner, Jenny, who was the editor. She did a fantastic job. Thank you.

Good. Nice. So the cover of this book, you and I talked a little bit before we got started, but for those who are just here, the cover is a real attention grabber. And it really pulls you in. And it's such a psychedelic image. Like, tell me how that came about. You know, I've been fortunate all along this process. and one of the people I connected with is this book designer.

And I told her what I was looking for, this kind of healing picture of my own mind. I saw it as sort of that person with their hands up and just receiving that healing. And we just brainstormed for a little while. And then she said, here are 15 images that I think fit what you're talking about, which one do you like?

and or which ones do you like? And we immediately saw this one. And I just said, oh, my God, that that is the cover with, you know, with some tweets here and there. But so it's all just, you know, again, universe creator, whatever, driven in this whole process in my mind, meeting the right people. And then having, including the storytellers who, you know, are pivotal to the book. Yeah, without a doubt. I thought it was fascinating. You tell a little bit in the beginning of the book about how you came to want to write this book

or how you were almost instructed to write this book. Would you be able to maybe not give up the whole book? Would that be okay to share that story with people? Yeah, of course, of course. And, you know, I purposely kept myself out of the book as much as possible, except that little bit in the intro where the author has a voice. But to me, you know, the voices are the same. storytellers. But for this book, you know, I wasn't, you know, I'm an advocate, an educator

for healing for psychedelics. And I never imagined myself writing another book. I looked at the psychedelic space and saw, you know, we have a lot of nice books. You had, you know, Matt, you had Matt Zeman on the other day or a lot a couple weeks ago. And he has a great book out there. And so I just like, you know, no, there's no need for. it and writing a book is a lot of work and maybe the maybe the work is more afterwards when you're actually now done with a book but now you have to kind of try to get it out to the people but anyway so I was I was I was I've discovered that LSD is is most certainly the psychedelic that that fits me the best the medicine that works best for me and so I was on the end of this

LSD journey. I was on my deck, which in late summer, any afternoon, that's where you're going to find me because it's meditation, it's quiet, it's nature. And so I was just coming down from this beautiful journey. And all of a sudden I got this, and you can't describe it. It's not words. It's not, you know, from the mount ran, you are going to write this book. You know, it wasn't anything like that at all. But it was always a lot. a sudden this, you need to get people's stories out. And the way you're going to do this is a book. And I literally had to run inside, grab a pad of paper and a pen, come back out. And the outline that the final book is probably about 90% of what I got from that download. And, you know, I had heard these stories from really experienced psychonauts about the

digital download. And, you know, we've seen these documentaries. I can't remember which one it was, but it was this businessman, his English gentleman. And he was like, you know, I went to the jungle to figure out what my business plan should be. And I got this digital download and, you know, the business plan, the marketing plan, the app, the website all came to me. And I was like, that's BS. That doesn't happen. You know, that's so much grand idea. But I can bear witness. to that. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't this, like I said, it wasn't some grand voice or lightning bolt, but it was this force. That's the best way I can say it, force saying, here's what you're going to do, here's the stories you're going to get,

you need to do this to educate the people and kind of break through all this, you know, 50 years of propaganda. And so that's, that's where it came from. The only thing that wasn't in that digital download originally was the microdosing section. And as I was talking with people and sharing stories, microdosing became a bigger and bigger thing. So I said, oh, well, sorry, LSD, but I need to add this to the book as well. So I guess I should have put a side note and, you know, more credit to LSD for the book. It's fascinating to me because I think that on some level, that's the Ariadne thread that allows people to follow their way out of trauma, follow their way to a better life, follow their way out of whatever it is that seems to be burdening them. And for some people, it's a download.

For other people, it is an insight into why they are in a traumatic episode. For other people, it's an idea about how they can change their life that may have incredible ramifications in a year from now. But it is this sort of, you know, downloads a good word for it. Insight is a good word for it. Discovery is a good word for it. And it seems to me in the author's note, you explain about this. And then each of the profound stories that are in there, they may not describe it as a download, but they do describe the healing journey thereon.

And I think that the way you started the book is a great tone that continues to echo throughout the book through everybody's story there. And, you know, I just, it's amazing to me how it came together and it flows like that. In some ways, I look at the book. For me, psilocybin is my ally. You know, that's the one that I spend a lot of time with. And we seem to have a really great relationship. And it seems to be the one that, you know, maybe we have the same.

sort of voice or that calls to me. But it seems to me that the book you've written is almost like a psilocybin trip for me. Like it comes in waves. Like the first wave is you speaking your story. And then it intensifies through the trauma and everybody else's story. And then it kind of backs off with the micro dose, you know. So it was really well done. I'm wondering it like it's just did that sort of insight come into it?

As you've gotten the download, was there a set of ideas that you flowed through you as you wrote it? Or what was that process like? Yeah. Well, first of all, wow, that's, you know, George, first of all, with your beautiful comment, you put it in about the book, I was like, and I should have hired George as my PR person for sure. Wow. And the way you just described this book, I think I'm going to steal that because that's beautiful. Wow. It's true. If you look at it, I think you'll see it like that. I don't know how you can't. You know, the one thing that the one, probably the biggest joy I've gotten from the book so far.

more to come. I hope when I actually hear from people that have maybe healed from the book. But from the storytellers, you know, every single storyteller at the end said, thank me. And I'm like, no, no, no, thank you. And they're like, no, no, no, I just further integrated during the sharing of this story. It just helped me understand more. And I was like, wow, this book has all these different layers to it. I love the journey that you just mentioned. I love this integration part.

But the writing, George, you know, it was smooth sailing. I, you know, I will say that toward the last bit of it, I was also doing a little more reducing LSD. And that, you know, there were times where Jenny was looking at me and saying, I think I see smoke coming off your keyboard because it was literally like I could not type fast enough. And again, to me, that's, that's not me doing it. That's the medicine within me that's saying, you get this out. We get this out. And here's how to do it.

So I take, you know, very little credit, except I see myself as sort of like, I don't know. I could, I was trying to give a better analogy than this. And I can't, but I love trees. I'll say Johnny, Johnny Appleseed. That's how I feel like I am. Like, I just want to spread these little seeds of healing and psychedelics all across the world. And, you know, like Johnny Appleseed, I'll be, you know, long gone before that fruit comes some beautiful tree.

But that's what I want. You know, that is not my book. It's a book about healing from the storytellers. And you can see these, you know, these beautiful examples as you talked about. And I, and just back to one thing you said, too. I love that these lessons or downloads or insights come in a variety. of different ways. I mean, some people,

Allison's story where she sees this little girl and she can't figure out who this little girl is, is it herself as a little girl? Is it one of her daughters that she doesn't recognize? Is it something else? And so that's a visual. And others hear something. Other people, like I think Charles mentioned,

he felt Jesus's hand on his shoulder. So it's all these different ways. that we experience that healing that that and the message that that that the psychedelics want to have a see and understand and even if it's a bad situation a traumatic one the as you know the psychedelics put you more in observer mode yeah so you're not the one reliving it you're just sort of observing and saying oh okay now i understand more of what happened or what was going on on and now I can, especially for childhood trauma, because now I can understand it as an adult rather than my child brain that couldn't understand it and put so much shame and guilt on it,

now I can say, oh, no, it wasn't my fault at all. And as an adult, I can see this, I can release this trauma. And then with that, usually there's just some miraculous, beautiful moment. This, again, the one, I think, clear thing we see through most of these stories. is this notion of pure love, wherever that comes from. Sometimes it's another person, sometimes it's an outwardly being. Sometimes it's God. Sometimes it's whatever, you know, a lizard or whatever.

But, you know, it's really weird stuff sometimes. But they all feel that love. And to me, you know, and this comes from a little bit of my trauma maybe. But, you know, I was married for a long time and thought I was in love with that, my first wife and, you know, until I met Jenny and, and we actually formed a friendship before we were ever even thinking romantically, which maybe is the key. I don't know, but I feel like when I read these stories of that love in some of these psychedelic stories, I, that's the sense I have. And I thought I knew love until I met Jenny. And then that love is like,

wow, no, this love is, you know, a hundred times more powerful than the love I thought I had before. You know, I think that's a little my trauma relating to these stories a little bit, but I love that sense of, especially when someone said, I have never felt love before in my life until that moment. And your heart breaks because it's like, wow, this person's 30, 40, whatever, you know, and they've never felt that before. Anyway, so, yeah, we could, we could go deeply to these stories for a long time. But anyway, back to you. It's, I feel all of it. And it reminds me, let me talk, let me tell people a little bit about the great way in which the book is structured. I think you did a great job at that too.

I like the way that when you move through the first part of the book, you get to the second part and then it kind of unfolds like a flower. There's all these fun facts and inspiring quotes and pitfalls to healing and facilitator tips. And the story you just told me about love reminds me of one of the quotes that you have in their book from McKenna. And he says, he's, McKenna says, quote, I think of going to the grave without ever having a psychedelic experience. Like going to the grave without ever having sex. It means that you never figured out what it's all about. The mystery is in the body and the way the body works itself into nature. And when you talk about feeling love for the first time, you know, it's almost as if you're allowing,

yourself to be a whole human being for the first time. Because until you've really, and like you said, when it comes to trauma, there's been so many people who maybe their parents didn't know better. You can't pick your parents. And maybe it's a generational trauma that happened. And you never really got to experience what it's like to have somebody love you on a level that is almost unconditional. And when you finally get that, it's just like your body gets to become one with the world again.

And so I really admire the structure of in the beginning you talk about basics, you move into the stories, you move into microdosing, and you wrap it up like that. And I think it's a, you know what it reminds me of, Rand? It reminds me of a mosaic because there's so many different genders and so many different age groups and so many different ethnicities. Like how did you go about finding all these different people to fit this mosaic that you built? George, man, I don't know. I'm going to be stealing a lot of your words. Well, first of all, I, you know, one of the things that in my research into psychedelics for the last several years is I was always craving the stories.

And I found a lot of the stories kind of lacking for my, whatever my needs were. So, you know, yes, it's fun to hear about the geometric, patterns or the wall being entirely energy, put your hand through it. You know, that's all cool stuff. And that's part of that psychedelic experience. But I want to know, especially if someone who was going to try the medicine, you know, I want to know what's going to happen to me in that first half hour after I ingested, you know, first time I did psilocybin.

I didn't know that my body temperature is going to, you know, drop like what felt like 20 degrees and you know and then other weird stuff happening after that so so one of the things story is I had a very specific format or structure that I wanted each storyteller to to follow and some were better at that than others but all worked out in the end because I wanted I wanted to the reader to have a have a true sense of almost being there with that storyteller and being you know you know, in that ceremonial space or being at the John Hopkins Center or being in their Airbnb or wherever they were doing it. And my goal was to get as, and it was crazy. And I probably

ended up asking about 75 to 80 people to get 23 stories. But I wanted, you know, I wanted a mix of people that had done it legally through a clinic, clinical trial or through a, uh, center where it's typically outside the country where it's legal. But I also wanted people that had done it personally, because especially something like psilocybin, which is readily available in so many ways that many people are doing, not in a treatment center or something like that. But then I also wanted, as you mentioned,

I wanted as diverse a population as possible. You know, I wanted all age, as many different aid groups as possible. And amusingly, I think I thought I'd have, you know, mostly top-heavy, you know, 50s and above, since especially even older, they, you know, they were part of the LSD crowd and all that. But most of my, I think I haven't done the actual look, but I think, you know, millennials and Gen X might be the biggest group, which is totally fine. Anyway, so I was trying to get a broad mix of age, of gender, of ethnicity, of racial background. my one, I also wanted to get at least one veteran in there because I have a heart for veterans.

I also really wanted a first responder and I was so close to getting one because they both first responders and veterans are, you know, some of the highest suicide rates. And then my other goal, which I didn't achieve was I really wanted an indigenous person to really talk about the sacred aspect of that and spiritual aspect of it. you know we have i would need you know 30 years to build up trust because we have you know torn that trust in in so many pieces shreds of paper and so i you know i reached out to several i reached out to several you know sort of the kevin bacon friends of friends of friends have tried to get to that and uh i i thought i was close to that and i i didn't get that but those is a slight too missing from the book. But otherwise, yeah, I try to get as broad a spectrum as possible because that's what

the world is. Psychedelics has traditionally been more white male centered. And so that was also sort of pushing, always that voice in the back of my head, especially being a white, older white male doing it, that I wanted to get as diverse a crowd as possible. And I really feel that that was accomplished for this book. Because I wanted anyone to read it to at least find themselves in one of the stories, ideally more, but either because of the trauma or the medicine or the age or gender or whatever might be, they could at least say, oh boy, she sounds like me or he sounds like me. And then that story will resonate more with them because of that. Yeah, I think you did a fantastic job.

And I think one of the psychedelic effects of that particular mosaic painting is that even though the individuals that told their stories were really different, ages, the psychedelic that they took, the trauma that they've been through, it showed that all of them have trauma. And it's so weird to me that something so painful can be the very thing that brings us together. And it's not only the trauma that brings us together, but now we have this medicine that can help us get out of it. And if you just look at it, if you just pan back a little bit, and we're so focused on all these small differences that we have, whether, you know, white or black or gay or straight or man or woman or Ukrainian or Russian, like we have all these words to explain how different we are. But in the grand scheme of things, we are so similar. We have the same problems. We care about a lot of the same things. And most of us have been affected by this thing called trauma that forces us to not see the big picture anymore.

And I think you did a great job in your book at getting to the heart of trauma, which brings me to my next question is there's a lot of talk about spirituality. What do you think is the relationship between trauma and spirituality? Wow, that's a great question. Of course, my first thought brain went right to all the trauma that's been, Well, first we found it in the Catholic Church, but now we find it's in the Baptist Church, an Episcopal Church, and all these others. And so my immediate one is, of course, well, anyone who's been traumatized by a spiritual person is going to be not religious anymore. Or they are in a very sad, sick way, I think.

But I think trauma can block spirituality. And again, I'm using spirituality in the broadest sense. I just saw this post today about, you know, religion is hurting psychedelics. And I thought, that's just a weird. But they were talking about spirituality. You know, religion to me is the organization, you know, so the Catholic Church, or Catholicism is a religion, but spirituality is more about faith. And that faith is, and the one constant, again, I think in most psychedelic experiences,

is there is this sense of, wow, okay, now I understand I'm part of a much larger universe, and there is this smart, intelligent, being, creator, God, Buddha, so many different names to it that people call that. And I think what the trauma does, it blocks, in my mind, trauma blocks our authentic self. And so when that's released, it releases not only who we truly are, but it releases this, I don't know, gate opens this gate, I think, that separates us to, you know, some talk about that veil in a psychedelic journey. And I experienced that in ayahuasca most certainly, that veil between heaven and earth, you know, became a razor-thin line during that experience.

So I think, and I know that from my personal experience, you know, I, and I thought I was original when I was talking about wearing a mask all the time. And then I more, more people I talked to, everyone's like, oh, yeah, I wore a mask, or I'm still wearing a mask. And I'm like, oh, I thought I was the only one wasn't wearing a mask. No, it seems like, because I think that's the trauma. again, you know, it's, we wear a mask because when we wear a mask, we fit in with whatever group we're in because we look like them, we sound like them, even though we're not like

them because we're, but this mask protects us from whatever hurt we perceive or, and again, the thing about trauma that blows my mind is, and again, I come back to veterans because you look at some of these guys that guys and women but the guys the story I'm thinking about as a guy in particular but you know he he had seen so much death and destruction you know TBI and and PTSD and moral injury and all these things and he went into ayahuasca thinking you know this is my last hope and the first night the trauma he saw was see, I still, I hear these stories 20 times and I'm still affected by it. He was abused as a child and it had that he had perfectly blocked it out as most of us do.

We compartmentalize it in some sort of way. It sneaks out in horrible ways where we, you know, all of a sudden get angry at someone. We don't know why or we all of a sudden feel great guilt or shame. We don't know why. But it's locked down there. night, you know, he was all prepared, you know, yeah, show me that death and destruction. And instead he sees his little boy and he witnesses this trauma. And so that first night, he had to clear that. And he thought, oh, my God, you know, am I ever going to get to the war stuff?

And then the next night or the next ceremony, that was the factor. And he's like, okay, now I've had two horrible nights. You know, where's this love I hear about? And then the third night, after he had cleared all this stuff, the third night was this night of what he called pure bliss. And if that is not something we all want to seek and feel and maybe carry with us even after that experience, you know, if we can care, if we, if we capture that feeling once,

you know, we're going to find it again. You know, we're going to find it doesn't have to be through psychedelics. It can be just through, hey, I feel that love. Now I'm going to find how I can receive that love. other ways or whatever it might be but love is definitely one of those things for sure yeah it's it always blows my mind to see what happens to someone when they face their traumas and they're able to you know i don't know that we necessarily ever get over them but i think that you do become aware of them and sometimes that's enough yeah it's enough to be aware hey this happened to me

and i can't change it you know like i get goosebumps when I think about that kind of stuff. Yeah, and the thing I wanted to stress is I was talking to this woman in my psychedelic society who just got out of a horrible battered spouse relationship. And she did a psilocybin journey and she said it changed her from black to white, dart, whatever you want to call, just, just complete flip and his self-love. But the thing that that got me, she said, you know, we're talking about how psychedelics really help with PTSD.

And she said, I don't want to say this, but I think I have it. And I'm like, of course you have it. You know, I mean, not in that. Yes, you have it. But not in that way, but in a way of. Yes, I mean, post-traumatic stress is, yes, we talk a lot about it with veterans and military because they are, and police and firefighters, because they are exposed to these things, you know, every day sometimes. But anyone who's been in a traumatic situation can have post-traumatic stress. You know, certainly domestic abuse, a car accident, just witnessing a car.

You don't have to even be in the accident, it's witnessing it. So that's one of the messages I want to get out there too is, is we all have trauma. And even if we don't remember the trauma or recognize the trauma, that's our brain tricking us just to keep us functioning. And I love, you know, thinking about trauma on this spectrum because, you know, Dr. Gabor McCay talks about, you know, there's trauma from absence of love. It doesn't have to be abuse. It doesn't have to be physically violent. It can be the absence of love. And, you know, his story of his mother giving him up to a person on the street for a couple,

for only a month or two months, but he was a very young child, a baby. So he had no memory of it at all, no memory of that experience. But later during a Silo Sivan journey, he. had this profound sense of this is why he felt all his life he struggled with people telling him they loved him like you know i i would if i saw him today i would say that too i mean he is the the most beautiful soul and he's done so much toward healing and if you've seen him on a podcast i love him because he just talks so methodically and so beautiful you just want to sit there and say yes dr mathe yeah But anyway, but during this mushroom journey, he realized this is why I was rejecting this love because I felt rejected as a baby.

And I never had that realization all his life. And once he had that realization, once he was healed from that, you know, all of a sudden he felt this profound love from his family and his, you know, his children, all they were giving him to him all these years, but he could never accept it. And now he could. And so, yeah, this trauma spectrum is, without question, you know, we've all been traumatized. And again, just to reinforce back to this poor woman in my group. And it's not just veterans that have post-traumatic stress. We, you know, any of us can have it that have witnessed or experienced some traumatic event. Yeah.

It's, it makes me wonder. Like, what does it mean to triumph over? drama. My, I guess my great question, my view is, there's probably about four parts to it, but I'm realizing the first part is triumphing over all the BS that would have been told for the 50 years. So that's the first triumph. If you can get over the stigma or the stereotype, you know, I can't remember if I told you this last time, George, but it'll still stick with me anytime I see an article in the mainstream that's that's posted on social media about psychedelics you know I'm always supportive of it but then I look at the

comments and people are like oh you're just trading one drug for another and oh great we're going to fix this by by more drugs or you know oh yeah I want to have I want to damage my DNA just weird stuff that comes from the war on drugs. So the first triumph for me is that people can just be open to the idea of psychedelics as one healing modality. We know there are multiple healing modalities, but the one thing I truly love about psychedelics from every story I've seen, from all the research I have seen is that it cuts through the BS to get to what you need to work on. I mean, I have a good friend of mine. his IQ is probably off the charts.

He goes to therapy every week. Every once in a while, when we're talking about it, he brags about how he manipulates the therapy sessions to just talk about whatever he wants to talk about. And I'm like, so why are you doing therapy? Because that's not the point of therapy. The point is not to manipulate your therapist. It's to get to some answers.

and he said, oh, I just enjoy it. He's not going to get to his trauma through that, but the psychedelic journey will cut through that, especially a heavy enough dose, will cut through that and say, no, no, no more BS. Now I'm in control, and now we're going to show you and talk about this.

So I love that. So that's the first triumph is just people saying, hmm, okay, I've seen. Now, you know, we just had this Time magazine article about a week ago. You know, we've seen it in Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, so it's getting into the mainstream media. So now people are like, well, you know, so some are still, you know, maybe. But there are still a lot that are in that anti-drug modality. So that's one triumph.

And I think the second triumph is accepting that you're deserving of healing. because I feel, again, in gathering some of these stories and just talking people in general, there's a sense of, you know, this is my circumstance. You know, I don't deserve to get out of it. This is just the way life has put me. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. But again, whether it's the mental illness or life or whatever that's put them in this corner and they feel like they deserve to be in that corner. And so that's the second

triumph, just accept that you deserve healing. And the third thing, the third triumph is the actual healing. And that's, and that's something it sometimes happens during a psychedelic experience. We look at something like addiction, where one psychedelic experience is enough, at least for short term, maybe not permanently, put them off whatever drug they were taking. Alcohol is especially one being studied. But the other thing is, is so I need, you know, the other factor that we, I know Tom mentioned last time too is, you know, we need to make sure we're talking about the integration part as well because yes, occasionally these are miracles. I mean, it truly is amazing when someone could take one psilocybin experience and say after a lifelong experience of drinking

every day and saying no i i don't i'm not even thinking about a drink and it's like unbelievable so in that case it serves so there is you know i know there's a lot of discussion within the psychedelic community about you know it's not a match pill, not a magic pill, not a magic pill. And I think that's important because I think in some ways, outside of psychedelics, we are seeking that magic pill. You know, when people are, when the average number of prescription drugs is 13 prescriptions per person.

Yeah. And, you know, we hear about people being on maybe two antidepressants because one has a side effect. They don't like. they put another one on to help that side effect and then maybe an anti-anxiety. So they're on multiple medications. So I think they're looking for that magic pill. And I don't know whether that partly that's the pharmaceutical industry, partly that's the FDA,

partly that's marketing because we're bombarded by this. You know, I'm a cheap out guy, so I watch Hulu with commercials. And I would say at least half the commercials are for pharmaceuticals. And for conditions that are just non-life-threatening, you know, skin rash or I'm trying to think some of the other things that are advertised. But I'm not saying those aren't important. But so I think, I think, you know, we are seeking that magic pill. And the psychedelics aren't that in most cases, but they are that avenue to get us into that space where we can do the work. that healing work.

A lot of people refer to that as the inner child work because that's often where a lot of that really bad abuse happened. And again, not necessarily physical abuse, but even just mental abuse that happened because the child brain, we just, we don't know how to process it. So we just, you know, just shove it down there. And so these, these medicines cut through all the layers that would put down there to protect ourselves to face it to then, you know, come back to this notion that we've talked about earlier of then trying to live this authentic life. So I think, so, you know, my hope is there's a lot of

triumphs here with this, with this book. Yeah. I think it's a, I think your book is a gateway to more triumphs for a lot of people, you know, the same way they talk about things being a gateway. And it, you know, it does bring up the idea that for a long time, We have been, I don't want to say taught. I would say more like brainwashed to believe that a pill can fix your problems. And I'd spoken about this with, maybe it was Matt. We were talking about the way in which our society or the current medical institutionalized idea of medicine. The idea of medicine these days seems to prefer a coping strategy versus a healing strategy.

Yes. Right? It's like, take this pill and you'll steal. feel like you'll still feel horrible you stuff your problems but you can still get up and go to work you'll still be mad at your spouse but you feel just good enough to not to ignore them or something like that and you know i think i think you had brought up in the book something about the antidepressant market is expected to reach 21 billion dollars by 2030 what does that say about our society when the business model is more and more sick people and you know they don't want

to heal them why would you want to heal them when you have a product that helps them hope with it. Right. It's sad to me. It greatly saddens me. And the same thing with, especially with most of the psychedelics, which are plants or fungi, you know, how are these outlawed? This is, you know, whenever in our history have we outlawed a plant, you know, it's just bizarre to me,

especially a plant, you know, and the thing that really floored me and I, you know, I just miss the Woodstock LSD days. but I, you know, I never knew there were so much research done in the 60s and so much use of LSD by psychiatrists for therapy sessions. And I just feel I'm so angered and frustrated because, you know, we've lost hundreds of thousands of lives because of a political decision to block these medicines because, oh, we're afraid of the counterculture is going to be too much about love and peace. Oh, my God, that's horrible.

How can we live in a world of love and peace and compassion? I don't know. And so, yeah, and I worry about it in so many different levels. I just saw just another story today, George, and I know you've seen these two because we've been running now for the last two months or so. You know, the mental health of our children

is at its most fragile point ever. Add that to the mental health of us as adults and we're mentally health challenged dealing with our children who are challenged. And yeah, and our solution seems to be, take a pill or in or worse up the dosage oh you're not feeling quite enough well let's give it a little higher to see what happens and yeah let's make you know let's dull you down even more and I think that's exactly right we're in a in a coping rather than healing and and maybe that's why it's so hard to

break through this message with this book and with psychedelics in general because you know maybe this belief that, you know, oh my gosh, we're, you know, with antidepressants, you know, antidepressants, if you look at the research, they were designed just as a temporary fix. So in the deepest, darkest periods, you would take an antidepressant for, you know, three to five days until that depressive moment passed, and then you would stop. And that's the only way they were tested was, in this process. And yet everyone I've talked to that's on an antidepressant has been on it forever every day since they were first prescribed it. And so we're not even following our own research

methods in terms of these medicines sometimes. So I do feel sometimes a little hopeless about about this. And I think I told you the time I knew that the world had changed dramatically was when I went in for my annual wellness check. And the first thing my doctor, who I'd been seeing for years at that point, the first thing he said to me was, well, what prescription can I get you? Not even how am I? Not even, how's it going? Haven't seen you in a year. You know, nothing. It was What prescription can I get you? And I just stood there stunned. And I thought, this is the world we've come to?

And, you know, it wasn't like I was on any prescription. So it wasn't like, oh, oh, you know, yes, last year we tried a, you know, blood pressure. So now he's checking on it. No, no. It was just a way of welcoming to his office. So I think that's, and I don't know how to, I don't know how to change that. You know, we have some natural pathic doctors that are doing great things and are trying to be a voice in the wilderness, but, you know, they are typically poo-poed by the medical community, quote-unquote. And so, but here's another example, too, just thinking about that.

Actually, I just heard a story about a natural path doing this, which kind of blows my mind. one of the other things that just about this pill mentality we have is I heard this from one woman and then I actually saw a paper about this that more more women, more and more paramedipausal women, so premenopausal women, are being put on antidepressants. Well, first of all, this is a natural occurrence within the body. And this one woman I talked to said was just infuriated. She's like, well, first of all, this is a natural doctor. So I would expect I don't consider antidepressants natural.

So I was stunned by that. But also, you know, she said all I was expressing was just kind of, you know, frustration about hot flashes and, you know, a couple of symptoms of paramenopause. And to be immediately given, oh, you need a pill. Take a pill. take a pill. It's like, yeah, we're in a messed up society if, you know, if this is our answer to everything is take a pill and you'll feel better. And I get the little problem with the book, because a lot of times we seconded out to turn a pill form, capsule form. So it is a little tricky

to say, yeah, stop being that take a pill mentality to switch to psychedelic where you're going to take a pill, but maybe not. Maybe you're going to take a tea. Maybe you're going to smoke something. So it's a little different, but it's also not that you're not going to take a pill your rest of your life. Even in microdosing, you take a pill a couple days a week for a month, and then you stop and let your body, you know, and so, but it's a hard message to get through because

it is its tricky line, a slippery slope where we want to say, you want to do that you want to get off those pills again with medical advice if your doctor if your doctor will even agree with you we've had some people some stories where the person's had a switch to her doctor because they said I want to taper off my medication so I can do a psychedelic journey and the doctor said oh no you can't do that you need these things and so it's like what you know again Again, my best physician I ever had, he was the one who always asked me. He never dictated to me.

He asked me, how are you feeling? What's going on in your life? What do you think you might need? What are you concerned about? And I think in today's, and that was, you know, unfortunately, 10, 15 years ago. And today's, you know, 15, 20-minute doctor appointment sessions we have, you know, they become, in a sense, a little more like pill pushers because it's like, how are you? Oh, okay, check your blood pressure, temperature.

The nurse has done that. But blah, okay, here's your new prescription or I'll call it in for you and then, you know, see you in a month or see you six months or whatever. And I don't know, we just need to figure out a way to change that somehow. Yeah. It brings up some interesting points. You know, and I'm a big fan of as above so below. And when I think about modern medicine, when I think about pills, when I think about our society,

I think about this formula of like distraction and addiction versus confrontation. And like let's take a look at our society today. Why is it that so much of the business world is based on a model of addiction? Like if you buy a copier, I'll give you that copier. But I'm going to addict you to the ink and you're going to pay for it forever. I'll give you a Microsoft computer, but you're going to buy that software for. forever. That's like that's the same model as addiction. That's like me going and getting some crack. Hey, the first one's free. Every good drug dealer knows that. First one's free. Right. And so it's

just, I had this idea a while back like, gosh, dang it, man. Like that makes me, first off, upset. Like the business world has said, wow, look at this model of addiction. Wouldn't that be great if we could just slip into that? And you can even see it with the subscription based services as a model coming now, where everyone wants to go to the subscription based service. But if you just pan back a little bit, you go, wait a minute. You can't afford that many subscriptions, you know? Like what's going to happen? It's not going to work.

So if we can look at the business model and know that this model is not going to continue to work, it's breaking. Then we also can look at this addiction model towards medicine and go, well, that's not going to work either. And which we have with psychedelics is even though it may come in a pill form, it's neither a distraction nor is it an addiction. It's a confrontation. Like you said, your friend can take that. And he can manipulate the therapist until he's blue in the face. But let me give you eight grams of psilocybin mushrooms. Let me see you manipulate that.

Yeah, exactly. You can. And you may be in your bed crying. But guess what? You're going to confront the demon that or the, maybe not a demon. Maybe the threshold guardian. You know, Joseph Campbell talks about these threshold guardians. And maybe that's what it is.

Yeah. And that to me, if I can see that and I can see the, the, the, the, the, the, Wars breaking down in business. I can see people coming through addiction. And I myself have gone through different confrontations and left the old skin that I was in at that confrontation point. You can see the world changing. And I think that that is cause for celebration with books like yours,

with, you know, Matt Zeman being on every single podcast, every single day, every time I turn on the channel. I love that guy. He's on everywhere, you know. With people like Ranga coming from India, moving to Canada. When you know what, I don't know about being a mechanical engineer anymore. I think I'm going to do this other thing. Like you can see the world changing in positive ways one person at a time.

And maybe that is the triumph of trauma. Maybe that is the idea of one at a time. Slow at first and then all at once. Because all of a sudden, once you start getting some thought leaders through their trauma. And this is one thing I tell people who have PTSD or maybe have been in a battered relationship is that is necessary. I know it sounds horrible. I know it sounds selfish, but something bigger than both of us

needed you to go through that so you can come through on the other side and now you can turn around and help the next person up. And that only takes a few, it takes maybe a generation before the model goes from an addiction and a distraction to, hey, I'm going to turn around and help that next person up. And then that becomes the pattern.

That becomes the catalyst to move us forward. And I think with books like yours, And even though it was hard and, you know, you still tear up a little bit when you start hearing these stories, it's like, that's all necessary. And the more people we can affect, the more people we can get to confront that which is dragging them down, the more that they can become the dragon and fight for it. But yeah, I see that model changing. And I do, which leads me to my next question. And that is the idea of integration. What do you think is the relationship between trauma and integration?

All right. Before we get to that, I just want to come back to one thing you say that is important. Yeah, I'm also, you know, we have so much baggage we have in this because of the politics. And I love that you said challenging because that's one of my other little soapbox issues.

Even people within psychedelics are still saying bad trip. And it's like, no, no, no. That's the politics. That's the fried egg and it's burning up in the pan. The Friday. Yeah. That's funny. You know, yes, you will face some challenging things.

I like that comfort. I like that you were confrontational. I was a little scared at first when you mentioned it because like confrontation to me. Like I'm a peacemaker. You know, I grew up in a family where at some point that role was put on me and I'm worn that mantle ever since. And to this day, I hate confrontation. That's a whole other story down the road. But I like how you say, frame it in this thing because we have to, we talk about surrender.

Yeah. And sometimes the challenging aspects happen when we don't surrender. And the medicine is like, you have to, you have to let it go. You have to let it go. And we're like, no, no, no, I need it. I need it, need it. it. So sometimes that's the challenging part. And then or like you said it, or if you just do a heroic dose of whatever it is, there'll be no surrender because you'll just go right into it.

And then the challenging thing might be some of the things you have to face, but you have to face them, but you're in a safe spot to face them. They still might be obviously things you'd rather see the rainbows and the unicorn than this whatever dark thing you're facing. But once you've done it, the light comes. And so that's, like you said, that's the important part. So, yeah, there are psychedelics aren't all, yeah, there aren't all unicorns and rain, rainbows. And you will face some, some dark, challenging aspects to it. The thing I love is what, one of the ayahuasca people told me is, you know,

you know, if you're in this journey and don't like what you're doing, swipe left or swipe right, you know, move the change, change what you're seeing, or as other people say, find the next door, you know, okay, I want to go through that door. This is, this is, this room is done, you know, just, just acknowledge it and move on. And so I think that that's a big role to it. But anyway, no. Yeah. But not bad trips.

You know, you're not going to, I can honestly say on any psychedelic experience, I, you know, I've had a hard enough time getting up from my wherever I'm sitting. let alone wanting to jump off a building or whatever you know the crazy anti-drug stuff that we heard. All right. So back to your question about integration and trauma. I love integration. So integration is this word that we all throw around in the space. Maybe we should define it first.

Yes, right. So to me, integration is simply taking the, I'll let me backtrack. I'll go. Let me define it. I'll backtrack. Whatever. So integration is taking the lessons that you learn or the things you saw, what you felt, the entire psychedelic experience.

And by the way, you also need to integrate when you're doing microdosing, where you still have, you're still having the medicine within you, but you're not having the hallucinogenic experience. Anyway, so integration is just saying, you know, what did I learn? see, what did I hear, what lessons from somebody taking, and then trying to incorporate them into what you, I think what you said, which is, I wish I, I need to be, I'm going to watch it. I don't rewatch this to get all your words, George. I think it was, you know, that you talked about, you know, and that healing of being able to take you out, leaving that, you know, integration is leaving that dead skin, that old skin over there. And now, now, now, them in this new skin, which is also sometimes a little fragile.

Yeah. How do I protect this new skin? How do I move it forward? How do I grow with it? And, you know, integration comes in all different format. So what I recently thought about, to wait for the book, but Jenny and I were talking, one of the most important things about integration is, We talk about having community, having people to share this with because it is outworldly.

It is different. We've all talked to friends or relatives, and then you just hear crickets because they don't know how to respond to you. Oh, yeah. I just had a secondary experience. And, you know, I was talking with Jesus. Yep. Okay. Next topic.

How's the weather? Yes. So, you know, we talk about in a psychedelic experience having preparation, the psychedelic experience, and then integration, the three key components of the psychedelic journey. And I would actually, we usually talk about community in integration, but I would actually say it should be in preparation that you start seeking out that because there's a story in a book about Charles. And Charles was in a bad place.

He was in a group of people that were doing alcohol, heroin, coke, all the hard drugs. And he just happened upon a psychedelic experience. It wasn't intentional at the time. But it was enough so that the medicine told him, you don't need these drugs anymore. You don't need the alcohol anymore. You can heal yourself. So stop it. Stop doing the drugs.

And he came out of that experience like, hallelujah, oh my God. I am a changed person and he looked around the room and there were the people passed out from their heroin or whatever. And he actually became more alone, more traumatized in a way because he would drew from that crowd because he didn't want to do it anymore. But then he had no one else because his whole community was other people doing drugs. And so he actually went back to alcohol and drugs until he had another psychedelic experience. And then he luckily did find community.

So that's why to me it's so important to, you know, if you're thinking about psychedelics, is to start looking, you know, at a psychedelic society. There are ones all across the world, all across the country. That's a good thing. Or amazingly, even on, you know, Facebook or LinkedIn, people talk. It still blows my mind at LinkedIn. We're talking about psychedelic.

I love it, but, you know, I look at LinkedIn from like five years ago versus LinkedIn today, and it's like night and day. But so, so. Integration is basically integration is just saying and you can do integration by yourself. I'm a journaling is a one probably the number one tool people use. So, you know, right some people during the during a psychedelic experience actually journal. There's no way in most of mine that I could have journaled. LSD is a little different for me because it's not quite as inward an experience for me.

It's still so I am in my own little world. I mean, so aside, but I can't even speak. You know, like, Jenny and I were on a journey, and there was a song that was just driving me into this dark, deep valley. And I, on one hand, I think I wanted to be there. So I think that's partly why. I wanted to find out why am I in this valley. But the other hand, I was like, screaming, when is this song going to end? So I can get out of this damn valley.

And she's sitting right next to me, and she has her phone. She could fast forward that song. And I could look at her and I could try to telepathically tell her that. But I physically could not. So it made it, it's, you know, I love, again, everyone's experience is different. I love that some people have their phone with them and actually do voice notations during their journey. It's like, wow, I got to try that. because I want to hear how I sound.

But so integration is just, you know, whatever, whatever tools you have, some people paint, some people dance, create different things. But talking, I think. And that's why these stories, these writing these stories and sharing these stories, that's integration because you are, the more you talk about, the more little nuanced things you pick up. And to me, that's the one really fascinating part about psychedelic. is sometimes you have some amazing insights a week, a month later, because, you know, that what we're discovering, as you know, Georgie, you talk about this, is, you know, all these new brain connections. I mean, to me, that actually, I'm torn between the healing, which I think is just so beautiful

and that our brain psychedelics actually help our brains grow again. You know, we thought for so many years that our brains, you know, stopped growing in 20s and this idea that that we're making these new connections and it might take a month it might take two months before that connection to finally then all of a sudden fire up and then all of a sudden you're just sitting there thinking about it oh wow you know just a brilliant insight and so you know integration again I used to think integration oh you know yeah maybe a week a month you know six months after after a journey and And now I'm more on that bandwagon of, you know, it's really a lifetime because you, I mean, you're not going to constantly go back.

Oh, let's think about that, you know, that experience on my deck and that LSD experience. It's not so much like a nostalgic thing. It's more, again, just sort of looking at the pieces. I had a friend who did a psilocybin journey. and all he did, according to him and his spouse, all he did during the journey was laugh uncontrollably and then apologize because he wasn't speaking clearly, which his spouse says he was.

And so I said, what do you think that means? I said, did he journal about it? He's like, journal about it. Why would I need to journal about it? Nothing happened. I said, you just told me what happened. He said, oh, no, laughing. That's nothing.

I was just laughing. I couldn't stop it. And then the speech thing, I don't know. I guess I'm just very particular about how I sound. And I said, buddy, there are messages there. There's something going on. I said, the laughing could just be a release. So that, that's just you're releasing something.

But maybe it's a good idea to find out, what you're releasing because that could help you. And then they apologizing for your speech, where is that coming from? And, you know, dig down into, you know, that sounds like, and he's a guy that has, he's a really, really successful guy, but he has a little bit of a fragile ego, a little self-confidence issue. And I think that, that's, that's it right there where he's talking about his, you know, in his journey, where he's so not confident about his speech.

And so anyway, so again, he's never going to understand any of that if he doesn't integrate. And so that's the other thing. So no matter how inconsequential, and again, if you do a lower dose of any medicine, you're going to have maybe a less of a psychedelic experience in what you're expecting. And, of course, one of the things we also say is don't have any expectations go into it, just go into it open, willing to see what the medicine is going to show you. But you know, there's always something that happens in a journey and you need to find a way to integrate. And yeah, there might be some that are just minor things.

But the more you write down and then if you do another psychedelic experience or you try microdosing, you know, more things are going to come up. And that's the key. I think the healing, that's the key to, I think what you said earlier and I'm not going to say that again, as nice way as you did, but kind of unlocking this universal, you know, I'm, you know, I'm a son of a scientist. I grew up in a rational home for the first 18 years. I couldn't use an emotion if I tried because only rational arguments, discussions, one in that household. So I still have that half of me.

I'm on a Myers-Brigg. I'm just on that T.F. right and half half. So I like the rational science aspects of the psychedelics, but I do like the, I do like the little bit of the woo-woo. So I like that notion of that psychedelics can unlock this understanding that we are all part of one community. We are not different.

And I love what one veteran said to me. He's like, you know, there wouldn't be wars anymore because we would realize we're fighting our brothers and our sisters, not the enemy. Wow. I mean, that is profound. That brings me a little way from the woo-woo to a more rational, you know, look at that. But it's so true. I mean, we look at things like sustainability.

I love the other aspect of the psychedelic movement is that when people have these psychedelic experiences, they tend to be more grounded in nature. All of a sudden, they see more the fragility of. the earth and more respect for the earth and sustainability and better farming and we see people eating better and taking care of themselves better so there's another aspect of triumphing over yeah you know our sad american diet you know our standard american diet which we call sad which you know has so much process and fast foods you know we're we're killing our bodies that way too i mean there's so much you only needs to be done but i think you know psychedelics

just awakens us to, again, sounds more spiritual than it is healing, but I think it does sort of open us to this notion that our bodies are a temple, not maybe, again, not in this religious, strict container of that, but in a sense that all our systems should be flowing 100%. And when we're hurt and traumatized, they're not operating at 100%. that and one system's partial failure affects another system. And so that's why often we have physical elements when we have mental elements because they're all connected in that way. And again, that's amazing to me as we look at psychedelics as a way of just fostering

this whole system approach to healing rather than just pieces of a system. Yeah, that's really well said. I, as you were talking, I had this question in my mind that we talk about healing all the time. But what's happening when we're healing is we're learning. And when you were talking, like, those two words can almost be synonymous. Healing and learning. You know, it's like when you are making these new connections in your brain, I had a good friend whose father had a stroke and he had to teach himself how to talk again.

And what was explained to me is that, okay, this small part of his brain over by broken. area. It didn't give enough blood. And so that part died. And he had to reestablish new connections, like a bypass, the same way you would bypass a heart surgery. And you can do it if you practice and you go to therapy. And in some ways, that seems to me to be what's happening on some of these entheogens or psychedelics is that you're making these new connections. And you're learning how to get past that trauma. You're learning how to see the world different. You're learning how to shed that skin. And it's it's so fascinating to me because I think that, you know, we spoke about this earlier, but we have been trying to put band-aids on these traumas, whether it's in the

individual's life, the society's life, the state's life, the country's life. You know, it's the same thing just on different scales. And it seems to me for the first time, maybe since the 50s or since this particular this particular psychedelic outreach has been happening is that we're healing from the ground up now. You know, the same way that the forest makes new brush

after a fire, so too are we. We're the new brush. And there's all these people that are beginning to grow up around the broken old burned down trees. And it's beautiful to me in so many ways because I can see people around me that I know and I love

coming to coming to the end of their trauma for the first time. And some of these people are like my parents that are in their 70s. And some of them are my uncles that for the first time are saying, you know what? I'm a dummy.

I messed up a lot of things. And they're not saying it as a pejorative. They're saying it as like an enlightened, maybe not enlightened, but they're coming to their own conclusion. Hey, I can fix this. It's my fault. I can fix it.

If I did it, I can fix it. I'm the one that can do it. And it's beautiful in a lot of ways. I also on that same notion, I see, I don't know if you've seen your book like this, but this is a radical way of doing business to me. And maybe you can, you know, you're giving your proceeds to someone. I want you to touch on that, but you came up with an idea or you had an idea handed to you that you embellished, that you wrote that came from somewhere.

And then you included everybody in the community that wanted to be part of it. invited them in. You guys created something. And now you're taking that creation and you're giving it to someone else that can heal. Like what a radical community model to raise money, to raise awareness and make the entire system around you better. I've often said that if you want to make the world better, start with yourself and then make everyone around you better.

And like, this is one of the first books that I have seen, Rand. I'm really impressed by it and I'm really stoked about this model of it. So can you tell me about this model where the proceeds are going, the people that you got involved and how it's all transpiring? George, can we just do this every day? It's beautiful. Yeah, I mean, first I just want to say, and this is really truly from my heart, that, you know, I love promoting Matt, Matt Zemin.

I love promoting his book. I love Amanda's book, Sych, Christian has a book for Microdose. There are so many books out there. And one of the things I, my hope about psychedelic community, and it's partly there, it's not all the way there, is we just want, like, I don't care if Matt's book becomes a New York Times bestseller in mine's number 10,000. And all I care about is that people are getting the message. Because so, and that's why, you know, besides obviously having a good laugh doing this with you,

that's why, you know, going on podcast and just trying to get this, you know, I had a friend text me today and say, how's the book going? And I'm like, you know, if I could find that one switch that would get this book, my book, or Matt's book or one other book out there, you know, NPR book review or New York Times book review, I don't care whose book it is. As long as I see psychedelics on the top 10 list, wouldn't that be awesome?

And not be a mainstream book, not be a How to Change Your Mind, which is fantastic. Love that book, love a miniseries, but I would love to see someone from our group that has this knowledge beyond that list. So we'll see, maybe it'll happen. The one thing I love about psychedelics, and again, maybe that's my altruistic element to myself and hope for the future. I'm part of my, I guess, viewpoint as a peacemaker is I always want to see the rainbow possibility, maybe not the rainbow every day, but the possibility of that rainbow.

And so I see psychedelics as this, you know, yeah, I like having the rose colored. glasses on as often as I can. I have to take them off once in a while when we see some, you know, bad stuff happening. But, you know, I would, I would love, because again, some of these art plants or, or natural materials to just see, you know, access, 100% access to anyone who can do it. You know, ketamine is the only legal, quote-unquote, psychedelic, being allowed in the U.S. right now. But those treatments are ridiculously expensive. And I would say in general, well, ketamine is a treatment and it's done amazing things. I don't think it's the ideal psychedelic.

So I'd rather see psilocybin on that, be on that list. And I guess slowly it will be. But the motto is, so this book, I think one of the things, only talk about ego death for a second, too. One of the things that psychedelics does, and we've labeled this ego death or ego disillusion, and I think some people get scared of that because I think, well, how am I going to come back if I don't have an ego? And it's like, that's not exactly what happens. So I guess we need a better way of describing that too. So I have a hard time even calling this my book because of this process.

And so a lot of times they'll say the book and Jen will look at me like, really. But you get to this place where it's not that you don't have ego. It's not that like if my book were our number one on the bestseller list, I wouldn't sit there and do a little happy dance for 10 minutes or all day or whatever. But that would be just a happy dance. It wouldn't be like ego in a sense of like, oh, to me ego is my book deserves to be on the number one list. And so I think what psychedelics does is it just besides the healing factor of the trauma, it also resets yourself in seeing as you're not as important as you think you are. And again, you don't, I don't think I ever had that big an ego before.

you know, I think I, you know, being a PhD, you sometimes get a little ego there and you want people to say Dr. Hansen rather than Mr. Hansen, at least in the classroom. But, you know, I don't think I ever had that sense of that, but the psychedelics definitely shredded what ego I had. And then it's rebuilt it. You come back with an ego, but it's just a different ego. And it's so hard to describe, but it's like a mellow, a mellow ego. where you still have your skills and you still know, like I feel like I'm a good writer. And so this is one of the reasons why I think LSD chose me for this book.

And then it gave me some extra skills to, like I said, you know, smoke in the keyboard literally almost. Okay, now I've just totally lost where we're going with that question. Oh, oh, so one of the things in this, one of the things in this journey that the medicine told I mean, not just, it didn't just give me the outline, but it said, the way you're going to do this is you're going to foster healing a second way by donating the profits to organizations that are helping people heal or helping in the healing process. And so I thought that was fabulous. It's a way, you know, to, you know, in one hand, the other model would be just giving the book away.

but I think in that model I think people need to if they purchase it there's more of a commitment to actually read it than if they just get a free copy and it sits there in their inbox or their bookshelf and they never read it. But in this way, everyone who buys a book, not only are they hopefully learning more about potential healing themselves, but all the proceeds are going to go to three different organizations, a heroic heart project. which was a project that the nonprofit that actually got us both involved in the psychedelic space to begin with. And they are healing veterans by sending them down to ayahuasca retreats in Peru. And they are also actively involved in research. They're doing research with psilocybin and TBIs, and they've done some with PTS as well, I think. And then a Chakruna Institute, which is focusing on the indigenous and bipypon.

community and trying to create more, that's the right word, availability access to everyone, psychedelics access, and then to the Fireside Project, which is just really neat nonprofit, that's a peer support line. So if someone's doing a psychedelic journey on their own, which they shouldn't, but if they are and they get a little frightened by a challenging experience. They can use an app or call on their phone and speak to a peer that will kind of help talk them down through that experience. So all three are going to donate from this. So yeah, so it's a truly healing, healing model, both from the person who buys a book and then from their money, their resources are then going to help others heal.

I love it. It's such a unique way to give back to a cause that has given you so much. And that goes for all of us. And I, you know, here in Hawaii, we have something called the Clarity Project. And there's some really good people working on, we're at the early stages of trying to get psychedelics as a medicine here. And it's just now going through the legislature and they're putting some testimonies forward. and there's some really good people at the helm of that. And so when I saw the way in which you were presenting this model,

I automatically reached out to them. And I was like, look, here's something that RAN has created that I think other communities could begin to implement. And they could even be synergistic. You know, if you have a team of doctors or a community, I love the way that you reached out to the community and they shared their stories with you. And, you know, alone, a story is a beautiful thing that can help people. But a story could be the very thing other people live by.

We all tell stories. We all have narratives we live by. And if we can get powerful stories and put them together in a collection, that collection can change people's lives. And if it can do that, it can generate revenue to build a project. So whether it's the clarity project, getting authors together. You know, and it's not too far-fetched to think that there couldn't be some sort of speaking tour that every, if our community got together, where, hey, Rand, we want you to come out to Hawaii and maybe give up an auction off some signed books or we could have some of the authors from Hawaii going to these different places. But we could have, you know, there's no reason why we can't continue to grow together as a community and sponsor or send the profits towards something that continues to grow.

and then those people help people and then they start kicking in. You can really begin to see a different business model beginning to take shape if we continue to move forward on that. But this is the first time I've seen it like this. And I'm really impressed by it. And I really admire the way you've done it there. Well, no credit to me, George. So again, the medicine or whatever.

Yeah, I love that idea. you know, I love the idea of because, you know, all these states now are looking at, well, I shouldn't say all, many states are looking at some sort of medical therapy, Bill, some decrim, all the decrim seems to have slowed down a little bit. And so I think it would be amazing to have, and I don't know what the format would be, But the one problem I have is we're doing a great job of talking amongst ourselves in the psychedelic community. And that's great because we're building this base of knowledge that all of us can share. But we need to get the word out to the people that need to hear it.

And so I've sort of been strong-armed into going to the Maps conference in Denver. but that's not where I want to. I mean, I'm looking forward to because it's meeting a lot of the people that I networked with, but that's not the community I want to talk with because they're healed or they're being healed. I want to, so I would love this idea of a nonprofit, like you said, nonprofit. And again, not even an expert's panel, not necessarily an author's panel, but just a healer, not even a healer, because I'm not a healer. But so I would have to find the right name for it.

But I love that idea of, you know, doing like a, you know, a 50 state tour. Yeah, going to legislatures and or just town hall meetings. Yeah. And he's trying to get the word out because I think, again, if, you know, whether it's a podcast or, you know, people are now getting on CNN sometimes. that's all great, but I think when you can be in person and then that person can ask questions, so we're going to have a town hall and people can raise some of these questions that are, that people are listening to this podcast, or even thinking like, you know, well, I, you know, I heard, you know, you might not come back from a psychedelic journey or something like that.

And they can't ask that during a podcast, but they could ask that in a town hall meeting. And so, yeah, maybe we should put that out there to all the thoughts. lot leaders out there. I would love, and again, not for me. I don't need to be part of it. I would definitely take part because I enjoy obviously being that educator, but I would love to see some movement to the general public because that's, you know, I talk about the audience from my book, it's a psychedelically curious. You know, they heard about psychedelics, not too sure what it's about, which is why I had these introductory chapters that you talked about, that buildup into the journey, because I felt like they needed to have that information. We needed to kind

of just interface, discount all the lies and mistruths. But then the stories, yeah, the stories are the meat of it where they can really see that healing. And so, yeah, I think that some notion of that would be a really cool process. I don't know what it would look like. But the other thing I want to mention, I know you brought this up with Tom a little bit, because Tom DeNardo is a big proponent of ethics in all areas, but obviously especially psychedelics. And that is one of my fears. You know, we, that's why I love that you mentioned this business model, though, again, not that I thought of it. But I, you know, we talk about, yeah, everyone needs to make money. We're not saying, making money is a bad thing. We need that. We need to pay rent or a mortgage, buy our food. But we, we, we, we, we need to pay rent or a mortgage, buy our food. But we, we, we, we, we, we, we can do it in an ethical manner that doesn't gouge people, doesn't, you know, make them spend $10,000 to get prime rib while they're having ayahuasca and throwing it up, you know, whatever, you know. So, you know, I, so I love this because this would be, you know, again, this is this model is of just sharing information and giving of our, whoever's on that giving of themselves, their time,

their energy to to just showcase that knowledge and pass this healing message on. So whatever, whatever way we can do with George, I'm there. And if you figure it out, I'll be right behind you. Yeah, it seems,

I think that there's a whole lot of areas that we have really yet to drill down on. I'm going to be speaking with a young lady Serena who's just getting to start a law firm and talking about the different laws about psychedelics. And that's something, too, that you don't, Like here in Hawaii, we're beginning to give testimony about how it could heal and why it's good. I think a beautiful compliment to that testimony would be why, let me show you why it's financially viable for the community as well.

Because when you have these people healed, you can have less crime. There's a lot of financial components that I think people aren't talking about. And I don't know them all because it's just beginning to bloom. It's just beginning to unfold in places like Colorado. But I do think that the people at the legislature at the town halls, I think when you want to reach them, you've got to speak their language. And their language is more of a financial language. And that's fine because there's plenty of financial avenues that psychedelics can speak to, whether it's healing, whether it's trauma, whether it's revitalizing communities. You know, how will the relationship work with homelessness?

If we know a large percentage of people that are homeless have mental illness and we know, that psychedelics is doing a really good job at helping people with mental illness. Does that mean we're going to be able to find places for these people to work? Is that mean they're going to be able to be a little bit more responsible in finding their housing? And, you know, what happens if we can get people out from underneath bridges and into some sort of community housing where they can benefit the community? And I don't know if any of these topics are being brought up with the townhouse. I think that these ideas are potentially more of a game. game changer or they're you know if you go to somebody and you want money if you go to somebody and

you want something you have to show them this is why i want it and i think that these conversations would help so you know it doesn't necessarily have to be the merry pranksters rolling in in a school bust it's painted in day glow colors i don't have any problem with that i think it's kind of fun but you know it can be a lawyer it can be uh you know someone who owns a community center or a wellness the center, a doctor, a psychotherapist. I think that that would make up a few authors, you know, someone that works in the community. But I think that that sort of team coming to a legislature puts all grown up face on psychedelics where maybe the first wave of psychedelics was these King Kese and all these guys.

But I think if you brought that particular set to the town hall meetings, I think that, you know, you would really be able to drive some points home there. It's fascinating to me because it's a time where new laws are being made. ideas are blooming and I you know new books like like triumph over trauma are coming out and making a difference here and so it's it's fascinating to me I really think that it's a it's a real opportunity for for the world to take that next step forward and it's it's really fascinating to me was there any please go ahead I go ahead I go ahead I love what you just said speaking the language because that's that's a you know one of it's a basic communications protocol you know you

you if you want to get your message across, you speak their language. You code it their way. Yes. I love that. Yeah. And you're right. I mean, there are, you know, I've just, I've sort of been focusing more on, on all the bad negative stuff from the past. But you're right.

All this, if we look, flip it to the future. We're talking about, you know, reduction in hospitalization costs, medical costs. How, you know, yeah, all the homeless costs that we have. The war on drugs, which has been the most ridiculous thing we could really. invest that to education in other ways. So, you know, that's actually, I love, I'm going to work on that some more, because I love that idea, George. I think that that is key.

And especially at the national level where almost every legislator is a lawyer, so you definitely need to be speaking in those terms. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, doctors and, and, you know, we have so many of these people in the community already. we have this this is one pharmacist I'd love on LinkedIn who is like I can't be a retail pharmacist anymore because I have to speak the truth about these medications and what and side effects and polypharmacy and all the stuff and I'm like wow you know the world is slowly opening up and it wasn't that

she did psychedelics it's just that she just saw the BS in the pharmacy industry and said I can't do it anymore. Yeah. And I think, I think we need to do it sooner rather than later. I had someone tell me the other day and it really is kind of just sitting in the back of my head depressing me a teeny bit, but not too much. But he said, I think the earth is in a mental health crisis. And I was like, whoa.

You know, again, if we sort of push beyond what that. the words mean to a broader sense, you know, the violence we're seeing in the climate and depletion of our soil and things like that. Yeah, I would say maybe the earth is a little depressed. And, you know, that just sort of fits. And so, you know, if we as a collective are feeling this heavy weight on our shoulders from our own traumas and burdens and then the earth is itself is sort of carrying that weight. We, you know, we have this duty to do just what you're saying to really, you know, take up this mantle.

I mean, so there are, yeah, there are two avenues we really should be pursuing. We should be pursuing at the individual level for healing and at the legislative level for clearing the way. Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the biggest, when you start reading some of the, you, when you start reading some of the projections for budgets, whether it's state, whether it's federal. What you're seeing people really worried about is health care.

You know, there's such an aging population. And there's, you know, and we seem, we seem as a society to do what we do as individuals. And we hide that trauma. The same way you have childhood trauma and you lock it away. So too do we have these giant problems staring at us. We're like, let's just not face that. Hey, look at, look at the mental illness. look at the people aging, look at these drugs.

We're not doing anything. People are like, yeah, just shut up about it. Let's not talk about it. Yeah, put the bliders on. Yeah, just pretend it's not there. And that's the same thing we do. And here's why I think psychedelics are such a potential for greatness. You just said that it seems that the same way the individual's sick,

maybe the world's sick. And I think that we're just an extension of the planet. If you want to know what's wrong with the planet, look at your life. The same way we poison ourselves with food is the same way we poison the earth with chemicals in Ohio from a train. It's not that different. You're putting poison in your body. You're putting poison in the planet. So if you want to stop all those problems, like the trains overflowing with chemicals,

then how would you stop putting chemicals in your body? Well, I would take more precautions. I would have a better set of standards. Okay, well, if you have that for yourself. Have it for the planet. And I think you could take that same model and give it to the government. Like, okay, look, we have to deal with health care. Here is this psychedelic.

Psychedelic breaks the pattern of addiction in individuals. Why wouldn't it break the pattern of addiction in society? If it works in this model and you look at, you have like 40 different models in here. If each person's story is a model, they may not work exactly the same, but the undertone of solving problems is right here. And so if it works on the individual level, why wouldn't it work at a local level? Why wouldn't it work at a state level?

Why wouldn't it work at a giant level? And I really think that if people can take this argument to the legislatures, whether it's the clarity project, whether it's different projects in Colorado, New Mexico, Washington, Oregon, wherever you're at, if you can speak the language to the legislature, look, we have a problem with health care. This model has like how you know what every one of these stories in here is like its own clinical trial, right? It's an individual going through their own clinical trial telling you what happened, telling you how they got over it.

And this is one, I mean, there's millions of these stories probably. You put together a lot of them, but you could take, we could take this book to the legislation. I just read this. This solves a lot of it. And so I think that it's not my idea or your idea, but it's the, it's the, it's, it's. It's our idea, all of us waking up to this, okay, we've got a solution and it's staring at it's right here. And it's happening in Colorado. It's happening in Colorado. It's happening in all over the world.

We're waking up to it. And I really think that it's a big part of it. And like that's one reason. Like I keep thinking every time I see this book, Randall, I keep thinking of like different things that it is or different messages sending to me. So thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, if there's a donor out there that wants to send these books to all.

the state legislators, let's do it. Yeah, yeah. I agree. I got some, I got some questions right here that people were hitting us up in the chat. Let me just start off with a couple of them. Okay, because I haven't been looking at it at all. So we start off with our friend Bernadette here. And she says that she loves how the book is structured. She loves the inspiring quotes, the fun facts, the facilitator tips, and of course the personal stories. What would you tell Bernadette? Well, first, I love you. Thank you. No payment was done for this. The other thing that I truly love about the psychedelic experience is once you're healed, you just have more compassion first for yourself, which I think is vital. We have to love, you know, again, self-love, not in love

self, but you, and then love for others. And this, this Burnett's quote here is just the perfect example of that, you know, just supportive, caring, willing to take the time to do that. I will say that I purposely put, you know, as you've seen George and those who have the book of seeing, I purposely put these fun facts and inspiring quotes and other things, partly to break up the book because I didn't want you know I again I love how to change your mind but it is such a deep heavy book that you have to really take breaks from it to read it and comprehend it and in my book I just again I wanted that the educator of me said I want it to be available to everybody and so let's break up the text a little bit by sharing a fun quote from one of the you know one of our

great psychedelic thinkers or a fun fact about mushroom, you know, whatever. And so I love, I mean, to me, that was my fun little gem for myself that I put in a book. And so I love that, you know, other people are appreciating it as well. Yeah, I like, I like the way it's like a, you know, when you swim, like you're swimming and get your head down and you take your breath and you do some smoke and take a breath. Like that's how I feel like I'm reading, reading. And I'm like, oh, look at this fun fact.

Okay. Okay. You know, let me swim, swim, swim. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. And I, thank you,

Bernardet, for taking time to comment and check out the chat. And I know, I love the book the same way. So here's another one from our friend David on YouTube. And he says, Generation X suddenly initiating the next psychedelic reformation.

What do you think? I don't know which group is doing it. I will say that the thing that most amaze me is there are people, So this would be more Gen Z than Gen X, but that are, so the people, young people in their 20s that are so mature and wise for their age from the psychedelic experience. You know, I think to myself in my early 20s and the bonehead, you know, I was, typical, you know, male testosterone, hormones driving through and all that. And, you know, I was talking with this 22-year-old and he's sitting there,

yes, the medicine is so profound. And I'm like, who is this guy? You know? So I think that is a cool part. There is this big youth element to it. But I think all ages are fueling it. I love that psychedelics are being used for boomers for understanding, you know, death is we're on the you know we're in the end chapter and what what's what's next for us and

this understanding that yeah you know we are all part of the universe and there's this energy or whether it's heaven or whatever you want to call it depending on your spirituality you know there's this there's a sense okay this isn't an ending so i think all generations are fueling different aspects of healing different aspects of understanding and i love that you know all All adult ages, shall we say, can benefit from these experiences. Yeah, there's a really good book called The Fourth Turning, and it talks about generational cycles. And as an extra myself, I took, I really enjoyed the book, and it just talked about, you know, how these generational traumas happen and how each sort of generation is playing apart. and what he said for, David, if you, David, if you are into other books, definitely check out Randall's book here.

You'll love it. And there's another book called The Fourth Turning. And he gets into the idea of Generation X being a bridge between the boomers and the millennials and how, you know, a lot of the boomers have this mindset that they grew up in. And there's been a, like a lot of generations, there's a disconnect, you know. And the Generation X is the bridge between the boomers and the millennials. because sometimes there's some boomers like, these millennials are a bunch of dummies. And somebody's women who's like,

these old guys don't know nothing. And that's just how it happens between the age groups like that. But the Generation X being a small, it's like the meniscus in between the two bones, you know, because we're a small group and you have these two giant groups on both sides. So we're sort of that soft tissue in the middle.

It's like, hey, these guys actually know quite a bit about they're talking about. And hey, these younger guys, they're actually not lazy. They're working their tails off over here, you know? So I think it's a really good book to, explain how the generation X is sort of an in-between there. And yeah, but I agree.

I think all of them have a part to play in the psychedelic reformation. Yeah, I love that what you just said. You know, part of my background is in marketing. So, you know, knowing the generational things I know quite well. And I know, obviously, in their early days, the boomers were beloved. And that's partly when we had JetX come along and marketers could not. figure out Gen X because Gen X is different. It's cool. It's people born in that time frame definitely have a very different outlook. And I think you're right. I think they I love that I'm going to

look up with this book that you just mentioned because I love this idea that they serve a bridge. Yeah. To these two and you're right, these two other groups are massive and they know it. And I think that's part of the problem. They say, you know, well, we're so big. We control, you know, we control everything because what we say, you know, the world follows. And I think having this group in the middle will be like, calm down, you're too, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. You're going to love that book. It's fascinating. Cool. Good. Who else we got here? We have, I'm not the same as it ever was. Thank you.

I'm not the same as it ever was for coming on and making some comments. The first comment he says is he's really, he's excited about the experience being shared. And here's a part that he wanted us to talk a little bit more about. he says talk about blocking things out and avoiding helping others i i guess that's what i think psychedelics are doing the opposite of that i think that they are the antithesis to blocking things out and that they are the catalyst to helping others and i i think that for too long that's what we've done we've blocked things out and by doing that we block out relationships we block out helping each other And earlier in the podcast, we had talked about if you want to make the world better,

make everyone around you better. But it's hard to do when you're upset. It's hard to do when you're waking up at 4.45 in the morning, trying to get your kid to school, trying to have a conversation with your wife, trying to get the errands done, get ready to go to work. Like, you know, we've spent so much time chasing this American dream of materialism that we've seems like we've forgotten what's important. So I do think we've blocked things out. I do think we avoid helping others.

What do you think about that? Yeah, I totally agree. You know, the word or the phrase that we use in my household, you know, sweep it under the rug. Yeah. You know, no, outside world can't know. Sweep it on the rug and sweep it on the rug and sweep it on the rug and sweep it under the rug. And, you know, outwardly, you know, we're all successful, happy and inwardly we're kind of riding. And I think one of the one of the.

really strongest message I got from a psilocybin journey was none of this matters. And it was talking to me specifically about social media because I was getting more and more fed up, you know, during the pandemic and everyone, you know, was just fighting at each other. And so I think anyway, so the point being that I think that the psychedelics does break all that down. It breaks down the barriers that we put up between each other, the barriers we put up with ourselves. There was this great documentary about tennis players on Netflix, and one of the tennis players, the pros, says, you know, all her pictures on her Facebook profile are, you know, holding the trophy, or here's my boyfriend, or here's my beautiful apartment. And then on camera,

she has his mental, she has his breakdown and she says, you know, she lost a match. And so she's not going to move to the next round. And she says, you know, it's just heartbreaking. And no one understands the pain I go through in playing the sport. And I wanted to shout, because you just post happy photos on Facebook. How is anyone going to know you facing these challenges? And so I think, yeah, if psychedelic says, I can't do this anymore.

I can't pretend to post happy photos or I can't pretend to be happy. I have to just be real. I have to get back to this notion of, and I know we've kind of overworn this term, although I still love it personally, so I'm going to use it, this authenticity, authenticity, you know, our true selves. And so, yeah, I think that psychedelics, we sometimes, the trauma blocks who our true selves are. So psychedelics cuts through all that.

And yeah, I think once we have healed ourselves, then we are in a place to help heal others. And that's the other cool part about this community. It's like a domino effect. You heal yourself, and then you turn around and say, okay, who else needs healing? How can I help? And it might just be providing a book or a resource or sharing a podcast, but that's still helping. So yeah, I would agree with you, Jordan. completely. Yeah. He's got some other notes in here too. And I think it's a yeah, I want to say too that

like none of this is really medical advice for anybody to be doing like just because we're talking about these things that we have found that helped us doesn't mean it's right for everybody. Right. And so while my heart goes out to everybody watching or participating in it, the best thing you can do is find a medical professional or someone you trust in your area to begin talking about what might be right for you. So I want to premise it with that. Yes, good point. And, you know, happily, more, more psychologists and others are very interested. They can't be 100% interested yet until we change the regulatory issues surrounding psychedelics for them even. But yes, definitely always seek advice. This is more just for your personal research and that kind of thing.

An entertainment value. Entertainment value, yeah. Right, right. But I think I'm not the same as it ever was. brings up, like his story seems to be all of our stories. And he says that he's someone who needs help and he's had a lifetime of abuses, traumatic events, still bullied at times and has initiated extensive therapies. And it seems that people still don't recognize the needs, even when he reaches out to them. And you know what? I think that this is a story that's shared by so many people and that even the people that seem to be the happiest sometimes are the loneliest.

That's one of the biggest problems we have is this epidemic of loneliness. And even though we're more connected than ever, you know, what does that mean to be connected? It is even though you and I have this great technology and we're talking and we're bonding, like I can't give you a hug. I can't, gosh, I really love the book, you know. And I think people are feeling it. And especially if people have grown up with childhood trauma, they've been abused, they've had traumatic events.

if you can't clear those events from your past, if you can't find the time to be honest with yourself or have someone around you that loves you or is willing to talk to you and help you through these events, it's really hard to move forward. What kind of advice could you give to someone or maybe not advice, but what are some words that could help illuminate a path forward for someone

that's feeling these things? Well, at first I agree. I think that this is a sad, story of today and regardless of how many smiling faces you see on Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn, we are, many of us are hurting inside and that's just a way to make ourselves feel better in the world by putting that smiley face out there and I totally get it trying to, you know, fake it to you make it kind of thing. The other problem we have is those of us who have been healed, you know, we want to heal the world.

but we don't have the capacity or capability or, you know, any of the tools necessary to do that. We, like you said, we'd have to physically go to every single person practically. So I guess to me, it would come down to, again, community. And I would say it doesn't have to, you know, community is a broad term, friends, supportive groups. You know, I would say my first thing would be, if I thought psychedelic, might be a healing modality for me or something at least I was curious about. I think my first step would be like a psychedelic society. Almost all of them are on meetups, so you just go to meet up and search for that.

And at least then you can start a conversation and rather with a one-on-one rather than to some posting on a site that you don't know who's going to respond and misinterpreted. the worst thing can happen. I've seen that happen in a few times where someone posts sort of a really vulnerable post and people misread into it and then actually start attacking them rather than helping them. So I get that. I get that the people that haven't been healed are sometimes going to see vulnerability in a negative light. And so again, that's why I say that community, finding people that are more like you and psychedelic. community is the obvious solution for me.

And you could also go to link. I mean, again, amazingly, LinkedIn has several psychedelic groups that are more professionals, but it doesn't mean you couldn't join and start watching, you know, seeking advice, watching the post and that as well. Yeah. I'm not the same as it ever was. I put my, I put my email, G6G988 at Yahoo.com. Send me an email and I'll send you a copy of a triumph over trauma right here.

And I think it'll help. It helped me. And that's what we want to do for all our listeners here, the True Life podcast. You know, I really think that there's some, in this book, there's a story for everybody.

You know, it doesn't matter what gender you are. It doesn't matter your age. You know, and I, and you're not alone. I mean, that's,

you're not. You know, even if you feel the most alone, at this moment, you are not alone because all these souls or share that same, the same feelings and this similar hurts and problems and so you're in a community already. You just don't know it.

Yeah. And you know what? I think being aware of it is a big part of solving it. Like just the fact that you even, you have the courage to bring this up. I'm not the same as it was. Hey, look, I have this problem. Like, do you have any idea how many people have the same problem you have but won't even mention it? Like the fact that you brought it up to two people means that you're aware of this thing. And just being aware of this thing. And just being aware of it. of something. It's like this. Imagine walking down the street and there's a giant manhole with a lid off. If you're not aware of it, you're going to fall right into that bad boy. But if you're aware of it, you can walk, you could sidestep that and walk right around it. And that's the first part is being aware.

Hey, then you can start reading some cool books. And then all of a sudden, you can be like, oh, you know what? I know what? I know what? I know what? I know what? I'm not the same as I was. I'm better than I ever. You're going to go from I'm not the same as it ever was to I'm better than I've ever been. I'm going to change your screen name. George, you are pretty amazing. But I totally agree with that. Yeah, I mean, I think awareness is definitely the first step. So you're right.

He's already on his healing path. It just doesn't recognize it yet. Yeah. It's always cool to be at a point where you see something and then know, I think maybe we're aware of it because we've been there. You're able to look back at it. I remember when I started having those same feelings. So here's the path I took.

Maybe it's not the right path for you, but here's all these other people. Here's the path they took. You can begin to chart your own course that way. Ran, I'm having such a good time. If I didn't have a heart out in a little bit, you and I would probably go for another hour. And I think we're just scratching the surface here.

Yeah, I know, I know. What, as we're getting to land the plane, where can people find you? What do you have coming up and what are you excited about? That's almost as bad or good, I should say, as the question was asked, what do I want my legacy to be on another podcast? I'm like, whoa. Pre-psychedelics might have been quite different than post-psychedelics, but let me just end one

final comment and I'll give you the details there. but I think for psychedelics going forward, what I would love to see is sort of a three-pronged stool of decriminalization. So again, access to anybody that finds her way to it. Some kind of therapy declassification bill so the therapist can use this because I think it works extremely well. by the way, therapy after psychedelics is integration as well, talk therapy in that sense. And then the third leg would be the sacred aspect of it, the indigenous churches and things like that. I think they're pretty, that leg is pretty strong right now, except for some issues with protecting the medicine that are sacred to them.

But so anyway, those are the three legs that I would love to see psychedelics go forward with. in terms of reaching me, the best way is LinkedIn. That is probably the key platform. I actually got off Facebook after the psilocybin told me to do that. But I found I need to be back on it for the books. I'm back on it, but in a totally different way now. I'm not being affected by the negativity or the fighting. In fact, I've got rid of so many people that now I don't see that way anyway.

But LinkedIn, by far, the best way. They can go to Triumph Over Trauma Book.com to go to the book website and learn a little bit more about the book before they decide whether they want to read it or not. I'm just excited about this year because I think this year and maybe part of next year are going to be the most pivotal in this current Renaissance, revolution, whatever we want to call it. thinking about Hawaii and Hawaii 50, which used to watch as a kid, the waves crashing. You know, I think this psychedelic movement were that, I don't think the wave is crashing yet. I think it's still cresting. And as these states, I think we'll know better how much the wave is crested once toward the end of this year or more of these states have gone through their process.

But so I'm excited about the potential for more access to healing. more access to these psychedelics. I'm excited that we're talking about ethics and a different business model in psychedelics where, yes, we need to make a living, but we don't need to be doing it like the pharmaceutical companies are doing where we're just praying on people's trauma. You know, we're supposed to be helping release that trauma. But that's about it. I don't, I, after my, my Jenny, Jane is my partner.

we did a little thing for the book. And two things happened after that we turned it, turned it off. First she turned to me and she said, and by the way, she was extremely nervous before this whole thing happened. But after we turned it off, she turned to me and she said, well, when's the next one? And then, and then the second question of her head was, okay, and when's the next book? And I was like, no, no. No, no, no. So my focus is on this book and healing.

And hopefully, like I said, you know, some more podcasts. I'm just trying to do all I can to get the word out there. Yours is, you know, your podcast, I would come back on a million times because you are a treasure. I have to thank Hank Foley because he was the one who first introduced us months ago. and Hank was like, oh, George, you've got to talk to this guy ran because he's brilliant. And I'm like, no, Hank is the one who's brilliant. He really is. He is brilliant.

I mean, he literally is. Anyway, so I'm all about that. Down the road, if the medicine or other things point me in a different direction, I'll go in that way. Again, not to sound too woo-woo, but I just, I want to be a voice for reason, a voice, for education, a voice for ethics, you know, for doing things the right way because we are, you know, as this becomes more available mainstream, we are going to see a lot more ethical challenges, companies coming in with the old business model, which we don't want. So that's going to be something we're going to need, you know, safeguards, people protecting this

industry in some way going forward, I think. And I hope to be one of those. Yeah, I think so. I really am excited for the future. You know, you are welcome on here anytime. My next move is to start getting more of an integration with, I love one-on-one, and I'll never stop doing that. But I think it may enrich the conversation if we could have a third or fourth voice in here to bounce ideas back and forth. So look for that in the future. I'll definitely have you on to discuss some topics that can be interesting and spicy and all of the above. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I agree.

I think, I think, you know, I've seen a couple of those that you've done. And I, yeah, I just, and even though we're two brains, having two more brains, we'll just bring up more things that we forgot to mention today. So, yeah, good. Yeah. Yeah, I think so too. In some ways, I think we can bring to the forefront ideas that, that may need to be addressed or could be addressed or could help.

And I just think that in this area where things are so new, we really have an opportunity to create the world that we want to live in. Like, it's so new. It's so fresh. And this is a rare opportunity to start laying some paverstones down for people to follow. And I'm really excited about it. So you can reach you. You could find me at the True Life podcast.

Links are in the show notes. Thank you so much. Rand for hanging out. Check out his new book, Triumph Over Trauma. Go to the website. It's posted right now on the window you guys can see there. Reach out to Rand on LinkedIn. And if you have any questions or comments, reach out to us. And that's all we got for today. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for being here. Thanks to everybody in the chat. So we got for today. Aloha. Aloha. All right. Let me do this part.