Well with Arielle Lorre - 271: Conquering Panic Through Psychedelics with ABC’s Chief National Correspondent, Matt Gutman

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

Matt Gutman is a reporter, currently serving as ABC’s Chief National Correspondent, and author of multiple books including his latest, No Time to Panic: How I Curbed My Anxiety and Conquered a Lifetime of Panic Attacks (2023). He joins the show to discuss his quest to conquer the panic attacks he secretly had on air, and everything he learned along the way. We explore why we have not evolved out of panic, why panic occurs, the fear of social rejection, and how he ultimately found relief through psychedelics. We also talk about addiction, trauma, and the various modalities available to us to self regulate. Despite the heavy subject matter this is a fascinating, fun and lively conversation that everyone will be able to relate to.This episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct, or indirect financial interest in products, or services referred to in this episode.At Westin hotels, there’s amenities and offerings aimed to help you move well, eat well, and sleep well, so you can keep your well-being close, while away. Find wellness on your next stay at Westin.Go to SundaysForDogs.com/blonde or use the code BLONDE at checkout for 35% off your first order of Sundays.AG1 is giving you a FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D and 5 FREE travel packs with your purchase. Head to drinkAG1.com/blondefiles to redeem. Get 20% off your first order of Sakara at www.Sakara.com/Blonde or use the code BLONDE at checkout. Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Sonderger Go to your Reisadviseur Orsoniccars. The following podcast is A Dear Media Production One of the questions that I get all the time from listeners and people who follow me is how do I stay healthy and maintain healthy habits when I travel? I think we have all experienced being really locked in with our routines when we're at home and then we travel and it's really hard to keep up with our habits.

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sleep well, so you can keep your well-being close while away. Find wellness on your next day at Weston. Welcome to the Blond Files podcast. I'm your host, Ariel Lorry, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits. I know there's so much information out there, so I'm bringing on expert guests and sharing my own experiences to help you sift through all the wellness stuff without the BS. Enjoy the show. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. I truly loved this episode so much. My guest and I, I actually talked, I want to say for like two or three hours, about an hour of which made the podcast,

but he is such an interesting guy. And we were just really curious about each other's experiences with things like anxiety and panic. And we get into substance use and substance abuse in this episode. And I talk a lot about my experience there. And so much more, it's just a really fun lively, fascinating conversation about a topic that can be really difficult, but I think that we brought some levity to it. And we explore the origin of panic and some anxiety and this deep-rooted kind of evolutionary fear of social rejection and essentially being kicked out of the pack. We also talk about various attempts at self-regulation. So let me rewind a little bit. I am talking about. I am talking to Matt Gutman. You may know him as the chief national correspondent on ABC. He's had an

incredible career. He actually moved to Tel Aviv during the peak of the Palestinian uprising. He worked there from 2001 to 2005 covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He was in the Middle East for nearly eight years covering most major conflicts, including the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Syria, and Lebanon. He is also an author. His first book, The Boys in the Cave, tells the story of the rescue of 13 Thai boys and their coach, who were rescued in July 2018. And he has a new book out, which we're talking about today, called No Time to Panic. And this book chronicles his secret 20-year battle with panic attacks. So it's pretty much his purpose. personal journey into the science and the treatment of panic attacks. He spoke to the world's

foremost scholars on panic and anxiety. He consulted therapists and shamans trying everything from group treatment and CBT to ayahuasca and psilocybin. And he also really went inward and looked at his trauma. He talks about how his father died suddenly in a plane crash at the age of 42 and how this kind of shaped him and his experience in life later and how ultimately talking about the panic attacks and bringing them to light enabled him to confront them and really find healing. And he realized that he wasn't broken. He just needed to recalibrate. So I think you guys are going to love this conversation.

It's really fun talking to a reporter and somebody who's. talks and talks to other people for a living. He is so charismatic and energetic and regardless of your interest in the subject matter or not. I think you're really going to love this episode. So please enjoy Matt Gutman. And his book, No Time to Panic, is available now. It came out, I believe, yesterday. So go check that out. I got an early copy before we recorded this about a month ago. And it's amazing. One of the rave reviews said that it's warm and candid and it offers helpful doses of hope, humor, and wisdom. And that is exactly how I felt. So I know you guys will love that too. So go check out the book, no time to panic and enjoy the episode. Welcome, Matt.

Thank you, Ariel. I feel like we already know one another. We met one week ago via text, via J. There's been lots of texts. Lots of texts. And I was telling you before we started recording. a big deep dive on my end. I am fascinated with your experience and your career and everything. Why don't you just tell the listeners a little bit about where you're from, your childhood, and your trajectory to where you are now? Okay, so I'm Matt Gutman. I'm my title now as a person in the workforce is chief national correspondent at ABC News. I grew up partly in Israel, and we moved back to the U.S. in 1989.

And I guess shortly thereafter, my dad was killed in a plane crash, a private plane crash, which obviously had a significant effect on my life. He was on a business trip. Somebody offered to give him a ride in Georgia to Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport. And plane went up, plane went down. You know, I don't know if that kind of stamp of trauma influenced my later, you know, rush towards adventure and excitement. and things that are, you know, pretty dangerous.

But that's where I went. So right after college, I started traveling in South America and Africa, and I wound up in Israel during the second in defado, which was this major Palestinian uprising in the West Bank in Gaza. And things were literally blowing up everywhere. And I was like, this is what I want to do. I want a big conflict reporter. And so I went home, got two duffel bags, moved to Israel,

and then spent the next seven and a half years covering literally every, major conflict in the Middle East. Met my wife, had a kid, and then we moved to Miami. And at this point, I started becoming, you know, full time in ABC and then doing TV. But my conflict days weren't quite over. I still do that from time to time. I've been to Ukraine a couple of times since the war and the Middle East again. I mean, that's a very rough nutshell of part of my, yeah.

Well, yeah, I want to rewind a little bit to that experience when you were a child because I heard in another interview you said that you had started doing TM a few months before that happened. I thought that in and of itself was very interesting. I told you in our text that I did TM. I started a few years ago. And even as an adult, I think the hardest thing about TM is having the discipline to do TM, any kind of meditation, really. So what was your experience with that like when you were that age? Where did the willingness come from?

Well, that was like a 12-year-old pudge ball, right? Like the thing I wanted to do is stay home and eat chef boy R.D. I was not interested in, you know, connecting with the collective unconscious in Madison, New Jersey from like 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. That's a long course when you do the full thing, right? I think it's a little bit different now, very truncated, because when I did it, it was four consecutive days, but only for about two hours a day. So I think they may have cut it down a little bit. I was literally in a basement in suburban New Jersey. with these people who were very nice

and it was very interesting, but it was a lot for a 12-year-old. Right. Both my parents did it as well and it was like a month before my dad was killed. But it did end up really helping me because, you know, even though I may have resented it mildly at the time,

I did understand that there was immediate benefit and I've always gone back to TM and really just like the very rudimentary repeating of the mantra type of thing, not the 20 minutes twice a day. which you do or try to do. Try. I told you I'm a very good 12 minute meditator and then minutes 12 to 20.

I'm thinking about how much time is left and all of the things. And I don't always do the few minutes before and the few minutes after to go into it and come out of it. When I do that, it is very impactful, very profound. Even when I do 12 minutes, it's very impactful. But I think I'm kind of like you and that I take it and leave it different parts of my life. But that's the gift, right? All these little tidbits and skills, life skills, self skills, I don't know what you call them, that we pick up in a lifetime, especially people who are trying to get to a place where they're quieter inside, more self-forgiving. They're all beneficial.

And we can come back to them whenever we choose. I mean, I'm skipping ahead a lot. But in my three and a half year endeavor to try to beat. panic, which I can't, right? You never fully, like, you can't change your genetic code, right? But you can work with it. So I tried a lot of psychedelics, and I felt like I could access the places of pain, the portals to tears through psychedelics. That was the only real way I could do it. And I've been in therapy for like 20 years. It doesn't work the same way. And SSRIs, antidepressants, and benzos don't work the same way. There's something about psychedelics that takes you,

to this altered state that puts you in a mind frame that you can't do anywhere else. And the beauty of it is that I can come back to those things that I saw, those images that gave me strength or that crushed me and made me feel ego dead, just like what we do in meditation. When you go back to the practice

and you can just harness that thing that makes you feel a little bit better and you know it's there, that quick, good medicine, I know how to access it, and I can just pick it up when I need it. And incidentally, meditation has helped me access the stuff that I've seen in the psychedelic trips, those journeys. So when I meditate, I'm more easily able to access that space. So it's actually strengthened my meditation practice or my mindfulness practice.

Interesting. I want to go back to something that you said about how you were kind of seeking out maybe conflict and excitement. And when I was learning about you and listening to you in other interviews, I kind of thought, well, how amazing that he didn't turn to substances. Because I feel like I could relate a lot to your experience just with anxiety and panic. And I felt really dysregulated from a young age, I think. And so I had to seek something outside of myself. And for me, that was drugs, alcohol, a lot of drugs that ended in azepam that helped reduce that anxiety. anxiety and just that dysregulation and discomfort and everything that I felt inside. So,

you know, you kind of alluded to this, but do you think that that was, you know, your career and these experiences that you sought out and living in that adrenaline, I would imagine, if that was your first attempt to regulate your internal state? I was always drawn to physicality, right? I'm small, but I played every contact sport there was, you know, football and wrestling on the cross. And so like the moment of impact of bone crunching, of some, of a little bit of pain was always attractive to me, always appealed to me. And so, you know, I was just trying to think that when you're describing your dysregulation,

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and we'll get to this later in the conversation, hopefully. But I feel like a lot of the work that some people do in recovery is maybe similar to the experience that you have with psychedelics on a way lesser level, because it's all about deflation of ego. So for me, it was a lot of self-centered fear that's kind of how I would identify it. And I always talk about the first time I ever drank when I was about 16, maybe.

It was a spiritual experience. The most powerful thing I've probably ever experienced because I didn't know how uncomfortable I was until I felt comfortable for the first time. And suddenly I didn't feel less than other people. And I wasn't thinking about what you probably were thinking about me. and I wasn't, I forgot myself. It was like that self abandonment, you know, and that's what I've found in recovery, nine and a half years in when I'm doing certain things,

not all the time, but, yeah, forgetting of self. Like, that's where I get relief. So that's why the drink and the drugs were so powerful. There's so much there. First of all, I think the audience should know that yesterday was your birthday and that you share birthday with my son. And that on your birthday,

you headed up one of the biggest AA meetings around, possibly in the country, here in the L.A. area, and that you're putting your money where your mouth is, which is really pretty amazing. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I definitely, I can feel you on the alcohol thing. It's, I think for people who are anxious,

it's a great drug, right? Initially, at least, right? It takes away the inhibitions. It strips away the anxiety. makes you feel okay until you drink too much and then you're a disaster. Yes. So maybe danger in some ways was my drug. So like I would actually do and take moronic risks during my time in the Middle East.

And that, you know, it's part of this impulsivity. It's also what helped me create a career for myself as being willing to go to those places and do the things that other people didn't want to do. And drive my little Fiat Ponto, 1,200-C-engine car. if anybody knows what that is. I mean, it's literally people's motorcycles these days have bigger engines than that. So I drive this a little putt-put into the West Bank in Gaza

and like, do my thing. And like, you know, I had TV and duct tape on the doors because you didn't want to get shot. That's true. And then, like, settlers would see it and they hated the press. So they literally kicked in my doors and, like, ripped off the mirrors.

And anyway, it was not the best car ever. But it served me well. Anyway, so I was, like, totally attractive. acted to this danger. But you get older, and then you have a kid, and you realize you've got to sort of moderate what you do, as you did as well. So we change. I feel like I buried the lead in my telling of my biography. So, like, one of the things I didn't say is that, you know, in going from being a print reporter in the Middle East to a radio reporter in Miami, to a television reporter in Miami and then Los Angeles for ABC is that throughout the entirety of it, I suffered many,

many hundreds of panic attacks, basically when I went on air. And I think that one of the things that we're talking about is actually very similar. It's the hyper awareness of others and the massive fear of social judgment, which is one of the most potent factors in a lot of people's lives, that fear of social judgment. And it actually makes sense. And I'll tell you why in a second. And I can digress. Yeah, go for it. So I had this horrific, I have had lots of panic attacks, but I had one panic attack on January 26, 2020, while reporting on the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash. It happened just a few miles from my home. Kobe was the same age as my dad. I was the same age as his daughter, Gianna, and I made a terrible mistake during the initial

report, our special live coverage. Catastrophic error was the worst thing I'd ever done in 20 years in journalism. I'm out 24 years in journalism. Still the worst thing I've ever done. It was a terrible, stupid mistake and it was in the midst of a panic attack. I was suspended for a month and I decided, okay, I've been miserable. I've been doing all these crazy things to try to avoid getting a panic attack on air. Like having magical underwear that I thought gave me like superpowers, which didn't. I was smoking cigarettes compulsion that I thought, well, maybe like some, like because it's so unhealthy, maybe it'll give me some like leg over the panic. I was doing like stretching.

I was doing taking, trying to take Xanax if it helped. All these, what are called, safety behaviors that didn't really work. And I was miserable. And so I'd start working up fear and anxiety about going live hours or even days before. And it was awful. My wife's like, dude, we don't have to, you don't have to do this anymore. We can find, you can find another career. You don't have to do TV.

Let's move on. And the reckoning with Kobe Bryant, I'm not going to get into the details out of respect to his family, but the reckoning that I had there made me decide I've got to figure this out or really I'm going to leave this business because I can do other forms of journalism,

but maybe I shouldn't do anything live because it's so painful and I may make a mistake again and I don't want to do that. So I went down a couple of rabbit holes first. First, I needed to know why panic existed. Like, how did this happen in our brains? And basically, cut the chemistry less than short. We like chemistry here.

Okay. Yes. The amygdala are these two almond-sized nodes in the back of your brain. And it's part of what we call the reptilian brain, we scientists, I don't call it. Basically, they assess the threat, right? Through your eyes, your ears, or your senses. They see some incoming, and they basically alert the special forces, which is your hypothalamus, which then harnesses your epinephrine, your adrenaline.

And it's like, guys, we're in trouble. Get the adrenaline going. Let's get this going. Adrenaline gives you strength to run, to hide, to fight, sometimes to freeze. And then you have cortisol, which keeps that period of hyper alert and power going. So cortisol pumps glucose corticoids into your system, which give you the energy to keep running and to not feel as much pain in case the line takes a bite out. out of your ass. Anyway, so that's the chemicals. And I was like, oh, okay, so that helped me

understand it more. The next thing I really wanted to know was like, why the hell did humans still have panic attacks? Like, we have adapted out of so many things, massive hair all over our bodies, really large thickness of bones, speed, body mass, tails. Some of us cleft chins we've adapted out of, right? Wouldn't something that is so bad for you that causes heart disease, gastrointestinal problems, diabetes, lack of sleep, poor sleep, poor judgment, poor everything. Like, how is this not maladaptive? And so I'm thinking, okay, so are people like me who have panic, are we these kinks in the human genome?

Are we like freaks? What is this? So then I saw it out all these evolutionary psychologists. And they're like, no, you're not a freak. Like, there is a reason for this. And the first reason is that we need our bodies. need a way to assess threat, right? And so, like, if there is a lion coming at you, you need to be able to run to fight, to hide, to do whatever you need to do. In modern days, it's like there's a 10

car pile up on the 101, and Ariel is driving, and she, her body immediately goes into this hyper-awareness mode, and she swerves out of the way with her super spiky sense and saves her life and everybody else. But the other major bucket of fear, so one is like getting bitten or in a car accident or whatever it is. The other major bucket of fear for humans is social awareness, is the social fear, right? Because we gave up physical size and strength for a bigger brain and more cooperation, right? So instead of walking on all fours, humans decided, hey, it'll be a really cool advantage if I can actually carry my food to my offspring and my partners instead of bringing them to the dangerous spot where I've just made the kill.

We learned to coordinate so much better. Everything was about cooperation for humans. So we needed each other. And the fear of getting kicked out of that group, of that cave group, of that whatever it is, became so powerful that we feel it as strongly as we feel being attacked by a line. It physically registers in your brain as a physical, Ouch. They've done this on MRIs. Social rejection equals physical pain. So, and one more thing, social rejection is so powerful that when you feel it, your body thinks that you are being kicked

out of your cave group. So it does two things. It kills your immune system. So people who have social rejection are much more likely to get sick because your brain is thinking, I'm not around the rest of my people. I'm not going to get germs or viruses right now. I don't have to worry about that. The second thing it does is jack up your inflammation because, hey, I might get hit by a rock slide, by lightning, by thunder, I'm going to starve out on the savanna. I'm going to get eaten by a lion. So I'm going to really ratchet up the inflammation, which is why social rejection is so very harmful to our health and why we are so sensitive to it. I think it's so interesting. Well, first of all, I think that that will help so many people because I think

a big component of having that type of anxiety is shame. I don't know if you felt shame. Oh my God. I was a king of shame. Reporter and I, you know, everyone thinks that I'm like this and really am having this experience. I would imagine,

because I've experienced it too, like what is wrong with me? That's like the predominant emotion I think. I am broken. Yeah. And then the other thing that I think is so interesting about your experience is that you kind of had both types of stress going on, right? You had the stress of the adrenaline and really actually

having that lion chasing you when you're in the middle of a tornado or a war zone or something, and that you were okay with. Yeah, I love the lion. Lion and I're close. Yeah, yes. And, you know, the thing that's actually a threat to your survival, I would imagine, in many cases, but that the the fear of social rejection was so much more powerful. And I wonder if in your endeavor to figure this out, you learned why some people are more prone to one versus the other. I mean, it's an excellent question. I don't know that I have the answer. But I definitely feel much more comfortable with physical risk. One of the things that Randy Nessie, who is an evolutionary psychiatrist, and really the godfather of the study, was telling me, is like,

I'm coming back to your answer is that panic is perfectly normal. Your body, your brain, all of our brains are designed to fail on the side of a false alarm. Right? A panic attack is a false alarm, typically. There's no real present threat that could destroy you, although sometimes there could be. But your brain would rather pull that fire alarm falsely and make a thousand false mistakes ring it and it'd be nothing instead of missing one

bad cue. Because if you miss one social cue, like a really important one, you get kicked out of the cave, you're dead. So it doesn't want you to miss any of those social cues or to miss the line coming at you. So yeah, it prefers keeping you on constant alert because you're going to

stay alive. And so your question actually, the way you phrase it, I've thought about this a lot, and I call it the paradox of the courageous coward, right? I am a courageous coward. I have physical courage, right? I've been to war. I've been shot at.

I've been kidnapped by the Venezuelan secret police in hell for five days, which was a really unpleasant experience. And throughout, I'm like, I'm pretty cool. Like, I can handle that. But the fear of social judgment is scary as hell. And maybe social judgment is really, in our society now, is something that can destroy us, right? That's where people get ruined in their careers.

I mean, that's something that can really affect you, negatively and that we experience a lot more in the day to day than the kind of physical threats that can actually kill us. So maybe it is normal. And that's what I was thinking that, hey, maybe the panickers, maybe the high anxiety people, maybe the people who are so attuned to like a minutely raised eyebrow or a frown like I am and I know you are. Yeah.

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what it is or why I'm having it. And I resist. Like there's so much resistance. Again, back to that shame narrative and something's wrong with me. Whereas, you know, if you're being chased in some foreign country by people who are shooting at you, you know what's happening. I don't know. That's just that's 100% right it's about focus yeah right you know what to focus on yes i know where the threat is coming from i feel like i understand how to evade the threat and i have this under control and a panic attack in other situations is the complete loss of control it's so for me it's not like i know exactly what causes it it's going live it's the fear so i consider you know we talk about cave groups and like neanderthal times or whatever early homo sapiens when everything

in our lives depended on being in that group and being accepted. And my cave group are, you know, senior executives and producers and anchors at ABC in this darkly lit cave at, you know, on the Upper West Side where we have our control room in our studios. And I want to support that group. I don't want to do anything that would weaken my group. And so I'm so attuned to that that it makes me think, I better not mess it up. I can't mess my group up. I've got to support them. I've got to be the best I can be. And that's the fear that drives me into over worrying about my performance and into a full-on panic attack. Okay. So you mentioned some of the modalities that were not helpful, SSRI's therapy, or maybe they were helpful in some ways,

but didn't offer any kind of long-term solution or anything. SSRIs, Benzos therapy, meditation, and I know that you do meditation and all of that now, but can you talk a lot? little bit more about that and how you ended up doing psychedelics and ketamine and breathwork as well. So these other modalities that ended up really helping you. Have you ever done? Have you ever been on SSRIs? Yes. How did they work for you? So I actually, I didn't go on SSRIs for anxiety. I was having really bad gut issues years ago and my doctor said, oh, just, you know, there's a lot of serotonin in your gut. So some people have improvement by taking a low-dose non-therapeutic, or non-therapeutic low dose of an SSRI. So I was like, sure. I mean, I was so miserable with the

symptoms that I was having. I was willing to do anything because nothing else worked. So I was taking this medication that wasn't doing anything for me, but I couldn't get off because it's so hard to get off. I mean, I think I told you in our text exchange last week that I felt like my brain was buzzing, electrical buzzes, zapping. It was awful. And then before I got sober, obviously, I said I was addicted to benzos. That was a big part of my addiction, stimulants too and alcohol. But the benzos, I remember talking to my ex at the time before we got sober and we were like, yeah, if we could just choose one drug for the rest of our lives, things for the conversations I was having, it would be a benzo because it just quieted everything. But I also had awful withdrawal from

that seizures, I was in the hospital, everything. People at Gariel knew the stuff that was out there for years. The drug companies, the pharmaceutical companies likely knew this as well. But this wasn't transmitted to the psychiatrists who are prescribing this stuff. And just last year, exactly this time last year, there was a massive study put out, it came out in nature, and it basically pulled the rug out from under SSRIs and benzos, but specifically SSRIs. But specifically SSRIs. saying what you know, massively addictive, huge withdrawal symptoms, and they don't exactly treat what we think that they treat because they're, they blew the whole concept of chemical imbalances out of the water. Like, actually, we don't have chemical imbalances. The serotonin thing

is not exactly what we think it is. And so, listen, the fact is that for 50% of the people, SSRIs work, and they are amazing. But they don't work for basically the other half of the population. And we don't know why they work and we don't know why they don't work. So I was taking them because, A, I have anxiety, but B, as an attempt to try to control the panic attacks because they have the ancillary benefit of helping panic. It didn't work for me, right? And I tried benzos, which didn't quite work either. What about beta blockers? Propranolol was my next one. It made me feel really sleepy. And so it didn't really work. And I also felt it stops. your heart from beating really fast, but you feel it in your brain. Yes. I did gabbas with your

anti-seizure medication. Gabapentin. Yeah, Gabapentin. Yeah, Gabapentin. Another terrible drug. Have you tried it? Like, I was put on it off label for pain. No, for pain. And another, I could not get off it. I felt like it was worse than benzodia withdrawal. And I was on such a tiny dose. I'll make this very short, but I tore a ligament in my foot, had a bone abulsion, it's like three years ago. And I went to a doctor and he said, oh, I think it's this nerve condition. So just go on this gabapentin. And then I went to another doctor and he said, no, you tore your ligament and it pulled your bone off three weeks ago. That totally justifies the pain that you're having. I stayed on the gabapentin only for like two months. And when I went off it, I thought I was going to have a seizure. Like it was awful. Then I had to go back

on and then taper very slowly. And one of the doctors who I spoke to said, yeah, we don't really know how it works. It just works for a lot of different things. So I have the utmost response. for psychiatry. And it can really help people and it can save lives. It can also ruin lives. And you're obviously an example of someone who's very sensitive to this stuff.

And so doctors need to treat someone like you extremely carefully. And we often don't do it. Even the best doctors. And they do it with the best intentions. I truly believe that their intentions are good. The fact is we still don't know so much about the brain, which is another thing I learned in this book. like the most advanced brain that science has been able to map so far is that of a fruit fly

which has, I'm going to mess up this number, but I think it's 86 billion fewer neurons than we do. Right? Like our brain is 86 billion times more complex than a fruit flies, but we've been able to map. And even though we map the fruit flies brain, we don't know what everything means in it. So like, we don't know what these drugs do. We don't know exactly how the brain reacts to them or why the brain reacts to them. We know that something happens, which is one of the perils of pharmaceuticals. They can't help again, but they can also really hurt.

So I tried that for a couple of years, including I did stimulants as well because I've ADHD. And the doctor's like, well, let's try strata, which is a non-stimulant ADHD medication. And then we tried Adderall, which is not good for panic because it basically increases anxiety. I was going to say, how did that word? I used to snort Stratara. I disagree with the fact that it's not a stimulant. Oh, yeah. Yes.

I hated it. So there's a lot of talking about like the stuff. I did a lot of Adderall too, but then I had to drink to bring myself down and get to that level where I had energy, but I was also not anxious. It was a daily, a daily struggle. They say Stratera has no stimulant in it. Yeah, I don't know. I remember snorting. Which is why she's sober, ladies.

and gentlemen. Yeah, don't kids, don't do what I did. No, that's amazing. It gave me the worst stomach. That's why I had to go off it after like three months. I was dying. All right, we digress. So none of this stuff really worked. And what ended up happening is that after my suspension, I had some time on my hands. And a buddy of mine from high school, Lane Jaffe, who was a yoga teacher here in L.A. and breathwork guru, I was like, dude, you have to try breath work. And I didn't really, this is early 2020. It wasn't as big as it is now.

And I didn't really know what it meant. I thought it was another form of meditation. And at best, I was like, okay, I got time on my hands. I mean, I'm not doing anything. I'll go check it out. And maybe it'll yield some, like, you know, a little dopamine and feel, I feel good and kind of light afterwards. But if anybody's done, like, serious breath work,

first of all, it's like a full-time workout because you're breathing really intensely. It's like two breaths in, one breath out. And Lane is like a coxin on a crewboat who's like giving you the rhythm and the cadence and you're just chugging away. And after a while, I'm like, oh my God, first of all, my mouth is really dry. Is anybody else feeling this? Their mouth is really dry. I'm like, this is kind of uncomfortable. And then, have you done it? I have done like Mickey Mouse breathwork. So I do the Wimhoff breathwork. It's holotropic breathwork, but I only do like a 15 minute quick thing on YouTube, but I do it when I feel panic or when I feel a lot of anxiety. Actually, I'll take a couple of al-thianine before and

then I'll do it. And I want to hear your experience with it. But even that 15 minutes, I feel like it completely changes my state of reality. Oh, that's plenty. It's an altered state. Yes. I think you've compared it maybe to some of the psychedelic experiences that you've had. And I could compare it to... I mean, it's kind of like taking a Xanax for me. I kind of feel that like just. So go harder. Yeah. I know. Well, when you're saying that, I'm like, I got to go to this guy. No, you got to go to this guy. So you're doing this. And suddenly like my hands are starting to lobster claw.

And then my feet are going numb. And like I'm not exactly sure what's going on. And I'm doing it because like everything that I do physically I do hard. Yeah. So like I'm okay with the physical part of it. You know, some people get. nervous about it. I'm like, I'm breathing like a mother-in. So, and I'm lobster clawing up. My feet are like totally doing weird things. I start to go numb. And this is January 2020. This is right after this happened or February 2020. And I start to cry. I am gone. No part of Matt Gutman is still in the room. Right. And I'm like, I start, I'm in a room full of strangers in Lane's class that he brought me in. And I'm like, uh-huh. It's just totally. bawling and agony and pain and releasing all this stuff.

It was amazing. And then he comes in and grounded me. I'm just having this out of body altered state experience. And it was amazing. So I ended up going back to him a couple times. And then the pandemic hit, which obviously killed it because then huffing and puffing in a room full of strangers during the pandemic

was probably not the best idea. But it got me thinking that altered states is where I needed to go because what I really needed to do is tap in to all of this deep subterranean pain that I had in my body. And that an altered state is a way to get there. So I became very interested also through Lane in mushrooms and psychedelics. And again, you know, when I tell people that I basically try to every psychedelic out there in like not just once, but, you know, a few times, they're like, you know, they're thinking fear and loathing in Las Vegas and Johnny Depp slaloming across Las Vegas and his red Chevy Capri.

but like I was not in a car, I was in a couch. Like I did this with facilitators and sometimes actual psychiatrists and psychologists and clinical nurses in settings that were very, very controlled. Because it was important to do it in a way that was not like recreational. And each of them was very, very powerful in its own way. And I could talk about them separately. But collectively, they, They just helped me tap to a place that I needed to go, which was the pain.

Like a lot of us carry around all this grief from whatever it is. Like, you know, my mom was sick and my dad died. And I had all sorts of had some trauma from PTSD from the war days and from being held in Venezuela. And like, we all accumulate baggage. You don't have to be a war correspondent or conflict correspondent to accumulate a ton of bad stuff. And some of us have a harder time extricating it and excavating it than others.

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pop. And I said this on Instagram, but I actually think it smells really good. Like if all the dog food have ever smelled. It just smells really fresh and really rich. So love that for Harvey. So we worked out a special deal for my dog loving listeners. You can get 35% off your first order of Sundays. If you go to Sundaysfor Dogs.com slash blonde or use the code blonde at checkout. That's S-U-N-D-A-Y-S-F-O-R-D-G-S.com forward slash blonde. Upgrade your pup to Sundays and feel good about the food you feed your dog. In the article that you sent me in psychology today, is that the right public? Yeah. Just making sure. I think you talked a little bit about how doing these different psychedelic modalities, they just show you what's already there, right? And these places that maybe we are

reluctant to go to or that we can't access in our normal reality, you know, just doing talk therapy or something. How do you process that after you go to those places? And then how does that benefit you in your present reality? I mean, you said in the beginning of the interview that, you know, you're able to kind of revisit those places in meditation. But how do you apply that experience to your life in a way that benefits you and helps you deal with the panic and the anxiety and the issues that you were seeking to resolve? So it's a great question. And one of the things that everybody talks about in the psychedelic world, which is obviously something that is increasingly common and increasingly popular, because it works for a lot of people. And it's been

used, this is not new, by the way, right? This has been used for hundreds of human generations, going back many thousands of years. It is the oldest medicine, right? People were picking fungi off of whatever it was many, many thousands of years ago. And peyote and, you know, these plant medicines have been there for a long time. And I'm not the first to say that. But one of the great ways that we can combine ancient medicine and modern psychology is through integration. And that's what they call the sessions you have after or after a psychedelic session in which

you talk with someone. You talk about your experiences and you try to get through the meaning of some of the images that you accumulate, because it's like a pile up of images sometimes and experiences during the psychedelic state. And you've got to separate the wheat from the chaff. Like, is, you know, I saw doing ketamine, I saw, you know, massive sky-high piles

of North Korean takeout boxes. I don't know why North Korean takeout. I'm like flying pigs and I saw, whatever blockchain is and I don't really know, I saw it. And I'm like, and I'm talking, out loud as I'm tripping. Like, I have these two shrinks sitting by my side who are my guards, my guides. One is a psychiatrist.

One is a psychologist. And I'm sitting there like a kid reading the signs, you know, as you're driving. So I'm like, oh, pink pigs. Blockchain. I see blockchain, North Korean takeout boxes. And I'm seeing this stuff unfold. And you have this pile up of imagery and you need to figure out what it all means. It's like going to Walmart.

and like, oh, it's so cheap, I'm going to grab this and that and that. And then eventually you keep only a certain couple of items in your basket. And so that's what integration is. It helps you figure out what's important to keep and what kind of stuff you should let go of. And that's why it's so big in the psychedelic world right now is helping you figure out why it's important. Can you talk a little bit about the ego death? So one of the central tenets of psychedelic work,

this is like Terrence McKenna going back, you know, 60, 70 years is ego death, right? You want to get to the place where that sense of ego is crushed. It's also the place where the anxiety is crushed, some of it, where everything is out. So for me, it happened in my first ketamine treatment, and it was at the Ohio Valley Inn, which is like this massively plush, yeah. I read that, and it's like, this sounds great. Yeah, and the thing before it was I had done in Peru and this very, very low budget communal ayahuasca experience in which everybody was puking and having diarrhea in the exact same area. So it was like the exact opposite. And here I am in this like million thread count duvet at the Ohio Valley in, literally tucked in by a clinical psychologist and a

psychiatrist. And so I get the pinch of the syringe. And then, you know, the first 10 seconds, you're like, this is not going to work on me. And then the next 10 seconds, you're like, this is not going to work on me. and then the next 10 seconds you're like, oh, wow, that feels good. Whatever that is, I want more. And so you have an eye mask on and you have this headset on and it's playing a ketamine initiation playlist on Spotify. Folks who are listening, I want you to look up how many ketamine playlists are on Spotify.

That made me laugh when I read that. It's a shocking amount. They're like literally hundreds. So I start to descend further and further into the bed like nine, ten feet down. I don't know. It feels like, I mean, I'm sinking. And it's an incredibly pleasant feeling. And I describe it in the book as like sipping cocoa on a hot, on a cold winter night. It's like, ah, it's like the most, the greatest relief you've ever had.

And suddenly I see the whole universe as this map that's like out on a table. And then it's like the old school maps that your parents used to have in the cars and they put in the glove compartment. It starts folding up in smaller and smaller and smaller. compartments and pieces. And then it's this tiny little thing. And then all the colors of the universe end up congealing in this like kids artwork mass of like mashed up color. Like the purples and the greens and the blacks and the reds,

they all sort of congeal into black. The map of the universe folds up and suddenly there's no universe. The bed I'm lying in disappears. There's no bed. There's no oh hi. There's no state of California. There's no earth. There's no universe.

There's no Matt Gutman. There's no history. There's no future. There's no present. I don't know. I don't have enough consciousness to know that I've taken a psychedelic in order to reassure myself that something bad is not happening. And then I find that I am the most minute speck in a limitless universe, just waiting and like looking around, not looking, just knowing that a universe exists, but not. knowing who I am and it felt like I inhabited this space for a very long time. You know,

in ketamine world and in psychedelic world, its time is warped. So you don't really have a good idea. But eventually the drug wore off enough for me to kind of croak out in like, I've recorded all of it so it sounds pretty pathetic. But I'm like, am I alive? It was like a baby. It's like a kid. Am I alive? Yeah. And then this six foot four dread. locked psychiatrist who I worked with. He's like, yes. And then I'm like, is this reality? He's like, this is full reality, man.

So this goes on for bed. And I'm like, okay, I'm alive. This is reality. I'm going to keep traveling. And it was like pure ego death. And for me, it was especially poignant because my wife had an emergency C-section when our daughter was born 15 years ago. she was given ketamine at the very end because she had started to come to during the suturing of her abdomen, which is horrific.

And so they jabbed her with some ketamine, which is, that was in Israel at a hospital there. And they did a great job. But ketamine is the most commonly administered psychedelic, not psychedelic, sedative in the world. Really great for pediatric surgeries because it wears off within 30 minutes. So it's super common. But she basically had ego death, but she didn't have those two shrinks by her side. She wasn't in a massively comfortable bed at the Ohio Valley Inn with two shrinks there. She didn't have anybody to tell her that this is full reality that she's alive.

And she had a really bad trip. She went into the dreaded K-hole. And it really affected her for months. She also had postpartum, but it really exacerbated it. And so during my psychedelic trip, I started crying, thinking about my wife and her experiencing this whole thing without anybody there by her side and how unbelievably lonely and scary it must have been. And I know a lot of people go through that. Anyway, so for me, it was like this amazing, cathartic, wonderful experience, everything that I ever hoped for in ketamine. So, okay, so what is your experience now with when you go live? How do you use this experience to, you know, help overcome that? fear of social rejection and the panic disorder. And how does that look in your life today?

I still feel anxiety, right? Like, I am me. I'm never going to shed myself of this anxiety, but I forgive myself. I don't have the anticipatory fear. I don't have the full on sweating through my underwear, tunnel vision, blackout panic attacks, right? I get nervous, but that's human. And it's more about like knowing that I'm okay. Like, I really am okay, that we are okay that this is normal. I also use some tricks, their mindfulness tricks, feeling your five senses, focusing on something near and far that are just little tricks of the tray that you can use and knowing that I had done literally many thousands of live shots without messing it up and messed up one. And then even if I have a panic attack, I've still gotten through it, you know, 3,999 times

and it's going to be okay. And it's like that background knowledge of like, it's going to be okay. And that's sort of what gets me through. The last major panic that I had on air was in December 2020 and it was in Phoenix and it was like, it's the beautiful snowbird day, you know, like mid-60s and perfectly dry.

And I'm standing in front of the camera and suddenly I realized like, I'm sweating so much my underwear wet. And then I'm like, oh, my God, I'm about to have a panic attack. And I smoked a couple of cigarettes and the lot, like a, like a bad kid in high school behind the gym beforehand because I was nervous that day. And I'm like, I'm going to have a full on panic. Like, I knew it was coming. And the panic about the panic, something that you said before.

Totally. That is almost worse. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's the anticipatory anxiety is the worst. Anyway, so it happens and I'm like, oh, my God, it's happening. Like, there's a narrator. as I'm actually panicking, there's like a narrator above me being like, oh, you're in it now. Oh, my God, listen to yourself.

You're totally screwing it up. You're a disaster. Anyway, so I got through it somehow. Nobody really knew. And I went home and I tried to get the first flight and I barely made it. And I'm dragging my suitcase up the Southwest aisle. And it's like, you know, it's like online dating. You like swipe right or left depending on the person you're seeing.

And there was like a person with a nasty looking like tuna sub or something. And I'm like, no, I'm not sitting there. People with lots of bags. And then there was this lady who was crocheting or knitting, crocheting. And knitting, sorry, it is knitting. We had a long conversation about what she was doing. I sat down next to her and I thought, like, I get ASMR very easily from people. So I was like, okay, I'm going to leach some ASMR and try to, like, deal with my shame hangover right now because I'm so embarrassed.

I'm so sick of myself. And I'm so full of self-hatred. We got to talking. And it ended up that her daughter suffered. first panic attacks and then she had suffered panic. And it was the first time in 20 plus years of having panic and peak anxiety that actually shared with someone who was not my shrink or my wife or my agent. And it was just unbelievable. It was this, this cathartic moment where I'm like, oh my God, I'm talking to someone who I shouldn't be talking to as a member of the public who

shouldn't know that I'm not, you know, invincible, that I'm not perfect. But I'm telling her my greatest secret and my greatest imperfection. And she's accepting it. And she's experienced it, too. God, this is amazing. This is a seminal moment. And after that, I started looking for panic attack support groups, of which there are basically, according to the Americans, well, all the psychological institutions in America, there are basically only three major public panic contact support groups. And we were talking about this because they're just in Los Angeles alone, there are what, 4,000 weekly AA meetings. So I was looking for that and I couldn't find it. And I found that all I wanted to do was talk about it and like talk about it to strangers afterwards.

And I talked to my colleagues and my friends and people at work and complete strangers and people at parties. And people would tell me their experiences. And I never realized how many of us there are out there until I started talking openly about it. I was listening to your interview with Dan Harris, and he was saying that he suffered from that too. And I was like, wow, because there is this perception that you do live TV or any kind of public-facing job, you don't have any inhibitions with that kind of thing. You don't have that self-consciousness or that anxiety. And I thought it was really powerful to hear people who are so accomplished, like yourselves, and hearing men talk about it. I think that that's one of the reasons why I really wanted to talk to you because I don't,

I think it's more expected and maybe more accepted to hear women talk about it than men. Men are, maybe this is an overgeneralization, but more hesitant to talk about their feelings and their struggles. And I think it's so powerful for people to hear that. It's hard to be vulnerable. And men, you know, you're told from a young age essentially not to be vulnerable. You don't want to release too much of yourself. You don't want to expose too much of yourself,

especially any weaknesses. So yeah, I think it's really important. And one of my missions in getting this book out is telling guys that it's okay. In fact, it takes courage to do this because you're exposing yourself in a way that you didn't think you've always been told you shouldn't. So yeah, I mean, I hope that this helps men.

And the other thing is we talked about it. It's free therapy. Crying is really good. It really, really helps. It's free therapy. It releases these wonderful hormones that make you feel immediately better. And if you feel like you need to cry, sometimes it's a really good thing to do. Oh, yeah.

Put on your crying playlist and- Or whatever gets you going, right? Okay, my last question is that narrative self that was judging you, that judges you and you have panic attacks. Did you meet that self in any of your psychedelic experiences? Is that your ego? You know, I don't know if I met that self. I hope that that self died somewhere, although there's always some of it that survives. During ketamine, I had this experience where I was soaring over

this primeval jungle. Maybe it was the Amazon a thousand years ago. I don't know. I know it's just gorgeous, and I'm flying over like some massive condor. I know I'm conflating geographies here, but whatever, big bird flying over the Amazon. And then I perch up on this cliff and I'm looking down scanning this beautiful tableau of nature beneath me. And suddenly I just take a nose dive off the cliff and I'm just going at terminal velocity towards the earth. And I'm about to crash. But then the earth rises up to meet me and sort of catches me. And I took that and I didn't die. And I took that as this concept of like in the trust fall of life, it's okay. I'm going to be caught. You're going to be caught. We're not going to die. And it gave me this massive sense of peace.

And so eventually that helped me retire that narrative self, the internal drill sergeant that always says, you're not good enough. You're not good enough. You got to do better. Look at you. You suck. You know, he's taken a nice retirement. The accountant who judged each performance afterwards and made me reassess it and go through it. He's in semi-retirement as well. So we're working on But it is constantly a work in progress. But those guys, yeah, I'm working on retiring them. They are definitely in semi-retirement now. Amazing.

Well, sorry to end this abruptly. Tell everybody where they can find you and where they can learn more about this in your book. They can find me anywhere on social media, wherever they find people, and on your podcast. But my book is called No Time to Panic. It's on Amazon and any bookseller that you typically buy your books.

should be everywhere we hope. Thank you so much for coming on. You'll have to come back for part two, maybe. Looking forward to it. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And if you liked it, and if you liked the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe.

It goes a long way, and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head over to The Blonde Files podcast on Instagram. You can go to Ariallori.com. And I'm always posting about each episode over on my personal page at Ariel Laurie. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.