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This is Lindsay.

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This is Russ.

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And we're married.

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Are we?

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Yep, since 2013.

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We're the hosts of the Unfiltered Union podcast.

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Where we discuss popular headlines and interview interesting people.

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Our opinions may vary, but we will never censor our guests or our viewpoints.

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Welcome to the Unfiltered Union.

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Have a new guest.

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Yay.

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Yay.

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We have Ilias Moscano with us,

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and he grew up in a conflictive household in Venezuela,

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and life always felt safer in his own head.

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When he left home to study abroad,

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he didn't realize he was bringing along invisible wounds of trauma and all the

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coping mechanisms he learned as a kid.

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It took a miserable college experience,

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moving countries again,

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and a marriage and a divorce,

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a wonderful therapist,

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and the discovery of psychedelics as tools for mental health for him to start

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piecing together the puzzle that held the answers to who he was.

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So today,

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he can say that putting the effort to finding himself as the single most meaningful

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decision of his life,

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and he has reaped the benefits of it on a daily basis.

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He now dedicates his life to offering others guidance as they navigate their own

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process of self-discovery and self-connection,

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focusing on the safe and responsible use of psychedelics as powerful tools for the

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exploration of the psychological,

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emotional,

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and spiritual landscape that hold the secrets to who we are.

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If you didn't get that from the introduction,

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this is going to be a mixture of both mental health and talking about tools for how

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to overcome some of those mental health issues

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angst, if you will.

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I mean,

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the idea of using psychedelics is something that,

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Russ,

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we have talked about previously during your OCD experience.

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Yes.

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And I think this is going to be a very interesting conversation.

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For sure.

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And before we do jump in, you have a business that is dedicated to coaching through psychedelics.

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How do you actually pronounce that name?

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Yeah, the name is pronounced Curasana.

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So it's C-U-R-A-S-A-N-E.

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And the name, it's the combination of two Spanish words that mean to heal kind of in different ways.

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And so I have a website, it's Curasana.com.

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And that's where I provide my services and coaching and guidance around psychedelic experiences.

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All right.

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Wow.

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I mean, let's start from the beginning.

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Let's try and start from the beginning.

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How was your home life growing up?

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Yeah, so, you know, my parents were an incredibly conflicting couple.

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They were just not meant for each other is the reality.

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And so I think during that time,

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you know,

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growing up,

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there was a lot of anxiety and a lot of trying to kind of escape that experience of

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them fighting and just discussing.

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And, you know, there was it was not as, you know, it's not horrible.

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But as some other experiences of childhood are,

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and I find myself lucky in that I always had everything that I needed in order to

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kind of become the person who I am today,

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very privileged in certain ways.

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But it was certainly,

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I would say,

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a traumatic experience in a lot of ways to kind of grow up with that constant conflict.

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And so I ended up developing certain mechanisms of just kind of disconnecting a

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little bit from everyday life and living in my head and not fully showing up in

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relationships in ways in which later I realized,

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you know,

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I didn't realize that when I was growing up,

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but later on in life,

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it became obvious that I had developed certain patterns that were just not going to

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serve me in the long term.

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Yeah, it's crazy how much childhood trauma can really impact us through our entire lives, right?

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Things that maybe some people would say, oh, that's not really traumatic.

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It's like, yeah, but to me, it was.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, that's the thing too, is people tend to discount other people's trauma.

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And that's not good.

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You know,

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just because you went through a situation and it didn't mess you up like it messed

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me up,

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that doesn't discount the way I'm feeling.

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For sure.

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And I mean, you develop ways to deal with it.

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I mean,

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what ways would you say that you feel you built coping mechanisms around all that

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to deal with it?

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How do you feel you coped?

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Yeah, well, I'll speak a little about that.

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But just on that point that you said about how people can interpret your own trauma,

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I'm not sure if you're familiar with Dr.

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Gabor Mate.

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He's got a few books around trauma and also a couple of things like ADHD and addiction.

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And the way that he speaks about it is and I really like this is trauma is not what happens to you.

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It's what happens inside of you as a result of what happened to you.

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And he makes a really good point about sensibility.

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People have different levels of sensibility.

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People are more sensible than others.

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And so if you think about trauma,

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a way of imagining this is if I just kind of touch you right now on your shoulder

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and just kind of push a little bit,

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you're going to feel it,

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but it's not really going to hurt.

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But if tomorrow you go to the beach and you get sunburned and it's really bad,

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and then I exert the same amount of pressure,

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you're going to have a very different reaction.

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You're going to be so much more sensible to that.

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And so different people react to different experiences in that way,

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which is what makes each individual case so interesting and so real for the person

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who experienced that.

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Definitely in my experience,

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My experience was that I realized at around 30 years old that I had no idea what I liked,

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who I was,

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why I was doing the things that I was doing.

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It's like waking up, and when people call it waking up, that's truly what it feels like.

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I open my eyes,

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and I'm like,

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you know when you're driving,

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and for 15 minutes,

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your mind is somewhere else,

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and then all of a sudden,

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you're like,

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oh,

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God,

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was I...

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Was I lost while I was what I should have been paying attention?

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That's kind of what it felt like.

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And I was,

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you know,

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30,

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31 years old already into this experience in a marriage that was not serving either

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of us in a,

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you know,

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with a career that I had not really chosen,

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just kind of had fallen into it.

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with a group of friends that I didn't connect with,

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living in a place like even geographically that I didn't really like or enjoy.

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And so like all of this big pieces of my life, I was like, how did I put this together?

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Like who did it for me?

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And eventually had to accept that it had been me because I

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That experience of disconnecting from reality,

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of not truly being present because of the things that I grew up with,

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that coping mechanism of just kind of going inwards and numbing out had just kind

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of kept going for years and years unchecked.

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So that was the experience that finally kind of made it so that I was like,

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oh,

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something's happening here.

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I need to fix it.

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And it took a lot of difficulty and kind of realizing that some things were truly

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not working for me,

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some addictions,

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like true troubles in the marriage,

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for me to be like,

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okay,

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this needs to be addressed.

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I won't lie and say that it was quick or easy.

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Oh, yeah.

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But I find it interesting.

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Everybody that we talk to that has a mental health struggle,

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it all seems to always compound to a point to where it's a breaking point.

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Every single situation that I've seen, including mine, it was a snap.

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And then it's like, oh, we got to go and do something about this.

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Because if we don't, we're going to end up in a bad spot.

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Yeah,

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I like the phrase,

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if people don't change when they see the light,

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they change when they feel the heat.

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You sometimes have to kind of hit that rock bottom.

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And that also looks different for everyone, just like trauma looks different for everyone.

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But the thing that makes you say, this cannot be the life that I'm living.

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Right.

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Yeah.

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I like that a lot.

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Well, we mentioned that you started therapy on your mental health journey.

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What do you feel led you to that moment, led you to seek therapy?

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Yeah.

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Well, let me open up a little bit about that.

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And that's, you know, just kind of peel some of the layers.

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But I was struggling with addiction and it wasn't substance addiction.

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It was actually a behavioral addiction.

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It started with pornography and then it evolved into full blown sexual addiction.

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I think that's something that a lot of people, definitely a lot of men struggle.

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I don't know.

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One man who can be honest in my life personally,

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who says that they haven't struggled or currently struggle a lot with pornography.

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And that was a path that for me started very early on, like it does for a lot of people.

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And that started leading to just kind of that bleeding into my day to day life.

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So compound that with pornography.

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being in a marriage where I wasn't happy and then starting exploring like,

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well,

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what happens if I push that outside of the relationship and ended up kind of

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becoming a serial cheater,

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very disconnected from that,

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started living like a life of complete lies.

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uh truly a double life where as soon as i had some time for myself i would start

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scheming like truly the behavior that you see on somebody with substance addiction

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and since i've learned through my training and you know through coaching and uh and

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a lot of other tools a lot of the training that i have

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that addiction is addiction is addiction.

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They express themselves differently.

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They have different consequences,

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but the addictive mentality will drive you to do those things that separate you

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from your real self,

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especially if you're already disconnected from it.

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And for me, it was that way in which it presented.

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And when I realized that I,

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was losing control of how I wanted to act.

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I never thought of myself as a cheater.

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I never thought of myself as somebody who would lie, definitely not at those levels.

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And again, that wake up moment of like, I could see myself

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driving and autopilot, just going through the motions.

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And there was a part of me that was trying to pump the brakes.

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Like, don't do this.

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This is not something that you want to engage in.

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This is just don't do it.

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Don't do it.

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Don't do it.

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And being completely unable to control myself.

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And so that was, that was the moment where it's like, this is, it's hurting me.

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It's hurting my partner.

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It's unrecognizable as, as I don't know who I am anymore.

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Like I truly don't know who I am now.

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And that was the moment that for me, I was like, I need to start therapy immediately.

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And so I started working with somebody who was a sex therapist and could help me

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kind of manage and understand truly what was happening for me,

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like what addiction was,

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why I was experiencing what I was experiencing and

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even though I carried an enormous amount of shame because of my behavior,

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she started helping me understand that that was

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I'll say natural as in when you're so disconnected and in such pain,

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your body will automatically try to look for something that helps you feel better,

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even if it's a completely negative behavior in the long term.

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And so kind of removing a little bit the shame around having acted so horribly for such a long time.

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And that's kind of where the journey really started.

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I would say the return to recovery.

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You know, that that's a really good point too, is pornography can be an addiction too.

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A lot of people don't consider things like that an addiction because it's like,

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well,

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I'm not doing anything that's hurting my body or what,

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you know,

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I'm not doing drugs.

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Yeah.

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I'm not doing drugs and I'm not stealing from my family to do drugs or,

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but it's still an addiction because you're still using that as a vice.

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Absolutely.

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Yeah.

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Addictions,

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you know,

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an addiction is it's a short term behavior that feels positive and that on the long term,

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when left unchecked,

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will have negative consequences.

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But it starts out as bad.

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sometimes a lifeline like this thing that's like i need this to breathe i need this

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to make my life a little bit better because i'm suffering and so you try masking

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that suffering but eventually if you don't get it under control then yeah it

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becomes what it becomes it can be substances it can be sugar it can be you know

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phones like screens like we can get lost in anything other people anything

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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You know,

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that,

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that reminds me a lot of the OCD don't seek reassurance because it's a,

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it's an immediate feel dopamine hit.

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Yeah.

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It's immediate, an immediate feel of relief.

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And then all it's doing is damaging you.

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Yep.

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It's so it's crazy.

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It's what you feel you need, but it's only like hurting more.

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Right.

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Right.

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It's not doing anything, but causing harm.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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And I imagine that you've experienced a lot of that,

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Russ,

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where like you wanted to like it's this search for what's the thing that's going to

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make make it feel a little bit more tolerable.

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Right.

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Oh, yeah.

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And asking Linz, hey, I'm not that kind of person.

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Right.

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And she would at first she would say, no, of course not.

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But once I started going to therapy and the OCD therapist was like,

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hey,

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you don't do that because that's bad.

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Reassurance is not what you need.

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Reassurance is gas on the fire.

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It's not going to make OCD any better.

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It's actually going to make it worse because you're just confirming to your brain

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that your fear is valid.

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Creating those neuron pathways that say, yes, be afraid of this.

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Exactly.

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Exactly.

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It's crazy.

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Well,

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when in your experience did you start to,

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well,

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when did you discover and or start to utilize psychedelics through your mental

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health journey?

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I was very lucky that as I was starting therapy,

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that I had my first psychedelic experience after I had started therapy.

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Because what we're hearing about psychedelics so much right now,

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there's a whole renaissance,

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as it's called,

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like truly this new wave of using them for mental health.

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And I think that it can be very easy to lose track of the fact that what's making

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them very useful for mental health

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It's not just a psychedelic.

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It's the way in which they're used.

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It's the method.

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And it's the fact that there is integration or processing after a journey that is

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done with a professional.

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It's a tool.

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And you can use a hammer to build something beautiful or to destroy a wall.

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And in the same way, that's what tools are.

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So when I discovered psychedelics,

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I did it because I was listening to a podcast where they had a mycologist.

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He's called Paul Stamets.

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And I've since heard of a few people who listened to that particular episode.

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And he was talking about psilocybin, which is the ingredient in magic mushrooms.

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And he is such a salesman in a way.

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He's captivating when he speaks.

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He's also in the documentary, Fantastic Fungi.

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If you guys haven't watched it, I highly recommend it to anybody listening.

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And as soon as that podcast ended, I was like, I need to figure this out.

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How can I get my hands on some of this?

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And I didn't really have any

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contacts or I didn't know, it was not my world at all.

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And I actually,

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I was so scared to try to find somebody who would sell them to me or anything like that,

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that I,

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the easiest way for me to do it was like,

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I'll just find the spores and I'll grow them.

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I'll grow my own mushrooms first.

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And that seemed easier than finding somebody on the street who could like help me out.

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And I did.

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More legal.

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Yeah, technically, because I'm not buying it from anyone.

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The spores are actually legal in most states.

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And so because the spores don't contain psilocybin, so you can actually buy the spores.

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And if you go through trouble of learning how to do it, then you can grow them.

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Technically, don't consume them.

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It's just for science.

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It's just for my culture.

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And so,

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yeah,

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it was great because as I started consuming them and having this really strong experiences,

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I was trying to kind of model my experiences after what I understood was being done

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at the universities,

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right?

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With all this research that was coming out.

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But the truth is that I wasn't exactly sure of what I was doing at the very beginning.

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But then I would have these big experiences, incredibly powerful, very confusing.

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And then I would go back to my therapist and be like, this is what happened.

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And she would be able to do integration for me and kind of help me piece or help me

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do integration,

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not doing it for me and help me piece together kind of all of these pieces of

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material that were coming up during my experiences.

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So that was probably about five years ago that I started experimenting with

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psychedelics for my mental health.

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Wow.

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So how was your, your first experience?

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Like what?

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I don't,

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I don't want people to think like you're just doing it to trip balls,

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you know,

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you're doing it because of the way it,

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from what I've heard,

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I've never done it,

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but it opens it.

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Yeah, I have, especially when

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I was down the really bad path of OCD, but it opens your mind up.

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Can you kind of explain how that works and what you feel like when you're in,

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you know,

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I don't want to say a trip because that makes it sound terrible,

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but when you're on a journey.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, yeah, on a journey.

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And I appreciate kind of the carefulness around the vocabulary.

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And I'll also say that at this point in my life today,

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I enjoy psychedelics recreationally,

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you know,

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quote unquote,

(00:19:02):
as much as I get benefit from them therapeutically.

(00:19:06):
And I think that with a responsible attitude,

(00:19:09):
with the right mindset,

(00:19:10):
with knowledge,

(00:19:10):
like knowing what you're doing,

(00:19:11):
knowing your substance,

(00:19:12):
testing it,

(00:19:13):
knowing about dose,

(00:19:14):
about set and setting,

(00:19:16):
a recreational experience,

(00:19:17):
like just having a really good day on a recreational experience can be almost as

(00:19:24):
therapeutic in certain cases,

(00:19:26):
truly,

(00:19:27):
as having a controlled journey.

(00:19:30):
But I wouldn't necessarily recommend for somebody who doesn't know what they're

(00:19:33):
doing yet to jump into that.

(00:19:38):
What makes those experiences different,

(00:19:40):
as I mentioned,

(00:19:41):
was the methods,

(00:19:44):
the setting,

(00:19:44):
meaning how you're prepared to come into this experience,

(00:19:48):
the tools that you have.

(00:19:50):
For somebody who doesn't know anything about mental health and they're kind of just

(00:19:53):
starting their journey and understanding themselves,

(00:19:56):
it's going to be a much different experience than somebody who has been,

(00:19:58):
say,

(00:19:58):
going to therapy or who has a really dedicated practice of self-understanding and self-knowledge,

(00:20:05):
who journals a lot or those kinds of things.

(00:20:11):
What that feels like,

(00:20:12):
a therapeutic experience or a trip,

(00:20:15):
is by definition,

(00:20:18):
the psychedelic experience is ineffable.

(00:20:21):
It's one of the characteristics of the psychedelic experience.

(00:20:24):
It's very difficult to put it into words.

(00:20:26):
And so what I can speak to maybe is some of the most

(00:20:30):
common effects when you're in the journey, like what that might feel like.

(00:20:35):
But to speak of visuals,

(00:20:36):
to speak of what is it that people see and how they feel inside after having that

(00:20:43):
can be very tricky.

(00:20:44):
And it is also different for every single person.

(00:20:49):
What psychedelics do, if I had to summarize it, to say it briefly, is that they help

(00:20:59):
blur the line between the conscious and the unconscious mind.

(00:21:03):
The world, the word psychedelic means mind manifesting.

(00:21:07):
So it's really allowing for those parts of your mind that usually are kind of behind the shadows that are

(00:21:14):
kept in check by your defense mechanisms because they're too difficult to deal with

(00:21:19):
or they're a little scary or too scary to come up during regular you know

(00:21:24):
consciousness because during on my day to day well I have to make dinner and I have

(00:21:28):
to work and I have to tend to you know my plants and feed my cat I can't be

(00:21:32):
thinking about all of this traumatic experiences and just kind of having the

(00:21:35):
present with me there's mechanisms that we have that keep them in check so during a

(00:21:40):
psychedelic experience that line is blurred it's like the the

(00:21:44):
the guards fell asleep and that starts seeping into,

(00:21:49):
depending on the dose,

(00:21:50):
just kind of being pushed into your conscious awareness.

(00:21:55):
People have the experience of kind of receiving insights or they can call it

(00:22:00):
downloads as if all of a sudden something made sense that you had never seen it before.

(00:22:05):
I know another practitioner who call it like the third leave.

(00:22:09):
Like sometimes you're looking at a,

(00:22:11):
at a situation in your life and you think that you only have two choices and that

(00:22:16):
they're black or white and psychedelics just kind of have like as if this was a

(00:22:20):
plant like you know i'm branching out and all of a sudden there's like a new leaf

(00:22:24):
that comes out through the middle and it's this option that is not here not there

(00:22:31):
that

(00:22:33):
is more integrated with the reality of what you have in terms of choices.

(00:22:39):
It doesn't have to be as black and white.

(00:22:41):
People get visuals.

(00:22:43):
Close-eyed visuals can be very intense.

(00:22:46):
They are almost dreamlike.

(00:22:48):
Some of them can be incredibly beautiful.

(00:22:51):
I've had clients who literally cry because what they're experiencing is so beautiful.

(00:22:57):
Just the images that they're seeing just move them to tears.

(00:23:03):
experiences can be incredibly positive as in this is the most joy that I've experienced in my life.

(00:23:10):
All of a sudden I can laugh like I did when I was five years old and I haven't

(00:23:15):
experienced this since I was a kid and they can be very harrowing as well.

(00:23:20):
It's heaven and hell.

(00:23:21):
Your demons might come up and then that's what we call a challenging experience

(00:23:25):
which outside of this context can be known as a bad trip.

(00:23:30):
I would

(00:23:31):
make the difference that when you're in a bad trip,

(00:23:34):
usually the set and the setting are not enough to contain that experience.

(00:23:37):
And so it can really spiral into something that comes out of control,

(00:23:43):
which is why people end up in the hospital.

(00:23:45):
Usually they're safe physically, but they are having such a struggle mentally that

(00:23:53):
that they need that outside help.

(00:23:55):
But within the context of a therapeutic setting,

(00:23:58):
you have a control set setting,

(00:24:00):
somebody who's supportive,

(00:24:01):
you know exactly what you took and the dose you took and all of that helps contain

(00:24:05):
those experiences.

(00:24:06):
So then instead of a bad trip,

(00:24:08):
you can have a challenging experience,

(00:24:10):
but that just means that you're looking at everything that exists within you

(00:24:14):
in a space that is allowed specifically for that.

(00:24:17):
And you have somebody who can help you do so lovingly and openly and to hold it all,

(00:24:22):
to process it all in that moment and hopefully in sessions that come after,

(00:24:27):
which become the integration.

(00:24:32):
Interesting.

(00:24:34):
That's a lot.

(00:24:35):
Hold on.

(00:24:37):
So you've mentioned a couple of things, right?

(00:24:39):
You said your method, your set, and your setting.

(00:24:42):
Can you dive in a little deeper as to what that looks like if you're someone who's

(00:24:48):
interested in this experience?

(00:24:50):
Like how do you manufacture all of that?

(00:24:55):
Yeah, so that is, I think, what's important about working with a facilitator or a guide.

(00:25:02):
There's maybe different levels of kind of professionals that you can work with.

(00:25:13):
I would say kind of at the lowest of the levels,

(00:25:15):
if it's a sitter,

(00:25:16):
that's somebody who's not really a professional guide or who,

(00:25:21):
you know,

(00:25:21):
they might have some experience is basically say telling somebody,

(00:25:24):
hey,

(00:25:24):
can you just kind of be present while I'm doing this thing?

(00:25:27):
And they, you know, make sure that they're

(00:25:29):
They're around and can help you with whatever you might need.

(00:25:33):
And then there's a professional therapist who has a certification to work on these things,

(00:25:39):
which right now there's not many in the United States or in the world,

(00:25:42):
really.

(00:25:42):
They're just kind of working with universities trying to understand all of this

(00:25:48):
because it's still very misunderstood.

(00:25:50):
At the level that I work, I consider myself a facilitator, like a guide.

(00:25:54):
I have training in coaching that's specific to the psychedelic experience for

(00:25:58):
psychedelic integration,

(00:25:59):
for preparation.

(00:26:01):
So what that looks like is the methods that I use encourage an inwards facing experience,

(00:26:09):
meaning that different from like just kind of tripping,

(00:26:12):
taking some mushrooms and going into the woods or hanging out watching TV.

(00:26:17):
right?

(00:26:17):
Which is what a lot of people used to like.

(00:26:19):
This is actually a eyes closed experience.

(00:26:23):
You're wearing a sleep mask and you're wearing headphones that are playing a very

(00:26:28):
specific playlist that was designed for this experience.

(00:26:31):
It's very evocative.

(00:26:32):
It moves you emotionally.

(00:26:34):
And it also has some spaces where it leaves you with some breaks in the music or

(00:26:39):
like very just kind of calm music for you to be able to

(00:26:43):
to have a minute or a couple minutes to take a breather and to process what just happened.

(00:26:49):
Experiences usually last between five to six hours where people are in the

(00:26:56):
psychedelic experience for usually about four and a half to five hours.

(00:26:59):
There's also some time to gear up to go into the experience on the day of and some time to land.

(00:27:06):
So the person will be with me for basically an entire day when they're doing their experience.

(00:27:14):
I provide what I call non-directive support.

(00:27:16):
So it's not like you're taking the self-saving and I'm just kind of asking you

(00:27:21):
questions or telling you how about we think about this or move you in this direction.

(00:27:25):
Actually, I'm not trying to influence your experience.

(00:27:28):
I trust that you know yourself more than I know you.

(00:27:31):
Even if you've been working with me for a really long time, you know yourself better than I know you.

(00:27:36):
And I trust that the experience is going to bring up the things that

(00:27:40):
that need to be brought up so what i'm doing there is when something comes up that

(00:27:46):
feels like it needs to be discussed it feels like it needs to be unpacked then i

(00:27:50):
come in as a coach and i help nudge or kind of open up the path for the client to

(00:27:56):
just continue their own experience

(00:27:59):
In terms of the setting, it has to be very welcoming.

(00:28:02):
It has to be very safe.

(00:28:04):
It has to be private.

(00:28:06):
There mustn't be other people around other than the client and the facilitator or facilitators.

(00:28:12):
It's fairly neutral because psychedelics can be very... What's the word that I'm looking for here?

(00:28:20):
when you're on a psychedelic experience, you're very influenceable.

(00:28:24):
And so,

(00:28:25):
you know,

(00:28:26):
imagery of things that you have any kind of opinion on will become enhanced,

(00:28:31):
like the volume for everything has just been raised.

(00:28:35):
So a space that's neutral,

(00:28:37):
that is safe,

(00:28:38):
safety is key,

(00:28:39):
having a good relationship with your guide and just really

(00:28:47):
making the person feel that everything that comes up during that day is welcome and it's okay.

(00:28:54):
Wow.

(00:28:56):
That's a lot.

(00:28:58):
I mean,

(00:28:59):
the whole idea of this controlled experience,

(00:29:01):
I mean,

(00:29:02):
I didn't realize,

(00:29:05):
I guess,

(00:29:05):
that that is something that

(00:29:08):
I mean, it seems obvious when you talk about it, right?

(00:29:10):
Like you want the idea of the sitter, right?

(00:29:12):
That makes total sense.

(00:29:14):
But to exponential,

(00:29:16):
to no expense on that,

(00:29:19):
to have it even bigger than that is to have someone actually help you through it.

(00:29:22):
And I think you've said it a few times, right?

(00:29:24):
Uh, the idea of integration.

(00:29:26):
I mean, is that, um, post or during or oath or.

(00:29:34):
How does integration work?

(00:29:36):
Yeah, that's a great question.

(00:29:37):
So I think of integration as kind of taking everything,

(00:29:40):
all the threads that you kind of got to pull during that experience and weaving

(00:29:44):
them into something new,

(00:29:46):
something that's going to affect your life.

(00:29:48):
So it can be new behaviors, it can be new perspectives.

(00:29:50):
Because another of the characteristics, I said the experience is ineffable.

(00:29:57):
It's also very easy to forget, right?

(00:30:01):
which is surprising, I think, to some people, because it's such an intense experience.

(00:30:05):
And when you come out of it, you're like, oh, my God, this is, you know, it's changed my life.

(00:30:10):
And then a week later,

(00:30:11):
you're going to remember some of the details,

(00:30:14):
but the felt experience,

(00:30:15):
you know,

(00:30:16):
that true,

(00:30:16):
like,

(00:30:17):
oh,

(00:30:17):
God,

(00:30:17):
this was so intense that I want to make these changes,

(00:30:20):
that will fade away.

(00:30:22):
That's why it's important to recognize that this is still work.

(00:30:26):
It's a tool, but the tool is going to give you the pieces.

(00:30:29):
You have to put that puzzle together and make sure that if a piece is just kind of

(00:30:33):
falling off at some point because a couple of weeks have passed or you went back to

(00:30:38):
a certain pattern of behavior that it's not serving you,

(00:30:42):
that's going to push out.

(00:30:43):
the work that you did.

(00:30:45):
So it's,

(00:30:46):
it's realizing through the experience that you have all of these choices that you

(00:30:51):
can make all of this,

(00:30:52):
turn all of these new behaviors into something concrete for yourself and beneficial

(00:30:58):
for yourself,

(00:30:58):
but doing that work.

(00:30:59):
And so integration usually comes after, and that can be, it's usually for me in the form of

(00:31:08):
calls with my clients uh the week of the experience you know within two or three

(00:31:14):
days and then uh depending on you know how much integration they they are doing

(00:31:19):
with me and how much we feel that is that is necessary uh every week after that is

(00:31:25):
or uh you know the the timing can change um

(00:31:31):
There can be some integration that happens on the day of,

(00:31:34):
but normally integration takes a little bit of time.

(00:31:37):
It really is just processing.

(00:31:38):
And for big, big experiences, it will take some time to process.

(00:31:44):
You know, of all the stuff that you're saying, I really like that you are not coloring any of it.

(00:31:52):
You're saying you could have a harrowing experience, but, but,

(00:31:58):
it's always a tool that we use to break down that harrowing experience.

(00:32:03):
And we learn from it.

(00:32:05):
You're not like trying to sell it as this thing's going to fix you.

(00:32:10):
Yeah.

(00:32:10):
It's going to,

(00:32:11):
it's going to fix you a hundred percent,

(00:32:12):
you know,

(00:32:13):
or,

(00:32:14):
or it's the easy button for mental health issues.

(00:32:18):
It's still work,

(00:32:20):
but I,

(00:32:21):
I like what you're doing and what you're saying,

(00:32:24):
because I feel as if you're legitimatizing the,

(00:32:28):
Psychedelics.

(00:32:30):
Most people right now are looking at psychedelics as something that hippies do.

(00:32:35):
They get high off of them and they trip.

(00:32:38):
But that's not the case anymore.

(00:32:40):
There's nothing wrong with hippies.

(00:32:43):
No, no.

(00:32:44):
I'm just saying it's just... I know.

(00:32:48):
I like it because anything that can help people with mental illness should be seriously considered.

(00:32:57):
A hundred percent.

(00:32:57):
Because there's such little advancement in mental health that anything,

(00:33:04):
especially something like this,

(00:33:05):
that can open your mind up and almost make you,

(00:33:09):
why am I depressed?

(00:33:10):
Let me look at the, you know, let me open my mind up and kind of really dig into myself.

(00:33:15):
Well,

(00:33:15):
when you think back on your mental health journey,

(00:33:18):
and we've talked about it a million times,

(00:33:19):
and I'm going to bring you in on this here a little bit.

(00:33:23):
During your mental health journey, we changed medicine.

(00:33:25):
How many times?

(00:33:26):
I know.

(00:33:29):
what do we want to call it?

(00:33:29):
The withdrawal,

(00:33:30):
the fallback,

(00:33:31):
the uptake,

(00:33:32):
the titration,

(00:33:34):
whatever the verbiage you want to use in order to get to a good point on the new

(00:33:38):
medicine always took a while.

(00:33:40):
So it was a painful experience for a little while.

(00:33:44):
So the idea of, you know, psychedelics being hurrying, I mean, it's,

(00:33:51):
Everything is when you come to mental health.

(00:33:54):
So I don't see this as any bad points right now.

(00:33:58):
It is part of a mental health journey if you want it to be.

(00:34:02):
Well,

(00:34:03):
I could see someone being a little resistant to wanting to go through a harrowing

(00:34:09):
experience and being fearful of it.

(00:34:11):
I mean, you would get that on medicine too.

(00:34:15):
Yeah, agreed.

(00:34:16):
But I feel like...

(00:34:18):
This is just another option.

(00:34:20):
For sure.

(00:34:21):
We need to legitimatize things like this instead of big pharma pushing this stuff

(00:34:27):
away because they want to sell more Zoloft.

(00:34:30):
Right.

(00:34:33):
Don't get me started.

(00:34:39):
Yeah, I mean, there's there's so much truth in what you said.

(00:34:43):
I mean, I've have people I have never had to go through the pharmaceutical route to kind of manage that.

(00:34:51):
uh mental health symptoms but i have multiple loved people very close to me who

(00:34:56):
have and who have gotten stuck in that cycle where you know now the pill is a

(00:35:01):
forever thing for them or or if it's not it has been

(00:35:06):
incredibly difficult journey to leave it aside.

(00:35:09):
So talk about,

(00:35:10):
you know,

(00:35:10):
we have this fear of psychedelics because for 40,

(00:35:13):
50 years,

(00:35:14):
we,

(00:35:15):
it was,

(00:35:15):
you know,

(00:35:16):
there was this propaganda that said that these are the worst things that are addictive,

(00:35:20):
that incredibly hurt,

(00:35:21):
hurtful for you.

(00:35:22):
And here we are being sold, you know, over prescribed with medications that truly, you

(00:35:29):
When you look at the history,

(00:35:31):
I understand that there was some hope in the antidepressants,

(00:35:36):
but the way that they're used today,

(00:35:38):
we've really just kind of fallen out of line with it.

(00:35:42):
So this is another option.

(00:35:43):
And I'm glad that as I'm speaking,

(00:35:45):
it feels like there's an effort to legitimize it because that's exactly what it is.

(00:35:52):
And I agree with you that for a lot of people,

(00:35:56):
I think there's different camps right now.

(00:35:58):
Psychedelics are just very sexy.

(00:35:59):
So there's a lot of people just kind of trying to push them without speaking of the

(00:36:05):
heroin experiences,

(00:36:06):
without speaking of the set and the setting,

(00:36:08):
because it's just easy to sell products to misinformed people,

(00:36:15):
especially when there's such a wave,

(00:36:16):
when people are hearing about this as a magic cure,

(00:36:19):
they want to try it.

(00:36:20):
And so there has to be an effort for the people who believe in it to,

(00:36:26):
legitimize it but also in the most responsible way and something just have

(00:36:32):
perspective because you mentioned that people when they think of psychedelics they

(00:36:38):
think of the hippie culture and that's true and I think what's something that's

(00:36:44):
really interesting about

(00:36:45):
about them,

(00:36:46):
which I've come to understand the more that I move in the circles,

(00:36:50):
is that psychedelics were in the underground because legislation had pushed them there.

(00:36:58):
We knew back in the 70s, 60s, even in the 50s, that these were incredible tools for mental health.

(00:37:05):
There was research in the 50s and 60s with LSD for alcoholism, for all kinds of mental health conditions.

(00:37:13):
And so at some point,

(00:37:15):
There was an explosion.

(00:37:16):
It was really more because of political reasons.

(00:37:18):
They were pushed into the underground.

(00:37:20):
And there they were mixing along with all of the pseudoscience that exists in underground movements.

(00:37:27):
And so we associate it with the people who believe in all kinds of things that have

(00:37:32):
absolutely no scientific backing.

(00:37:35):
And so now they're kind of being pulled out of the underground and into the scientific realm as well.

(00:37:43):
And we're also seeing as that is kind of coming up,

(00:37:46):
a lot of the other beliefs that were around psychedelics kind of being heightened,

(00:37:51):
you know,

(00:37:51):
kind of being almost brought into the light because of that.

(00:37:56):
So it's been an interesting experience.

(00:37:59):
I definitely came to psychedelics through a more scientific background.

(00:38:02):
You know, I...

(00:38:03):
I was very materialistic,

(00:38:06):
not as in I like material stuff,

(00:38:08):
but like I don't believe in anything that I can't touch type thing.

(00:38:11):
Right.

(00:38:13):
And I've certainly kind of hung out and learned from people that I would have never

(00:38:17):
thought I was going to be sitting around the same table with.

(00:38:21):
For sure.

(00:38:22):
For sure.

(00:38:23):
And,

(00:38:23):
you know,

(00:38:24):
one of the things is I don't think big pharma can sell something that comes from

(00:38:29):
something that grows in the ground.

(00:38:32):
You know, they can't make buku profits off of it.

(00:38:36):
So they,

(00:38:38):
you can't tell me that the politicians aren't in that pocket or they're not in the

(00:38:42):
politician's pocket and squashing things like that,

(00:38:45):
even though it's a game changer.

(00:38:49):
Absolutely.

(00:38:50):
Scary.

(00:38:53):
before we go down the rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and understanding how the

(00:38:58):
government could be impacting big pharma.

(00:39:00):
And we all know what it's true,

(00:39:01):
but moving on,

(00:39:03):
I mean,

(00:39:04):
how would you say that you feel that psychedelics have affected your mental health?

(00:39:09):
And then do you have any stories you can share with us of possible clients?

(00:39:14):
Yeah, absolutely.

(00:39:15):
I would love to.

(00:39:16):
I mean, for me, it's, it's day and night.

(00:39:21):
Uh,

(00:39:22):
I won't say that my first psychedelic experience did it,

(00:39:26):
but over the course of the first six months that I was doing my sessions and as I

(00:39:33):
started doing them,

(00:39:33):
I learned how to do them better and I was going to therapy and then I would do

(00:39:37):
these other sessions.

(00:39:38):
I think they accelerated my therapeutic process incredibly.

(00:39:43):
The progress that I saw within the first year was amazing.

(00:39:52):
if I had to pick one thing maybe is reconnection to self.

(00:40:00):
When I spoke of kind of growing up and being in my head and feeling disconnected

(00:40:05):
from who I was and making decisions from,

(00:40:08):
a space that I didn't even know who was making them, that started shifting.

(00:40:12):
It's like all of a sudden I could see and feel who I was and started kind of

(00:40:18):
creating that connection to the self.

(00:40:23):
I believe in this and there's therapeutic theories,

(00:40:28):
things like internal family systems and others that speak of the self.

(00:40:34):
And the self is like this,

(00:40:36):
indestructible diamond like when you come into the world and you see a kid like

(00:40:41):
they're a hundred percent themselves they are pure like

(00:40:46):
as pure as they can be,

(00:40:48):
they are not bound by any kind of education or indoctrination or shame,

(00:40:52):
you know,

(00:40:53):
they're just themselves.

(00:40:54):
And as we grow up,

(00:40:56):
there's like these layers of different things that get in the way that start

(00:41:01):
burying that diamond,

(00:41:03):
right?

(00:41:03):
So I said,

(00:41:04):
education,

(00:41:04):
trauma is one of them,

(00:41:06):
indoctrination,

(00:41:07):
conditioning,

(00:41:08):
like all of these different things,

(00:41:09):
where we're

(00:41:10):
we learn that we shouldn't be acting this particular way and that we should like,

(00:41:14):
that we should shy away,

(00:41:16):
that we should make a decision because the other person expects us to versus

(00:41:19):
because we want to.

(00:41:21):
All of those things start kind of burying that self.

(00:41:25):
And what I found that Psychedelics did for me is that they started creating a channel,

(00:41:29):
like just kind of digging a tunnel where all of a sudden that diamond could start

(00:41:34):
shining back again.

(00:41:35):
I call it at some point, like I said, I found my Eliasness, like what makes me me.

(00:41:41):
And not only did I find it, like I feel it radiating out of me.

(00:41:45):
And from there,

(00:41:46):
when I feel like that,

(00:41:47):
and you can get to this place,

(00:41:50):
you know,

(00:41:50):
in other ways,

(00:41:51):
you don't need psychedelics for that.

(00:41:52):
But for me, that's what it did.

(00:41:54):
It certainly can be like an accelerated path.

(00:41:58):
because they have this biochemical action mechanism.

(00:42:03):
So they're truly just kind of shifting the way in which your brain works,

(00:42:07):
at least for enough time that then you can hang on to that and grab momentum.

(00:42:12):
And so when you're feeling yourself at 100% and you make better decisions,

(00:42:17):
then you can say,

(00:42:18):
you know what,

(00:42:18):
this relationship that's not serving me,

(00:42:21):
I'm going to move away from it.

(00:42:23):
You know what, these behaviors that keep me stuck in a cycle, I don't want them anymore.

(00:42:28):
And you can truly be more connected.

(00:42:31):
There's less space between I feel and then I act.

(00:42:40):
Where are you?

(00:42:47):
Interestingly enough, I moved to Washington, D.C.

(00:42:50):
just a couple of weeks ago.

(00:42:52):
I just got here and the reason, part of the reason at least, it's because D.C.

(00:42:57):
is a decriminalized state.

(00:42:59):
After they passed Initiative 81, psychedelics have

(00:43:06):
have they've gone to the lowest level of priority for law enforcement.

(00:43:10):
So you still cannot sell them.

(00:43:12):
You still cannot purchase them in stores and things like that.

(00:43:15):
But it's basically been said,

(00:43:16):
like,

(00:43:16):
we're not going to waste our time trying to criminalize and act on substances that

(00:43:24):
are

(00:43:26):
not as definitely not as bad as we were made to believe and certainly starting to

(00:43:31):
show a lot of potential to help people.

(00:43:34):
So it's,

(00:43:34):
it's an interesting city and there's only a couple of places in the country where

(00:43:38):
that's the case.

(00:43:39):
Colorado being one of them, Oregon being one of them, but DC is, uh, is another one.

(00:43:43):
That's awesome.

(00:43:44):
We were, we're from Northern Virginia.

(00:43:46):
So, but we were, we were in that area around the corner.

(00:43:52):
Yeah, that is for real.

(00:43:55):
Yeah.

(00:43:57):
Well,

(00:43:58):
I think from everything that we've heard from you,

(00:44:00):
I mean,

(00:44:01):
I think it's a benefit to anyone with mental health struggles that they're going

(00:44:07):
through to explore the idea of psychedelic coaching.

(00:44:10):
But I mean, who do you think is the target, if you will?

(00:44:14):
Who's someone that would be most benefiting from this experience?

(00:44:20):
Yeah, what a great question.

(00:44:22):
I think there's a lot of curiosity.

(00:44:23):
So a lot of people want to try it out.

(00:44:28):
I would say there's not one thing that this experience can gift you.

(00:44:34):
It can be used for dealing with difficult mental health conditions.

(00:44:39):
It can also be used for just self-development for somebody who's looking for self-actualization,

(00:44:44):
even if they right now they're not.

(00:44:46):
if they're not dealing with a mental health condition, you can just use it to self-actualize.

(00:44:53):
Sometimes you just want to use it for a moment of reconnection for some people that never, never happens.

(00:44:59):
We live very busy lives.

(00:45:02):
So to take an entire day

(00:45:05):
eight,

(00:45:05):
nine hours for yourself to go to see somebody who's going to hold space for you and

(00:45:10):
prepare a beautiful ceremony because you deserve it.

(00:45:12):
That's also a great reason to do them.

(00:45:17):
I think one of the most important criteria is openness.

(00:45:23):
You have to be open to new experiences and open to the fact that this is

(00:45:27):
going to be work, some kind of work.

(00:45:33):
It always is.

(00:45:35):
But if you come in prepared for that with an open heart and with an open mind,

(00:45:40):
you're going to get value out of this experience.

(00:45:46):
So essentially everyone.

(00:45:50):
I believe mostly everyone.

(00:45:51):
Yeah.

(00:45:51):
And I will say,

(00:45:54):
because I think it's really important,

(00:45:55):
that there are certain mental health conditions that are,

(00:46:03):
what's the word?

(00:46:04):
It's not recommended.

(00:46:06):
There's a better word for it that I'm totally losing right now.

(00:46:11):
but yeah there are certain mental health conditions like schizophrenia where they

(00:46:16):
truly recommend to not engage with psychedelics because they can be very

(00:46:20):
destabilizing bipolar disorder is kind of still in a gray area but you know

(00:46:27):
professionals right now and normally don't work with it like research is there's

(00:46:33):
not that much research geared

(00:46:35):
towards bipolar and so I would say it's mostly for everyone but it's important that

(00:46:42):
you consider your own situation before jumping into something like that and a good

(00:46:47):
guide is gonna ask questions around that so you know for anybody who's engaging

(00:46:51):
with somebody who

(00:46:53):
wants to offer those services, it's really important that they understand what makes a good facilitator.

(00:46:59):
And there's a lot of really good articles that you can find online that will help

(00:47:03):
you define if the person that you're working with feels legit,

(00:47:06):
what it should feel like,

(00:47:08):
and what questions to ask.

(00:47:11):
As I'm saying that,

(00:47:12):
I'm thinking that I probably should have something like that in my little FAQ on my

(00:47:16):
website that helps people as well,

(00:47:18):
even if they're not working with me,

(00:47:20):
to direct them to someone.

(00:47:21):
Because

(00:47:22):
And it's probably,

(00:47:25):
for many people,

(00:47:27):
it is one of the most important experiences or most significant experiences that

(00:47:30):
they have in their life.

(00:47:33):
And it's also one of the most vulnerable spaces that you can be in.

(00:47:38):
It's a very vulnerable experience by nature.

(00:47:42):
So you want to have somebody,

(00:47:44):
if you're doing it with somebody,

(00:47:45):
that knows how to hold that space and that you can truly,

(00:47:48):
truly trust.

(00:47:50):
Right.

(00:47:51):
See, I see very small amounts of negatives, if any, in trying it.

(00:48:00):
There's definitely a lot less side effects from what it sounds like than Zoloft.

(00:48:06):
I mean, let's be clear.

(00:48:07):
That's what you're taking.

(00:48:09):
We keep saying Zoloft.

(00:48:10):
We're not picking on it.

(00:48:11):
It's what he's taking.

(00:48:13):
That's right.

(00:48:15):
Yeah, I understand.

(00:48:17):
What do you want to, what do you think about flipping gears onto the fun question?

(00:48:21):
Let's do it.

(00:48:23):
If you won $10 million tonight, what would be the first thing you do tomorrow?

(00:48:30):
Ah, that's a, yeah, I think that's an easy one.

(00:48:35):
I'm trying to think to see if like, is there anything else?

(00:48:37):
But the truth is, you know, you said in my introduction, I dedicate my life to this today.

(00:48:41):
And the truth is that currently I,

(00:48:46):
there is an attachment that I have to a nine to five job because,

(00:48:51):
you know,

(00:48:51):
paying bills is important.

(00:48:53):
And if there's one thing that I do not want is for this to just become a financial,

(00:48:58):
you know,

(00:49:00):
that all my money is coming from my facilitation and coaching practice,

(00:49:04):
because that in a way just kind of puts pressure on it.

(00:49:08):
And it's a pressure that it's not welcome.

(00:49:10):
It's a pressure that affects how you work on it.

(00:49:12):
So if I had $10 million and I didn't have to think about things,

(00:49:15):
I would just open up a practice,

(00:49:17):
buy a piece of land that would become a retreat where you would have not just

(00:49:23):
important pieces for this work.

(00:49:25):
It's not just the psychedelics and the integration, but your community.

(00:49:28):
So having a community where like wellness is put at top priority and where people

(00:49:33):
who need to heal can come,

(00:49:37):
can feel safe,

(00:49:38):
can stay.

(00:49:39):
And when they have done the work that they need to do, then they can go.

(00:49:45):
Oh, that sounds beautiful.

(00:49:47):
Yeah, I'll go.

(00:49:48):
That's a good answer.

(00:49:52):
I like it.

(00:49:54):
Absolutely.

(00:49:54):
Yeah.

(00:49:57):
Well, if we win the lottery and it's a substantial amount, we'll give you that $10 million.

(00:50:01):
How about that?

(00:50:01):
You can hold us to it.

(00:50:02):
For sure.

(00:50:03):
Then you guys get lifetime passes for all of the services.

(00:50:10):
Gold member subscriptions.

(00:50:14):
So we talked about your business before a little bit.

(00:50:18):
Where can we find you online?

(00:50:20):
Where can people, you know, sign up for an appointment, learn about your services, things of that nature?

(00:50:26):
Where are you out there on the old interwebs?

(00:50:30):
Yeah, so my website really would be the best place.

(00:50:33):
It's www.kurasanajourneys.com.

(00:50:38):
And Kurasana, as I mentioned, is C-U-R-A-S-A-N-A, journeys.com.

(00:50:46):
Uh,

(00:50:46):
the website is the best place because although I have tried doing a little bit of

(00:50:49):
social media marketing and it's just,

(00:50:52):
it almost goes up against the principles of the wellness that I'm trying to kind of

(00:50:56):
build and to share.

(00:50:57):
Like I don't want to be promoting wellness on,

(00:51:01):
you know,

(00:51:01):
highly addictive websites that are as addicting to me as to the people that are

(00:51:05):
using them.

(00:51:06):
And so I've tried my hand on Instagram.

(00:51:08):
You can still find my profile there at Kurasana journeys,

(00:51:11):
uh,

(00:51:11):
but don't expect it to be very up to date or very,

(00:51:14):
uh,

(00:51:16):
You know, yeah, I'm not I'm not going to be promoting stuff there a lot.

(00:51:21):
At least that's that's for now.

(00:51:22):
I want to stay disconnected from that.

(00:51:24):
So the website would be the best place.

(00:51:27):
Awesome.

(00:51:28):
And we've been to your website.

(00:51:29):
It's very pretty.

(00:51:30):
Yeah, you did a good job.

(00:51:32):
Oh, thank you.

(00:51:32):
I appreciate it.

(00:51:33):
Took a lot of work.

(00:51:34):
And yeah, just kind of multiple tries.

(00:51:38):
But it's yeah, I'm happy with where it's at.

(00:51:42):
For sure.

(00:51:43):
Well, we can't thank you enough for joining us.

(00:51:45):
And this has been both educational.

(00:51:47):
Oh, yeah.

(00:51:48):
And honestly, fun.

(00:51:50):
Yeah, yeah.

(00:51:51):
I liked it.

(00:51:51):
Talking about something that,

(00:51:53):
you know,

(00:51:54):
you wouldn't expect,

(00:51:56):
I guess,

(00:51:56):
to be in the realm of mental health.

(00:51:59):
We've been taught that psychedelics are the devil.

(00:52:02):
Yeah, but hearing about it, I mean...

(00:52:06):
i i don't know maybe we talk about this like we have family still in the dc area do

(00:52:11):
you want to go we could go visit and we'll go check out yeah and then we'll have

(00:52:17):
you at on as like a post a post what partum or whatever well if you give birth to

(00:52:28):
yourself as some people do

(00:52:31):
See, he fixed my issue already.

(00:52:35):
There you go.

(00:52:37):
We need you here.

(00:52:38):
We need you here.

(00:52:40):
Thanks so much.

(00:52:42):
Yeah, well, thank you guys.

(00:52:43):
This has been a pleasure.

(00:52:44):
It's been really fun.

(00:52:45):
And thank you for giving me the opportunity to share this with you and your listeners.

(00:52:53):
Thanks for listening to the Unfiltered Union.

(00:52:56):
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(00:52:57):
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