Program Notes
https://www.patreon.com/lorenzohagerty
Guest speakers: Shonagh Home and Sally
Today’s podcast features a conversation between Shonagh Home and a cannabis grower in the State of Washington, where both medical and recreational cannabis are now legal. Among other things, we learn how cannabis can be grown without the use of any chemicals to keep the pests away, thus providing their customers with truly healthy medicine. We also learn about an organization named Certified Natural Cannabis, which is uniting farms that use clean cultivation techniques and that meet or exceed national organic standards. Their mission is to keep cannabis nontoxic and to represent producers and products that use no synthetic chemicals.
Contact Sally at: synesthesia (dot) sally (at) gmail (dot) com
To get up to speed with Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) and blockchain technology, here are some links that may be of interest to you:
Understand the Blockchain in Two Minutes
About “The” DAO
Blockchain Explained, What is Blockchain?
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:19 ►
This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.
00:00:23 ►
And the very first thing that I’d like to do today is to welcome our newest fellow salonner.
00:00:30 ►
Her name is Thea, and she’s only three months old right now.
00:00:34 ►
But that doesn’t mean that she isn’t a part of the salon already, just as her parents are.
00:00:39 ►
I’ve known Thea’s parents, Kodoma and Kevin, for quite a while now.
00:00:44 ►
And although we haven’t been together in person lately,
00:00:47 ►
thoughts of the time that my wife and I stayed with them remain among my favorite memories.
00:00:52 ►
Particularly the night when many of their friends came by for an outdoor feast
00:00:56 ►
with a big fire, music, dancing, and a lot of wonderful conversation.
00:01:01 ►
Whenever I hear the phrase, extended family,
00:01:03 ►
I think of these cool people and still
00:01:06 ►
feel as if I’m one of them. Thea, you have landed in what I think of as one of the most perfect
00:01:12 ►
situations on earth that can be found today. Welcome aboard. We are so very pleased that
00:01:18 ►
you’re here. Also, I’d like to thank fellow salonners Jared G., John R., Fred A., Tabitha P., and Finn B., all of whom made donations to the salon, which are going to be used to help offset some of the expenses associated with these podcasts.
00:01:38 ►
And I thank each and every one of you very much for your help.
00:01:42 ►
Although I haven’t done this very often,
00:01:45 ►
I’ve decided that it’s okay for our guest speaker today to remain anonymous. Why, you ask? Well,
00:01:52 ►
if you are a cannabis grower right now, even in a state where it’s legal to grow cannabis,
00:01:58 ►
you nonetheless still must remain somewhat cautious and more or less keep your head down.
00:02:03 ►
So whenever we can get somebody to
00:02:05 ►
pass along a few things that they’ve learned about growing this important medicine, well,
00:02:10 ►
I think that we should listen. So as we do listen right now to Shona Holmes’ conversation
00:02:16 ►
with the young woman who calls herself Sally, here’s something you may want to keep in mind.
00:02:22 ►
Even if you’re living somewhere right now where it’s still very difficult to make any kind of a connection at all to purchase some cannabis,
00:02:30 ►
you’ll still need to be paying attention as to how that medicine was grown.
00:02:35 ►
For example, would you be willing to eat a peach that had been sprayed several times over with a deadly insecticide?
00:02:42 ►
Even if you wash it well before eating it, well, there’s still going
00:02:45 ►
to be some chemical residue on that peach that you eat. Now think about smoking something that
00:02:51 ►
has been sprayed with these deadly chemicals. Do you really want to toke so badly that you’re
00:02:57 ►
willing to expose your lungs to an attack like that? Like most cannabis aficionados that I know,
00:03:06 ►
an attack like that? Like most cannabis aficionados that I know, I’ll always be willing to pay a premium for outdoor grown and organically raised cannabis. In the long run, I think it’s going to
00:03:12 ►
save a lot of money on future medical bills needed to fight the cancers that chemically
00:03:18 ►
grown products bring to you. Ultimately though, you’re going to have to be the judge of this for
00:03:23 ►
yourself. As you will learn in just a few moments, it’s not impossible to raise some truly healthy plants without the marvels of modern chemistry.
00:03:33 ►
So now let’s join Shona and Sally and learn a little bit more about how to grow truly organic cannabis.
00:03:41 ►
Hey, everybody. Hey everybody, welcome to another conversation between myself, Shana Holm, and another fine
00:03:49 ►
medicine woman who I have met in my travels.
00:03:52 ►
And today I’m going to have a conversation with a very interesting woman who grows medicinal cannabis and grows it in a very refined way with a tremendous attention to
00:04:11 ►
the soil and what is added to the soil to create very potent medicine for people who need it and
00:04:21 ►
also, of course, for recreational users.
00:04:27 ►
And we’re going to call her Sally.
00:04:31 ►
She’s not going to use her real name for a number of reasons. That said, I will provide you with an email,
00:04:35 ►
and you can contact her directly if you have questions.
00:04:40 ►
And so I met Sally.
00:04:42 ►
She attended one of my retreats in the Quinault Rainforest recently, and I was very taken by how. So I’m going to read you her bio, and then we will launch into a conversation here.
00:05:12 ►
And so she says,
00:05:13 ►
I am a psychedelic ambassador, yogini, and friend of the fairies.
00:05:19 ►
After suffering back and brain injuries in 2013,
00:05:23 ►
the process of healing required changing everything about my career and yoga practice I had developed over the prior decade.
00:05:29 ►
I began learning how to cultivate organic cannabis as therapeutic and celebratory medicine.
00:05:35 ►
Cannabis supported my basic and most urgent needs and conspired with many psychotropic medicines in the emotional and spiritual healing that had to take place.
00:05:44 ►
Psychedelics and their stewards are largely responsible for saving my life.
00:05:49 ►
The conversation around understanding consciousness is allowing more of us to participate in our
00:05:53 ►
own research and develop our personal connection with spirituality.
00:05:58 ►
Our opportunity to examine our relationship with cannabis and other sequestered medicines
00:06:02 ►
supports our process of healing the earth and
00:06:05 ►
our relationship with her. I’m committed to supporting others in their journeys, connecting
00:06:10 ►
with plants, spirit, and their own deep truth. I also love being outside, travel, motorcycles,
00:06:17 ►
dancing, and dancing until sunrise. And there is a website that she would like you to know about,
00:06:26 ►
and she’s involved with these folks.
00:06:27 ►
It’s called CertifiedNaturalCannabis.com,
00:06:32 ►
and you can contact Sally at Synesthesia,
00:06:36 ►
which is S-Y-N-E-S-T-H-E-S-I-A,
00:06:40 ►
dot Sally at gmail.com.
00:06:44 ►
So, Sally, welcome.
00:06:49 ►
Thank you.
00:06:49 ►
I’m looking forward to this conversation.
00:06:52 ►
And so, first I’m going to ask you how you got into,
00:06:56 ►
you explained that you had an accident earlier,
00:06:59 ►
but talk about how you came into working with cannabis.
00:07:05 ►
Yeah.
00:07:06 ►
Well, in my early 20s, I had worked with and smoked cannabis just a little bit off and on.
00:07:14 ►
I think a lot less than your average Pacific Northwesterner even.
00:07:21 ►
But after I had these accidents, I came to cannabis as pain relief. Um,
00:07:30 ►
cause that’s the main thing that I had, had heard and understood about it. Um, and I, I knew that it
00:07:38 ►
could be healing for epilepsy and healing for cancer and help with appetite. And, um, and I wasn’t really, I didn’t, I wasn’t
00:07:45 ►
very familiar with the, um, the spirit of plants yet. I had a little bit of familiarity, but not,
00:07:54 ►
um, the like deep, like understanding yet. Um, so, um, yeah, after, after the accidents, I was using cannabis for pain relief
00:08:09 ►
and needed to leave the job I was working at for almost 10 years.
00:08:17 ►
And my partner was a cannabis grower and very versed in psychedelic medicines.
00:08:28 ►
And so he was very supportive in me learning to work with these plants
00:08:34 ►
and learning how to build my personal relationship with them.
00:08:42 ►
Yeah, so it started out just with simple pain, pain relief
00:08:46 ►
and developed into a lot more than that. It’s, it’s definitely been, um, uh, that I think
00:08:53 ►
that the majority of the relationship developed just with being with the plants. Like there’s
00:09:01 ►
this idea that, you know, we’re cultivating plants or growing them.
00:09:09 ►
Um, and you, you build this relationship without even consuming the plant, without even like smoking or eating just by growing or rubbing it on our bodies or whatever it is. Yeah. Um,
00:09:14 ►
and that, and that’s what I really started to notice first is just like, you know, pruning
00:09:20 ►
plants or training plants or like digging in soil or like sprinkling bugs or something like that, um, predatory bugs. Um, and just feeling like I’m not, even if I’m the only person in the
00:09:31 ►
room, like feeling that, like I’m not alone in the room, like feeling like there’s some,
00:09:34 ►
some, something else that’s like sweet and quiet and, um, you know, calming with me there. And
00:09:42 ►
that, that’s sort of how it, how it started.
00:09:49 ►
Interesting. How are you using the cannabis for the pain?
00:09:56 ►
Yeah. Um, I had been on a little bit of a hunt for the right combination. There’s for, for different people, it doesn’t seem like there’s really a, um, that we know of yet,
00:10:01 ►
like a direct, you know, a CBD to THC relationship for every person.
00:10:05 ►
So maybe it’s like maybe two-to-one CBD, THC, or maybe it’s two-to-one the other way.
00:10:13 ►
So I’ve been sort of hunting for what combination might be good for me and my back pain.
00:10:20 ►
Could you explain? I’m sure most listeners know, but some don’t.
00:10:24 ►
What is CBD?
00:10:26 ►
Yeah, CBD is a chemical in the plant, an oil that is produced later in flower along with THC.
00:10:38 ►
There’s all these chemicals that are developing throughout the life of the plant,
00:10:44 ►
and then they sort of evolve into these.
00:10:47 ►
And these are just ones that I’m most familiar with
00:10:49 ►
and people are most commonly familiar with.
00:10:51 ►
But that’s another cool thing about this,
00:10:53 ►
is that we are learning more and more about the different chemicals
00:11:00 ►
and the different oils and compounds.
00:11:02 ►
These are the ones we know the most about right now.
00:11:12 ►
And CBD is associated most with treating pain and, um, THC is associated most with the stony feeling or, um, like getting the munchies or, you know, like the part that is,
00:11:19 ►
um, relaxing or, um, helps you to slow down your thinking. And so those are the differences there. So,
00:11:26 ►
so for me, I was seeking out something for, for my back pain. And I did finally
00:11:31 ►
grew out six seeds and got, I think it was four of them ended up being female and two are male.
00:11:39 ►
And out of those four phenotypes, there might have been three phenotypes there, but out of those four plants, one of them, which I called Dogfather 4,
00:11:48 ►
Dogfather is the name of the strain, and 4 was the number of the seed.
00:11:53 ►
And that one, it didn’t have very extraordinary cannabinoid profile,
00:12:00 ►
but it’s something like 20, 21, 22% THC and something like 0.03 or 0.05 CBD,
00:12:10 ►
which wouldn’t even be considered a CBD strain.
00:12:13 ►
But that specific strain I found to be extremely helpful with my back pain,
00:12:20 ►
almost anesthetizing, so where it would numb my back
00:12:24 ►
and I would actually feel relief
00:12:26 ►
from pain, um, which I had experienced a little bit with higher THC strains to the point where
00:12:34 ►
it’s just like, I’m, I’m more in my head and less in my body, but not that my body is being
00:12:39 ►
relieved from pain. So sort of a different, um, different relationship with that. But, um,
00:12:47 ►
yeah, so, and I found that, and I also find the, um, the dog father to be, if I smoke,
00:12:52 ►
I smoke a little bit, like I’ll take a little couple puffs like throughout the evening or
00:12:56 ►
something to sort of maintain pain. But, um, I’ve also found that if I smoke it more intentionally
00:13:00 ►
and spend time with it, that it’s very, um, very psychedelic and that,
00:13:05 ►
um, like I can lay down and really like have a conversation with my thoughts and, um, I’ll even
00:13:12 ►
have some closed eye visuals with that strain. So it’s definitely my favorite treating pain.
00:13:18 ►
Good for the brain and a little psychedelic experience. That’s really interesting because
00:13:23 ►
you would not necessarily, most people would associate cannabis with psychedelics.
00:13:28 ►
Yeah, yeah.
00:13:31 ►
That’s very interesting.
00:13:32 ►
All right.
00:13:33 ►
So, and how’s your pain now?
00:13:36 ►
It’s still, I still have pain most days.
00:13:39 ►
You do?
00:13:40 ►
Yeah.
00:13:41 ►
And it’s been just about three years.
00:13:51 ►
do. Um, yeah. Uh, and it’s been just about three years, but, um, I have learned to, I was trying for a while unconsciously to, you know, well, I guess first I was, I was very like committed to
00:14:00 ►
doing every single thing that I could. And I still. I still am to treat my back pain.
00:14:08 ►
But it was sort of this, like, dedication to,
00:14:10 ►
I’m going to be 100% better.
00:14:17 ►
And now I have realized, like, I’m not going to be 100% better.
00:14:17 ►
My body is different.
00:14:19 ►
Like, now it’s different. And so, what was the question?
00:14:24 ►
Sorry. That’s okay. No, I just wanted to what was the question? Sorry.
00:14:25 ►
That’s okay.
00:14:26 ►
No, I just wanted to know how your pain was.
00:14:28 ►
Oh, how I’m feeling today.
00:14:29 ►
Yeah.
00:14:29 ►
Yeah.
00:14:29 ►
So in other words, you’re still managing it with the cannabis.
00:14:33 ►
Yeah.
00:14:34 ►
As often as you were initially or?
00:14:37 ►
Um, no, no, it’s a, to, to a lesser degree and less frequent.
00:14:42 ►
Yeah.
00:14:42 ►
Yeah.
00:14:43 ►
Okay. Um, but cannabis now my use with it.
00:14:48 ►
Yeah. I guess maybe like two out of 10 times I’m using cannabis for pain and eight out of 10 times
00:14:53 ►
I’m using it for a change in perspective. Um, I, for, for myself and like my own work I’m doing
00:15:00 ►
on myself, I’m trying to pivot my judgment on myself a lot lately.
00:15:06 ►
And sort of like not this perspective of like needing permission from someone else
00:15:13 ►
or needing like validation from someone else or something like that.
00:15:16 ►
And just sort of like pivoting the view of myself to I am validating myself.
00:15:23 ►
I am giving my own permission, you know, and cannabis really
00:15:26 ►
helps me to slow, slow down those thoughts in it. You know, it, it’s, it, it’s not a secret that it,
00:15:33 ►
it slows your thoughts or puts space between, between your thoughts, but I think it’s what you
00:15:38 ►
do with it and how that plant teaches us to see ourselves and see our thoughts differently.
00:15:43 ►
You know, I can be, be really upset or be in an argument or be feeling judgmental or frustrated or
00:15:49 ►
something and use cannabis and think,
00:15:52 ►
you know,
00:15:52 ►
think about it a completely different way.
00:15:54 ►
Right.
00:15:54 ►
You know,
00:15:54 ►
there’s like the elevation and I think,
00:15:57 ►
um,
00:15:58 ►
the feeling that there’s,
00:15:59 ►
there’s somebody else like showing me a part of myself that,
00:16:02 ►
um,
00:16:04 ►
for that’s,
00:16:04 ►
that’s better, you better, that’s stronger.
00:16:07 ►
Okay, I want to have you elaborate on that in a moment.
00:16:11 ►
But when you were talking about slowing down the thoughts,
00:16:13 ►
that is interesting because I have a dear friend who is a high school dropout
00:16:20 ►
and a scholar of law.
00:16:23 ►
And he’s one of the brightest people I know.
00:16:26 ►
And one thing that he says constantly is,
00:16:29 ►
you’ve got to slow down your thinking.
00:16:33 ►
And that most people are just,
00:16:35 ►
there’s several steps ahead.
00:16:37 ►
The attention span is not real focused
00:16:40 ►
or as focused as it needs to be.
00:16:43 ►
And they’re just too far ahead of themselves.
00:16:46 ►
And that necessity to slow down, which is rough these days because everything is going
00:16:52 ►
so fast.
00:16:53 ►
Mm-hmm.
00:16:55 ►
And at the same time, you know, people think of that, oh, you’re a smoke pot, you’re way
00:17:00 ►
stoned, you know, you’re sort of missing whatever.
00:17:03 ►
So there is a fine line, I would think, you know, you’re sort of missing whatever. So there is a fine line I would think,
00:17:07 ►
you know, in terms of when you speak of slowing down your thought, you’re not talking about
00:17:10 ►
getting like uber stoned. You’re just, you’re sort of using this as a, uh, an assist. Um, well,
00:17:16 ►
okay. Actually, this is what I want you to elaborate on the way you spoke of it at the
00:17:20 ►
retreat and you spoke of her. You feel there is a feminine presence, like a big sister.
00:17:27 ►
Yes, exactly.
00:17:28 ►
Yeah, a gal had asked what she’s like.
00:17:33 ►
And so I was just picturing myself in the room
00:17:37 ►
and working with the plants and training and pruning, like I said.
00:17:42 ►
Yeah, and that feeling is like, it’s like a big
00:17:45 ►
sister. Like I’m, I’m an only child, but I always wanted older siblings to like hang out and protect
00:17:51 ►
me and like bring their cool friends over. And that is the feeling of the cannabis spirit to me
00:17:56 ►
that she is a cool older sibling that brings over her cool friends and, and like, and like shows me interesting things and like makes me,
00:18:06 ►
gives me someone to look up to and shows me how I can be, you know, like here’s, here’s an example
00:18:13 ►
and, and you can, you can live this way or feel this way too. Um, yeah, it, it, she just feels very super loving and super calming and grounded.
00:18:28 ►
I think just friendly, too.
00:18:32 ►
Nothing stern about it.
00:18:34 ►
Just super sweet.
00:18:36 ►
Yeah, that’s very interesting.
00:18:37 ►
You’re deeply connected with this spirit of the cannabis and see it as such. And I, I know, I know this, that these plants and
00:18:48 ►
fungi were the original teachers and they’re ancient, ancient teachers. Yeah. So it’s,
00:18:55 ►
it’s even sweeter that like the feeling of it is something so, um, like youthful and modern too,
00:19:03 ►
you know, like bringing over your cool friends or,
00:19:05 ►
you know, something like that. That’s like, um, you know, using her wisdom to be accessible
00:19:12 ►
and readable and relatable. And so, and the way you use it is very deliberate and focused. And
00:19:19 ►
let’s speak to this. It’s, I think think cannabis is is probably just incredibly overused
00:19:25 ►
and abused and there’s people who just smoke it chronically so where’s that
00:19:33 ►
fine line because you clearly use it regularly you have to to manage the
00:19:38 ►
pain yeah um you know yeah i think that that you had mentioned something about using small amounts of cannabis or getting super stoned.
00:19:50 ►
And I just said the other night that I really was getting good lessons from being super stoned.
00:19:56 ►
I was just sharing that the other night.
00:19:58 ►
And it’s funny because, like, I wouldn’t have thought that.
00:20:01 ►
I wouldn’t have thought that about myself with my brain, and I wouldn’t think that about the sort of cultural view about cannabis use.
00:20:10 ►
But it just removes so much chatter, and I have a lot of chatter in here.
00:20:16 ►
It removes so much chatter where things are slow and easy to see and easy to feel and has like this sweetness around it where it, um,
00:20:31 ►
where it’s not, it’s not difficult to, to, to speak the thought totally opposite of right now.
00:20:40 ►
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Huh. That’s interesting. Very, very, it’s not what I, it’s
00:20:47 ►
not what I would think. And it hasn’t always been like this either. My relationship with cannabis
00:20:51 ►
has changed a lot. And especially the last, um, nine or 12 months or something like that with
00:20:57 ►
the, the, the more plants that I work with, the more cannabis changes for me. And I feel like
00:21:02 ►
she helps channel in other plant teachers also. Like she’s very,
00:21:07 ►
like has a, has quite an affinity for other plants too. And like helps bring in those messages,
00:21:13 ►
even if it’s not, you know, even if I’m just working with cannabis and I’m not maybe using
00:21:17 ►
cannabis in a mushroom ceremony or something else, it’s still very, like the lessons are there,
00:21:21 ►
you know, like the doors open. Yeah. Well, you’re very clearly connected. I mean, you’re, you’re growing plants in the basement. Yeah. Gorgeous plants in the
00:21:30 ►
basement. And let’s talk to speak to that because you and your partner are growing cannabis with
00:21:37 ►
extraordinary soil. You don’t use harmful pesticide chemicals. Yeah. So talk about how you are growing this plant.
00:21:47 ►
Yeah, so we grow in soil with compost and rock dust and crab meal
00:21:54 ►
and caranja cake and these kinds of things.
00:21:57 ►
And we rely on the biology of the plant to eat when it’s hungry.
00:22:02 ►
So a lot, and I’m surprised a lot of people don’t realize,
00:22:08 ►
but most cannabis is not grown in soil.
00:22:10 ►
It’s grown in either a hydroponic system
00:22:12 ►
or it’s grown in something like peat or coca coir
00:22:17 ►
and ionic or mineral liquid nutrients are poured on.
00:22:22 ►
So when you’re watering your plant, you’re also feeding your
00:22:25 ►
plant. And because the minerals are soluble, the plant just eats it. It’s forced to eat it,
00:22:33 ►
so it’s forced feeding the plant. And so this way instead, just like outside, we let the plant eat
00:22:40 ►
when it wants to. And we find that, um, you know, I think that, I think people agree that
00:22:45 ►
organic cannabis is, is tastier. It smells better. It’s nicer. It’s beautiful. You know, you can,
00:22:51 ►
you can certainly grow beautiful, tasty cannabis, um, with mineral nutrients, but, um, I do think
00:22:57 ►
that people agree that it is better if you, if you don’t, if you just let, let the plant do what it
00:23:01 ►
does, you know? Um, and so, yeah, so we rely on the plant to feed itself.
00:23:06 ►
We don’t have a huge waste stream.
00:23:08 ►
I was thinking recently it would be very cool to take a photo
00:23:10 ►
of all of the waste that comes out of one crop
00:23:14 ►
because it’s basically nothing.
00:23:17 ►
We don’t throw away any, we don’t throw away the soil.
00:23:20 ►
We reuse it.
00:23:20 ►
We re-amend it.
00:23:22 ►
We don’t lose any water.
00:23:24 ►
We use a mechanical irrigation system.
00:23:26 ►
And so they’re like these little carrots, they’re tensiometers that sense the moisture content of
00:23:33 ►
the soil and hold it at perfect moisture content all the time, which is nice because then I can
00:23:38 ►
go on a vacation. And then the plants will take care of themselves while we’re gone.
00:23:49 ►
And we also grow in beds instead of pots,
00:23:53 ►
so that will allow for the plants can just keep growing.
00:23:55 ►
They have all of the food that they need in the soil,
00:24:02 ►
and it’s easier to fill out the light footprint doing indoor growing.
00:24:06 ►
We base it off of footage of the light footprint doing indoor growing. Um, we base it off of footage of the light footprint and, um,
00:24:15 ►
yeah, in soil mechanical irrigation. Uh, and not a single chemical, not a single chemical needed.
00:24:19 ►
Oh, you talked about predator bugs. Yeah, we, yeah, we buy predator bugs instead of using pesticides. Um, so we order bugs, um, from a friend who has a bug company and he gives great bug advice.
00:24:29 ►
Um, what kind of bugs?
00:24:31 ►
Uh, so there, we use mites and then also like tiny beetles.
00:24:35 ►
Um, they have a new name now, but the name I’m most familiar with is Atheta coriarea.
00:24:42 ►
Okay.
00:24:42 ►
And they’re also called the rove beetle. And they’re
00:24:46 ►
cute. They’re, they’re little, um, they’re tiny little guys. You can, you can still see them
00:24:49 ►
there. Um, they fly around in the dark and, um, they eat all kinds of mites and, um, they eat,
00:24:55 ►
uh, root aphids, which is a big problem for a lot of growers that don’t have rove beetles.
00:25:01 ►
Okay. Um, we’ve had root aphid populations before and fungus gnat populations
00:25:07 ►
before and then we introduced the bugs the the rogue beetle and they’re gone totally and then
00:25:13 ►
maybe we’ll see another bloom and then the rogue beetles come in so they’ll naturalize
00:25:16 ►
in the environment which is cool so it’s like a it’s an actual kind of enclosed biological
00:25:21 ►
ecosystem yeah um with the bugs.
00:25:29 ►
And then we also get tiny little mites that are called cucumerus,
00:25:33 ►
and they’re almost invisible to the naked eye,
00:25:37 ►
but they come out of these little sachets that we hang in the plants,
00:25:38 ►
and they crawl out when they’re big enough.
00:25:43 ►
Inside the sachet, they’re either eating a mite that eats mold,
00:25:45 ►
or they’re eating the mold until they’re big enough, anyway they crawl to this tiny pinhole and then they go and they crawl around the plants
00:25:49 ►
and eat any bad guys that are that might cause causes problems they eat um they eat spider mites
00:25:55 ►
and broad mites and russet mites all the big the big guys that’s fantastic yeah it’s very cool and
00:26:01 ►
it’s exciting too we have a um a couple of microscopes that we use to scope for tiny microscopic mites,
00:26:07 ►
mostly broad mites because they’re the big scary guys in the cannabis industry.
00:26:12 ►
And we’ll find the cucumaris and find the mites cruising around on the leaves,
00:26:18 ►
and they’re fast and these clear little guys.
00:26:20 ►
It’s really cool.
00:26:20 ►
It’s just fun to watch them.
00:26:22 ►
I’m like, oh, no, it’s a bug.
00:26:23 ►
Oh, it’s a predator bug.
00:26:30 ►
That’s just brilliant to watch them. I’m like, oh no, it’s a bug. Oh, it’s a predator bug. That’s just brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Because there are so many growers that grow with pesticides and chemicals. And then I was in Shasta this past weekend and
00:26:37 ►
the friends I was visiting were talking about the cannabis growers there that are doing tremendous
00:26:41 ►
damage to the environment and they’re clear cutting
00:26:45 ►
forests and they’re growing these plants and they’re throwing pesticides and chemicals
00:26:49 ►
everywhere and they’re causing tremendous damage.
00:26:52 ►
Yeah.
00:26:52 ►
Killing salmon.
00:26:53 ►
A lot of the, um, rivers in, um, in Northern California, um, grass valley area, like a
00:27:01 ►
lot of the, there’s a, there’s a lot of pollution in the rivers down there.
00:27:04 ►
There’s a lot of, um, yeah, people just, you know, they don’t know what to do. I think a
00:27:08 ►
lot of people come to cannabis because, um, they want to make money, you know, it’s money. It’s,
00:27:13 ►
it’s, you don’t have, you know, you’re not allowed to pay taxes on it. You can’t pay
00:27:16 ►
federal tax on a scheduled substance. Right. So it’s like, Oh, that’s a great idea. You know,
00:27:21 ►
like we’ll plant 99 plants outside in Northern California and we’ll make a bunch of money. And oh, you’ve bugs like, you know, if, if you’d ever
00:27:29 ►
grown a vegetable before, if you ever grow a plant before, like, um, you, you have a little
00:27:36 ►
bit of background to know what to do, but I think a lot of people just come in and they want to make
00:27:41 ►
money and they, and they don’t know what to to do and they end up spraying horrible carcinogenic pesticides on these beautiful plants. And then they sell it at
00:27:52 ►
dispensaries and call it medicine. And then people who are actually sick, you know, I mean,
00:27:58 ►
we know that a lot of people go into dispensaries, you know, like they get headaches or they rolled
00:28:02 ►
their ankle or it’s, you know, it’s a it’s a small thing. And, um, and people like to self-medicate for those ailments in other ways
00:28:10 ►
too. You know, they might be treating, they might be, they’re probably treating something that’s not
00:28:14 ►
the ailment that they got their prescription for, which that’s okay. Um, but you know,
00:28:21 ►
there are people who are going in who are sick, who do have cancer, who do have epilepsy,
00:28:29 ►
But there are people who are going in who are sick, who do have cancer, who do have epilepsy, and they are smoking these chemicals.
00:28:32 ►
And we don’t know what happens yet.
00:28:43 ►
But I do witness people who are big into hash oil or BHO, and you get this horrible cough. And I don’t think that smoking oil is bad if the oil has been processed in a clean way.
00:28:49 ►
And especially with treating cancer epilepsy, I think that that’s a great delivery method is to vaporize oil.
00:28:57 ►
But not if it’s been, you know, not if you have, like, watered Eagle 20 into your plants that has some outrageous half-life and never goes
00:29:06 ►
away in your soil. Anytime that you’re, that you’re there, you know, like spring avid and forbid,
00:29:11 ►
these are, these are nasties that are not even okay for food. They’re not even sprayed on food
00:29:15 ►
crops. They’re ornamental. So yeah, it’s, and a lot of people just don’t realize. And it’s like, what do you do? If you have this, you know, 10-week or more investment into a crop,
00:29:31 ►
are you going to just cut your plants down?
00:29:32 ►
People don’t do that.
00:29:33 ►
They don’t really cut their plants down ever.
00:29:36 ►
They spray them with nasty chemicals to save their money, you know?
00:29:40 ►
Right.
00:29:41 ►
So there’s a sort of bummer, uh, cultural pressure on that also, you know,
00:29:47 ►
like we’re trying to make money, so we can’t, can’t sacrifice, but it’s like you’re sacrificing
00:29:51 ►
people’s health, you know? And finally this is being talked about, you know, there’s been a lot
00:29:56 ►
of articles in, in the stranger, in the Oregonian and talking about pesticides finally now, you know,
00:30:02 ►
and there’s been a lot of people getting busted in Colorado and
00:30:05 ►
a couple of companies locally here in Seattle who are, who are getting in trouble too, that
00:30:10 ►
just have outrageous, you can look online, the list of things and the parts per million
00:30:15 ►
that they’re finding in their, in their hash oil or on their flowers.
00:30:18 ►
And it’s just outrageous.
00:30:19 ►
Like my honey and I were doing some math to try to figure out, like looking at the application rate of these chemicals and then looking at
00:30:27 ►
the residue of the chemicals that they found in the flower.
00:30:30 ►
And we’re like,
00:30:31 ►
how much are you spraying on these plants?
00:30:33 ►
Like it’s way above the label rate for something that’s an ornamental.
00:30:36 ►
It’s just,
00:30:36 ►
it’s really shocking.
00:30:38 ►
And,
00:30:38 ►
um,
00:30:39 ►
and people should know about it.
00:30:40 ►
It’s dangerous.
00:30:41 ►
Yeah.
00:30:41 ►
And it’s,
00:30:42 ►
and it’s not,
00:30:43 ►
um,
00:30:43 ►
it’s not a good way to treat our bodies. It’s not a good way to treat
00:30:46 ►
the plant or the earth. It doesn’t have to be done like this. And I think that we, as cannabis
00:30:54 ►
growers, we can change the way that culture views cannabis and we can change the way that we are
00:31:02 ►
treating the earth. We have this opportunity as a new
00:31:06 ►
sect of agriculture to change change how plants are grown you know like if everyone grew in soil
00:31:11 ►
and stopped spraying spraying with the nasty chemicals and started using bugs you know like
00:31:17 ►
we could be growing more food this way organic could be the new standard instead of the alternative
00:31:24 ►
you know like maybe we were talking about like label the conventional food like i just like my organic could be the new standard instead of the alternative.
00:31:28 ►
You know, like maybe we were talking about, like label the conventional food.
00:31:30 ►
Like my food should be organic.
00:31:30 ►
That makes sense.
00:31:32 ►
You know, like label the other stuff.
00:31:33 ►
Yeah.
00:31:36 ►
Well, it’s funny because we call it organic, but organic is the way it’s been.
00:31:37 ►
Right.
00:31:42 ►
Essentially, that’s the way you properly grow that we’ve always done. And so these pesticides, that is all very new, pretty much since World War I.
00:31:49 ►
And they turned all the World War I, the leftover munitions into pesticides and fertilizers.
00:31:56 ►
And it boggles the mind.
00:31:58 ►
I mean, when you think of, like, there’s no common sense to that whatsoever.
00:32:03 ►
So, and I should have said, well, you mentioned Seattle because we are in Washington State.
00:32:07 ►
And so it is legal to grow cannabis here.
00:32:11 ►
Well, according to the state, well, explain that as well because there’s some caveats there as there always are.
00:32:18 ►
There are a lot.
00:32:19 ►
It’s a very long story.
00:32:20 ►
I heard a great lawyer at the Northwest Cannabis Classic telling the story of Washington’s legalization and black market, gray market story. I heard a great lawyer at the Northwest Cannabis Classic telling the story
00:32:25 ►
of Washington’s legalization and black market, gray market story. And it was excellent, but
00:32:30 ►
I can’t tell the whole thing. In this state, we have both medical and recreational. Recreational
00:32:39 ►
502 is still pretty new. I want to say we’ve had it for, I think it’ll be two years in December
00:32:46 ►
or maybe three now. Um, but the, but as a medical state, um, that’s been going on a long,
00:32:54 ►
long time. It’s sort of just been wild west. Anybody can get a prescription and there’s a,
00:32:59 ►
there was a recommendation on plant count with the Washington state prescription. So
00:33:03 ►
you can have recommended
00:33:05 ►
15 plants or recommended whatever, however many plants. The average person can. Yes. Okay. Yeah.
00:33:11 ►
With the, with the medical, with the medical prescription. Okay. So, you know, you go to,
00:33:16 ►
you go to one of the cannabis doctors and they write you the prescription and you hang it on
00:33:20 ►
the wall and outside of where you’re’re growing, and that’s fine.
00:33:28 ►
And up until recently, you could also have collective gardens, so you can stack.
00:33:35 ►
I think what they changed last summer was up to four prescriptions together to have a collective garden.
00:33:36 ►
Okay.
00:33:39 ►
So you could have 60 plants in one place. And so the legislation around that has been changing almost,
00:33:45 ►
it’s been changing a lot, very frequently and quickly.
00:33:50 ►
And come July of this year, you will not be able to have collective gardens
00:34:00 ►
or basically grow your own.
00:34:03 ►
I think that the last thing I heard was,
00:34:05 ►
I think for plants, and then you have to also register with the state in order to grow your
00:34:10 ►
own medicine. Um, and there, and something else, the last I heard about recreational,
00:34:17 ►
if you’re a medical patient who does not grow, then you still need to go into a recreational
00:34:21 ►
store. Um, and there’s some kind of like tax discount.
00:34:25 ►
You either get a tax refund or you don’t have to pay tax.
00:34:28 ►
So,
00:34:28 ►
which I think is kind of a bummer,
00:34:30 ►
you know,
00:34:30 ►
to have maybe like maybe grandma with cancer go into the rec stores,
00:34:34 ►
which are pretty,
00:34:35 ►
a lot of them are pretty nice.
00:34:37 ►
Oh,
00:34:37 ►
and then they’re not allowed to speak to any of the medicinal.
00:34:39 ►
That’s right.
00:34:40 ►
So they couldn’t say,
00:34:42 ►
well,
00:34:42 ►
this strain is particularly effective for that kind of cancer.
00:34:46 ►
Or this is if you suffer from epileptic seizures.
00:34:49 ►
This strain would be.
00:34:50 ►
So they’re not allowed to say that anymore.
00:34:52 ►
Yeah.
00:34:52 ►
For recreational, you’re not allowed to give people medical advice.
00:34:55 ►
Right, right, right.
00:34:56 ►
But even to simply say this strain is efficacious for that.
00:35:01 ►
Right.
00:35:02 ►
Yeah.
00:35:03 ►
There’s a maxim of law.
00:35:01 ►
Efficacious for that.
00:35:01 ►
Right.
00:35:04 ►
Yeah, there’s a maxim of law.
00:35:09 ►
I study these maxims because every judge knows their maxims.
00:35:11 ►
That’s the foundation of law.
00:35:17 ►
Favors from government often carry with them enhanced measures of regulation. And there is another maxim that says,
00:35:21 ►
he who accepts the benefit must also bear the disadvantage.
00:35:26 ►
And so here we have the government getting involved in this.
00:35:29 ►
Now, it’s an interesting conversation because, like those growers in California
00:35:35 ►
who are destroying the environment, you know, there needs to be some kind of regulation here.
00:35:43 ►
At the same time, I think also we’ve got, as we always do,
00:35:47 ►
outside interest, corporate interest,
00:35:50 ►
because this is ultimately big money.
00:35:54 ►
And that, unfortunately, becomes the bottom line.
00:35:58 ►
And cannabis, as we know, is so highly medicinal
00:36:01 ►
and also can be a very spiritual experience as well for people, just
00:36:08 ►
on many, many levels.
00:36:10 ►
And so we’ve got the state getting their mitts involved, and the state is really a corporate
00:36:14 ►
body.
00:36:15 ►
Yeah, and too, even in the sort of grower community, what I’m seeing a little bit is our folks who are saying, who are
00:36:27 ►
trying to get pesticides approved for use. And there’s some, what I will call lobbyist
00:36:37 ►
organizations that are working to make that easier because it’s, because it has such a, uh, history of,
00:36:46 ►
of just reaching for the, you know, nasty bottle buying the counter, um,
00:36:52 ►
that, that they’re, they’re lobbying to make that legal. And so what we’re trying to do with
00:36:57 ►
certified natural cannabis is say, Hey, you don’t have to do it that way. Like just hold the phone
00:37:03 ►
for a second. Like, let’s, let’s just learn.
00:37:05 ►
There’s a,
00:37:06 ►
you know,
00:37:06 ►
a tiny bit of a learning curve and then,
00:37:09 ►
you know,
00:37:09 ►
you can grow a beautiful medicine that’s clean,
00:37:11 ►
that’s safe,
00:37:11 ►
it’s safe for the environment and people.
00:37:13 ►
Um,
00:37:14 ►
and healing.
00:37:15 ►
Yeah.
00:37:16 ►
Ultimately.
00:37:16 ►
Yeah.
00:37:17 ►
So your partner has been a regular speaker at CannaCon,
00:37:20 ►
which is a conference.
00:37:22 ►
Yeah.
00:37:22 ►
Yeah.
00:37:23 ►
Can you say his name or,
00:37:24 ►
or do you choose?
00:37:25 ►
Oh, I think that we might want to leave it out for now.
00:37:28 ►
Okay, we’ll leave it out for now.
00:37:29 ►
That’s fine.
00:37:30 ►
But if anybody does want help growing organically, definitely check out that website,
00:37:37 ►
CertifiedNaturalCannabis.com, and send an email over.
00:37:40 ►
And we would love to give any information that we can to help people keep cannabis non-toxic.
00:37:45 ►
Yeah, so talk about that website.
00:37:47 ►
So that’s all of this kind of information on how to get it.
00:37:50 ►
Yeah, it’s still like, and you’ll tell by looking at the website,
00:37:54 ►
it’s still really new.
00:37:56 ►
But that’s the goal is to have consulting services available for people
00:38:01 ►
for biological horticulture for, you know, safe cannabis growing.
00:38:06 ►
Um, and, uh, so is that, is that your partners involved with that and a couple of other folks
00:38:14 ►
as well? Yeah. Okay, great. So experts in this area of growing cannabis. Yeah. Organically.
00:38:21 ►
Cleanly. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Okay. And then you have different
00:38:26 ►
strains obviously that you guys grow and you have, uh, you gave me one, I haven’t worked with it yet,
00:38:33 ►
but that is a psychedelic strain. So speak, speak to that. You talked earlier about,
00:38:40 ►
is that the strain you were speaking to earlier? i think that maybe before i did share the dog father with you um the one from just a couple weekends ago was grape ape okay yeah and
00:38:52 ►
that and that is it’s pretty strong um thc but the grape ape plant the the strains do have they
00:39:03 ►
each have a little different vibe growing them too.
00:39:06 ►
You know, I think that there’s like the cannabis, the mama cannabis spirit in all the plants. And
00:39:11 ►
then she sort of like will express her personality a little bit different in each strain. Um, you
00:39:16 ►
know, like sometimes I’m, I’m training a plant and, um, you know, it’s so lanky and so viney
00:39:23 ►
and I’m like, Oh man, you know, like this is, this is a totally different creature, you know, it’s so lanky and so viney. And I’m like, oh, man, you know, like this is a totally different creature.
00:39:27 ►
You know, it’s a totally different vibe.
00:39:29 ►
But the grapefruit plant, they grow a little bit squattier.
00:39:32 ►
They’re more indica-like plant.
00:39:35 ►
The indica and the sativa, a lot of people associate with the effect of smoking.
00:39:42 ►
But most strains are hybrid now.
00:39:47 ►
of smoking. But most strains are hybrid now. There are very few that are either really,
00:39:54 ►
really leaning one side or the other. So usually when I use the words Indica or Sativa, I’m talking about the plant itself. What does it look like? What are its characteristics?
00:39:59 ►
And so grape ape is one that’s pretty squat. It’s really leafy. It’s produces a lot of dense buds. Um, that one,
00:40:07 ►
I don’t find to be particularly psychedelic. Um, I do find it to be strong in, um, having a,
00:40:17 ►
having perspective in my mind. Um, and then if you smoke a lot of it, I definitely find it to be,
00:40:23 ►
um, helpful with sleep.
00:40:26 ►
It’s definitely a nighttime.
00:40:27 ►
Yeah.
00:40:27 ►
A nighttime one. Which would also be an association with an indica plant.
00:40:33 ►
Okay.
00:40:33 ►
Yeah.
00:40:34 ►
Okay.
00:40:35 ►
All right.
00:40:35 ►
And then the psychedelic, more of some psychedelic.
00:40:37 ►
Yeah.
00:40:37 ►
And that’s the dog father I found.
00:40:39 ►
That is the dog father.
00:40:39 ►
Yeah.
00:40:40 ►
Okay.
00:40:40 ►
Yeah.
00:40:40 ►
And that too, just like the ratio for treating pain or the ratio for what to eat,
00:40:49 ►
like if you’re making a butter or something, I think will be individual too.
00:40:54 ►
Of course, of course, yeah.
00:40:56 ►
Because everyone’s system is different.
00:40:57 ►
Although I have heard from a couple other people they find the dog father to be psychedelic.
00:41:01 ►
Okay, and then also also want you to speak to
00:41:12 ►
Pairing cannabis uh-huh with for instance mushroom. Yeah, okay, and how that works and I’ll just say quickly I
00:41:15 ►
worked with the mushroom one evening
00:41:20 ►
With someone and then and I don’t really smoke pot, you know Just every once in a while And so the following night I had back pain from, uh,
00:41:26 ►
an injury I had. And a friend of mine had given me these cannabis capsules and it was like a sort
00:41:35 ►
of a cannabis oil butter or something like this, but in capsules. And, and, uh, this was our friend
00:41:41 ►
from the farm who runs it.
00:41:47 ►
And so, and he’s an old guy.
00:41:52 ►
He’s been doing, working with cannabis for, gosh, probably 40 years or more.
00:41:55 ►
But he said, yeah, I usually take about six of these.
00:41:57 ►
So I figured, okay, I’ll be good with three.
00:41:59 ►
Because he gave me a few.
00:42:01 ►
Because I’d hurt my back at the farm.
00:42:05 ►
So anyway, so, okay, so the night prior, I worked with mushrooms. So then this night, all I wanted to do was go to sleep early. And so I popped
00:42:11 ►
three of these pills and then my eyes, maybe an, I don’t know, 45 minutes later, I’m seeing
00:42:17 ►
shimmering images, you know, like I’m on the mushroom and then I’m like buzzing. And I was like, wait a minute, this was last night, not tonight.
00:42:28 ►
And then I was like so stoned, so stoned.
00:42:33 ►
It was ridiculous.
00:42:34 ►
I was like, God damn it, I’m going to fall asleep.
00:42:36 ►
And I was having images, like mushroom imagery.
00:42:41 ►
And so I assumed somehow maybe the mushroom was still in my system and then the
00:42:48 ►
cannabis activated it. And then I had this experience in Belize a number of years ago,
00:42:54 ►
well, maybe three years ago, where I had done the mushroom and then towards the end, my friend
00:43:01 ►
gave me a little cannabis to smoke. and then it brought back, it deepened
00:43:07 ►
the mushroom journey. I mean, it was ending, but then it sort of began again. So yeah,
00:43:11 ►
I want to hear your thoughts on all of that. Yeah, I think that that is directly in line
00:43:15 ►
with my experience and the experience of others. Yeah. Yeah, even it, so even if you’re not directly pairing, like your, your couple of
00:43:26 ►
evening example, I do think that cannabis helps sort of open that door to, to other or plant
00:43:34 ►
plants or fungi. Um, uh, I think that, um, it’s, it’s really, it’s really surprising.
00:43:44 ►
It’s really surprising how it feels like not,
00:43:47 ►
not the cannabis spirit, how it really feels like, Oh, were you working with this? Or,
00:43:51 ►
Oh, are you interested in this? You know, or like, let me show you this thing. And it doesn’t,
00:43:55 ►
it doesn’t at all feel like the cannabis spirit, you know, but I think that she’s there and she’s
00:44:01 ►
holding open the door and that that’s what it’s like, you know? Um, cause I think that she’s there and she’s holding open the door and that that’s what it’s like, you know? Yeah. Um, cause I think that she just likes, you know, wants, wants people to, to work with
00:44:10 ►
the plant spirits, you know?
00:44:12 ►
Yes.
00:44:13 ►
I think it would be really fascinating to study the, the, the deep science beneath that
00:44:18 ►
as well.
00:44:18 ►
Yeah.
00:44:19 ►
It just seems that of course the cannabis really should for the most part, relax the
00:44:24 ►
body if you’re working with that kind of strain.
00:44:27 ►
And so it relaxes, but slows down the mind.
00:44:31 ►
And then you add something like the mushroom.
00:44:34 ►
It makes sense to me that it would then deepen that experience for you because it’s almost like you’re that much more relaxed and receptive.
00:44:42 ►
Yeah, absolutely.
00:44:45 ►
much more relaxed and receptive. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes,
00:44:53 ►
sometimes if I, if I will use cannabis at the end of a mushroom journey, um, yeah, it will either, either bring it or like open it back up for me or it’ll really, really slow down and then shift.
00:44:59 ►
It’ll be like, okay, it’s time to close out. You know, like we’re gonna, we’re gonna close
00:45:03 ►
out the night, like ceremonies ending. And now we’re going to like shift you back into, you know, this other
00:45:08 ►
realm of being. Um, but it’s, it seems very, um, not programmable, but like, like she’s listening
00:45:17 ►
to what you need. It feels like, yeah. Yeah. And I have spoken with some people who swear by the soft cannabis that relaxes you, except
00:45:27 ►
for the indica, correct?
00:45:29 ►
Yeah, that would be indica.
00:45:30 ►
Or more of indica.
00:45:32 ►
Yeah.
00:45:33 ►
Yeah.
00:45:33 ►
Yeah.
00:45:34 ►
Who said, oh yeah, at the end of, you know, when I’m finished with Mush and Journey, I
00:45:37 ►
just smoke just a little and then it just really relaxes me.
00:45:41 ►
Whereas I usually just take a spoonful of peanut butter.
00:45:45 ►
So I let the protein and the fat just sort of calm my nervous system. But this one’s sort of
00:45:50 ►
by the cannabis as do other people who I’ve spoken with about that. So that’s really interesting.
00:45:58 ►
And then what about, I suppose you could put it with, it’s interesting because I’m not
00:46:04 ►
a big, I’m not sure how I feel about a lot of these it’s interesting because I’m not a big
00:46:05 ►
I’m not sure how I feel about a lot of these
00:46:07 ►
sort of combining, I hear people combining
00:46:08 ►
ayahuasca with a mushroom
00:46:10 ►
I’ve not done that
00:46:13 ►
I’m not drawn to that
00:46:15 ►
but I’m just wondering
00:46:17 ►
in terms of
00:46:18 ►
gosh, combining cannabis
00:46:21 ►
with ayahuasca, I’m sure people
00:46:23 ►
have, smoking at the end of a journey.
00:46:26 ►
Yeah, I think that in a lot of traditions,
00:46:31 ►
working with ayahuasca, that is definitely not embraced.
00:46:36 ►
I would not think so.
00:46:38 ►
But I have talked to a couple of people.
00:46:51 ►
a couple of people. I have not used cannabis during an ayahuasca ceremony experience, but I have before, which I found to be very helpful. So before, how soon before? A few hours.
00:46:58 ►
Okay. Or maybe two. Okay. Yeah. Which, you know, I was doing as an experiment and, and I thought a lot about this
00:47:06 ►
because when, um, getting ready for ayahuasca ceremony, you know, like I’ll adjust my diet to,
00:47:12 ►
to what I think is, is needed at the time. I’m not really strict about it. I used to be super
00:47:17 ►
strict about it and I’m not, I’m not now. Um, but I thought a lot about, you know, if,
00:47:22 ►
if cannabis is growing in the jungle,
00:47:25 ►
it would probably be in the brew, you know?
00:47:28 ►
And I think that, like, knowing that cannabis loves other plants.
00:47:34 ►
And, you know, there is sort of like this idea existing around,
00:47:40 ►
and from, you know, born of personal experience,
00:47:43 ►
that ayahuasca is sort of a jealous
00:47:45 ►
plant. Yes. I’ve heard that. Which I don’t, I don’t like to say that. I’m, uh, I don’t think,
00:47:51 ►
I mean, I think it really depends on the work that you’re, you’re doing with ayahuasca, but,
00:47:58 ►
um, I found it in ceremony. I, what I’ve heard from people who have smoked cannabis during ceremony,
00:48:06 ►
that it does get in the way.
00:48:08 ►
It does interrupt ayahuasca.
00:48:14 ►
But you can communicate with these plants, especially in the ayahuasca or psychedelic space,
00:48:18 ►
where you can say, okay, who are you?
00:48:19 ►
What are you doing?
00:48:21 ►
Or what is this experience in having?
00:48:26 ►
And then from this lovely shaman woman I talked to,
00:48:30 ►
she said, you know, cannabis answered and said, oh, here I am in cannabis, you know.
00:48:34 ►
And she was like, all right, well, you know, right now I’m working with ayahuasca.
00:48:36 ►
And cannabis said, okay, and just moved over. And everything shifted.
00:48:38 ►
So I think that taking our place as having a conversation with these plants
00:48:48 ►
and not making too many rules about it
00:48:51 ►
and just investigating what it is for ourselves is the right answer, I think.
00:48:55 ►
As long as we know that it’s not dangerous, and we do,
00:49:00 ►
that asking the plants about each other and asking the plant about yourself
00:49:04 ►
and see how that works for you and your relationship with the plant. that, you know, asking the plants about each other and like asking plant about yourself and,
00:49:05 ►
and see what that, see how that works for you and your relationship with the plant.
00:49:09 ►
Cause that’s like, you know, no one else can tell you about that.
00:49:13 ►
Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I see all of these substances really as like a portal
00:49:18 ►
that you cross and so depends on your intention and the set and setting that you’ve created.
00:49:27 ►
And, and do you incorporate any kind of ritual when you work with cannabis at times?
00:49:34 ►
Yeah. At times, if I, you know, like if I am struggling and I want to go to cannabis for
00:49:39 ►
this shift in judgment or shift in perspective, you know, like I ask her, you know, like,
00:49:44 ►
I don’t like feeling
00:49:45 ►
this way. Like help me see myself from a different perspective or help me see this thing. Um, in,
00:49:52 ►
um, when I am transplanting plants or harvesting plants, that is, um, also has some ritual around
00:50:01 ►
it. Um, I, I really 90% of the time, I really love transplanting plants.
00:50:08 ►
If they’ve gotten kind of big and out of control, it’s like a physical, you know,
00:50:11 ►
like, all right, me and you, girl, we’re going to plant you in this bed.
00:50:14 ►
Maybe it’ll be kind of hard, but we’ll get you there kind of situation.
00:50:18 ►
But most of the time, it’s great.
00:50:20 ►
It’s really lovely.
00:50:20 ►
I like it.
00:50:21 ►
I like when I pop them out of, like, when the plants are in veg,
00:50:24 ►
we’ll transplant them a couple of times in different pots, in bigger pots,
00:50:26 ►
so they have more soil, so they have more food.
00:50:29 ►
And then usually they go from, like, a six-inch pot or a three-gallon pot into the beds.
00:50:33 ►
Okay.
00:50:33 ►
And so, you know, I love taking them out of the pot and, like, seeing their beautiful roots
00:50:38 ►
and they’re all these big, pearly, like, thick roots, and they just look cool.
00:50:42 ►
And it’s like, you know, you see the top of the plant and the foliage,
00:50:50 ►
and you see all, you know, like this network of, of roots. It’s like, um, you know, the plant’s brain or something. Um, so I, I love that. I love to
00:50:57 ►
be in touch with the plant and make that ritual when I do that. And then also when, um,
00:51:06 ►
plant and make that ritual when I do that. And then also when, um, when I harvest, I always say,
00:51:12 ►
I usually get a couple of helpers, um, cause it’s, it’s a big job. It’s a long day. Um,
00:51:15 ►
and I’ll get a couple, a couple of helpers and, you know, we thank the plants and we tell them they’re beautiful and that they’ve been awesome. And, you know, like, thank you for growing. Like
00:51:19 ►
you look great. You smell beautiful. Like, um, please, you know, do go out into the world and do your,
00:51:27 ►
do your best work. You know, whether it’s like, whether someone ends up with this cannabis and
00:51:32 ►
they’re relaxing at home after work by themselves, or they’re bonding with their lover or they’re
00:51:40 ►
hanging out with their family and smoking a joint and eating some snacks and like watching a TV
00:51:45 ►
show. That’s awesome. Like I want all those things to happen with cannabis that I grow,
00:51:50 ►
you know, or, um, you know, we’ve also grown some, the higher CBD varieties and, you know,
00:51:56 ►
like I, I talked to the plant and, you know, say, go out and find the people who need you,
00:52:01 ►
you know, like be, be good medicine. I know you will,
00:52:05 ►
you know? Yeah. I’m sitting here thinking, you know, this really, we’re speaking really of
00:52:11 ►
tutelary spirits and that’s long been understood in cultures all over, right. Who have worked with
00:52:19 ►
plants and fungi are able to access essentially a tutelary spirit.
00:52:26 ►
Yeah.
00:52:27 ►
Yeah.
00:52:27 ►
I, um, I didn’t hear much about cannabis being a teacher plant from others, but it sort of,
00:52:34 ►
it occurred to me one time, you know, like I, um, um, had been working with ayahuasca and growing cannabis and realizing that, you know, the person I want to become, I am becoming that person by growing these plants.
00:52:54 ►
And becoming and being a healer already happened because I get to work with these plants.
00:53:01 ►
I get to work with these plants.
00:53:05 ►
And it was very, like, you know, just pretty recently, you know,
00:53:09 ►
like surprising me and then seeing where I am, you know, and seeing that I get to have this super cool gig
00:53:13 ►
where I get to be with beautiful, beautiful plants
00:53:16 ►
and, like, feel the love of earth directly, you know, in my work.
00:53:23 ►
And so I know you have uh essentially a mediator a fellow
00:53:27 ►
right he he sells your plants for you to the various dispensaries and and uh places around
00:53:34 ►
here we are in washington have you received feedback from people who have used the you
00:53:41 ►
your cannabis medicinally for various ailments? I would love to hear.
00:53:46 ►
The first one that comes to mind is probably the coolest one. We grew an ACDC variety,
00:53:57 ►
which is, there are a couple different phenotypes. The ACDC is the name of the strain or the cultivar. Um, and it’s high CBD, low THC.
00:54:05 ►
And, um, we grew, we grew this plant and it just looked completely different from all of our other
00:54:12 ►
cannabis plants. It looked like a Christmas tree. It had like big, um, stretched flowers and it was
00:54:19 ►
just like really silly, like Dr. Seuss Christmas tree. And we’re like this ACDC plant, I hope someone,
00:54:25 ►
I hope somebody gets it. They need it. You know, like, is anybody going to love the silly,
00:54:31 ►
like looking flowers? And so, um, yeah, it ended up going to a dispensary and, um, mom was coming
00:54:37 ►
in and buying it and she was buying it for her son who I forget how old he was. I feel like he
00:54:42 ►
was around 10, but, um, yeah, and he was having
00:54:45 ►
seizures and was, um, I think that she was making like cooking it down and putting it in butter and
00:54:51 ►
he’s eating it and it was keeping him from having seizures. Oh. And so, and we were like, wow,
00:54:57 ►
that worked. You know, like what a wonderful, what a wonderful story. What is someone like that going to do when the government changes, makes these drastic changes?
00:55:09 ►
And, I mean, how are they going to figure out in terms of, is there, I guess there’s, I mean, how would you do that?
00:55:15 ►
Because all these strains have different names.
00:55:18 ►
Mm-hmm.
00:55:18 ►
Yeah. So I just wonder about even if there could be a website put together that simply discusses the various strains and what their attributes are, but doesn’t sell anything.
00:55:30 ►
Yeah.
00:55:31 ►
Because I think that is perfectly fine.
00:55:34 ►
Yeah, yeah, yeah, to talk about.
00:55:35 ►
Yeah, yeah.
00:55:36 ►
You can talk about it as long as you’re not selling anything.
00:55:38 ►
Yeah.
00:55:39 ►
So how, I mean, how about a website that would be?
00:55:42 ►
I mean, they certainly exist.
00:55:44 ►
There’s Leafly, which is a pretty common one and has a lot of strains on it.
00:55:50 ►
And that does talk about, it has like a little rating scale and people can make comments.
00:55:55 ►
Could you say Leafly?
00:55:57 ►
Leafly.
00:55:57 ►
How would you spell that?
00:55:58 ►
L-E-A-F-L-Y.
00:56:00 ►
Okay, Leafly.com.
00:56:02 ►
Yeah.
00:56:02 ►
Okay.
00:56:08 ►
okay leafly.com yeah okay um and uh i mean any the thing is when you’re looking for information about cannabis it has been so um researched so little yeah most of the information that we have
00:56:15 ►
on it and a lot of information in forums is is not um not done by trial there’s no control it’s
00:56:22 ►
just like i watered the stuff in and it was super
00:56:25 ►
dank. And you’re like, okay, like, did you do anything else differently? Or, you know, so like
00:56:30 ►
you have to keep in mind, even, even when looking at leafly, um, that any, anyone can say anything
00:56:36 ►
they want about any plant and it could be named incorrectly or, you know, it could be anything.
00:56:42 ►
So just being thorough and, um, you know, doing your be anything. So just being thorough and, you know, doing your own research.
00:56:49 ►
As best you can.
00:56:50 ►
Yeah.
00:56:50 ►
Wow.
00:56:51 ►
I would highly recommend you guys do something like that.
00:56:54 ►
I’ll just tell you right now.
00:56:55 ►
Crack the whip.
00:56:56 ►
Get started on that immediately.
00:56:58 ►
Because that’s going to be hugely helpful.
00:57:01 ►
Yeah.
00:57:02 ►
Because ultimately, cannabis is so highly helpful. Yeah, because ultimately cannabis is it’s so highly medicinal. Yeah, it is really just
00:57:08 ►
Astonishing because it’s this wonderful teaching plant as you say, there is definitely a tutelary spirit there
00:57:15 ►
it is a tremendous assist in the psychedelic piece as well and
00:57:21 ►
Then has this incredible medicine and then of course the other side is so abused, chronically abused.
00:57:28 ►
It’s ridiculous and a shame.
00:57:31 ►
But aside from that, so back to medicinal peace,
00:57:34 ►
and it’s medicine that we need desperately.
00:57:38 ►
And, oh, what about the oil, the actual oil?
00:57:41 ►
Like, you know, there’s the Rick Simpson oil, that guy from Canada.
00:57:45 ►
the actual ill like you know there’s the rick simpson oil yeah guy from yeah yeah canada yeah and he was healing well a lot of cancers particularly skin cancer he would put the
00:57:51 ►
oil on the skin cancer and it would take it right away yeah um there let’s see it wasn’t until too
00:57:58 ►
recently that i had um met anyone or knew of anyone directly that had healed their cancer, um, with cannabis.
00:58:07 ►
I’ve heard of it being, um, supplement, something that tree and, um, um, helping in that way.
00:58:15 ►
Um, and of course like helping with symptoms and appetite and things like that with different
00:58:19 ►
treatments. Um, but oil is oil is what I see being abused. Um, really? Yeah. I don’t see too many, you know,
00:58:28 ►
I think that are, um, and you know, this could certainly be because I’m insulated, but I don’t
00:58:36 ►
see a lot. I see on TV, you know, on TV, there’s people abusing cannabis and there’s on TV and like
00:58:42 ►
I, on like CNN, maybe I don’t know, not CNN,
00:58:45 ►
but someone’s talking about, you know, this guy who works at a pizza place and he lives in his
00:58:50 ►
mom’s basement and he just plays video games and smokes weed. I don’t know that guy. You know,
00:58:55 ►
I think that a lot of, a lot of our ideas about cannabis abuse are not true. Um, but I do believe
00:59:03 ►
of course that we can be, um, and I’m not saying
00:59:06 ►
you can’t easily abuse cannabis. You certainly can. Um, and there are, you know, you can,
00:59:12 ►
you can use cannabis and not use it mindfully. And I think that that that’s the abuse of it.
00:59:16 ►
But I think that, um, you know, it’s, you’re still, you’re still working with the plant.
00:59:22 ►
The plant is still working with you. Like don’t underestimate what you’re putting inside your body and how you’re altering your
00:59:27 ►
consciousness. You know, I used to, um, I compare it with yoga a lot. Um, I used to teach yoga and
00:59:33 ►
I’ve had a, had a yoga practice for a long time and it used to bug me a lot. Bikram yoga bugged
00:59:38 ►
me a lot. Cause I thought that it was like void of actual yoga, void of safety and body mechanics and spirituality. And, you know,
00:59:47 ►
I’d go to a Bikram class and they’re like, open your eyes, look forward. Don’t put your ankle
00:59:50 ►
like that. And I’d be like, man, you know, like, I wish I was just doing some yoga in here instead
00:59:56 ►
of like getting yelled at about Bikram positions. But like even Bikram yoga brings people to yoga.
01:00:01 ►
It still gets people curious about yoga. It still gets people
01:00:05 ►
curious about their bodies and their spirituality and their meditation. And what happens in my brain
01:00:09 ►
when I do this posture, you know, it’s still like still guides people away or along. So, um, I,
01:00:16 ►
yeah, I just like to keep that in mind with the umbrella of cannabis abuse. Cause I think that,
01:00:22 ►
you know, we were told that it’s,
01:00:25 ►
you know, or it looks low vibe sometimes it doesn’t look like a high vibe medicine,
01:00:30 ►
but you know, like my experience of it and how, um, I think it can be worked with is, is, you know,
01:00:37 ►
super high vibe. Of course. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. And then there has been a tremendous
01:00:42 ►
amount of negative propaganda put out there by design
01:00:45 ►
for all of, you know, for mushrooms, for all of this stuff.
01:00:49 ►
Yeah.
01:00:50 ►
And that said, you know, people will, can and do use cannabis as a crutch.
01:00:56 ►
Right.
01:00:57 ►
Yes.
01:00:57 ►
And I remember having a really great talk with my teenage daughter about all of this
01:01:02 ►
kind of thing.
01:01:03 ►
And explaining to her, cause she was asking
01:01:05 ►
me about cannabis and she wanted to try it. And, and, uh, and so we just had a very candid
01:01:11 ►
discussion, but I explained, look, you know, this is actually kind of a medicine and yes,
01:01:17 ►
it can be used to just chill out with at the right time. Right. And if you’re not careful,
01:01:24 ►
it can become like anything, a crutch, like that glass can become a crutch. time. Right. And if you’re not careful, it can become, like anything, a crutch.
01:01:26 ►
Like that glass of wine can become a crutch.
01:01:28 ►
Absolutely.
01:01:29 ►
Yeah.
01:01:30 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,
01:01:33 ►
where people are changing their lives
01:01:35 ►
one thought at a time.
01:01:38 ►
So, I wonder if maybe I’m just another
01:01:41 ►
chronic cannabis toker
01:01:42 ►
who uses it as a crutch.
01:01:45 ►
Well, it’s a fine line, actually, I guess.
01:01:48 ►
In the interest of full disclosure for any newcomers to the salon,
01:01:52 ►
you should know that I’ve been using cannabis almost each and every day for over 25 years now.
01:01:58 ►
Some conservative and religious people I know of would think of me as a pothead,
01:02:03 ►
and maybe that’s true.
01:02:04 ►
But this pothead was also
01:02:07 ►
a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy, the president of several corporations,
01:02:11 ►
and a Texas lawyer with a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and a doctor
01:02:16 ►
degree in jurisprudence. So I may be a pothead, but you should know that not all potheads just
01:02:22 ►
lay around on a sofa eating chips and watching cartoons all day.
01:02:26 ►
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, if that’s what you want,
01:02:30 ►
but please keep in mind that we tokers come in many flavors, just as cannabis itself does, I should add.
01:02:37 ►
Now in regards to their discussion about using cannabis with other substances,
01:02:42 ►
my personal experience has been in the ayahuasca group
01:02:45 ►
with which I was involved. We were all purists, and not only didn’t we use cannabis during an
01:02:50 ►
ayahuasca ceremony, we even stopped using it one week before the ceremony. But mushrooms are a
01:02:57 ►
different story, at least with me. I’ve had dozens and dozens of mushroom experiences,
01:03:03 ►
and I used cannabis during every one of them.
01:03:06 ►
My usual protocol was to grind up the dried mushrooms in a coffee grinder and mix that all up in a cup of hot chocolate.
01:03:13 ►
Then, while I was waiting for the mushrooms to come on, I’d smoke a little pot to calm my stomach and ease me into the experience.
01:03:27 ►
ease me into the experience. And now that I think of it, I guess that I’ve also used cannabis with MDMA, LSD, and well, who knows what else? Just never with ayahuasca. Now, I know that this may
01:03:35 ►
make me sound like an old fogey, probably am, but you have no idea how happy it makes me to
01:03:42 ►
hear young people very matter-of-factly speak about the
01:03:45 ►
various strains of cannabis and that one needs to be more selective in choosing which one
01:03:50 ►
to use for different occasions.
01:03:52 ►
Now, the old fogey part is that for everyone my age, and probably for most people who aren’t
01:03:58 ►
living somewhere, that at the very least medical marijuana is legal, well, that to hear about
01:04:04 ►
choices available to cannabis enthusiasts sounds like fiction.
01:04:08 ►
It wasn’t all that many years ago when I would be ecstatic just to find a source for any kind of pot.
01:04:14 ►
Even really poor quality pot was a great thing to find.
01:04:18 ►
So if you’re living somewhere that cannabis is still illegal,
01:04:22 ►
well, hang on, because the day when it is legal
01:04:25 ►
almost everywhere in the world is not all that far off.
01:04:29 ►
As us old guys say, I can feel it in my bones.
01:04:33 ►
Now, there is one more thing that I’d like to mention
01:04:35 ►
before I go today, but to tell the truth,
01:04:39 ►
the more I try to come up with a brief description
01:04:42 ►
of something that I think is going to be interesting
01:04:44 ►
for us to try.
01:04:46 ►
I get lost in first filling in some of the necessary background
01:04:49 ►
to better understand the potential for what might be done.
01:04:53 ►
So I’ve decided to first explore some of my new ideas with our fellow salonners on the forums,
01:04:59 ►
the people who want to get involved in the creation of something that I think has the potential
01:05:04 ►
of transforming parts of the global psychedelic community.
01:05:09 ►
I’ll be going into more detail about this on the forums in the months ahead, but here are the headlines.
01:05:15 ►
In the late 1970s, the first personal computers began to appear in hobby stores
01:05:20 ►
and were essentially thought of as expensive toys for us geeks.
01:05:26 ►
Eventually, enough people owned personal computers that email became a necessity. Then there was this thing called the
01:05:31 ►
World Wide Web that again seemed to be of interest mainly to the more technically inclined among us.
01:05:37 ►
About 10 years ago, smartphones appeared, and now the web, email, and a personal computer can be found in our pockets and have become part of our everyday life.
01:05:47 ►
But all of this is merely a prologue for what is about to happen.
01:05:52 ►
A new protocol is being layered on the internet, one that has potential to become even more important to human life than is the phone in your pocket or purse.
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I’m talking about blockchain technology.
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is the phone in your pocket or purse. I’m talking about blockchain technology, and if you don’t know what that is, then you owe it to yourself to begin paying attention whenever you hear about it,
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because 10 years from now, blockchain technology will be an essential part of your life.
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Now, that’s as geeky as I’m going to get today. I’m taking the technical discussion of this out
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of these podcasts and onto our forums where we can discuss things in more detail.
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And I certainly hope that even if you don’t have any interest at all in the technology, that you nonetheless join in our discussions.
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Otherwise, the distributed autonomous organization that we design and give a test drive to will have been designed only by us geeks.
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Best Drive 2 will have been designed only by us geeks.
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So please feel free to join us in the forums where we will begin to discuss the structure that we would like to see to support what I’m thinking of as a psychedelic distributed autonomous organization, or the psychedelic doll.
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I don’t know if we’ll actually achieve all that is possible with a non-hierarchical organization,
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but it sure will be fun to try.
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To me, what I will consider to be a success with our first attempt is to organize and then
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establish a self-running DAO into which I can transfer control of the psychedelic salon.
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But that’s only the first baby step. The worldwide psychedelic community numbers in the hundreds of
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millions. We live in
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every nation on earth and we participate in many different cultures. But when we meet at festivals
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and conferences, we look into one another’s eyes and say to ourselves, hey, they are one of us.
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What if there is a way that collectively, on a global scale, we can combine a few of our individual resources and
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back one another in various ventures? What if the psychedelic community had its own form of money?
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What if there was a way to tell if one of us is who we claim to be and are not actually an
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undercover narc? What if we were able to fund cannabis growers in places where it’s legal and use our share of the profits for scholarships or something?
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The possibilities are endless, but at the very least,
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I think that this may be a way for the salon to continue long after I lose the energy to keep podcasting each week.
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Not to mention the fact that this technology holds the promise for the global psychedelic community
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to have its own democratic infrastructure and economy.
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To learn more about what I and some of our other fellow salonners are thinking about these things,
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just go to thepsychedelicsalon.com and click the forums link.
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I’ve set up a new topic titled A Psychedelic Tao,
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and hopefully this is going to grow into a lively topic.
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Now if you want to learn more about blockchain technology without first going to the forums,
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then check out a couple of the videos that I’ve linked to in the program notes for today’s podcast.
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In any event, I think that it would be wise for you to start learning more about what the world’s bankers
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are already planning for their own uses of the blockchain.
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more about what the world’s bankers are already planning for their own uses of the blockchain.
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It’s a technology that is going to revolutionize societies everywhere, and our community now has the opportunity to be a part of the leading edge of the wave of change that soon will
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be upon us.
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And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
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Be well, my friends. Thank you.