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599 - The Psychedelic Hospice Movement

Apr 01, 2019, 45 min read

Program Notes

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https://www.patreon.com/lorenzohagerty
Guest speaker: Lorenzo Hagerty

A view of Roasario Resort in the distance …  on Orcas Island, Washington

Date this lecture was recorded: March 22, 2019

Today’s podcast features the talk that Lorenzo delivered at the recent Imagine Convergence held on Orcas Island. The Imagine Convergence was a gathering of change-makers, intellectuals, innovators and cultural creatives who explored cross-disciplinary solutions to our current global complexities. Lorenzo’s talk focused on end-of-life issues and what he calls The Psychedelic Hospice Movement.

VIDEO of “The Psychedelic Hospice Movememt”
by Lorenzo

Download a free copy of Lorenzo’s latest book
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Transcript

00:00:00 ►

Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic

00:00:23 ►

salon.

00:00:23 ►

This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

00:00:35 ►

And before we begin today, I would first like for you to pause for a moment in remembrance of psychedelic elder Ralph Metzner, who died on the 14th of this month.

00:00:46 ►

As you know, Ralph was one of the four principal researchers who conducted the Concord Prison Experiment under the auspices of Harvard University back in the 60s.

00:00:55 ►

At the time of his death, Ralph was Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco,

00:01:00 ►

where he was formerly the academic dean and also the academic vice president.

00:01:06 ►

One of Ralph’s close friends was Charlie Grobe, who I recently spent some time with at the Convergence on Orcas Island. And while there, we recorded an interview that I’ll be

00:01:12 ►

playing here in the salon in a few weeks. And in that interview, Charlie disclosed what I consider

00:01:17 ►

to be, and really, well, it’s really an incredible story about Ralph that I hadn’t known before.

00:01:23 ►

But since it’s Charlie’s story, I’ll save it for him to tell in a future podcast.

00:01:28 ►

When I returned from Orcas last weekend,

00:01:31 ►

Charlie sent me a short poem that Ralph had written some time ago,

00:01:34 ►

and I’d like to read it for you now.

00:01:37 ►

It’s titled Shaman’s Song by Ralph Metzner.

00:01:41 ►

During the first half of my life,

00:01:44 ►

I wove the threads and textures of my experience

00:01:47 ►

into a multicolored tapestry that, in the ending half of this journey, has become a magic carpet

00:01:55 ►

on which I shall sail away over the mountains into the worlds of the mystery.

00:02:02 ►

And so on he sails into worlds enclosed and even more worlds of mystery.

00:02:09 ►

Sail on, dear Ralph. We deeply appreciate all that you’ve done for us.

00:02:14 ►

Now, for today’s program, as you know, I spent the last weekend with 350 of my new best friends

00:02:22 ►

at the Convergence on Orcas Island.

00:02:29 ►

Unlike many other conferences that I’ve participated in in the past,

00:02:32 ►

this one wasn’t primarily focused on psychedelics.

00:02:37 ►

Rather, it was designed as a way for a wide range of changemakers,

00:02:41 ►

intellectuals, innovators, and cultural creatives to come together and explore cross-disciplinary solutions

00:02:44 ►

to our current global

00:02:46 ►

complexities. After the presenters offered a wide range of experience in very diverse fields,

00:02:53 ►

well, countless little conversations began taking place where we discussed new ideas about ways that

00:02:59 ►

each of us in attendance could, well, maybe just adjust our trajectories a slight bit and converge

00:03:05 ►

our work with that of other like-minded souls who are on slightly different tracks.

00:03:11 ►

And to give you just a little idea of the aim of the conference, I’m going to play right

00:03:15 ►

now a brief introduction that co-producer Katie Gray gave.

00:03:29 ►

The Imagine Convergence is more than a conference. It’s an opportunity to gather 300 dynamic thought leaders around ideas vital to our collective evolution.

00:03:38 ►

Over the coming spring equinox at the historic Rosario Resort on Orcas Island,

00:03:43 ►

we’ll be showcasing some of the world’s leading scientists,

00:03:47 ►

authors, activists, and artists,

00:03:50 ►

merging our collective wisdom,

00:03:52 ►

making connections,

00:03:53 ►

and inspiring new realities together.

00:03:56 ►

For three days,

00:03:57 ►

in the company of Paul Stamets,

00:04:00 ►

Charles Eisenstein,

00:04:01 ►

Nikita Oliver,

00:04:03 ►

Paul Wagner,

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and many more,

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we will navigate what it means to be alive in these times

00:04:08 ►

and explore new ideas and solutions to solving global issues.

00:04:13 ►

In this time of immense change,

00:04:15 ►

it’s essential for us to navigate new ways of thinking and working together.

00:04:20 ►

As society faces widespread species extinction, mental illness, poverty, political

00:04:27 ►

upheaval, and other converging crises, we gather together with hope, belief, and inspiration for a

00:04:35 ►

better world. Though we may look different or speak different languages, we’re all relatives

00:04:41 ►

and deeply connected through the tapestry of existence.

00:04:52 ►

Together, we are weaving a story to inspire transformation in our daily lives and the world at large.

00:04:58 ►

What would happen if we as a collective began truly working together to evolve our relationship with one another and better our connection to the earth?

00:05:05 ►

Imagine.

00:05:30 ►

You may have noticed that in the introduction to the convergence that we just heard,

00:05:35 ►

Katie said that there would be about 300 people who would be attending the conference.

00:05:41 ►

And that, in fact, is the maximum number of tickets that were sold because the event was sold out.

00:05:46 ►

But you’ll hear me and others talk about 350 people being there.

00:05:53 ►

Well, those other 50 people were the organizers, presenters, and most importantly, the volunteers who made it all happen. During the event, I overheard many people commenting about how

00:05:58 ►

professionally organized this conference was, particularly since this was the first time it

00:06:03 ►

was held. With such a large

00:06:05 ►

crowd and with so many speakers, it amazed me to see how efficiently the

00:06:09 ►

conference ran. And I should add, of course, that it also had to do with the

00:06:13 ►

quality of the crowd. Everyone was there with a deep intent and it was wonderful

00:06:19 ►

to experience being a part of that crowd myself. And I should add that it was particularly great for me

00:06:26 ►

to meet so many of our fellow salonners. For example, I learned that the parents of one of

00:06:32 ►

our fellow salonners now live in my old hometown, which I must admit warms the cockles of my heart.

00:06:38 ►

And yes, I don’t know what a cockle is, but I’m sure that mine are warm. However, I digress. Needless to say, the psychedelic

00:06:47 ►

salon was well represented at the Imagine Convergence on Orcas Island. And in just a few

00:06:53 ►

moments, I’m going to play a recording of the talk that I gave at the conference. But first, I’m going

00:06:58 ►

to do something that we should all do after these events, and that is to recognize the many people

00:07:03 ►

who put in the long hours and

00:07:05 ►

do the hard work that it takes to pull off a major conference like this one. To begin,

00:07:11 ►

let’s not forget the businesses who provided some of the much-needed startup cash to get the ball

00:07:16 ►

rolling and they included major sponsors, New Stories and Bluebird Botanicals, as well as

00:07:22 ►

several other co-sponsors, and there were some

00:07:25 ►

personal co-sponsors who included Linnea, Rick, Justin, Michael, Kyra, Nancy, Maris, Benjamin,

00:07:34 ►

Dan, Jared, and Donna. Of course, we all got to see the co-producers, Darren, Ben, Jamie, Kate,

00:07:42 ►

and Mika. They were all on stage several times,

00:07:45 ►

but they also had a huge staff working behind them

00:07:49 ►

to keep the audio and video recordings going

00:07:51 ►

among countless other tasks.

00:07:54 ►

And these most excellent staff people include

00:07:56 ►

Daniel, Jake, Heather, Bridget.

00:08:00 ►

And by the way, Bridget, I’m really sorry

00:08:02 ►

that we never had time for our visit.

00:08:04 ►

Every time I stopped by, you were too busy to interrupt but we’ll connect in September at

00:08:09 ►

the festival for sure and by the way Bridget is a person who took the picture that I’ve been using

00:08:15 ►

as the cover art for these podcasts ever since last October with the exception of today’s podcast

00:08:21 ►

however because today I’m going to use a screenshot from the video of my talk.

00:08:26 ►

And so the photo credit for that

00:08:28 ►

goes to the camera person who took it,

00:08:31 ►

plus the entire video, audio,

00:08:33 ►

and sound production crews.

00:08:34 ►

Gosh, you guys really did an amazing job.

00:08:37 ►

And to continue thanking the staff,

00:08:40 ►

they also include Cameron, Angela,

00:08:44 ►

another Jamie, Christopher, Mikey, Aaron, Emily, Andy, Rico,

00:08:50 ►

Sergei, Krute, Miles, Leon, Karen, Samantha, Gretchen Paul, Charlie, and Allison. So now you should begin

00:09:01 ►

to understand what a large crew it takes to pull off an event like this.

00:09:06 ►

And I still haven’t read the names of the volunteers.

00:09:09 ►

And here are the ones that I know of.

00:09:11 ►

But first of all, I want to thank Aaron, Volunteer Aaron, who met Bruce Dahmer and me along with our friends at the Seattle airport,

00:09:18 ►

drove us to the event on Thursday and back to the airport on Sunday.

00:09:22 ►

And that took a total of almost 10 hours driving time,

00:09:26 ►

plus his gas, which he wouldn’t let us pay for. And need I say that Aaron is also a longtime

00:09:31 ►

salonner. And he was one of many other volunteers who also gave their time and resources to make

00:09:38 ►

this such a memorable conference. And here are the names of most of the volunteers. And I apologize

00:09:43 ►

if you also work on the convergence, but I didn’t read your name. However, here are the names of most of the volunteers, and I apologize if you also work on the convergence, but I didn’t read your name.

00:09:47 ►

However, here are the volunteers that I know of for sure.

00:09:51 ►

Giuseppe, Allison, Christian, Will, Chance, Mike, Jenny, Aiden, Aliko, Ryan, Russ, Ken, Amanda, Jennifer, Casey, Jessica, Chelsea, Kyler, Becca, Eric, Thomas,

00:10:10 ►

Jason, Matt, Michael, Holly, Kai, Sienna, Asifa, Stephanie, Susie, Ruthann, Jamie, Aaron,

00:10:22 ►

Emily A. and Emily L., Neon, Kara, and Conti.

00:10:28 ►

You are, one and all, an amazing extended family that came together and created a vessel

00:10:34 ►

to contain a very powerful collective of consciousness that’s already spreading its vibe over the land.

00:10:42 ►

Now, I’ll be mentioning this again in other podcasts, but as the video crew

00:10:46 ►

completes their edits and posts videos from this conference on the net, I’ll be embedding them here

00:10:51 ►

on the salon’s website at psychedelicsalon.com, so you’ll eventually be able to hear almost all

00:10:58 ►

of the presentations from the very first Imagine Conference on Orcas Island. And to begin the

00:11:03 ►

process, I’ll embed this talk of mine

00:11:05 ►

in today’s program notes, so check it out if you get a chance. In fact, I just did check out the

00:11:12 ►

video, and as I was watching the recording of my talk, I realized that the major big point that I

00:11:19 ►

make at the end of my talk was done with a gesture and not with words. Now, if you watch the video that I’ve embedded in today’s program notes,

00:11:27 ►

instead of just listening to it here,

00:11:29 ►

the impact will be considerably better than the audio alone.

00:11:33 ►

But in the audio-only version, when you hear me say,

00:11:36 ►

I’m going to go, and it’s followed by a brief pause of silence

00:11:41 ►

and then some laughter from the crowd,

00:11:43 ►

well, that’s because they are seeing a big smile on my face while I’m giving a thumbs

00:11:48 ►

up sign.

00:11:49 ►

In fact, I’m going to use a screenshot of that moment for today’s cover art.

00:11:54 ►

So with that little spoiler alert, here’s my talk from last week at the Imagine Convergence

00:11:59 ►

on Orcas Island.

00:12:02 ►

I want to introduce my co-producer Darren Leong who’s a longtime friend of Lorenzo’s

00:12:08 ►

um my friend Lorenzo Haggerty is up next I’m super thrilled and honored to have him here with us

00:12:17 ►

uh I’ve known Lorenzo now for I think probably 13 years or so. And, you know, in that time,

00:12:26 ►

the wisdom and knowledge I’ve just gained

00:12:29 ►

from having him in my life

00:12:31 ►

has had a profound influence on me.

00:12:35 ►

And Lorenzo and I met at Burning Man one year.

00:12:40 ►

I was there working on a raging party,

00:12:44 ►

and Lorenzo was running a thing called the Palenque Norte

00:12:47 ►

lectures and one morning for

00:12:51 ►

Sasha Shulgin, I don’t know if you guys know who he is

00:12:54 ►

Lorenzo didn’t have a sound guy so he comes knocking on my door

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at like 10 in the morning, I just got to bed at like 8

00:13:02 ►

so I was like okay okay. And we came up

00:13:07 ►

and, um, I got to, uh, sit behind, um, Sasha Shulgin and run the DJ mixer that we were using

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for the sound, um, in front of like 700 people or something like that. And I was just like

00:13:20 ►

introduced to this whole realm of scientists and thinkers and researchers and stuff that,

00:13:26 ►

that, you know, that are in this, this psychedelic realm. And if, I don’t know if you guys know,

00:13:34 ►

but Lorenzo runs a podcast and a website called the Psychedelic Salon. And they, they feature

00:13:41 ►

lectures and talks from different speakers, authors, and thinkers, and scientists.

00:13:47 ►

And it’s a wealth of knowledge.

00:13:49 ►

So it’s really an honor to have Lorenzo Haggerty here with us.

00:13:53 ►

And I’d like to welcome him to the stage.

00:13:57 ►

Thank you, Darren.

00:14:01 ►

It’s really an honor to have Darren introduce me.

00:14:03 ►

He’s an amazing man, as you all know.

00:14:06 ►

And, you know, when the speaker schedule was published,

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and I went out to YouTube, and I looked at a lot of the videos of speakers,

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and I saw the schedule, and I thought,

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oh, thank goodness that I’m not going to follow Nikita.

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She is a powerhouse.

00:14:22 ►

So here we are.

00:14:25 ►

And after that exciting presentation, I’m going to talk about death and dying.

00:14:32 ►

But, you know, I’ve waited a long time to be able to talk about this

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because I’m the oldest person on the speaker platform.

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I was born in 1942, if you want to do the math.

00:14:43 ►

So I’ve been around a little while

00:14:45 ►

and I’ve always been disappointed that the old people wouldn’t talk about dying

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because they’re the ones going to do it next

00:14:50 ►

so I thought I would talk about the psychedelic hospice movement

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and most of you are probably wondering what that is

00:15:00 ►

but I haven’t heard of it

00:15:01 ►

because we’re going to launch it today

00:15:03 ►

it’s going to begin right now.

00:15:06 ►

And, spoiler alert, it doesn’t include drugs.

00:15:10 ►

And there’s no website to go to.

00:15:13 ►

There’s no dues.

00:15:14 ►

There’s no protocol you have to follow.

00:15:17 ►

Because it’s in your mind.

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And the word psychedelic is the key word here.

00:15:23 ►

Because psychedelic, you know, we get the impression from popular media that it’s crazy-eyed people having hallucinations.

00:15:32 ►

And, you know, Humphrey Osmond, who defined the word or coined the word psychedelic, called it mind manifesting.

00:15:39 ►

And that’s a little vague.

00:15:40 ►

And so Dr. Timothy Leary came along, and I think he defined it better.

00:15:43 ►

He said, if you’re a psychedelic thinker, you think for yourself and question authority.

00:15:49 ►

And, you know, that’s been around for a long time, and, of course, everybody thinks that means young people are supposed to go out and do drugs and question authorities.

00:15:57 ►

But there are a lot of authorities, and I used to be a member of the largest group in America of psychedelic thinkers.

00:16:06 ►

to be a member of the largest group in America of psychedelic thinkers. Now you can look around,

00:16:11 ►

there may be some bigger ones, but what I’m talking about are American married Catholics who practice birth control. And I’m talking about 90% of American Catholic families.

00:16:20 ►

And the church says you’ll go to hell, it’s a mortal sin. But they think for themselves and say, you know, I don’t want a dozen kids.

00:16:28 ►

I can’t afford to educate them.

00:16:30 ►

I can’t afford to clothe them.

00:16:31 ►

And so they’re going to practice birth control,

00:16:33 ►

and they question the authority of church on the threat of going to hell.

00:16:38 ►

I mean, that’s a really big psychedelic thought.

00:16:41 ►

Now, as a kid, I have to admit that hell didn’t carry that much fear for

00:16:48 ►

me because, first of all, the body wouldn’t be there, so I wouldn’t have any pain, you know?

00:16:52 ►

And fire is so fascinating. I thought, boy, it’d be a lot more interesting to be in the fire than

00:16:57 ►

sitting in a cloud playing a harp. And so, you know, the threat didn’t work too well on me.

00:17:04 ►

But what I’m talking about in the psychedelic hospice movement,

00:17:07 ►

I’m not talking about any change to the existing hospice movement,

00:17:11 ►

which is an incredible service and it’s a wonderful thing that they do.

00:17:16 ►

And what I’m talking about is an overlay on the hospice movement.

00:17:19 ►

Just like the Internet actually began around 1969, and then the web came out late 92.

00:17:26 ►

It was an overlay on the Internet.

00:17:29 ►

And I’m talking about an overlay on the hospice movement.

00:17:32 ►

But the hospice movement, I found, has been such a blessing to so many families

00:17:38 ►

because, first of all, it’s a way to ease the pain of a dying person if they’re in pain, get them in comfort. But it also

00:17:46 ►

takes a big burden off the families. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this in your lives, but

00:17:51 ►

it seems to me my friends and relatives who have died before me always seem to die at a very

00:17:57 ►

inconvenient time for me because I’ve got other things going on. And that’s always the case. And

00:18:02 ►

so the hospice movement comes in and really relieves a lot of that pressure. But I’ve got other things going on. And that’s always the case. And so the hospice movement comes in and really relieves a lot of that pressure.

00:18:06 ►

But I’ve been thinking about it from a personal point of view now.

00:18:10 ►

I’ve had a number of friends been in hospice, and I’ve visited with them, and I think the world of it.

00:18:15 ►

But the thing I’ve noticed is the people who are actually doing the dying didn’t have any say in what’s going on.

00:18:22 ►

They maybe waited too long, and they’re almost in and out

00:18:25 ►

of consciousness. And I’d like to, ahead of time, let my family know what I’d like to do in my final

00:18:33 ►

days or weeks or whatever it is. And so it’s a farewell to the family in a way. And I’d like to

00:18:40 ►

be conscious of it. I’d like to not just be shuffled around and put in a hospital bed in my living room or something like that.

00:18:46 ►

I would like to have some say in how I’m going to end my time on this planet.

00:18:52 ►

We all have two things in common right now.

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We have a lot of things in common, but two things 100% in common with all of us.

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One is we are here now.

00:19:01 ►

I know some of you would argue with that, but let’s just assume.

00:19:07 ►

Let’s assume we’re all here now. I know some of you would argue with that, but let’s just assume. Let’s assume we’re all here now. The other thing is we’re all going to die. And so we really should take some

00:19:11 ►

responsibility for that ourselves. And we should let our families know. I’ve taken care of what

00:19:17 ►

they’re going to do with my ashes and all that. So the last thing I have to do is I want to make

00:19:20 ►

sure that my final time is done in a way I like it. I like to create my own

00:19:27 ►

death ritual. Now, there are death rituals. A lot of societies and cultures have them.

00:19:33 ►

And at one point in time, I used to be, as I said, I was a Catholic. And the Catholics have a death

00:19:39 ►

ritual of the last rites. And I have had the last rites at the Catholic Church. When I was in the Navy in

00:19:46 ►

1967, my appendix ruptured, and it took over eight hours to get me to the hospital. And so I was very

00:19:53 ►

near death. And I’m laying there, and they’re shaving me and getting me ready for surgery and

00:19:59 ►

all this commotion, and I was in incredible pain. And all of a sudden, everybody stopped and moved away

00:20:05 ►

from me. They were hurrying up to get me into surgery, and this priest shows up, and he’s going

00:20:11 ►

to give me the last rites of the church. Well, I was a good Catholic boy, and so I didn’t say

00:20:16 ►

anything. I said, oh, yes, Father. In the meantime, all the emergency stuff was stopped, and they were

00:20:20 ►

giving me the last rites. And in my head, though though even though i was being polite to him in my head i’m screaming get the hell out of here let these people save my life you know

00:20:31 ►

so i decided my death ritual would be alone i didn’t want anybody with me and i really still

00:20:41 ►

actually kind of would prefer that except i had an experience that really impacted me and changed my opinion on that.

00:20:49 ►

My dad died in 1975, and he was 63 years old, and it was early death.

00:20:57 ►

He’d been in the hospital for a few weeks, and the family had been cycling in and out because he’d been in and out of consciousness.

00:21:02 ►

So we always had somebody there at his bedside in the hospital.

00:21:05 ►

I happened to be there when he died.

00:21:08 ►

I was holding his hand when he died.

00:21:11 ►

And I guess with all of my childhood experience and all,

00:21:15 ►

I expected some, like, angels to come up.

00:21:19 ►

And nothing happened like that, but something did happen.

00:21:23 ►

I was holding his hand, and as he was taking his final breaths and dying,

00:21:28 ►

his energy flowed into my arm.

00:21:31 ►

I mean, it was like an electrical shock.

00:21:33 ►

I was just surprised.

00:21:35 ►

I couldn’t believe something like that happened.

00:21:37 ►

Now, it was probably just internal in my mind.

00:21:40 ►

It doesn’t really matter.

00:21:41 ►

It was something that happened to me that made me realize that

00:21:45 ►

when I die, if I’m able to do a similar thing, I could give the last of my energy to whoever is

00:21:51 ►

there, and it would be friends and family. And I thought, well, that would be the last gift I could

00:21:56 ►

give them. So even though I’d like to die alone, I won’t. I’ll have people there. Well, there’s a

00:22:03 ►

couple things that go on here. Hospice usually doesn’t come into play

00:22:07 ►

until you’re really on death’s doorstep, although a lot of people, not a lot, I know a handful of

00:22:12 ►

people that have gotten off of hospice because they seem to have recovered. But usually when

00:22:19 ►

people are dying in this country, families are so separated and dispersed throughout the country that the families start coming in.

00:22:26 ►

Oh, dad’s dying, you know, and the cousins and the children come.

00:22:31 ►

But, you know, you don’t know when the person’s going to die.

00:22:33 ►

And so if you can get there early, I have a little pre-hospice ritual that I think would be wonderful for family gatherings.

00:22:41 ►

And I got the idea from some friends who are in a men’s supper group in the

00:22:47 ►

Hollywood area. And they get together every other month, I think. And they pick one of their number

00:22:54 ►

who is having a hard time or depressed or just divorced or whatever. And they make that person

00:23:01 ►

the honoree for the night. And everybody there at the dinner stands up and says something nice about that person,

00:23:08 ►

about the way their lives affected them, they were affected by this person.

00:23:13 ►

And they were just thanking them for being themselves.

00:23:16 ►

And, you know, none of us are going to go out and, you know, make a big splash like, well, Paul Stamets says.

00:23:24 ►

There are a few of us that will do some things like that.

00:23:27 ►

But most of us don’t have those kind of history book kind of stories to be told at our demise.

00:23:33 ►

But those aren’t the important stories.

00:23:36 ►

When we went up to my hometown to bury my mother’s ashes,

00:23:40 ►

only three of my family members would come because the town I grew up in is so dangerous

00:23:46 ►

now nobody wants to even drive through there.

00:23:49 ►

But we had the burial at the cemetery.

00:23:53 ►

And my cousin, who is about six years older than me, she’s gone now, but she was my favorite

00:23:58 ►

cousin.

00:23:59 ►

I can’t remember ever seeing her without a smile on her face.

00:24:03 ►

And she was a bank teller in a small

00:24:05 ►

little farming community bank. You know, she’d been robbed. The bank had been robbed like three times.

00:24:10 ►

But she’s always smiling, had the best attitude. Her husband died when he was 42, left her with

00:24:14 ►

four kids. But I’ve never seen her depressed. Well, at my mother’s graveside, she said, you know what

00:24:20 ►

I remember most about your mother is the way she buttered toast.

00:24:31 ►

Now, Peg grew up in a farm community where the mother would just slap a couple of slips of butter on and let it go.

00:24:33 ►

My mother buttered toast right out to the edge.

00:24:35 ►

She got the butter all the way out to the crust.

00:24:41 ►

Well, my cousin Peg says, that is the thing I remembered so much about your mother,

00:24:44 ►

besides the fact that your mother was always smiling.

00:24:47 ►

And so every morning when I get up and have toast, I think of your mother.

00:24:49 ►

It puts a smile on my face.

00:24:56 ►

So indirectly, that little buttering toast thing was the main thing that affected my cousin’s life,

00:24:59 ►

that my mother did to affect my cousin’s life.

00:25:03 ►

Little things like that are really amazing. Now, a thing that affected me that was, you would think,

00:25:09 ►

would be pretty insignificant, but it turned out to be a milestone in my life, and that is,

00:25:15 ►

in 1999, my closest friend is Vietnamese, and he was a generation younger than me, but we became really close friends.

00:25:25 ►

And he raised a bunch of money in the Vietnamese community in Florida

00:25:30 ►

and wanted to take it over to Vietnam to support this Montagnard tribe up in the central highlands up close to Laos.

00:25:40 ►

And it was a Montagnard village of lepers. And they had really no support by the government.

00:25:45 ►

The government was trying to essentially kill them off.

00:25:47 ►

And so he raised this money to take over and buy food and medicine and books for them.

00:25:53 ►

Well, he had a little trouble being Vietnamese because he was really searched closely when we entered the country.

00:25:59 ►

So I smuggled the money in for him.

00:26:01 ►

And, yeah, I was wet in my pants, let me tell you that.

00:26:04 ►

I was scared. But we got the money in for him. And, yeah, I was wet in my pants, let me tell you that. I was scared.

00:26:06 ►

But we got the money in the country.

00:26:08 ►

We bought the food, the medicine, the books.

00:26:11 ►

And we trekked our way up through Khantoum up into the central highlands to Dock Ring,

00:26:16 ►

right up close to the Laotian border.

00:26:18 ►

And it was an amazing experience.

00:26:21 ►

There were maybe a little around 200, 300 people in the village.

00:26:27 ►

And I guess about a third of them were lepers and the rest were the family. And we spent the day

00:26:32 ►

with them and had a picnic with them. And on the bank of this little stream, there’s a straw bridge

00:26:37 ►

going across. It was real jungle-like. It was a very exciting experience. But all of these people,

00:26:42 ►

I felt so deeply attached to them. And as I was

00:26:46 ►

getting ready to leave, there was this one young woman, I’d say she’s maybe in her late 20s,

00:26:52 ►

and she had a, I remember she had a red high neck blouse on, but her nose was essentially gone,

00:26:59 ►

her mouth was gone, she was badly disfigured. But as I was walking up the bank of the river getting ready to leave, we made eye contact.

00:27:09 ►

And it probably couldn’t have been more than 10 or 12 seconds, but it felt like a lifetime.

00:27:16 ►

We looked deeply into one another’s eyes, and she had the most beautiful brown eyes.

00:27:22 ►

I can never forget them because I see them all the time.

00:27:25 ►

And she seemed to, she communicated a lot of things to me. But one of the things was,

00:27:31 ►

you are a white, male, college-educated American, and you don’t deserve to feel sorry for yourself

00:27:39 ►

again until I’m up there with you. Now, I knew that would never happen, but I can’t tell you how many times in my life since then

00:27:47 ►

when I’ve been depressed and down and thought everything was going against me

00:27:51 ►

that her eyes come to me.

00:27:54 ►

And I don’t allow myself to feel sorry for myself because of her.

00:27:58 ►

What I wouldn’t give to be able to go back and tell her

00:28:01 ►

how much she affected my life.

00:28:03 ►

And those are the little things that we can do to our loved ones

00:28:06 ►

and tell them about ways that they affected our lives.

00:28:10 ►

And that’s, I think, a beautiful way to send people off.

00:28:13 ►

Now, as far as the final moments,

00:28:16 ►

I want to be really clear about what I call the psychedelic hospice movement,

00:28:20 ►

that I don’t care what anybody else does, and there’s no rules or regulations.

00:28:24 ►

You can do this however you want. But I don’t want any drugs given to me. I want to go out on a natch. You know,

00:28:31 ►

it’s a trip that I’ve never had, and I’ve done a lot of polydrugging, but I never polydrug the

00:28:38 ►

first time I try something, and so I don’t want to polydrug that trip. Now, I want to be really clear about this because, you know, all the stuff I do with the word psychedelic in it,

00:28:51 ►

Aldous Huxley wrote a note to his wife.

00:28:53 ►

He won 150 micrograms intermuscular, LSD.

00:28:56 ►

And he went out like that.

00:28:58 ►

Well, one of his contemporaries who I became friends with was also very prominent in LSD world back in the 50s

00:29:06 ►

and 60s. He was kind of depressed one time, and I offered to get him some LSD. He said, no. He says,

00:29:13 ►

I hate it. I’ve only done it a few times. I mean, he’s had this big reputation for being an LSD guy,

00:29:19 ►

but he gave it to other people. He was a researcher. And he did not like to take LSD.

00:29:26 ►

He wouldn’t take any from me.

00:29:27 ►

Well, on his deathbed, and he was kind of comatose, one of his friends gave him LSD.

00:29:34 ►

What a horrible, horrible thing.

00:29:36 ►

But that’s because he never vocalized that he didn’t like it.

00:29:39 ►

He let on that he was an acid head, you know.

00:29:42 ►

Shame on him, too, but definitely shame on the friend. So I want to be really clear about that, that I want to be able to understand what’s happening.

00:29:53 ►

But on the other hand, I realized whoever’s going to be there, you know, they get a little sad,

00:29:58 ►

say goodbye. Some of them maybe wouldn’t, I’ll try to irritate them before I die. So they won’t

00:30:02 ►

miss me, you know, but I have this death scene in my mind here where I’m laying comfortably in a hospital bed in my living room.

00:30:13 ►

And my close friends and family are there.

00:30:15 ►

And, you know, in the background, Warren Zebon’s record is playing Keep Me In Your Heart for a while and real softly.

00:30:24 ►

And my friends and family are there. and they’ve all taken MDMA,

00:30:27 ►

and they’re in a love puddle, you know?

00:30:30 ►

And here is the big thing.

00:30:33 ►

I’ve wanted to do psychedelic research ever since I found out about this stuff,

00:30:37 ►

but I don’t have the talent or the inclination to be a scientist.

00:30:40 ►

I can’t do that.

00:30:41 ►

But I can do one thing for psychedelic research,

00:30:44 ►

because, you know, we all have DMT that we manufacture, but nobody knows why we do it. And there’s speculation

00:30:49 ►

that it’s released on our death. And so I’m going to wait and wait. And I know what it’s like when

00:30:55 ►

you get a DMT flash. I’ve had a few. And so if I get a DMT flash as I’m dying, I’m going to go.

00:31:08 ►

And that will be my contribution to psychedelic research. Now, I do have to warn you, I was 42 years old, Vietnam vet, lawyer in Texas.

00:31:21 ►

I’d never smoked pot even, never done any drugs. I was an Irish Catholic

00:31:25 ►

Republican lawyer. I took some MDMA and went to the sort club, and by the time I walked out,

00:31:33 ►

I was still Irish, but nothing else. Now, full disclosure, I am still licensed to practice law in Texas.

00:31:47 ►

If you go to the Texas Bar website, you can look me up under Lawrence,

00:31:51 ►

because I had changed my name at Burning Man.

00:31:54 ►

And I am the only lawyer.

00:31:58 ►

We all had to have our picture there.

00:32:00 ►

I’m the only lawyer on the Texas Bar website that isn’t in a coat and tie.

00:32:05 ►

My picture, I have a straw hat, and it was taken by Bruce Dahmer at Burning Man. So even though I’m

00:32:12 ►

still licensed, I don’t practice. Since I’ve died now, let me just say a few more things,

00:32:23 ►

but not about the psychedelic hospice movement.

00:32:26 ►

I want to talk about us and this weekend.

00:32:30 ►

You know, this is really a much more magical and important weekend than many of us maybe expected.

00:32:38 ►

Now, last summer, Darren flew down to Southern California to visit.

00:32:44 ►

And he said, you know, he and a few of

00:32:46 ►

his friends are thinking about producing this conference. And what do you think? Well, since I

00:32:51 ►

didn’t have a financial risk on it, I thought it was great. And I did everything I could to

00:32:56 ►

encourage him to do this. Now, at the time, you know, I had taken myself off the speaking circuit

00:33:02 ►

because I was very sensitive to the criticism about it’s all old white men up here.

00:33:07 ►

And so for five years, I hadn’t even left San Diego County until I came up here for Imagine in September.

00:33:15 ►

And actually, if this conference wasn’t in Orcas Island, I probably wouldn’t have come.

00:33:20 ►

I just love this place.

00:33:22 ►

And someday I’m going to live here.

00:33:25 ►

I’ve got plans.

00:33:28 ►

I was thinking about going to Port Townsend because my oldest son wants to live there.

00:33:32 ►

But when I got off that ferry on Thursday, there was no question.

00:33:36 ►

This is where I’m going to end my day.

00:33:38 ►

So if you want to be there to see if I have a DMT flash, come to the island, okay?

00:33:46 ►

Now, the reason I was so excited about this conference, as opposed to many of the others,

00:33:52 ►

is because of the location, not just Orcas.

00:33:55 ►

But, you know, you can’t really go into town here.

00:33:58 ►

You can’t go into Bifast.

00:33:59 ►

You can’t do it.

00:34:00 ►

You’re here with each other.

00:34:01 ►

And that’s the way these conferences were in Palenque back in the 90s.

00:34:07 ►

And that’s where I first got really deeply involved in this community.

00:34:11 ►

And that was a conference that had about a third of this size.

00:34:15 ►

But out of that conference, so many things grew.

00:34:19 ►

Like in April, I’ll be interviewing a group of people who have a very strong, well-financed political action committee

00:34:27 ►

that’s trying to get Ibogaine moved to a schedule where it can be used for medicinal purposes.

00:34:33 ►

That came out of the Palenque meetings, conferences.

00:34:37 ►

Ketamine.

00:34:38 ►

I know that ketamine is kind of a hot topic right now.

00:34:42 ►

And the ketamine explosion came out of those Palenque conferences.

00:34:46 ►

How many licensed ketamine therapists

00:34:50 ►

do you think there are in the United States?

00:34:52 ►

Right now, there’s over 5,000.

00:34:54 ►

Did you know you can have a sanctioned,

00:34:57 ►

legal, psychedelic trip

00:34:58 ►

that is one of the most powerful,

00:35:00 ►

more so, almost as powerful as DMT?

00:35:03 ►

And it’s legal.

00:35:04 ►

There’s 5,000 licensed therapists in the United States that do that.

00:35:07 ►

Some of that came out of people who were in Palenque.

00:35:11 ►

You know, thinking about this conference,

00:35:16 ►

some of you may remember there was an old movie back in the last century,

00:35:19 ►

the last millennium, that was called Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

00:35:24 ►

And it was a comedy, and there’s people all running

00:35:27 ►

to find this treasure you know and they were coming from all different directions and i thought

00:35:32 ►

wow this is just like the mad mad mad world because it is a mad world and we’re all coming

00:35:38 ►

here to find some kind of a treasure but the treasure, is within this time. And I was thinking, what, you know,

00:35:51 ►

there’s 350 of us gathered here this weekend, and I’m thinking everyone here has a story,

00:35:58 ►

not just a story, but an interesting story. And if we had time, and all of us wrote a biography,

00:36:04 ►

and if we had time to read all 350 biographies, it would be fascinating. We would really, I think,

00:36:06 ►

really enjoy it, but nobody has time for that. I’ll tell you the book I want to read. I want to read the 351st volume

00:36:11 ►

that has one, has the last chapter from each of your biographies in it to see what you did after

00:36:18 ►

you left here. You know, and you don’t have to think, oh, I don’t have any resources. You know,

00:36:24 ►

how am I going to do things?

00:36:26 ►

The podcast I have, The Psychedelic Salon, has become very successful.

00:36:31 ►

And I have no resources.

00:36:32 ►

My wife and I are living on our Social Security checks and what I get from Patreon.

00:36:36 ►

So we don’t have massive resources to go out and do things.

00:36:40 ►

But they’re not necessary, I don’t think, all the time.

00:36:43 ►

For me, it’s just an old man’s hobby, but two, three years, four years after Palenque, I started the Palenque Norte

00:36:50 ►

lectures at Burning Man, and after the first year in 2003, I couldn’t afford to go again until 2006,

00:36:56 ►

but some of my friends kept it going, and thanks to Bruce Dahmer, he revitalized it again in 2012,

00:37:02 ►

and they’re having 30 and 35 people speak at Burning Man every year.

00:37:07 ►

They’ve had amazing people there.

00:37:08 ►

And so that’s something that I launched, but I didn’t have any resources to do it, you know, my one trip to Burning Man.

00:37:15 ►

But you can get a lot of things going if you have encouragement about it.

00:37:20 ►

So I started the Psychedelic Salon in 2005, and I’ve never advertised.

00:37:25 ►

There’s no advertising on the site.

00:37:27 ►

I don’t advertise in the program.

00:37:29 ►

And the last four books I’ve published are available for free online in PDF format.

00:37:34 ►

So I’m not trying to sell things.

00:37:35 ►

And one of the reasons I don’t advertise and I don’t use Google ads and stuff like that is because they track people.

00:37:41 ►

And over half my audience is 35 and under. Significant number of teenagers,

00:37:46 ►

a lot of military people, a lot of police people, law enforcement people, and it’s a big audience.

00:37:53 ►

And so I don’t want anybody tracking all that. And so John Gilmore has helped me keep the site

00:37:57 ►

really clean so that there’s no tracking coming out of it. But that little podcast, I do it in my bedroom, in a little corner in my bedroom.

00:38:07 ►

And it doesn’t really cost all that much to do it. Because I didn’t know what I was doing in

00:38:12 ►

the beginning, I’ve had to change my RSS feed. That’s a channel, if you’re not geeky. I’ve had

00:38:17 ►

four different feeds, and then a lot of people mirror the site. So I really have no idea how

00:38:22 ►

big the audience is. But on one of my four feeds,

00:38:25 ►

I don’t know how many programs have been downloaded, but individual unique users,

00:38:30 ►

there have been over 30 million. This is a popular subject. There’s a lot of people interested in it.

00:38:36 ►

Now that came out of a conference like this. It took me five or six years to get my act together

00:38:42 ►

to see it. It didn’t happen magically overnight, but I knew when I left that conference

00:38:45 ►

I was going to do something.

00:38:48 ►

Now, one other thing I’d like to say in closing.

00:38:50 ►

Be sure you don’t leave

00:38:52 ►

here without

00:38:53 ►

making two or three new good friends.

00:38:56 ►

I still have close friends

00:38:57 ►

that I met in that conference in 99.

00:39:00 ►

In fact, one of them

00:39:01 ►

on the Sunday morning of that conference

00:39:04 ►

everybody else went out to the ruins,

00:39:06 ►

and I went up the road, bought some mushrooms from a kid out in the jungle, and I stayed home and did mushrooms.

00:39:10 ►

And when my roommate got back, he said, well, how was it?

00:39:14 ►

And I said, well, I’ve made a hard left turn.

00:39:17 ►

And six months later, I’d quit my job and moved to the coast.

00:39:20 ►

But two days after my hard left turn, we’re having breakfast in this kind of communal breakfast area,

00:39:27 ►

and it’s a picnic table-like thing.

00:39:29 ►

And there was an empty seat, and this woman sat down kind of across from me, and we got talking.

00:39:34 ►

Long story short, this October we’re celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary.

00:39:40 ►

So be sure to make some friends.

00:39:42 ►

That’s all I’ve got.

00:39:43 ►

Thank you.

00:39:56 ►

And now, here’s to Ralph Messner, to Nick Sand, to Sasha Shulgin, to Dr. Tom,

00:40:08 ►

Kyle, Linda Rosa, Dale Pendell, Daniel Jabbour, Kai Wingo, Noah, Terrence McKenna, Timothy Leary, Carla Higdon, and so many other fair spirits, including your own relatives and close friends whose spirits are still with us

00:40:14 ►

because, well, they’ll always remain forever in our hearts. shadows are falling and i’m running out of breath keep me in your heart for a while

00:40:31 ►

if i leave you it doesn’t mean i love you any less keep me in your heart for a while. When you get up in the morning and you see that crazy sun.

00:40:50 ►

Keep me in your heart for a while.

00:40:55 ►

There’s a train leaving nightly called when all is said and done.

00:41:01 ►

Keep me in your heart for a while.

00:41:04 ►

Keep me in your heart for a while Sha la la la la la la la la la la la

00:41:10 ►

Keep me in your heart for a while

00:41:14 ►

Sha la la la la la la la la la la la

00:41:21 ►

Keep me in your heart for a while

00:41:54 ►

Sometimes when you’re doing simple things around the house Maybe you’ll think of me and smile

00:41:58 ►

You know I’m tied to you like the buttons on your blouse.

00:42:06 ►

Keep me in your heart for a while.

00:42:11 ►

Hold me in your thoughts.

00:42:14 ►

Take me to your dreams.

00:42:16 ►

Touch me as I fall into view.

00:42:21 ►

When the winter comes Keep the fires lit

00:42:26 ►

And I will be right next to you

00:42:31 ►

Engine drivers headed north to Pleasant Street

00:42:37 ►

Keep me in your heart for a while

00:42:41 ►

These wheels keep turning But they’re running out of steam.

00:42:48 ►

Keep me in your heart for a while.

00:42:54 ►

Sha la la la la la la la la la la la.

00:42:59 ►

Keep me in your heart for a while.

00:43:04 ►

Sha la la la la la la la la la la la. Keep me in your heart for a while.

00:43:09 ►

Sha la la la la la la la la la la.

00:43:35 ►

Keep me in your heart for a while

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