Program Notes

Guest speakers: Various

Date this lecture was recorded: April 13, 2017

Here’s our next set of stories from the Blue-Dot tour’s stop in a library of Austin, Texas.

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Transcript

00:00:00

Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

00:00:24

This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

00:00:33

Today, the Symposia team has sent us a recording of some of the stories that were told last month in Austin, Texas, on their Blue Dot Tour.

00:00:38

Lex told me that this was the first time that they held one of these sessions in a public library.

00:00:46

And interestingly, well, to me at least, whenever I think of Austin, it’s a library that comes to mind.

00:00:52

You see, it was 45 years ago in the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas,

00:00:56

that I was sworn into the Texas State Bar and began practicing law.

00:01:02

Practicing legally, I should add, because I’d already made a couple of court appearances while waiting for the bar exam grades to come in.

00:01:05

I was pretty confident.

00:01:08

Anyway, in addition to being a Texas drug dealer, I also practiced law there without a license,

00:01:13

which means that being a Texas outlaw isn’t actually the thrilling occupation it’s shown to be in the movies.

00:01:20

Anyway, let’s get on with the show, huh?

00:01:23

I guess I should add that the Bluetot Tour is progressing quite well.

00:01:27

Since they left San Diego after the April 27th event,

00:01:31

they’ve produced storytelling events in Portland, Oregon,

00:01:34

and in Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia.

00:01:39

A few minutes ago, I talked with Lex Pelger,

00:01:41

who is driving to Chicago for their next stop,

00:01:44

and he says that after that, they’ll be making two stops in Ohio and then on to the south.

00:01:49

I’ll be sure that there’s a link in today’s program notes where you can check out the upcoming Blue Dot Tour stops.

00:01:56

Hopefully, you’ll be able to make one of them and tell your own story.

00:02:00

Now, let’s join our friends in Austin, Texas, and listen to a few psychedelic Texas stories.

00:02:10

I’m Lex Pelger of Symposia, and this is the Psychedelic Salon 2.0.

00:02:16

This week we’ll be bringing you another set of our storytelling nights, and this stop is from Austin, Texas.

00:02:23

This one was especially important to me because it was our first time having an event inside a public library.

00:02:29

And it just makes sense because nothing is more libertarian than those fierce librarians

00:02:33

who will defend to the death your right to talk about or do anything within their holy walls.

00:02:40

It made a particularly safe space for this strong local community to share some very close stories to their soul.

00:02:48

It was also a pleasure to be able to feature Robert Barnhart, the maker of A New Understanding, the Science of Psilocybin.

00:03:05

is that it is an excellent piece of work for sharing both the science of why psilocybin works,

00:03:11

but also the stories of people who went through the legal research and how much it transformed them.

00:03:14

A story is worth a thousand data points.

00:03:18

This was one of my favorite stops so far on the Blue Dot Tour,

00:03:21

and I’m pleased that you’ll be hearing these stories from Austin, Texas.

00:03:35

Enjoy. Now it’s been many years since I have done psychedelic drugs, possibly because I don’t

00:03:43

know where in Austin to get them anymore. But I think I can

00:03:47

bring a perspective to this because I’m 73 and I probably did my last drugs maybe 30 years ago.

00:03:56

So in a sense, I find myself thinking, what lasted? What do I remember when three decades have passed? And it’s interesting.

00:04:08

It’s nothing like really splashy or fantastic, and yet what I remember has had a profound effect on

00:04:16

my whole view of life and so forth. And one of them was I was in my candle-lighted apartment and playing beautiful music.

00:04:28

And I got up on a stepstool, and I was looking at a plant.

00:04:34

And this dark green plant had little purple hairs.

00:04:39

And I just got up really close to it because I’m kind of nearsighted anyway.

00:04:44

And I’ll tell you to this day, I felt that the plant was breathing.

00:04:50

And actually, plants do breathe and so forth.

00:04:55

But that had a really profound effect on me just to sort of feel the livingness,

00:05:03

the energy that is in all things. And then even seeing things that

00:05:08

weren’t supposed to be moving, moving. Like, I don’t know, you know, a swirl on the wall or

00:05:15

something. Again, it wasn’t a fantastic, showy realization, but I think it really brought home

00:05:21

to me that basically all things that we see and touch, even though they

00:05:27

seem solid, they really are energy. And this is my belief to this day, that really we are energy

00:05:36

beings. And my personal belief, because all of this led on a spiritual journey that began like

00:05:43

with Stan Grof’s book

00:05:45

and also with some other books that were coming out in the 70s like Life After Life, Raymond Moody.

00:05:52

There are all these books about near-death experiences and out-of-the-body experiences.

00:05:58

And I thought, well, okay, what if anything does survive physical death. And I think the realization that I had that is real for me

00:06:08

is that since we are energy beings,

00:06:12

when the human body wears out and we don’t need it anymore,

00:06:16

as Elizabeth Kubler-Ross said,

00:06:18

it’s just like taking off an old threadbare worn coat,

00:06:23

taking off an old threadbare worn coat,

00:06:32

but that the essential is-ness or I am-ness of us is not destroyed.

00:06:33

It’s just transformed.

00:06:34

So I don’t know.

00:06:36

I just felt like sharing that with you this evening.

00:06:38

Thank you so much for listening. Thank you. There are many reasons to stay in a closet sometimes,

00:06:53

so I’m going to leave certain things undiscussed.

00:06:56

But I did want to address something related to entheogenic drugs.

00:07:01

A few months ago, I started exploring shamanism specifically in the context

00:07:09

of drums and rhythmic induction of meditative states. I think it was theta states or whatever

00:07:18

and it’s between 160 and 240 beats per minute of drums or rattles helps you to achieve that same meditative state.

00:07:27

And it is surprisingly very similar to substances that you can acquire by other means. But whenever

00:07:41

you’re in that situation, you’re able to travel and take a journey or a trip, literally, in a very similar way.

00:07:51

And I know that that’s not exactly the same thing, but what I’ve been taught in the course, and I’m not sure if the exact numbers are true,

00:08:00

but although about 5% of shamanic cultures around the world do use entheogenic drugs to

00:08:06

achieve an altered mental state,

00:08:08

the vast majority of shamanic

00:08:10

cultures actually use rhythm or

00:08:11

dancing to achieve that

00:08:14

altered mental state.

00:08:16

Related, not the exact

00:08:17

same thing, but anyways, thank you.

00:08:20

Alright, thank you.

00:08:21

No, it’s perfect.

00:08:37

My name is Ian, and I was trying to sit there and figure out what I was going to talk about.

00:08:42

Since my last drug war story, which was, what, a year and a half ago in D.C., we got to participate in their event at the Washington Monument.

00:08:46

So I thought I would talk about two major times I did five at MEO DMT in the past year,

00:08:56

both times in Mexico.

00:08:59

I was about to go to Peru with a bunch of veterans to take ayahuasca,

00:09:02

do a 10-day plant dieta and uh crossroads invited me

00:09:06

to come down to mexico to do the ibogaine and the toad medicine to kind of be like a guinea pig for

00:09:12

the veterans and uh so i had done synthetic five-invia dmt like 20 years before, like when I was, after I got out of the army, right when I was in law school.

00:09:27

And I just had the whiteout retroactive amnesia where you have the murder of the Godhead,

00:09:34

but you can’t remember anything.

00:09:36

And so I was like, wow, how do you just, how does a substance, you know, get rid of free will?

00:09:41

But so I’ve just put that away and didn’t do it for like 20 years

00:09:45

and then i did it again with a friend when he found out that i had it and same thing we both

00:09:51

have these both whiteout experiences so i was like okay there’s there’s no point here but then

00:09:57

i had this opportunity to take this medicine uh six months or so after that in Mexico.

00:10:08

And you take the Ibogaine on Friday night,

00:10:13

and then you take the toad medicine Sunday morning or during the day.

00:10:16

So after you have a whole day of Saturday to recover.

00:10:20

So I had recovered pretty well.

00:10:25

It’s probably about 90% that Sunday morning I was going to take the toad and so i’m like hey i’ve taken this particular substance before you know i got these experiences and

00:10:32

techniques and meditation and yoga and all stuff so i’m like i’ve smoked dmt before taking ayahuasca

00:10:38

i’m ready to go and uh so you’re in a very you know comforting room with rugs and pillows and blankets and stuff

00:10:48

and two facilitators and they’re heating the toad medicine for you in a pipe

00:10:57

and I took it in and the consciousness shift is just so strong,

00:11:05

so your ego is just really in overdrive.

00:11:10

But I was able to calm that down,

00:11:14

and then as soon as my soul tried to leave my body,

00:11:17

my ego shot out some kind of, I don’t know, rope or net or connection,

00:11:23

and I couldn’t break that.

00:11:27

And I came back and tried to work through that.

00:11:30

I still couldn’t.

00:11:31

So I said I was ready for more medicine.

00:11:33

I took another dose of medicine.

00:11:35

And I still couldn’t break through.

00:11:39

I felt like I was trying to, I had to kill the ego for God to come from outside,

00:11:46

kind of my mental orientation of this, from outside into me, you know,

00:11:50

this kind of replacement thing.

00:11:52

And I had to understand that that can happen, but from the inside,

00:11:57

God’s already in there, and I’m having this, you know,

00:12:00

mistaken way of looking at it.

00:12:02

And when that happened, I was uh i was okay but my ego

00:12:07

never i was okay that i could experience the divine and my ego could exist at the same time

00:12:11

and so then when i had the chance to do it a couple months later when we took the veterans

00:12:14

after peru this time i was ready to try to fully let go i wanted to really happen to find out

00:12:19

we all have this belief of what the source is of of what the universe is, of what God is.

00:12:25

I wanted to replace that belief with the actual experience.

00:12:29

But to do that, you’ve got to let go of everything that you’re holding on to.

00:12:34

And I was able to do that.

00:12:37

And I was able to control my breathing and turn off the gas reflex, the need to breathe.

00:12:43

So my higher self is like, you’re good, you’re going to be able to breathe.

00:12:47

But my ego, which is controlling that survival mechanism,

00:12:51

I was able to downregulate it so I could basically get it out of the way.

00:12:55

And then I took another dose and I was able to completely let go.

00:12:59

And then I can only describe the things as far as in some kind of sensory-based perception of, like, I was in a place, but that place was infinite is where I was.

00:13:09

So time and space disappeared.

00:13:12

My ego disappeared.

00:13:14

My soul disappeared.

00:13:16

Ian disappeared.

00:13:17

I had a perspective, but it was just the goddess. So it’s an infinite ocean of love and infinite potential in every possible direction

00:13:28

and dimension and capacity and description and all at the same time.

00:13:34

And so then as soon as I got there, I said, is this all there is?

00:13:38

And then God said, I let go to create creation.

00:13:40

But I didn’t say it like I hear it or I saw it.

00:13:44

I felt it inside

00:13:45

of me and i was like like the little monkey he had to take this stuff to let go to try to find

00:13:52

out what was there and the source just said dude i just flipped the script right back on you i let

00:13:57

go to do all this go back and do your little re-entry thing you know. I was like, thank you, thank you.

00:14:05

And I cried.

00:14:07

And then I came back.

00:14:09

Yeah, that medicine’s just really amazing.

00:14:12

And it’s really powerful for trauma, for releasing trauma for people.

00:14:19

So, yeah, anyway, thank you guys. Thank you.

00:14:35

So it’s kind of hard for me to pick exactly where to start,

00:14:37

except for to say that I have long-term PTSD.

00:14:42

I had a very, very abusive childhood, both emotionally and physically.

00:14:46

And because of that, I started having a lot of health problems around age 15. And over the years, they got worse and worse and worse. Problems with my

00:14:52

stomach, with sleep, anxiety, depression. I was eventually diagnosed with fibromyalgia,

00:15:00

which I think is pretty much bullshit. It’s just a box that they throw

00:15:05

everything into when they don’t know what’s wrong with your immune system and why your body doesn’t

00:15:10

want to take care of itself anymore. And for years, I saw dozens and dozens of doctors got

00:15:18

pretty much every kind of health care that you can imagine, did therapy of all different kinds, physical therapy, was constantly

00:15:28

getting MRIs. At one point, I went and did a sleep study, and they said, well, your body never goes

00:15:35

into delta sleep, so it’s not repairing itself, and we don’t know how to fix that. You can take

00:15:40

Ambien for that, and Ambien’s the worst. At one point, I was on two different antidepressants, muscle relaxers,

00:15:50

Tramadol for pain several times a day, and sleep medications,

00:15:55

and still I was sick all the time to the point where I was losing jobs

00:16:01

because I wasn’t showing up to work because I felt horrible.

00:16:03

I was losing jobs because I wasn’t showing up to work because I felt horrible.

00:16:17

And I was also doing things like yoga, meditation, but nothing was getting to the heart of the problem.

00:16:24

The issue was that I was dealing with hypervigilance and dissociation. So when I would go to therapy and I would try to talk about the things that had happened to me,

00:16:30

I would just dissociate.

00:16:32

And so I was never getting to the root of the problem.

00:16:36

And then I found hallucinogenics.

00:16:39

And I started tripping pretty regularly by myself.

00:16:44

I’d say this was probably about four years ago.

00:16:47

And I probably trip once a month.

00:16:49

And I’m not on any medications anymore.

00:16:54

I kicked a 15-year tramadol habit.

00:16:57

And tramadol is pretty much one of the most addictive drugs out there.

00:17:01

And I did it cold turkey, which was pretty incredible.

00:17:04

Well, I had the help

00:17:05

a little bit of kratom. Kratom helped me get through that and I’ve heard a lot of

00:17:10

people say that it’s super addictive, but it was something that I was able to drop

00:17:15

immediately. I feel like hallucinogenics have changed my life, mainly in conjunction with genetic testing to find out

00:17:29

what substances were missing in my brain and to work with different minerals and vitamins

00:17:38

and to keep up with my meditation and yoga practices. I’m also a huge proponent for using hallucinogenics for fun.

00:17:52

I think they’re a wonderful way to find your creativity

00:17:56

and, as was mentioned in the film, your sense of childlike wonder.

00:18:04

Like I said, it’s changed my life.

00:18:06

I think it’s probably my biggest hobby now

00:18:10

is reading everything that I can get my hands on

00:18:13

regarding neurochemistry, neurobiology, and hallucinogenics.

00:18:18

And, yeah.

00:18:19

Thank you. Hi, everybody.

00:18:34

Hi.

00:18:36

I guess more than just an experience,

00:18:39

I wanted to share, I guess,

00:18:42

my relationship with these kind of substances.

00:18:47

I guess I was raised Catholic, and as a little kid, I really bought into that tale.

00:18:53

I got into it, and that was something important as I grew up as a child.

00:19:00

Then I got into high school and started questioning things.

00:19:06

as a child, then got into high school and then started questioning things. And that sort of,

00:19:13

I wasn’t getting the answers from religion, Christianity, whatever. But I did still keep a very spiritual component throughout my early teenage years. Then I got into science, biology,

00:19:21

and started reading Richard Dawkins and that kind of crowd.

00:19:26

And that was like pretty much, you know, science, this is it.

00:19:30

Reality is what we can grasp.

00:19:33

And, you know, while this was going on, you know, I first started experiencing with cannabis

00:19:40

and getting into, you know, enjoying music and that kind of stuff, playing guitar.

00:19:44

and getting into you know enjoying music and that kind of stuff playing guitar but then I guess when I was like around 17 I had my first acid trip and I had a

00:19:51

music festival I really wanted to experience what I would read about and

00:19:57

what what was this about and then so one night I got a good hookup, got, you know, six hits, did not know what I was doing, and I started with three hits.

00:20:11

And I’m like, all right, well, this is probably going to be fun.

00:20:18

And maybe an hour, an hour and a half into it, I started feeling a little bit weird, but I wasn’t quite

00:20:26

there, so I decided to take three more hits.

00:20:30

So I said, you know, if I’m going to have this experience, this is going to be the night.

00:20:35

And I mean, what can you say?

00:20:38

I mean, I think it was the first, I mean, the first time that I had a really psychedelic

00:20:44

experience.

00:20:48

And I had not visuals as in like patterns I had literally hallucinations I would close my eyes and I would see rockets

00:20:54

shooting up a little like dwarfy looking character that would shoot a gun and then suddenly like

00:21:00

bang like it was very um I don’t know like a comic very animated and then

00:21:06

suddenly I would remember kind of like looking at the band guitar being on fire

00:21:11

like the guy shredding and I was just lost I mean I couldn’t grasp what was

00:21:16

going on and then maybe people looking at me and I was by myself minor detail

00:21:24

people would try to talk to me and I would just like stare at them,

00:21:28

but I just couldn’t communicate. But I would be like, the next day I woke up, you know, slept in

00:21:38

a tent, woke up and still everything was still very swirly the next day. So I guess I was like, all right, well, I had my psychedelic trip.

00:21:47

I had the experience I was looking for.

00:21:51

But then every time I would get into psychedelics when I was a young teenager,

00:21:56

it would be through music and party and experiencing like friends and that kind of stuff.

00:22:02

Until later on, maybe when I was like I mean

00:22:07

maybe five years ago like late 20s when I got really into having a very

00:22:14

personally relationship with psilocybin by getting to you know grow and I mean

00:22:23

you say grow but you just provide the right environment and the rest you know, grow. And I mean, you say grow, but you just provide the right environment and the

00:22:26

rest, you know, the organism flourishes. And that’s when I really got into, you know, exploring the

00:22:35

mind and exploring, you know, whatever. I mean, it’s like having a psychotherapist at your hand.

00:22:45

And the one thing is that having this sort of scientific background and being very into, you know, this is what we see.

00:22:56

Reality is what science tells us it’s all about.

00:22:59

And at the same time, every weekend I was having crazy experiences where I could not explain what was going on.

00:23:07

And I was like, you know, how can I merge these two views?

00:23:10

How can I have experiences where I cannot really explain or, you know, I cannot put it even into words?

00:23:20

So I think that overall, I mean, it’s been a really growing experience.

00:23:26

And I think that the main thing that I get from these drugs is that, or, you know, psychedelic, whatever you want to call them,

00:23:35

it’s just that they really make you question whatever you believe in.

00:23:39

You know, whether it is your religion or if you are an atheist, like I was at one point,

00:23:44

it really makes

00:23:45

you question just everything so I think that that’s the main thing that that I

00:23:50

got to learn from having a relationship with these kind of substances that

00:23:54

you’re never sure about anything and that you should always put yourself into

00:23:59

other people’s perspective give people the benefit of the doubt because we

00:24:03

don’t know shit and you know so but that’s basically what I learned so yeah. It’s been fun.

00:24:20

I’m a big nature lover and one of the things I think about a lot is invasives.

00:24:26

Anyone who’s familiar with invasives, they’re basically just plants and animals that are deemed that they shouldn’t be here.

00:24:33

Like skunk cabbage all over Austin, those fields and fields with those yellow flowers, you see them.

00:24:37

Those aren’t native to Texas, they shouldn’t be here, they’re choking out other things, as an example.

00:24:43

They shouldn’t be here. They’re choking out other things, as an example.

00:24:52

And my family lives in Hawaii, where it’s basically like the boiling pot of what’s going to happen all over the planet with climate change and everything else. It’s just like ground zero for invasives.

00:24:57

Like, you know, I remember when there weren’t coqui frogs in Hawaii, and that was about 10 years ago, and now they’re everywhere.

00:25:04

I remember when there weren’t cattle egrets in Hawaii, and they showed up last year ago and now they’re everywhere. I remember when there weren’t cattle egrets in Hawaii and they showed up last

00:25:08

year and now they’re all over the place.

00:25:11

Anyway,

00:25:12

I have a lot of anxiety and guilt and shame about the state of the planet.

00:25:18

I kind of just put it on myself.

00:25:20

Somehow this is my fault because of my kind of Western privileged lifestyle.

00:25:26

And I’ve kind of been grappling with this for years.

00:25:29

And while I was last in Hawaii visiting my family, I decided to kind of sit with this and take some mushrooms.

00:25:37

And I had a big moment while I was sitting, like, really deep peeking into the experience when I I mean it

00:25:47

was beautiful my parents live on the coast there’s you know beautiful trees you see the pacific it’s

00:25:52

absolutely gorgeous and while I’m in the middle of this a cardinal flies and sits on a tree and

00:25:58

cardinals don’t belong in Hawaii they’re not native to Hawaii um like they’re from here but they’re

00:26:04

not from there someone someone brought it to hawaii

00:26:06

i don’t know why i guess they just really like cardinals who knows and so the bird technically

00:26:13

didn’t belong there and it was beautiful you know it was a beautiful bright red vibrant bird against

00:26:19

the blue backdrop of the pacific and i suddenly just realized that I’m the one who’s deciding whether it should

00:26:26

be there or not. The Earth

00:26:28

doesn’t fucking care. Like, as long

00:26:30

as there’s trees, as long

00:26:32

as there’s breezes, as long as there’s animals,

00:26:34

the Earth doesn’t really care

00:26:36

what kind they are

00:26:38

or whether they belong or not.

00:26:40

And, you know,

00:26:42

that suddenly applied to me because, like,

00:26:44

for a long time I’ve seen humans as

00:26:46

invasive I feel like there’s too many of us we’re choking everything out and you know and thus that

00:26:52

really goes to me I’m invasive I don’t belong here and the mushrooms made me see that I do

00:26:58

belong here we all do we’re all part of this and it’s just

00:27:05

I’m so grateful for that because

00:27:07

for so long it’s like this

00:27:09

low level anxiety of feeling like I don’t

00:27:12

belong here and

00:27:13

that we’re ruining the planet and there’s nothing we can do

00:27:16

but that’s not

00:27:17

that’s not what it’s about really

00:27:19

it’s about something

00:27:21

bigger and I just

00:27:23

thank you for letting me talk about that.

00:27:31

If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider supporting us on Patreon.

00:27:44

To say thank you, we have perks like hemp t-shirts, blotter art, tickets to our events, Palo Santo, and one of the new chapters from Anandamide, or The Cannabinoid, my graphic novel series about cannabis based on Moby Dick.

00:27:59

Find us at patreon.com slash symposium.

00:28:04

A special thanks to Matt Payne, who engineered the sound,

00:28:08

Joey Whipp and California Smile, who made the music,

00:28:11

and to Brian Norman, who produced the show.