Program Notes
https://www.patreon.com/lorenzohagertyhttps://www.meetup.com/Nashville-Psychedelic-Society/Year this lecture was recorded: 2017
After a Veterans’ Day story by Lorenzo, today’s podcast features some stories from Nashville. Thanks to everyone at the Nashville Psychedelic Society for your help making a perfect last stop of the Blue Dot Tour.
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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 Psychedelic Salon 2.0.
00:00:24 ►
And today we’re going to hear some of Nashville, Tennessee’s psychedelic stories.
00:00:29 ►
But before I turn the program over to Lex Pelger, I want to tell one of my own stories.
00:00:35 ►
To me, well, this story also seems like mind manifesting or a psychedelic story,
00:00:42 ►
because it brings back a lot of thoughts that have been lying dormant in my mind for a long time.
00:00:47 ►
However, the only drug involved in this one is alcohol,
00:00:51 ►
because all of it took place before I even had my first toke of cannabis.
00:00:57 ►
Now, what prompts me to tell this story today is that here in the States,
00:01:01 ►
today is the national holiday called Veterans Day,
00:01:05 ►
and it’s held in honor of the 6% of our population who are military veterans.
00:01:10 ►
And if you include their families as well, a lot of people participate on this day
00:01:15 ►
in remembering their loved ones who have been or now are in military service.
00:01:20 ►
But I don’t want to be too serious here and sound like a lot of other commentators about our veterans.
00:01:26 ►
Instead, I want to tell a little story about where I was and what I was doing 50 years ago today.
00:01:33 ►
And I also want to talk about one of my former brothers in arms,
00:01:37 ►
a man who always brings a smile to my face when I think about him.
00:01:41 ►
His name is T.D. Sullivan, and he is, without a doubt, one of the most
00:01:46 ►
memorable characters that I’ve ever become friends with. I first met T.D. at Officer Candidate School
00:01:52 ►
in 1966. On my first Sunday night there, it was my job to empty the trash cans in each of the rooms
00:02:00 ►
that were occupied by members of our company. When I got to TD’s room, I found him
00:02:06 ►
passed out on his bunk, which was strange because for our first month we were restricted to the base
00:02:12 ►
and alcohol was off limits. His trash can gave him away, however, because it was filled with a half
00:02:18 ►
a dozen or more empty bottles of mouthwash, the kind that had some alcohol in it. Apparently, by drinking a lot of
00:02:26 ►
mouthwash, he was able to get a buzz on. So, two of our new classmates helped me get TD into a shower
00:02:32 ►
and sober him up. I knew right then that we would become good friends. I was 23 years old at the
00:02:38 ►
time, and TD was a couple of years older than me. We were not only the two oldest guys in our company, we were also the two
00:02:46 ►
that were most out of shape. At OCS, the rule was that our entire company had to jog as a group,
00:02:53 ►
from one building to wherever the next class was. Within a few days, we got into trouble because TD
00:02:58 ►
and I were always way behind the rest of the group. The solution, of course, was to put the two of us
00:03:04 ►
up front to set a slow enough pace that we, of course, was to put the two of us up front to set
00:03:05 ►
a slow enough pace that we all stayed together, although we were the slowest company by far.
00:03:11 ►
One other thing about T.D. He was in OCS because of a big misunderstanding.
00:03:18 ►
You see, back in his hometown of Wichita, Kansas, he was in the Navy Reserve after first having
00:03:23 ►
served four years of active duty as
00:03:25 ►
an enlisted electronics technician. After one long weekend of drinking with his best friend,
00:03:31 ►
who also happened to be a Navy recruiter, T.D. signed up for Officer Candidate School with the
00:03:37 ►
understanding that after four months at OCS, he would return to his reserve unit in Wichita as an
00:03:42 ►
officer. For reasons that we can only guess at,
00:03:46 ►
what he actually signed up for was another four years of active duty
00:03:50 ►
after he received his commission.
00:03:53 ►
The entire time we were at OCS,
00:03:56 ►
he was submitting letters and forms trying to get out of his four-year commitment.
00:04:00 ►
It didn’t work, however, and after graduation,
00:04:03 ►
he was ordered to report to the aircraft carrier Constellation in San Diego.
00:04:07 ►
My orders were also to San Diego, to the destroyer Hopewell, where I was to be the officer in charge of the electronic technicians, who all turned out to be about as crazy as was T.D.
00:04:23 ►
I got released from active duty about six months before T.D. did,
00:04:26 ►
but he then followed me to the University of Houston,
00:04:32 ►
where we both received Doctor of Jurisprudence degrees and began practicing law, but with different firms.
00:04:39 ►
I’d like to divert here for a moment to tell some stories about our participation in some St. Patrick’s Day parades,
00:04:43 ►
where we used T.D.’s four-door Lincoln Continental convertible,
00:04:48 ►
but I’ve already gone on too long and haven’t even got to the story that I want to tell you.
00:04:54 ►
So, let’s go back 50 years ago today, November 11, 1967.
00:04:59 ►
For the past six days, our destroyer had been operating independently in I-Corps,
00:05:02 ►
just below the DMZ in Vietnam.
00:05:06 ►
Our mission was to provide gunfire support for the 12th Marine Regiment who were engaged in firefights along the coast.
00:05:10 ►
At midnight, as that day 50 years ago began,
00:05:14 ►
our ship began firing one 5-inch shell every minute at locations sent to us by the Marines.
00:05:20 ►
It was called H&I, Harassment and Interdiction Fire.
00:05:24 ►
At midnight, we began firing to port, which offered my best chance to catch a little sleep.
00:05:30 ►
You see, Pete Biddle and I shared a stateroom on the port side.
00:05:34 ►
Our room was tiny, but it was orders of magnitude more comfortable than the enlisted crew’s accommodations.
00:05:40 ►
Our bunk beds were right against the side of the ship,
00:05:43 ►
and my top bunk only allowed about 20 inches of headroom
00:05:46 ►
preventing me from being able to sit up in my bunk
00:05:49 ►
We each also had a tall locker for our clothes and a desk that we shared
00:05:54 ►
It was a small room with only enough floor space for one of us to stand at a time
00:05:59 ►
But, as I said, it was a five-star hotel compared to what our crew had to put up with
00:06:05 ►
Now there were two major downsides to our cabin.
00:06:09 ►
One was the fact that just forward of us was the ammunition handling room for our number two gun mount.
00:06:15 ►
And whenever the big guns were being fired, that room was manned by several strong sailors
00:06:20 ►
whose job it was to take the big projectiles along with a huge brass
00:06:25 ►
casing filled with powder and send them up a deck and into the gun mount. And the
00:06:30 ►
gun would then shoot that 55 pound projectile up to 18,000 feet from the
00:06:35 ►
ship. It was hot and noisy work down there but somehow Pete and I got used to
00:06:40 ►
the noise and well we were able to get a little sleep even during the long nights
00:06:44 ►
of H&I firing.
00:06:46 ►
Eventually, the ship had to reverse course and begin firing to starboard.
00:06:50 ►
That caused another problem with our sleep.
00:06:53 ►
When the number two gun mount was fired to starboard,
00:06:56 ►
the large, heavy brass shell casing that held the explosive that sent the projectile flying
00:07:02 ►
would be ejected through the bottom of the gun mount, where it would crash onto the deck. You can probably imagine how loud that sound was when
00:07:10 ►
the empty casing crashed into the metal deck only 20 inches from where I was trying to sleep.
00:07:16 ►
And that is how I spent the first four hours of Veterans Day 50 years ago. According to a copy of
00:07:22 ►
our deck log for that day, we expended almost 400 rounds that night.
00:07:26 ►
Then during the day, we continued to provide fire support for the Marines,
00:07:31 ►
expending another 100 or so rounds at various times and in various locations along the coast in I-Corps.
00:07:38 ►
That evening, we were detached from the gun line and proceeded to Yankee Station,
00:07:42 ►
which was in the South China Sea about 50 miles
00:07:45 ►
from North Vietnam. Our orders were to join Task Group 77.4. It was just before midnight on that
00:07:53 ►
same day that we joined four other destroyers who were providing a screen to protect the largest U.S.
00:07:59 ►
carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin at the time. It was the USS Constellation. At midnight, I went on watch on
00:08:06 ►
the bridge of the Hopewell. Recently, I had been qualified to be an officer of the deck, the OD,
00:08:12 ►
and so I became the senior officer of the ship who was awake and in charge during that mid-watch.
00:08:18 ►
As a little aside here, let me just say that the responsibility that I felt to be the OD on a Navy destroyer in
00:08:25 ►
a war zone with over 300 men who trusted me to not make any mistakes for the next four hours
00:08:31 ►
while they slept, well, it was the greatest responsibility that I’ve ever had to respond to.
00:08:38 ►
Now, about an hour after I began my watch, the forward lookout let us know that we were receiving
00:08:43 ►
a signal from the Constellation. At the time, we were know that we were receiving a signal from the constellation.
00:08:50 ►
At the time, we were under radio silence, and so all of the communications between our little group of ships had to be done by flashing light.
00:08:54 ►
As it happened, we were the only destroyer who was in a position to see the flashing
00:08:58 ►
light coming from the carrier.
00:09:00 ►
I immediately began to worry that the signal would be given to reorient our screen, and our ship would be responsible for coordinating it.
00:09:08 ►
As a new OD, and the junior one at that, I sensed that my first big challenge as a destroyer man was about to take place.
00:09:17 ►
Our signal man decoded the message and, with a puzzled voice, said,
00:09:21 ►
They want to know if there’s anyone on the bridge called the Gouge. I’ll cut to the
00:09:27 ►
chase here. Back at Officer Kennedy School, the nickname that T.D. had given me was the Gouge,
00:09:33 ►
and how that came about is a long story that we don’t have time for here, but it really isn’t
00:09:37 ►
important right now. Now, as soon as I heard that name come from our signal man, I knew that TD was on the bridge of the Connie.
00:09:46 ►
As it turned out, he had recently received his own qualification as OD.
00:09:52 ►
So, that crazy drunken Irish madman was, at least for the length of this watch,
00:09:58 ►
in charge of this massive aircraft carrier out here in the Tonkin Gulf.
00:10:02 ►
And here I was doing the same job on a destroyer providing protection for him.
00:10:08 ►
Well, for the next 30 minutes or so, using our signalman’s flashing light code skills,
00:10:13 ►
TD and I exchanged information about our favorite bars in Olongapo and Hong Kong.
00:10:19 ►
I still wonder what the other destroyers were thinking about the long series of signals
00:10:24 ►
between us and the Constellation.
00:10:27 ►
Well, there’s more to this story, but my point here has to do with Veterans Day and the military.
00:10:32 ►
Today, when I think about the women and men in our nation’s armed services,
00:10:37 ►
I keep in mind that they are people not all that different than T.D. and I were back then.
00:10:42 ►
When we first arrived at OCS, as any petty officer
00:10:46 ►
can tell you, we didn’t know shit from Shinola. But the military has a way to train and inspire
00:10:53 ►
people who were like T.D. and me, civilian goof-offs with bad attitudes about authority.
00:10:59 ►
The Navy turned the two of us into people who, when they had to, were extremely well-trained and
00:11:05 ►
could act like responsible people, capable of doing very difficult and dangerous things when
00:11:10 ►
we had to. The Navy gets the credit for that, not TD and me. Although I rose to the rank of
00:11:17 ►
Lieutenant Commander while still in the Reserves and going to law school, I was not in any way
00:11:22 ►
cut out for the commitment and discipline that it takes to be a truly professional military person. And it is to those great
00:11:31 ►
men and women and their families that I dedicate today’s program. So now let’s get on to some more
00:11:37 ►
recent and pertinent stories from the psychonauts in Nashville, Tennessee.
00:11:42 ►
But thanks for listening to me first. Now, take it away, Lex Pelger.
00:11:54 ►
I’m Lex Pelger, and this is the Psychedelic Salon 2.0.
00:12:00 ►
I’m happy to be presenting another storytelling episode this week.
00:12:05 ►
This happy little gathering happened at Nocee Art College in Nashville, Tennessee.
00:12:10 ►
Chronologically, it was the last stop of the Blue Dot Tour.
00:12:14 ►
After this, I was heading home to get ready to leave New York and head west to my babies in Colorado.
00:12:20 ►
So many thanks to Andrea and Taylor and everyone at the Nashville Psychedelic Society that made this event happen.
00:12:26 ►
Because for me, it was the perfect last stop.
00:12:29 ►
An intimate affair where I believe every single person in the room told a story.
00:12:35 ►
It was beautiful to see, and I hope you enjoy what they shared.
00:12:40 ►
Though this actually won’t be the last storytelling episode.
00:12:43 ►
The first episode of the Blue Dot Tour that I released here on the Salon
00:12:47 ►
was from Athens, Georgia.
00:12:49 ►
That’s actually part of the reason I didn’t release any of those East Coast shows first.
00:12:54 ►
That’s where I started these experiments with open mic storytelling,
00:12:58 ►
so I’d heard the most of those.
00:13:00 ►
And so it was fascinating to watch the tone of the show shift
00:13:03 ►
with the cultures along the route of the tour.
00:13:06 ►
So we’ll be ending the Blue Dot series of storytelling soon
00:13:10 ►
after just a few more stops from the beginnings in the East.
00:13:15 ►
And the very last one that we’ll put out from that tour
00:13:17 ►
will end with the final one coming from my hometown of Lidditz, Pennsylvania,
00:13:22 ►
where we had an event in my parents’ barn,
00:13:24 ►
and where my father delivered another beautiful one,
00:13:27 ►
and a bunch of other people surprised me too.
00:13:30 ►
By the way, you can check out my father’s new book,
00:13:32 ►
Great Sex Christian Style, which just hit Amazon,
00:13:35 ►
and it’s actually a great piece of work
00:13:37 ►
for any liberal, atheist, curious person
00:13:40 ►
about this kind of stuff.
00:13:42 ►
I think open mic storytelling
00:13:43 ►
is a beautiful community-growing exercise.
00:13:46 ►
And all you need is the back of a bar
00:13:48 ►
or someone’s living room
00:13:50 ►
or a church basement
00:13:51 ►
or a library or a public park
00:13:53 ►
and you can create a wonderful gathering.
00:13:56 ►
So go on out and meet the others.
00:14:09 ►
I’m just delighted to be here tonight.
00:14:12 ►
And I’m just like a natural outgoing guy, so.
00:14:22 ►
The first thing I wanted to share was my first experience of hearing about LSD or acid or even hearing anything about it. And it was early high school.
00:14:25 ►
acid or even hearing anything about it. And it was early high school. And it was this presentation in a full assembly where there were these, I remember it was a woman and two men,
00:14:33 ►
and they had film. And the whole thing was just like this horrible, don’t ever do these awful
00:14:43 ►
drugs that make people think they’re bees
00:14:45 ►
and fly out the 27th story of a window in New York City.
00:14:50 ►
And so that was like my first introduction to, I guess, LSD,
00:14:55 ►
or psychotropic drugs, if that’s the right word.
00:15:01 ►
And then, and so I was kind of like, okay that sounds pretty bad but then I was also not really
00:15:06 ►
experimenting much there was a lot of weed and shrooms where I grew up but I didn’t actually
00:15:10 ►
discover that so I grew up on a lake in southwest Tennessee I didn’t really discover that until
00:15:16 ►
senior year and then summers back working in my hometown on the golf course on the lake and on the
00:15:23 ►
marina on the lake and I was a lifeguard at the pool on the lake.
00:15:26 ►
That’s when I really discovered it.
00:15:29 ►
So the first time that I actually remember a shroom trip, I was working at the marina.
00:15:39 ►
And, of course, we just smoked weed.
00:15:41 ►
It was like I had the afternoon into the evening shift, and the harbormaster was
00:15:47 ►
such a cool old guy, and there wasn’t always a lot of yachts or boats or whatever coming in, so
00:15:54 ►
we just smoked weed and hang out, and my cousin was running the restaurant at the marina at the time.
00:16:02 ►
He’s like five years older than I am.
00:16:11 ►
And so I remember the first time that I had shrooms, and it was great to be on the lake in the summer, in the still, with the crickets and the frogs, and just the smooth, glassy,
00:16:17 ►
green, beautiful lake water.
00:16:20 ►
And my friend Scott and I, Scott now has like 10 children that he fathered,
00:16:28 ►
and he just has lots of kids around.
00:16:30 ►
And it was just such,
00:16:33 ►
I remember with the weed and the environment,
00:16:35 ►
I like doing shrooms more in nature than I do,
00:16:39 ►
like I’ve done them before at a circuit party,
00:16:42 ►
which is a big gay, you know,
00:16:44 ►
mega event with DJs and guys from all over the world.
00:16:48 ►
I like doing it more in nature when it comes to shrooms.
00:16:52 ►
And the first time that I remember doing LSD, I had just graduated from NTSU, a university near here,
00:17:02 ►
and I had just started going to gay bars, and I had met some
00:17:07 ►
cool guys who actually liked to travel.
00:17:09 ►
One guy was just a spin thrift, and we’d go to New York and Dallas, and anyway, we would
00:17:16 ►
travel, and so he had introduced me to cocaine and acid.
00:17:21 ►
So those were the drugs that we were doing back then, besides smoking a lot of weed.
00:17:26 ►
And the first time that I remember an acid trip, it was at a gay bar that’s no longer around in
00:17:33 ►
Nashville. And I didn’t know how it would hit me or anything, but it grabbed me by the back
00:17:39 ►
of my neck, around my cerebral cortex, around the spine, the top of the neck, up into the cranium,
00:17:49 ►
and just pulled me up.
00:17:52 ►
And so I kind of had a hard first trip.
00:17:55 ►
Maybe it was just the intensity of the blotter.
00:17:58 ►
But once I kind of settled into it, I really enjoyed it.
00:18:03 ►
And then, because it was kind of trippy, because, I mean, gosh, we were probably still doing cocaine,
00:18:07 ►
probably still smoking pot and drinking, because we just were doing it all.
00:18:12 ►
And so then I had some great shroom trips in college with fraternity brothers in, like, apartments, you know, somebody’s apartment.
00:18:23 ►
And I remember, oh, and I remember one shroom trip with these buddies that I was talking
00:18:28 ►
about in Nashville, and one of my friends started calling me Jesus Christ.
00:18:32 ►
And it was just very strange, because I mean, I don’t think I’m Jesus Christ or anything
00:18:36 ►
like that, but I was like, why don’t you just stop calling me Jesus Christ?
00:18:39 ►
But then I was like, okay, I’m Jesus Christ.
00:18:42 ►
So, but those are the things sort of that just rise up within me about psychedelics.
00:18:48 ►
And I’m totally available to hang out socially.
00:18:51 ►
I’m just saying that.
00:18:52 ►
I mean, it’s like I know this is not what this group is all about,
00:18:56 ►
and it’s not part of the mission.
00:18:58 ►
But I’m open to exploring.
00:19:03 ►
I haven’t really done any.
00:19:05 ►
I take that back.
00:19:07 ►
I haven’t done LSD
00:19:08 ►
or shrooms…
00:19:11 ►
LSD in a long time.
00:19:15 ►
And I haven’t done shrooms.
00:19:16 ►
Well, I’ve done shrooms here and there.
00:19:19 ►
Thank you.
00:19:20 ►
All right.
00:19:21 ►
Cool.
00:19:20 ►
Thank you. Oh, God.
00:19:24 ►
So my name is Justin, and I just want to piggyback off what Lex just said.
00:19:34 ►
And I’m sure you feel the same way, but no matter where you get them from, always test.
00:19:39 ►
Test your drugs to make sure it is what you’re getting, especially in the psychedelic world nowadays.
00:19:44 ►
There’s just too much fake stuff going around, and you can overdose on a lot of it.
00:19:48 ►
You can just have a bad, different experience at the best.
00:19:54 ►
But I’m Justin, and I want to tell, I was going through all my stories in my head
00:20:00 ►
and said, what do I want to tell today?
00:20:02 ►
And I think it came to, you know, psychedelics have changed my life in so many ways, so many different ways. And I said, well, I got to talk
00:20:09 ►
about that. But it’s changed my life in so many different ways that I had to, you know, dig deeper
00:20:15 ►
and say, okay, let’s distill that out. What’s one message you want this group to hear? And i’m going to talk about uh mdma for post-traumatic stress disorder when i was 18 i went to bible college i was born and raised in a christian church
00:20:32 ►
christian family super christian super protective never gonna get see anything outside my bubble
00:20:38 ►
and so when i was 18 i was like okay well i’m gonna go in the direction that it’s obvious for
00:20:42 ►
me i want to become a youth minister and preacher.
00:20:47 ►
And so I went to Bible college for a year.
00:20:49 ►
And I asked a lot of questions.
00:20:51 ►
I didn’t get a lot of answers that satisfied me.
00:20:53 ►
And so that was it. I got one year, and I was like, all right, let’s pass this way out of the house.
00:20:56 ►
Let’s join the military.
00:20:57 ►
I don’t even know what to believe anymore.
00:20:59 ►
My whole world just got flipped upside down.
00:21:02 ►
So I went into the military, which was a unique choice, interesting,
00:21:07 ►
but it actually worked out for me
00:21:08 ►
because I had my first mushroom experience
00:21:12 ►
in the military.
00:21:17 ►
And I guess my first one,
00:21:21 ►
you ever seen just that asshole guy at a party
00:21:24 ►
that you’re like man
00:21:25 ►
I wish someone would just
00:21:27 ►
feed him a bunch of shrooms
00:21:28 ►
and just leave him alone let him figure stuff out
00:21:31 ►
on his own
00:21:32 ►
that was me
00:21:35 ►
that was beyond a shadow of a doubt
00:21:37 ►
me
00:21:38 ►
I was all in it for Justin
00:21:41 ►
that was it that was my only
00:21:43 ►
concern back in the day that and getting inebriated and for Justin that was it that was just my only concern uh back in the day that and
00:21:46 ►
getting inebriated and you know that was it um so I said hey this will be fun let’s eat the
00:21:53 ►
mushrooms my buddy said okay well I ate an eighth last time nothing happened so I think we should
00:21:57 ►
eat like seven grams each and I said look dude you’re. I’ll do it. So I piled up an inch of mushrooms on top of a slice of cheese pizza
00:22:10 ►
and just folded it in half and ate it.
00:22:14 ►
And we were in a barrio of Southern California.
00:22:21 ►
So we were in, like, not the best neighborhood.
00:22:23 ►
In fact, probably one of the worst areas you could do this in.
00:22:26 ►
And they knew we were tripping on shrooms
00:22:27 ►
because we had told them and bought them
00:22:29 ►
from the guys that lived there.
00:22:32 ►
They messed with us. It was a horrible
00:22:33 ►
trip, but it
00:22:35 ►
made Justin go introspective.
00:22:38 ►
And it made me look at a lot of
00:22:39 ►
aspects of myself that I’d never looked
00:22:41 ►
at before. Aspects that I’d never considered
00:22:43 ►
before. And then it made me look at all the other people around me and how I’ve been treating them and how I’ve viewed people in general.
00:22:51 ►
And found out, man, you know, I really feel like shit.
00:22:54 ►
And that was a whole eternal mushroom trip of feeling like shit is what that was.
00:23:01 ►
But, okay, so now I’m changed, you know.
00:23:03 ►
I’ve seen the light.
00:23:04 ►
I have a desire to go toward it continue my
00:23:06 ►
path the only thing is I’m in the military now
00:23:09 ►
and it’s time for me to go to Afghanistan
00:23:10 ►
so
00:23:12 ►
off I go with the Marines
00:23:15 ►
to Afghanistan and
00:23:16 ►
you know the thing
00:23:19 ►
over there was
00:23:20 ►
how do I I don’t know
00:23:22 ►
you want to be the light in the world
00:23:24 ►
you want to change things and you want to be the light in the world, you know, you want to change things,
00:23:27 ►
and you want to start from within, but at the same time, people are trying to kill you now,
00:23:31 ►
so you better maybe throw this on the back burner for a second, at least until you get back home
00:23:37 ►
alive, and so, you know, that whole thing, you know, I came back home and I was sitting in my house one day,
00:23:46 ►
and we were smoking synthetic marijuana, of course, which is horrible, but we were in the military.
00:23:50 ►
So that’s what we were doing.
00:23:52 ►
And man, it just kicked in.
00:23:55 ►
I was in my room, and I saw my military gear sitting in the corner.
00:24:00 ►
And I was in my room, but I was in Afghanistan in my head.
00:24:03 ►
And that was my first flashback.
00:24:05 ►
I’d never had experience anything like that at all.
00:24:10 ►
And that was when I realized, man, this is really starting to affect my personality.
00:24:15 ►
And so I got out of the military.
00:24:16 ►
I came home with my family.
00:24:18 ►
We’d be driving down the interstate and see a trash bag on the side of the road.
00:24:23 ►
And I’d freak out you know getting emotional
00:24:26 ►
I definitely wouldn’t be able to even talk about this before MDMA this is all stuff I internalized
00:24:32 ►
one year I was at a Christmas dinner family Christmas dinner and my an uncle of mine
00:24:41 ►
didn’t even mean anything by it started started asking me about the war. And I was like, I don’t want to talk about this, you know.
00:24:49 ►
But I was trying to answer his questions
00:24:51 ►
and give people a different perspective of what’s going on.
00:24:55 ►
And my roommate started texting me, and he says,
00:24:58 ►
man, I’m going to commit suicide.
00:25:01 ►
Another war veteran.
00:25:02 ►
So I was like, man, this is, everything’s going crazy. I ran out of the house.
00:25:07 ►
Entire Ascendant family saw this, right? So now I’m like, crap, I’m fucked up in the head. How do I
00:25:13 ►
get around this? And it wasn’t until I met my wife here that she actually was like, well, what do you
00:25:21 ►
think about MDMA? And my initial response was, well, I have no desire to do it
00:25:28 ►
because I did ecstasy in the rave scene.
00:25:31 ►
I know what that’s like.
00:25:32 ►
I’m trying to get away from the party drug.
00:25:34 ►
I just want to get my life together again.
00:25:36 ►
You know what I mean?
00:25:36 ►
To where I can be Justin before war.
00:25:39 ►
And she was like, okay, well, I think you should come to this talk
00:25:44 ►
when you come up here to visit me.
00:25:45 ►
She was living in Manhattan at the time.
00:25:46 ►
So I went up to visit her.
00:25:49 ►
And Rick Doblin was speaking at the Alchemist’s Kitchen.
00:25:53 ►
And so she was like, just go listen to him.
00:25:55 ►
You don’t have to do MDMA.
00:25:56 ►
I’m not going to make you do it.
00:25:58 ►
Just go listen to him.
00:25:59 ►
See what he has to say.
00:25:59 ►
I said, okay, I’ll go listen to him.
00:26:01 ►
And, man, I listened to Rick.
00:26:03 ►
And he started laying out all the facts about MDMA
00:26:06 ►
and laying to rest all the myths about MDMA.
00:26:10 ►
And she recorded it, and even we were listening to it the other day,
00:26:13 ►
and I was like, man, yeah, all that stuff he was saying, that’s what changed my mind about it.
00:26:17 ►
So after the talk, I got to meet Rick.
00:26:20 ►
Rick was super interested in my story.
00:26:23 ►
I could just tell that he really did care about people on a base level,
00:26:28 ►
which if you’ve ever done MDMA, you can really probably see how that’s true.
00:26:33 ►
So then the next step was acquiring MDMA that we could test that was pure.
00:26:38 ►
Once we got that, I said, okay, let’s try this, you know, in a therapeutic setting for once.
00:26:46 ►
And probably three to four sessions later, no PTSD.
00:26:55 ►
Oh, wow.
00:26:56 ►
None.
00:26:59 ►
You dropped your phone right behind me during the movie.
00:27:04 ►
Oh, it freaked me out before mdma uh man i went over to my
00:27:08 ►
parents house to watch fireworks before i did mdma on the fourth of july i went over there specifically
00:27:14 ►
to see the fireworks fireworks started i freaked out forgot they were happening you know i jumped
00:27:20 ►
in the floor my parents were like oh my god you, what happened to our son? But, you know,
00:27:27 ►
MGMN.
00:27:28 ►
Made it all go away.
00:27:29 ►
And I get super emotional about it because
00:27:31 ►
you know, it’s okay for me to stand up here and talk about it.
00:27:34 ►
Before I wouldn’t be able to do it because it still
00:27:35 ►
had a grip on my life.
00:27:38 ►
And now I feel like before
00:27:40 ►
the war. I mean, it is
00:27:42 ►
amazing.
00:27:43 ►
One of the big stats that Rick said that really changed my whole
00:27:48 ►
perception of it was 80% of the people that had gone through his study no longer were diagnosed
00:27:55 ►
with PTSD after three treatments. That means you don’t have to take SSRIs for the rest of your life.
00:28:03 ►
You don’t have to go to therapy for the rest of your life,
00:28:06 ►
at least not about this.
00:28:07 ►
You know, life continues on, but surely more things will happen.
00:28:11 ►
But, you know, it’s given me my life back,
00:28:14 ►
and I couldn’t be more grateful to Rick.
00:28:16 ►
I couldn’t be more grateful to MAPS.
00:28:17 ►
I couldn’t be more grateful to Alexander Shulgin and my wife.
00:28:23 ►
You know, and I guess through all that, we were dating. Through all that MDMA that we did together, Alexander Shulgin and my wife.
00:28:26 ►
And I guess through all that, we were dating.
00:28:29 ►
Through all that MDMA that we did together,
00:28:33 ►
we ended up getting married super fast and falling in love.
00:28:37 ►
And, yeah, we still say, you know, we look at each other and we’re like,
00:28:38 ►
can you believe we got married?
00:28:40 ►
No.
00:28:41 ►
It’s crazy.
00:28:42 ►
It’s crazy.
00:28:46 ►
But that was the big thing that I wanted to share about me.
00:28:53 ►
So my life passion now is letting people know, like, I see veterans all the time that are dealing with this.
00:28:56 ►
I see Vietnam veterans that are still dealing with this crap.
00:28:58 ►
And it’s insane. You don’t have to go through it.
00:29:00 ►
It doesn’t have to be part of life.
00:29:01 ►
You know?
00:29:07 ►
It’s something to do in the Army for some of You know? Any trauma.
00:29:09 ►
Because it’s not just a military thing. Everyone that gets born into this life is born
00:29:12 ►
into trauma. It’s going to happen.
00:29:13 ►
So, highly recommend it.
00:29:16 ►
I mean, I’m on the train all the way.
00:29:18 ►
I’m trying to get my family to do it for their
00:29:19 ►
childhood stuff that they got.
00:29:23 ►
Psychedelics have changed
00:29:24 ►
my whole family extended
00:29:25 ►
family and everything and but that’s where i want to stop that’s what i want to share with you guys
00:29:30 ►
thank you for listening um i didn’t really prepare a specific thing but i guess um the most important
00:29:42 ►
thing that i’ve gotten from psychedelics has been like building a strong foundation in my primary relationship in my life with my significant other and future husband.
00:29:56 ►
So, yeah.
00:29:57 ►
So basically my first time doing LSD, like higher doses, because I had done it once before
00:30:05 ►
but it was cool and you could see the visuals
00:30:08 ►
and whatever but it wasn’t
00:30:09 ►
super mind blowing
00:30:11 ►
but my first time was with him
00:30:13 ►
and it was also a lake experience
00:30:16 ►
as well
00:30:17 ►
actually all my major experiences have been on a lake
00:30:20 ►
but yeah
00:30:22 ►
so my first time was with him
00:30:24 ►
and big trip this is my biggest my biggest one
00:30:28 ►
um and it was I mean obviously just beautiful and just the most significant thing in my life
00:30:35 ►
ever you know um but I remember a specific point this is like the first time that I actually had
00:30:43 ►
like a ego drop and probably the most significant time that I actually had like an ego drop and probably
00:30:45 ►
the most significant time that I’ve actually like really had that experience of ego dropping,
00:30:51 ►
was peeking on Acid and looking over at my partner and looking at his face.
00:30:58 ►
I’m looking at his face and we do look kind of similar but um I looked at his face and I started to see
00:31:08 ►
myself and I just kept looking at him longer and longer and I was like am I seeing myself right now
00:31:16 ►
in his face and it was this weird thing where just all of a sudden it was like
00:31:25 ►
thing where just all of a sudden it was like everything was still and I was just looking at him and realizing that he wasn’t separate from me and that I didn’t actually exist either
00:31:33 ►
and it was this the craziest feeling of just this one God presence and that was it and there was
00:31:43 ►
nothing else and the shock of that, the realization
00:31:47 ►
of that was beautiful, but it was also shocking, because all of a sudden I’m realizing, oh
00:31:52 ►
shit, there’s nothing else, it’s just this, it’s the one, you know, thing, and anyways,
00:31:59 ►
so that was like incredible, and we’ve continued to use psychedelics to kind of bring us together and
00:32:06 ►
just shed away all of the you know all of the ego build-up that happens over time um but after
00:32:13 ►
we had tripped together a couple of times we actually i became pregnant with our son
00:32:18 ►
and um so it was a long hiatus, no psychedelic journeys for a while.
00:32:26 ►
Um, and we actually came back together, uh, to do psychedelics again, finally last, uh,
00:32:32 ►
last fall.
00:32:33 ►
And I was really nervous about it.
00:32:36 ►
Actually, I knew that it needed to be done, but I was really nervous.
00:32:38 ►
I just, it had been so long and I was in this new part of my life and it was like, I had
00:32:44 ►
a lot of anxiety about
00:32:45 ►
it but um sure enough we’re sitting on the dock at the same lake then the first the first big one
00:32:52 ►
happened and um we’re starting to come up and I look over at him and he’s looking at me and just
00:32:59 ►
the joy on his face and just the connection that we had in that moment. And it just clicked. And I was
00:33:07 ►
like, this is why we do this. This is why we do this. And, um, that just came back to reality.
00:33:15 ►
And it just spurred this, the connection again, all over just, you know, I guess we’re six months
00:33:21 ►
outside of that. And, uh, it’s just spurred so many beautiful things between us.
00:33:26 ►
And it’s really been the foundation of our relationship.
00:33:31 ►
I mean, truly, it is.
00:33:32 ►
I mean, we talk about this often.
00:33:34 ►
This experience that we can share together is what makes us so strong
00:33:39 ►
and capable of taking on anything and capable of being parents to, you know, a beautiful child. And it’s been
00:33:47 ►
an amazing journey because of that. So that’s, that’s my, that’s my share.
00:33:58 ►
I’m going to remain anonymous. Jane, my friend Jane Doe.
00:34:03 ►
I’ve only had a couple psychedelic experiences in my life so far, both with shrooms.
00:34:09 ►
And the first time it was with my ex-boyfriend.
00:34:13 ►
And I remember looking at him when we were peaking and we just both started to cry.
00:34:21 ►
Like it was just such an intense connection that I’ve never had with anyone else in my life.
00:34:28 ►
And in that moment, I was like, this is it.
00:34:31 ►
He’s the one.
00:34:32 ►
And I was like, I’m going to marry this guy.
00:34:37 ►
And our relationship ended up moving super fast after that.
00:34:41 ►
He met my family in Canada.
00:34:44 ►
I went to New York for Christmas, met his family. And
00:34:46 ►
all within a year, I moved in with him as well at his place due to other financial circumstances on
00:34:53 ►
my end. But it got to a point where I was so wrapped up in his own world that I lost myself.
00:35:02 ►
And I knew that there was something else beyond the relationship that I had.
00:35:07 ►
And I realized that the relationship had served its purpose.
00:35:12 ►
And so I broke it off with him, and it was about almost a year after dating him.
00:35:18 ►
And I was a mess.
00:35:23 ►
Well, actually, no.
00:35:24 ►
When I first initially broke it off, I knew it was the right thing, and I felt free.
00:35:31 ►
I understood, okay, I’m building the foundation of myself, so then I can be with someone and meet them exactly like…
00:35:40 ►
The analogy that I used was, there’s this book called The Prophet.
00:35:49 ►
And he describes a relationship where it’s two people and they’re holding up a building.
00:35:54 ►
They’re like pillars that hold up a building.
00:35:56 ►
And if the people are too close, the building will collapse.
00:35:59 ►
And you have to have that space to be yourself and hold space for that other person.
00:36:06 ►
And I felt like in our relationship, we were too close and I was like leaning in on him and he was too close to me and
00:36:10 ►
it, it wasn’t working. And so when I initially called it off, I was like, this is the right
00:36:17 ►
move. This is what I need to do to find myself. And then, uh, a couple of months went by and I’m, you know, had some very drunk
00:36:28 ►
nights where I went and saw him play anyway. Uh, then I ended up sleeping with him three
00:36:35 ►
months after we broke up and it ruined me. Like I was extremely stressed out and I was
00:36:42 ►
breaking out horribly. I have scarring from that
00:36:46 ►
and I could not figure out why I couldn’t let this go
00:36:49 ►
and why he wasn’t the one.
00:36:51 ►
Like I was obsessed with this.
00:36:52 ►
Like why is he not the one?
00:36:54 ►
Because he was so perfect.
00:36:55 ►
Like he was everything that I had been looking for
00:36:57 ►
that I wanted to manifest in my life.
00:37:01 ►
And then we came back together again
00:37:03 ►
and we started talking and started hooking up again.
00:37:07 ►
And then I started to remember like, oh yeah, shit, this is why we can’t do this. And finally,
00:37:14 ►
my friend Chelsea, um, got some shrooms from California recently, actually like two weeks ago.
00:37:20 ►
And, uh, I had this moment where I was like, why? There was just something blocked in me.
00:37:27 ►
I couldn’t figure it out, or I didn’t want to look at it, really,
00:37:30 ►
was what it came down to.
00:37:31 ►
And so I forced myself to look at where I was,
00:37:35 ►
and I asked for the truth.
00:37:38 ►
I just wanted to know the truth.
00:37:40 ►
And I meditated for like an hour while tripping,
00:37:43 ►
and then it just hit me.
00:37:45 ►
I was like, I have to call him right now and break this off.
00:37:49 ►
So I called him while I was tripping.
00:37:52 ►
And I explained.
00:37:53 ►
The amazing thing about tripping is that it removes a filter.
00:37:57 ►
Like I felt so much more like myself while going through this experience.
00:38:02 ►
And I was more eloquent with how I was saying things
00:38:05 ►
and was able to say it exactly as I intended to say it.
00:38:09 ►
And so when I told them all these things about
00:38:11 ►
when you’re in a relationship with somebody
00:38:14 ►
or when you’re not, when you’re in a relationship with somebody
00:38:16 ►
and then you’re not in a relationship with somebody
00:38:18 ►
and you hook up with them, sex is a very spiritual thing.
00:38:24 ►
You, especially for women, because we
00:38:26 ►
literally absorb their energy. We take in so much of what they’re feeling. And I had come to the
00:38:34 ►
realization that I was taking on so much of his suffering because he wasn’t doing the work on
00:38:41 ►
himself that he needed to. And that’s, that’s why I left that during that
00:38:46 ►
trip. I realized that I, I was only, I was holding my hand up so far to pull him up with me, but he
00:38:51 ►
didn’t want to pull himself up. So I called him and I like broke it off then and there. And then
00:38:57 ►
I had a moment where I just like had my knees hit the floor and I surrendered completely to what it
00:39:01 ►
was. And I was crying and it was really intense. Luckily I had my friend to call and I talked to her. And then after that, I was able to pull
00:39:08 ►
myself out of that like rabbit hole that I could have gone down of missing him and all this stuff.
00:39:14 ►
And I realized like, no, you’re free. Like this is what it feels like to be free. And I ended up
00:39:20 ►
like getting up and I started playing music. I started playing guitar and I was recording.
00:39:25 ►
I was like ad-libbing.
00:39:26 ►
I was having so much fun.
00:39:28 ►
And then all of a sudden,
00:39:29 ►
Steph comes to my door.
00:39:32 ►
His name is Steph, by the way.
00:39:33 ►
Same as mine.
00:39:34 ►
Oh shit.
00:39:34 ►
There we go.
00:39:39 ►
So he comes to the door and he walked in i remember feeling like he’s not welcome here
00:39:50 ►
anymore you know and um it it changed my life like i was able to really honestly truly let him
00:39:59 ►
go and know why like i think that’s the super important thing about, because sometimes we just don’t understand why we do things.
00:40:07 ►
And I think with shrooms and tripping,
00:40:09 ►
it just helps you realize why you do something
00:40:13 ►
and you’re okay with it.
00:40:16 ►
And you’re like, okay, I accept myself for who I am
00:40:18 ►
and what I want and I respect what I want
00:40:20 ►
and he’s not what I want.
00:40:23 ►
And that’s okay.
00:40:24 ►
And he’s going to be okay.
00:40:26 ►
So, and then afterwards we said bye, and that’s it.
00:40:31 ►
And it’s the end of the story.
00:40:32 ►
So I think psychedelics have the power to help people in relationships
00:40:37 ►
not go back to something that is really painful.
00:40:41 ►
Yeah.
00:40:42 ►
Thank you. really painful. Yeah.
00:40:48 ►
Wow.
00:40:53 ►
So I did mushrooms, like, eight or nine times all the span of, like, two and a half to three years.
00:40:55 ►
Like, really kind of went in on it.
00:40:57 ►
And I guess to preface the story,
00:40:59 ►
like, what I took from mushrooms,
00:41:01 ►
like, my first couple deep trips into it
00:41:03 ►
was that I kind of, I was definitely
00:41:05 ►
like a moody teenager, like definitely gravitated towards depressing stuff. Not that I was like
00:41:10 ►
super depressed, but I would just kind of fall into these lows that I wouldn’t really
00:41:14 ►
have the tools to like bring myself out of or have the perspective to do so. And so the
00:41:19 ►
amazing thing for me when I did shrooms was, I guess like the best way that like I described the experience
00:41:27 ►
even though it’s impossible to describe describe to somebody is that it’s like turning on a video
00:41:32 ►
game for the first time and the first thing you do is like kind of check out the world that you’re
00:41:36 ►
playing in you check out your character and so you’re like whoa like look at these arms and
00:41:40 ►
and it was like that’s like kind of experience that always like first happens for me and um i
00:41:47 ►
guess the main takeaway and like the thing that i love about the experience is that it just makes
00:41:52 ►
you see the world as if you’re plugged into it for the first time and makes you examine the beauty
00:41:57 ►
of it that you just kind of take for granted day in and day out and um yeah like that experience of
00:42:04 ►
being able to see things as if it’s for the
00:42:07 ►
first time and realize that like it is like a beautiful world like there’s no other place to be
00:42:11 ►
than here um i’m sorry i was gonna say something else too but um
00:42:18 ►
yeah and the great thing is that you know when you’re in it and you’re peeking, like, oh, it’s great.
00:42:25 ►
I mean, there’s bad times, too.
00:42:26 ►
I’m just more talking about the external experience of it, not the internal.
00:42:29 ►
But the great thing is how it lingers with you.
00:42:31 ►
And so I find myself now still, like, even though it’s been a long time since I’ve been on a trip, like, still just taking in the beauty of the world and having a much different perspective on not so much like, well, why am I here?
00:42:41 ►
Why do I have to do this stuff that I have to do?
00:42:43 ►
But just appreciating the fact that it is all here and it all is a miracle in its own way that everything has come together
00:42:48 ►
for this point and that’s what I wanted to say but it’s for sure that
00:42:53 ►
so hi my name is Andrea I actually had my first psychedelic experience ever three years ago.
00:43:08 ►
And it was a little bit of background.
00:43:13 ►
I’m originally from Chile.
00:43:14 ►
I moved here to the U.S. for many reasons.
00:43:20 ►
And one of those reasons was I had a very traumatic childhood and I had three brothers
00:43:28 ►
and two of them suffered at the time of addiction because of that traumatic childhood and I moved
00:43:37 ►
here trying to find myself but at the same time trying to find a way to help them. And what I mean here, I mean here to the U.S.
00:43:46 ►
I’ve been here in the U.S. for 10 years,
00:43:48 ►
and three years ago I had my first psychedelics experience
00:43:51 ►
where I find out not only what everybody’s saying,
00:43:57 ►
that you really find your true self,
00:43:59 ►
you really discover who you really are and what you’re here for,
00:44:03 ►
and not only it helped me to discover who you really are and what you’re here for. And not only it helped me to discover who I really was
00:44:06 ►
and why I was sent to pass through all the trauma that I passed through in a childhood.
00:44:14 ►
And as you said it beautifully, everything, if you start looking back after having a psychedelic experience,
00:44:20 ►
you start connecting the dots and you realize, wow, everything do happen for a reason. And every single person that you meet throughout the way are part
00:44:30 ►
of every step that you do throughout your whole journey in this life. And that’s exactly
00:44:36 ►
what happened to me with my psychedelic experience. My first psychedelic experience, I moved out
00:44:41 ►
of the city that I was living at the time with a career in my mind.
00:44:47 ►
And because my brother was suffering from an addiction, not only one but two of them,
00:44:50 ►
at home I moved to another city for a job that was actually giving me the opportunity
00:44:56 ►
to go and provide a solution for my brother’s addictions.
00:45:01 ►
My plan was to create a new profit that will help people with addiction
00:45:07 ►
and eventually that will help my brothers as well back home. I just didn’t know how.
00:45:13 ►
I just knew I had an idea and I had a job opportunity that showed me that it could have
00:45:19 ►
that opportunity and I jumped in and I moved to another city and it didn’t work out
00:45:26 ►
obviously and to in that city and when I needed to move back to the place that I
00:45:31 ►
was before I couldn’t and in that week period that I needed to stay longer
00:45:38 ►
before I moved back I had my first psychedelic experience. And I met my husband today, who is my husband today.
00:45:49 ►
But in that psychedelic experience, not only I found myself,
00:45:53 ►
I found the opportunity to help my brothers.
00:45:56 ►
I found out about ayahuasca, how ayahuasca can help people with addictions,
00:46:00 ►
and how this was in Peru, and I’m from Chile, and I didn’t know about it.
00:46:04 ►
And then I found out in Chile, it legal that actually there are people doing it in Chile
00:46:09 ►
and I didn’t know about it.
00:46:10 ►
Why did my brothers didn’t know about it?
00:46:12 ►
All these years they went through so many, especially my oldest brother, older brother,
00:46:17 ►
he went through so many rehab and nothing worked.
00:46:20 ►
And addiction doesn’t just affect the person who is in an attic, it affects the whole family.
00:46:23 ►
And addiction doesn’t just affect the person who is an addict.
00:46:24 ►
It affects the whole family.
00:46:30 ►
And that’s because my younger brother also became an addict. And I left home, and we have four of us.
00:46:34 ►
And our youngest brother suffered that abandonment as well.
00:46:38 ►
And all happened because of the trauma of the childhood.
00:46:43 ►
And so I found out about Ayahuasca and I had to move back because
00:46:48 ►
that week, that period of lapse that I had of a week where I had my experience and I
00:46:53 ►
needed to move back to New York, I realized that there was a way out, that my trip moving
00:47:02 ►
to another city, it did not bring my purpose,
00:47:06 ►
what I wanted to do to help my brothers,
00:47:08 ►
but it did show me another way,
00:47:11 ►
that I have never seen it before,
00:47:14 ►
and that it was taken away from me,
00:47:15 ►
and from my family, and from my brothers.
00:47:18 ►
These drugs are being illegal,
00:47:19 ►
so these drugs are helping people,
00:47:21 ►
are healing people,
00:47:24 ►
are changing life,
00:47:25 ►
not only on one person, but many others around.
00:47:28 ►
And the fact that they are illegal and all of them are Schedule 1,
00:47:34 ►
I felt that it was taken away from me and that I needed to do something about it,
00:47:39 ►
that I needed to help my brothers no matter what.
00:47:42 ►
And I went back to New York and the reason I wanted to
00:47:46 ►
mention this is because I’m very grateful to
00:47:47 ►
the Psychedelic Society of Brooklyn.
00:47:50 ►
I went to New York and I found this
00:47:51 ►
and I started looking for people of Ayahuasca
00:47:53 ►
because I wanted to help my brothers.
00:47:56 ►
And I went to a meetup
00:47:58 ►
of the Psychedelic of Brooklyn.
00:48:00 ►
I’m sorry. Before that,
00:48:02 ►
I went to a crystal store.
00:48:03 ►
And I met somebody who was very special and I told this, he asked me, why are you here?
00:48:08 ►
And I told my whole story, and he said, no, your brothers don’t need ayahuasca.
00:48:11 ►
Your brothers need iboga.
00:48:13 ►
I’m like, what is iboga?
00:48:15 ►
I never heard of it.
00:48:16 ►
And he said, it’s an African root, search for it.
00:48:19 ►
And that became my passion.
00:48:21 ►
That’s when I went to the Brooklyn Society meetup in the library, and Neil calls
00:48:27 ►
me, was talking about Incodad, and I see somebody walking with a Boga in t-shirt, and I see
00:48:33 ►
that person, and I’m like, that’s the guy that I need to talk to, you know, like he’s
00:48:37 ►
wearing a Boga in shirt, I’m here for my brothers, I need to find out what is going on, what
00:48:41 ►
is this drug, and why is it illegal? And when I spoke with
00:48:46 ►
this person, making the story short, at the same time, this was 2016, last year, the conference,
00:48:54 ►
the international conference that I was having in Mexico at the time, and this person that
00:49:01 ►
I met was going to the conference. So I invite him over when
00:49:05 ►
he come back from the conference for dinner, and we’re having a talk, and he knew a whole
00:49:10 ►
story about my brothers and how much I wanted to help them, I wanted to help them to find
00:49:16 ►
out a way to heal them, and my whole family as well, my parents and my youngest brother,
00:49:25 ►
parents, and my youngest brother, and myself as well.
00:49:32 ►
And we are having dinner at my house, and he makes a call, and in that call, he finds out that somebody that went to that conference,
00:49:36 ►
the national conference from Switzerland,
00:49:38 ►
was moving to Chile to work with the plan by the end of the year.
00:49:42 ►
Just like that.
00:49:44 ►
Just like that.
00:49:46 ►
I look for a book. Not only that. I look for Iboga.
00:49:48 ►
Not only that, I wanted to make a point that before that, when I found out
00:49:50 ►
about Iboga, I looked everywhere. I spoke to so many
00:49:52 ►
people about it and how
00:49:54 ►
to get it. And I was to a point,
00:49:56 ►
I got to a point that I just wanted
00:49:57 ►
to buy it on the black market
00:50:00 ►
and send it back home and just do it
00:50:02 ►
like whatever it takes to do it so they
00:50:04 ►
can get healed.
00:50:09 ►
And I realized over time, especially that person who helped out with that call and was wearing the Boga insurance, always told me, no, you can’t do that.
00:50:13 ►
You know, like the second set is super, super, super, super important for this medicine
00:50:18 ►
to actually really work and do the job that it’s supposed to do.
00:50:22 ►
So I started researching about it, and I get it, and I
00:50:28 ►
really got it, and I’m like, okay, yes, it can’t just be like that. It can actually harm
00:50:33 ►
my brothers and my whole family if I do it like that. And that happened within weeks
00:50:39 ►
until I found out that somebody was actually moving to that country, to my country back home, to work
00:50:45 ►
with the medicine.
00:50:48 ►
This happened, I think, around August.
00:50:50 ►
The person moved to Chile to work with the medicine at the end of the year.
00:50:56 ►
In January this year, my brother, and thank goodness, and all the angels and all the people
00:51:04 ►
that made this happen actually
00:51:06 ►
they are healed today and they’re back home they stay away for a for a period of time as well
00:51:11 ►
to recover and to do the reintegration work which is super super important with Ipoga and it’s not
00:51:17 ►
just taking the the medicine and doing the journey and then come back home and thinking that
00:51:22 ►
that everything is going to be okay no that is a lot of work to do it’s a lot of healing and a lot of rebuilding to do and they
00:51:29 ►
did that they had the opportunity to do that and the reason i wanted to share this story is because
00:51:35 ►
i would have never known if i didn’t go to psychedelic society brooklyn meetup you know
00:51:41 ►
and if that guy didn’t show up with a shirt, I would have never found out about it either. Everything
00:51:46 ►
did happen for a reason, and
00:51:48 ►
and
00:51:48 ►
like Lex was saying, when you tell your story,
00:51:52 ►
you know, like you really can
00:51:54 ►
get, people can
00:51:56 ►
get empathic with your story, and
00:51:58 ►
and can really understand
00:51:59 ►
that these
00:52:01 ►
medicines are illegal,
00:52:04 ►
not because they’re harmful for you.
00:52:06 ►
They’re illegal.
00:52:07 ►
I don’t know why, but they’re illegal,
00:52:10 ►
and we must do something to change that
00:52:13 ►
because so many people live with trauma.
00:52:16 ►
So many people live with child trauma today,
00:52:19 ►
and so many people suffer on a daily basis,
00:52:23 ►
and they don’t know that it’s a way out.
00:52:28 ►
And one thing I did learn about psychedelics,
00:52:31 ►
which is really important to know
00:52:34 ►
that psychedelics show you that way out,
00:52:36 ►
but the only way out is through.
00:52:39 ►
And I also wanted to share on the other side,
00:52:43 ►
not only my brothers are being healed,
00:52:45 ►
my mom is willing to work on her trauma.
00:52:50 ►
And I’m going to have the experience at the end of this year as well,
00:52:59 ►
which is beautiful because my brothers are the ones paying for it,
00:53:03 ►
which means weight so much for me.
00:53:06 ►
Not because of, it’s just the fact that they could have died a year ago,
00:53:13 ►
and now they’re willing to pay for my healing when I’m super far away.
00:53:18 ►
And these medicines are incredible.
00:53:21 ►
It really changed my life and the life of my whole family and it still do.
00:53:26 ►
And on top of that, it got to meet my husband and he got the opportunity to work on his PTSD.
00:53:34 ►
So I did as well with MDMA of my trauma childhood, which opened my heart to healing and to be able
00:53:43 ►
to fall in love and to live this life that is what
00:53:47 ►
you said is the only life we have and we are here for a reason.
00:53:51 ►
And psychedelics show you that way to find yourself and to be able to be true to yourself and to, like I said, to discover what we’re here for
00:54:06 ►
and why we came in the first place.
00:54:12 ►
And I believe that is to make a world a better place.
00:54:15 ►
And I believe psychedelic renaissance right now is happening because of that.
00:54:20 ►
And I believe this is not a coincidence that we’re talking about this right now.
00:54:23 ►
I believe it’s even if one person can relate to a story and it can change that person,
00:54:29 ►
the perspective of knowing that there is a way out, and that way it is true, but there is a way out,
00:54:36 ►
I think that it’s important that spaces like these are able to, I mean, the spaces like these are open,
00:54:41 ►
are able to, I mean,
00:54:43 ►
the spaces like these are open, so people are able to
00:54:46 ►
share their story and also
00:54:48 ►
encourage others to
00:54:50 ►
work in their own healing.
00:54:53 ►
That’s it.
00:55:00 ►
I have a funny story.
00:55:02 ►
Oh, I’m Bodhi, by the way, for anybody who doesn’t know.
00:55:03 ►
I have a funny story of a trip fairly recently, but just a little bit of a short background on my psychedelic experience. It’s almost zero. I tried. I have no experience with anything except mushrooms. My first time was probably three or four years ago.
00:55:23 ►
I came into it not knowing, well, knowing almost nothing about it.
00:55:28 ►
I had a friend when I was younger.
00:55:32 ►
He told me about taking LSD in high school, and he described going to class,
00:55:33 ►
and this is what the teacher looked like and all that. And it was interesting.
00:55:36 ►
I was curious about it, but I had no way to really understand it because I’d never done LSD.
00:55:40 ►
I still haven’t.
00:55:42 ►
So I didn’t really have any way to, I didn’t really know anything about psychedelics in general.
00:55:46 ►
Just the bare, bare minimum.
00:55:47 ►
Well, three or four years ago, my girlfriend got a hold of some mushrooms.
00:55:51 ►
And I don’t even know how much it was.
00:55:53 ►
I guess an eighth that we split.
00:55:55 ►
And so it was a fun, fun time.
00:55:59 ►
And to add to the theme of the night, I would say that it changed my life.
00:56:03 ►
It changed the direction of my life because even though the experience wasn’t super great, we went into it kind of
00:56:10 ►
like a party drug, the way you go to a party and drink beer, whatever. It’s going to be
00:56:14 ►
a fun night. We’re going to have fun. And it was. It kicked in 40 minutes or so. And
00:56:20 ►
oh, look at the walls and the towels are breathing. This is great. And then a couple hours into
00:56:24 ►
it, an hour, maybe two,
00:56:26 ►
like I said, I didn’t know anything about it.
00:56:28 ►
We didn’t know anything about dosing.
00:56:30 ►
That’s very important.
00:56:31 ►
Didn’t know that maybe you don’t want to eat.
00:56:33 ►
I got hungry.
00:56:34 ►
I had the munchies, opened the fridge,
00:56:36 ►
some leftovers from dinner.
00:56:38 ►
And so I ate this big fat pork chop,
00:56:40 ►
and a half hour later, I’m super bummed out.
00:56:46 ►
Ended up working out for the best because I’d had some, the muscle tissue around my rib cage had been getting inflamed gradually
00:56:54 ►
and ended up having to go to the emergency room at night. So it probably worked out for
00:56:58 ►
the best that I was not on mushrooms when I went. Since then I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned about microdosing and just a lot of
00:57:06 ►
the mechanics, the hardware aspect of doing mushrooms, not like the internal side. So
00:57:12 ►
I’ve learned a lot about that since then. But my total psychedelic experience is still
00:57:19 ►
not much. It’s only been three or four years since the first time. And since then, I’ve probably tripped five
00:57:27 ►
times and probably half of those got cut short for whatever reason, like the first one, I
00:57:31 ►
ate something or something came up and it just, it didn’t work out. The one had two
00:57:36 ►
or three, I think, full-on trips. And all of that was under three grams. So not much,
00:57:43 ►
not much. Not much.
00:57:49 ►
And so this one time a few weeks ago, I had my day off.
00:57:49 ►
I’m alone.
00:57:50 ►
I had it all planned out.
00:57:51 ►
I’m like, I’m going to trip.
00:57:52 ►
I’m going to have some fun.
00:57:53 ►
I’m going to learn something.
00:58:00 ►
Whether I’m tripping or not, no matter what I’m doing, I always want to be, I want to learn things.
00:58:01 ►
I want to be engaged in my environment. I want to just, I’ve always, always liked to learn new things.
00:58:05 ►
So I had this idea.
00:58:06 ►
I had it planned out.
00:58:07 ►
I was either going to watch something with Spanish in it,
00:58:09 ►
because I want to learn Spanish, or sign language, or guitar.
00:58:13 ►
One of these three things.
00:58:14 ►
I’m going to watch some videos with one of these three elements in it.
00:58:18 ►
And put on a couple Spanish telenovelas.
00:58:22 ►
And wasn’t really feeling it.
00:58:23 ►
Wasn’t getting into it.
00:58:24 ►
Ended up settling on
00:58:25 ►
Cartel Land, which if you don’t know
00:58:28 ►
is this Netflix documentary.
00:58:30 ►
It is extremely
00:58:31 ►
brutal. It is…
00:58:33 ►
I’m like, there’s some Spanish
00:58:35 ►
speaking in that. I’ll watch that.
00:58:38 ►
It is…
00:58:39 ►
It is not
00:58:41 ►
something I would want to watch not on mushrooms.
00:58:44 ►
Just looking back, I don’t think if I had to watch it not on mushrooms, I don’t think I would want to watch not on mushrooms. Just looking back,
00:58:47 ►
I don’t think, if I had to watch it not on mushrooms, I don’t think
00:58:49 ►
I’d want to watch it. It’s very, very
00:58:51 ►
difficult. It’s very
00:58:53 ►
brutal and graphic. They don’t show
00:58:55 ►
anybody getting killed, but they show images
00:58:57 ►
of people who have been killed, and there’s a lot of graphic
00:58:59 ►
descriptions of
00:59:01 ►
the way that the cartels
00:59:03 ►
treat people and stuff.
00:59:04 ►
So, as soon as it starts, my very first thought is,
00:59:09 ►
this is a little bit ironic,
00:59:11 ►
because here I am consuming a Schedule I highly illegal substance
00:59:15 ►
while I’m watching a documentary about the horrible,
00:59:19 ►
what I hope are unintended consequences of the war on some drugs.
00:59:24 ►
But I wasn’t too bothered by it
00:59:26 ►
because I don’t get my mushrooms from Mexico, so whatever.
00:59:29 ►
The cartels can traffic in mushrooms all they want.
00:59:31 ►
I ain’t eating them.
00:59:32 ►
All my money goes to the local economy.
00:59:35 ►
So it comes on, and that was my first thought.
00:59:41 ►
Well, this is a little bit ironic,
00:59:42 ►
but then the visuals start kicking in,
00:59:45 ►
and there was this one scene where one of the resistance leaders in,
00:59:50 ►
I think it’s in Mexico,
00:59:52 ►
he’s like, there’s a lot of small resistance groups,
00:59:55 ►
and he’s like one of the leaders of the bigger ones,
00:59:57 ►
like the local village people that go and take charge of their own village
01:00:02 ►
and fight against the cartels.
01:00:05 ►
And so there’s this one scene where the guy meets his father, hasn’t seen his father in, I guess, years.
01:00:10 ►
And I’m watching it, and I’m thinking, these guys haven’t seen each other in years?
01:00:16 ►
I mean, their shirts are perfectly color-coordinated.
01:00:20 ►
The blues of their shirt matches the light reflecting off their eyebrows and their hair and their mustache.
01:00:26 ►
And it matches the truck.
01:00:28 ►
And it matches the hills that are literally rolling in the background.
01:00:31 ►
I mean, this is not a super freaky documentary about the horrors of the drug war.
01:00:38 ►
This is a really, really artistically directed horror movie.
01:00:42 ►
A torture porn movie.
01:00:44 ►
But that’s how it was on mushrooms.
01:00:47 ►
And it made it a lot more bearable to watch,
01:00:49 ►
a lot easier to watch.
01:00:50 ►
I really don’t think I could watch that movie
01:00:52 ►
or documentary without being on mushrooms.
01:00:56 ►
It’s very informative.
01:01:00 ►
You learn a lot about people and governments
01:01:03 ►
and stuff like that,
01:01:03 ►
and I highly recommend it, but maybe on about two and a half grams of mushrooms.