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046 - The Psychedologist

Jun 26, 2018, 47 min read

Program Notes

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Guest speaker: Leia Friedman

Date this lecture was recorded: June 2018

Leia Friedman hosts “The Psychedologist” podcast, she cofounded the Boston Entheogenic Network, and is a writer and community organizer. She tells Lex about her work and her psychedelic journey.
The Psychedologist
Cosmic Sister
Medicine Hunter
Temple of the Way Of Light
Psymposia Articles
Eco-Feminism
Psychedelics & Sexual Healing
Social and Climate Justice Activism

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Transcript

00:00:00 ►

Greetings from Cyberdelic Space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in Psychedelic Salon

00:00:23 ►

2.0.

00:00:24 ►

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

00:00:31 ►

And I am pleased to begin today by thanking Robert L., Austin B., and EJ H., all of whom have become my new supporters on Patreon.

00:00:35 ►

And while these new patrons, well, I guess they weren’t able to join us on Zoom last night,

00:00:40 ►

but we nonetheless had a good crowd.

00:00:43 ►

And among other things, we talked about Dennis

00:00:46 ►

McKenna, Joe Rogan, Michael Pollan, our favorite binge-watching shows, some rude presenters at a

00:00:54 ►

recent psychedelic conference in Oregon, Burning Man, Lightning in a Bottle, and of course there

00:00:59 ►

was also a lot of talk about psychedelics and the psychedelic community. I should point out that Thank you. few short Terrence McKenna soundbites that I’ve been saving as I edited his talks over the last

00:01:25 ►

13 years. And all of that can be had for the princely sum of only one dollar a month. So I

00:01:32 ►

hope to see more of our fellow salonners joining us, not just on Patreon, but joining in our

00:01:37 ►

conversations as well. And it’s a true conversation. For example, last night I also asked for and received some really good suggestions

00:01:47 ►

as to how I should go about preparing the Terrence McKenna lectures

00:01:51 ►

that we as a group selected to be played late at night this year at Camp Soft Landing

00:01:57 ►

at Burning Man for anyone who needs to relax a bit and gather their second wind

00:02:02 ►

before returning to the parties on the playa.

00:02:04 ►

So late at night on Camp Soft Landing at the Palenque Norte tent, you’ll be able to

00:02:10 ►

hear some psychedelic salon talks.

00:02:13 ►

And just one announcement today, which is that in next week’s podcast, I intend to play

00:02:19 ►

the next session of the McKenna workshop that we’ve been listening to, and even though it’s

00:02:24 ►

all about his

00:02:25 ►

time wave idea. As you know, I’ve been skipping those parts of his workshops in some programs

00:02:30 ►

because they could also be found elsewhere on the net. But since this particular workshop isn’t up

00:02:36 ►

there anywhere that I can find, well, I thought that we should keep it intact. So if you’ve been

00:02:41 ►

wondering what I cut out when I didn’t play a time wave session,

00:02:45 ►

well, now you have your chance to hear what you’ve been missing.

00:02:49 ►

And now here is Lex Pelger, who will introduce to you our program for today.

00:03:01 ►

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

00:03:04 ►

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

00:03:12 ►

Leah Friedman is an academic, she’s a writer, and she’s a community organizer.

00:03:19 ►

She co-founded the Boston Entheogenic Network, and she also hosts the podcast The Psychedologist.

00:03:24 ►

Her work looks at consciousness through the lens of social and environmental justice.

00:03:28 ►

She’s also an old friend of mine from the New York City psychedelic community,

00:03:30 ►

and she’s one of my favorite people to put on a stage.

00:03:36 ►

Today, she’ll share about her recent trip to the Amazon and about the power and perils of ayahuasca.

00:03:47 ►

Hello, everybody. I’m happy to be here with Leah Friedman, the host of The Psychedologist.

00:03:48 ►

Thanks so much for joining us.

00:03:50 ►

Thanks for having me, Lex.

00:03:56 ►

So before we get into your big trip down south, can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you eventually came to an interest in psychedelics?

00:04:00 ►

Sure. I first learned about psychedelics in school, looped in with all the other very dangerous drugs that degenerate people use. So I had no interest in them at all until after I got my master’s and I dated a guy who was into mysticism and he was reading a book by Graham Hancock and talking to me about taking high doses of mushrooms.

00:04:27 ►

talking to me about taking high doses of mushrooms. So that was when it first entered my radar. And I was pretty frightened by it, partly because my mom had a scary, mystical experience on a high

00:04:33 ►

dose of edible cannabis when she was in her 20s. So she had always talked to me about how frightening

00:04:38 ►

that was. And she wanted to go to the hospital, she wanted to die. And then the police came and

00:04:44 ►

she was naked in the bed. And

00:04:45 ►

there was this whole big trauma. And so I, you know, like many people thought that psychedelics

00:04:50 ►

just made crazy, horrible things happen or made dragons pop out of nowhere. But then after that

00:04:56 ►

guy and I decoupled, I started looking into it more. And my first trip was actually to set me up to go down and drink ayahuasca. I

00:05:06 ►

found a center. I was going to Costa Rica and I found a place that did ayahuasca there. So

00:05:12 ►

when someone found out I was going, she said, okay, I’m going to give you this. She gives me

00:05:18 ►

a little piece of tinfoil. She goes, there’s one dose of LSD in there. And I think that you should

00:05:23 ►

take that before you drink ayahuasca because you have no idea

00:05:26 ►

what you’re getting yourself into.

00:05:29 ►

So on that day, I had realizations that were far surpassing anything I learned in school,

00:05:38 ►

anything I ever learned about myself.

00:05:39 ►

I studied psychology, undergrad and grad school.

00:05:42 ►

I’ve always been very interested in my mind and the way that I talk to others, the way that they hear me, how they think, our behaviors and larger social systems were always fascinating to me.

00:05:54 ►

And that day was just like a time warp.

00:05:56 ►

It’s like, I don’t know.

00:05:57 ►

I don’t remember.

00:05:58 ►

Was it The Secret World of Alex Mack?

00:05:59 ►

I think this like guy could put his hand on a book and just like read the whole book.

00:06:03 ►

Do you remember that?

00:06:04 ►

I do.

00:06:10 ►

Yes, I do. Was that The Secret world of alex mack um i i remember the show i there and there’s just such a history in uh cross worlds of uh causing demons to come forth who go and steal

00:06:18 ►

you books from around the world and magic spells to try to learn by osmosis and it’s just you know

00:06:23 ►

going all the way back to King Solomon

00:06:25 ►

being the great magician bibliomancer. So it makes sense to me. Yeah. Oh, exactly. Well,

00:06:33 ►

it was like that. And that began my journey. I actually saw you up on stage at Symposia’s

00:06:40 ►

conference in Amherst, the one of like a future beyond prohibition, was it?

00:06:46 ►

Yes. Imagine a post-prohibition.

00:06:49 ►

Yeah. And that was great. And that was the first time I saw some of my now friends and

00:06:53 ►

still idols speak coming back from that first ayahuasca trip. I didn’t think that it could

00:07:00 ►

be a career or an area of such personal growth and interest for me. And it totally was.

00:07:05 ►

So I got started about four years ago. And then after doing a lot of reading and attending events,

00:07:10 ►

I started to write about it and talk about it and had more experiences. And I was seeking to

00:07:16 ►

address some issues in my past and my present of eating disorder, body dysmorphia, and also other

00:07:24 ►

unexplainable conflicts that I’d had in

00:07:26 ►

my life. And psychedelics were giving me perspective on that. So that’s kind of what it looked like.

00:07:30 ►

So how did that LSD experience go then?

00:07:34 ►

Well, I watched my houseplant grow and wither and die and sprout and grow new and wither and die.

00:07:47 ►

and sprout and grow new and wither and die. And I was thinking about the life cycle and how maybe so many people are in pain because we’re separate from the natural cycles of nature and

00:07:52 ►

death and rebirth and the endings aren’t a bad thing and that it’s like from death that new life

00:07:57 ►

comes. Have you read Women Who Run With the Wolves, Lex?

00:08:00 ►

Oh, yes.

00:08:01 ►

So the life-death-life, right?

00:08:12 ►

Lex? Oh, yes. So the life death life, right? And following that, I just began. It’s actually where I started getting interested in cultivating the land. And that’s what that’s what psychedelics

00:08:16 ►

have led me to now. It’s funny that my first trip was about a plant. And now I’m all I want to do

00:08:22 ►

is work with the plants. And I’m finding it very psychedelic to cultivate the land and learn about herbs and how herbs interact with us and

00:08:28 ►

to have relationships with plants rather than just using them. That was another part of the trip was

00:08:33 ►

like, I use something and then I throw it away in a way isn’t even in a way that it can come

00:08:38 ►

back into the cycle. It’s like, where does our trash go? You know, it’s certainly not being

00:08:42 ►

recycled back in, in any kind of ready state to be used again by the planet.

00:08:49 ►

And it’s a good point because it’s such a remarkable feature of ayahuasca especially.

00:08:55 ►

But also the other psychedelics that shamans talk about a lot is people drink the vine for the first time and they just come out of the experience with big green eyes.

00:09:05 ►

So the first time they really get the ecosystem nature of the planet and the importance of preserving it.

00:09:11 ►

And it’s just such a regular occurrence from just even one experience with ayahuasca.

00:09:17 ►

It certainly lends to the perspective for me that psychedelics are defense mechanisms that the earth as an entire system uses to prevent

00:09:26 ►

destruction because mushrooms come up in areas of disturbed soil you know they like to grow

00:09:31 ►

in cow poop and and cow poop is is like you know this thing that’s causing massive pollution around

00:09:39 ►

the world for us because we’re like basically um i mean, everybody probably knows this, but the beef industry is by far the most responsible for climate change

00:09:49 ►

than any of the fossil fuels that we’re burning in our cars,

00:09:52 ►

which are also super bad, but it’s just the methane gas

00:09:55 ►

and everything that’s polluted as a result of it.

00:09:58 ►

And mushrooms grow out of that, and ayahuasca is growing in the rainforest

00:10:02 ►

where the most biodiversity in the world exists and is being destroyed every single day to clear plots to graze cattle and to grow monocrops of corn and soy.

00:10:12 ►

And so it’s like it’s I think that the fight is like you can actually watch it happen almost between these two forces.

00:10:20 ►

And I like to consider myself an ally to the psychedelics. Like they’re not an ally to me.

00:10:25 ►

I’m an ally to them in this mission to wake the world up to the harm humans are causing to the ecosystem.

00:10:33 ►

And is that how you came to be starting your show as well, to spread the news?

00:10:38 ►

I always wanted to have an outlet for my writing and my creative ideas. And I had been, little known fact,

00:10:48 ►

I’ve been a DJ since I was like 13. DJ Snow White.

00:10:54 ►

Nice.

00:10:55 ►

Yep. And I did like kids parties and also did some weddings and bar mitzvahs and whatnot.

00:11:01 ►

I love being on the microphone. So when somebody that I knew,

00:11:06 ►

and we sort of had a trade going of helping each other out, he’s a producer and he knows how to

00:11:11 ►

release stuff. So he said, I want to make this happen for you. Like if you record it,

00:11:15 ►

I’ll do everything else. So the initial plan was for it to just be about consciousness.

00:11:19 ►

Consciousness positive radio is the tagline. And what’s been great about that is that you can just,

00:11:26 ►

anything is consciousness related if you take that vein to it.

00:11:31 ►

So what I just began by interviewing people about psychedelics,

00:11:35 ►

now we’re talking a lot about social justice and environmental justice

00:11:39 ►

and the human experience.

00:11:41 ►

I’m focusing on mostly having female guests, because there’s,

00:11:45 ►

as you probably know, there’s a lot more male representation on the radio than female or

00:11:49 ►

non-binary. And I discovered that when I listened to a podcast hosted by a female, and thought her

00:11:56 ►

voice was really annoying. And when what she was saying was great. I’m like, wow, she her voice

00:12:00 ►

annoys me so much. I’m like, huh, all the podcasts I listen to are hosted by men. Maybe that’s why. So that’s kind of my bent for now is on featuring more female and non-binary voices,

00:12:10 ►

queer people, people of color, marginalized individuals who want to talk about their

00:12:16 ►

experience because we don’t get to hear that as much. Are there a couple of interviews that would

00:12:21 ►

be good ones for them to check out? Well, they all have a description with

00:12:25 ►

them. Some of my favorites, I did a six-day intensive mushroom cultivation course at Fungi

00:12:33 ►

Academy in Guatemala. And that one is a super cool interview. That’s number 15 because I interviewed

00:12:40 ►

one couple that kind of like got it started. and well, they didn’t get it started.

00:12:45 ►

They came in and like turned it into what it is now. And so we talk about starting like social

00:12:51 ►

cooperatives and all the difficulties and then some cool mushroom facts. And then this other

00:12:56 ►

couple, we talked about the bigger picture of like climax forests and how fungi works in the soil

00:13:01 ►

and those and plenty of talk about psychedelics there as well. And then another shout out is my episode with Britta Love, number 10. I love

00:13:09 ►

Britta Love. She’s a great friend. You know her.

00:13:14 ►

She’s amazing. I didn’t realize you had done a show together. That sounds great.

00:13:18 ►

Yeah, yeah, we did a great episode. And we talked about iboga in that one and

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And we talk about iboga in that one and sex work and healing.

00:13:30 ►

And I actually interviewed a few of the women that went on the Cosmic Sister trip.

00:13:32 ►

I know that you wanted to talk about that a little.

00:13:33 ►

So that’s episode 18. And it’s three interviews with just like all the women on the trip were absolutely amazing.

00:13:38 ►

There were 23 of us, but those three, I got them on the show.

00:13:41 ►

And can you tell me more about Cosmic Sister and what they do and how you got involved?

00:13:46 ►

Yeah.

00:13:46 ►

Cosmic Sister is something that you really should visit the website.

00:13:51 ►

There’s so much that this woman, Zoe Helena, does.

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I don’t even know where to begin.

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She’s like, she’s protecting the animals.

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She’s protecting the plants.

00:13:58 ►

She’s empowering women.

00:13:59 ►

She’s empowering the psychedelic movement and female voices in it and cannabis.

00:14:04 ►

And I’m just like, mindful living, ecofeminism, psychedelic feminism, advocacy works, just all this.

00:14:09 ►

But what I was participating in is kind of this yearly trip they do down to the Amazon.

00:14:16 ►

Chris Killam, the medicine hunters, Zoe’s husband, and he’s traveled the world, gone to far-reaching places to hunt medicine and try different things.

00:14:26 ►

So they safely take down a group of women from all different walks of life, some of whom have not had any travel experience.

00:14:34 ►

And there are grants that if someone can’t afford the trip, people can receive a grant from her and, the fundraising she does all year to save up all this money.

00:14:46 ►

And I know this year she spent a bunch of her own money.

00:14:49 ►

I suspect she does that every year just because she wants to bring everyone.

00:14:54 ►

Because we had travel delays and people had to buy new flights.

00:14:57 ►

It was like a whole New England nightmare, let me tell you.

00:15:01 ►

But yeah, it’s to bring people to the medicine for the first time.

00:15:08 ►

um but yeah it’s to bring people to the medicine for the first time and uh and i think i was one of like three people who had drank ayahuasca before some people had never taken psychedelics

00:15:12 ►

at all there was i think the oldest one of us was late 60s i want to say and and the youngest was 22

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and it’s it’s advocacy to heal and to process together and to form bonds

00:15:27 ►

and to bring back the awareness of whatever comes through in the medicine space.

00:15:34 ►

And so how did it go on the trip this year?

00:15:36 ►

I had a bunch of intentions to take a look at.

00:15:41 ►

And as is true for the psychedelic experience, especially ayahuasca,

00:15:47 ►

you usually don’t get any idea and anything that you thought you were asking for. It doesn’t look

00:15:53 ►

like that at all. But in some way, especially when you’ve had some distance from it,

00:15:57 ►

it was exactly what you needed, exactly what you asked for. So as I’ve tried to address my eating issues, lifelong issues with dysmorphia about my

00:16:08 ►

body, I thought that it would circle around my relationship to food, obviously, or my relationship

00:16:15 ►

to my body. It just seemed so clear. I’d have some epiphany. You know, ayahuasca would like

00:16:20 ►

change my brain and make me love my body. i would i’d come out of the trip like

00:16:25 ►

oh my god like poof cured you ever thought that that you would be just cured of something from

00:16:31 ►

a trip uh no no but i don’t have much faith in anything so um but i do but i which is funny

00:16:39 ►

because with all the anecdotal stories i’ve heard over the years i hear things like that a lot things

00:16:44 ►

that are more amazing than most people would believe. And, you know, you can’t even share them because the amount

00:16:48 ►

of change from one psychedelic experience can be, you know, lifelong and important.

00:16:54 ►

Absolutely. And I think those trips, sometimes afterward, you’re saying this trip changed my

00:17:00 ►

life. But other times, it’s like, okay, well, that was, that got a little weird. All right. And, and then you just keep coming back to it. So,

00:17:11 ►

I mean, you asked how the trip went in, in total, the orchestration of the trip was

00:17:16 ►

amazing. The bonding and the work that people did was truly astounding. Um, and then I’ll speak to

00:17:23 ►

how it went on my end, because then that kind of ties back into the whole group.

00:17:29 ►

We went to the Temple of the Way of Light.

00:17:31 ►

This is outside of Iquitos.

00:17:33 ►

Iquitos is like the Ayahuasca capital of Peru.

00:17:35 ►

And before Ayahuasca was the big industry,

00:17:39 ►

because it is the industry down there, it was rubber tapping.

00:17:45 ►

industry down there. It was rubber tapping. So this, you know, it’s another irony that this is the place where people are being healed and maybe the earth is like trying to heal

00:17:53 ►

itself from human activity. And it’s, the place is so destroyed. Very, like, it was as crazy as

00:18:00 ►

being in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, like all the motorbikes, the pollution in the air,

00:18:05 ►

the,

00:18:06 ►

um,

00:18:06 ►

trash in the streets and people salute,

00:18:10 ►

uh,

00:18:10 ►

people rushing around,

00:18:12 ►

um,

00:18:13 ►

you know,

00:18:13 ►

just like no,

00:18:14 ►

no good vibes,

00:18:15 ►

no good vibes that anyone could feel very hectic,

00:18:17 ►

a lot of noise pollution.

00:18:18 ►

And,

00:18:19 ►

uh,

00:18:21 ►

yeah,

00:18:21 ►

an,

00:18:21 ►

an industrialized city for sure.

00:18:23 ►

And it’s right on the bank of, and like, Oh and it’s right on the bank of um and like it’s right

00:18:27 ►

on the mouth of a river a confluence of two rivers and it’s filled with trash and there’s old an old

00:18:33 ►

boat floating in it that’s just like falling apart that and these expensive restaurants that

00:18:38 ►

serve ayahuasca dieta food it’s very very. So we traveled to the Temple of the Way of Light, which was by

00:18:46 ►

first bus and then boat and then smaller boat and then walking for a half hour through the jungle.

00:18:54 ►

And there were porters to carry our bags. So you’re really, you’re off the grid quite a bit.

00:18:59 ►

There’s no electricity there. You arrive, unpack, and then basically get to work.

00:19:05 ►

And so the intentions that I had created, and we shared them as a group, which was so

00:19:09 ►

amazing to hear what people were coming in to work on.

00:19:12 ►

And then as we would do the integration check-ins during the week, everyone’s sharing the kind

00:19:17 ►

of progress that they’re making.

00:19:18 ►

And it’s like, wow.

00:19:19 ►

And you can see it.

00:19:20 ►

You can see it in them or the progress they’re not making and how that just kind of makes them want to shut down, how frustrating that can be.

00:19:29 ►

So I was looking at my notes here.

00:19:31 ►

I wanted to heal body dysmorphia.

00:19:34 ►

I wanted to see myself and others as perfection and just so not see them through this like Western lens of what flaws, you know, completely arbitrary. I wanted to take a look at emotional

00:19:47 ►

eating and avoiding hard feelings by overworking. And then this one was cool. I have judgment and

00:19:56 ►

doubt about spiritual phenomena, including ayahuasca. I hear people talk about seeing spirit

00:20:03 ►

or just like the more what we’d call woo-woo things.

00:20:06 ►

And my brain’s very judgmental to hearing those experiences of people because I’ve never

00:20:11 ►

experienced them. So I wanted to have some more openness and acceptance about that.

00:20:17 ►

And of course, I wanted to experience it myself. If it’s there for me to see, I would love to

00:20:22 ►

meet these spirits. I’ve been tripping for a while now.

00:20:25 ►

Are you guys going to come? So I thought that the Shipibo shamans would be the key to that because

00:20:32 ►

when you take ayahuasca, there are different traditions that you can take it in. And you

00:20:37 ►

can definitely take it in Manhattan with a gringo shaman in someone’s high rise. And I don’t know

00:20:43 ►

what tradition that’s coming from. No tradition at

00:20:45 ►

all. I don’t think they’re probably just brewing a DMT containing leaf or plant with an MAOI.

00:20:52 ►

So people who aren’t familiar, ayahuasca is a combination of two things that makes the trip

00:20:56 ►

happen. But the Shipibo lineage has carried this medicine for a long time, and they have these songs called Icaros.

00:21:05 ►

And the Icaro is realized by the shaman or the maestro.

00:21:11 ►

Often when they do a dieta, which is like a walkabout, an isolation, they go into nature.

00:21:17 ►

They’re out of contact.

00:21:18 ►

They don’t touch anyone.

00:21:19 ►

They don’t talk.

00:21:20 ►

They don’t talk.

00:21:30 ►

They sit with the plant, either drinking an infusion of the plant or eating it in some way or just sitting with it and having a very, very limited diet. And this could be for one day, one week, five months, two years.

00:21:53 ►

And it’s the sound waves that make it possible for that maestro, for that shaman, curandero, whatever you want to call it, for them to call on that plant spirit’s help to help heal the person. So that basically they’re making allies with these plants by being with them, studying them and relating.

00:22:00 ►

So I thought that these Icaros would be the missing link because I had drank ayahuasca a number of times in different traditions, including Santo Daime and Colombian tradition.

00:22:10 ►

And I never had this like spirit experience.

00:22:14 ►

So I was going in with those intentions and a few more.

00:22:40 ►

The judgment and doubt about spiritual phenomena relates to this overarching thing I’ve been trying to do for a few years, which is to let go of my over-cognitive, reductionistic, kind of materialistic lens on reality and see beyond the possibilities that are right in front of me, that my mind has been trained to see.

00:22:47 ►

Especially as a clinical psychologist, I kind of pathologize things before I’m really curious as to what else is going on. You know what I mean?

00:22:54 ►

And so how did it feel with going in with those intentions? Did it feel like it went in that direction or did you get a pretty unexpected result?

00:23:00 ►

I got, well, if you had said, what are you most afraid of? I would have said, I’m not afraid. Give it to me. Give me whatever you got. And because often when we think of scary psychedelic, when I think of scary psychedelic experiences, it’s like being eaten by snakes and like, you know, falling off a cliff or just like your worst fear being in your face.

00:23:25 ►

your worst fear being in your face. And the very worst thing happened to me, which was, I felt like this was all a total sham. And I looked around at these lovely people singing to us.

00:23:34 ►

And I’m like, this is no different than paying to go to the circus and look at the performance

00:23:39 ►

that these animals are doing. I had, like disgust for all of us going

00:23:48 ►

into this indigenous area and basically like saying like, oh yeah, like I’ll pay the big

00:23:53 ►

bucks for you to sing this like ancient song to me. Oh, you learned it from a plant? Like whatever.

00:23:58 ►

Sure. Like heal me, please. Like I thought it was so disrespectful and then i’m like thinking it was it was very

00:24:07 ►

myopic like these people don’t you know they have these songs that come to them but it’s just like

00:24:12 ►

there’s no spirit there’s no spirit in anything in the world we’re all just empty and they’re

00:24:16 ►

singing these songs because we keep coming and paying to hear these songs and no one’s connected

00:24:22 ►

to anything and everyone takes a drug and sits and

00:24:25 ►

has a trip and feels really special and feels like their trauma and their life was really important.

00:24:31 ►

And that’s what heals is just all of that. It was so bad. I was like, if anyone could see into

00:24:39 ►

my thoughts right now, they would think I’m a terrible person. I care a lot about indigenous

00:24:44 ►

rights. And I think that that was like coming up against my guilt of like, is it okay for me to be

00:24:49 ►

here and to drink this medicine? And do I do enough at home to, to like live out my values about

00:24:56 ►

being in the cycle of nature? It was it was the worst.

00:25:00 ►

Would be tough, especially because you’re not wrong. I mean, that stuff is all true

00:25:05 ►

to a certain extent. It doesn’t invalidate all the healing that comes out of it, but there is a,

00:25:10 ►

you know, a dark and consumeristic side that’s growing. And to have that be a main part of the

00:25:15 ►

experience, that would be something. It was kind of a purge in a way. The purge can come

00:25:23 ►

in so many forms. You’re yawning, you’re burping,

00:25:26 ►

you’re farting. Never trust a fart. Ayahuasca, never trust a fart. That’s what they told us.

00:25:31 ►

Just better to go to the toilet. And then of course, there’s like purging through vomiting

00:25:36 ►

out the mouth or like out number two. And for me, I think it was a big mental purge,

00:25:46 ►

for me, I think it was a big mental purge, a big purge of negativity for me to think the very worst thoughts. And then, you know, you, you purge so that you’re clean so that there’s space for the

00:25:52 ►

healing to come through. That’s the idea. And, uh, it took me a while to see it that way. Um,

00:25:58 ►

cause I just came out of the ceremony in the morning, like, oh, I don’t even want to look at anybody. Um, and so what I ultimately

00:26:09 ►

had to face, and that was just the first ceremony there, there are supposed to be five in a nine

00:26:14 ►

day retreat, but we had weather delays for our whole party to arrive. So we only did four.

00:26:19 ►

Um, but what I realized by the end is that I have to grieve.

00:26:27 ►

I have to go through this whole process of sadness over not having my own belief system

00:26:31 ►

and wanting there to be something that I have an idea about

00:26:39 ►

rather than validating and accepting the lens through which I see the world.

00:26:43 ►

And as we came into the

00:26:45 ►

final integration circle, this is how it kind of comes around. Hearing the lengths of these

00:26:52 ►

experiences that people had, and someone watched their whole life, they watched their whole life

00:26:57 ►

before their eyes, and they saw all these repressed memories. And they were this calm,

00:27:03 ►

enlightened agent observing what had gone on

00:27:06 ►

and and not only did they see their past but they saw their future and it and i actually caught up

00:27:13 ►

with this person recently and it’s still a huge thing that they’re processing it wasn’t just like

00:27:18 ►

how do you just come back from that and be the same you You’re never the same. So just like hearing the,

00:27:25 ►

hearing the variety of experiences that were had, um, there was no way that I could, uh,

00:27:33 ►

put them down in my mind. They were, they were so amazing and so, so real. I felt like I was

00:27:39 ►

there with them. And ultimately I, it showed to me that as there is value in any other sort of experience

00:27:47 ►

and awareness, the awareness of auras and all these things that I haven’t seen,

00:27:52 ►

there’s as much to value in what I do see. And my visions in these situations are always

00:27:58 ►

plants and aliens. That’s what I see, plants and aliens and i i see through the consciousness of a plant and

00:28:08 ►

when i tell some people that they don’t know how to understand it and maybe some people listening

00:28:12 ►

um can’t even fathom what that looks like but it’s quite it’s quite simple actually like the

00:28:19 ►

way that nutrients move up and down the stalk of a plant and the way that the roots draw up

00:28:23 ►

um you know moisture and and more food from the soil and the way that the roots draw up, um, you know, moisture and,

00:28:25 ►

and more food from the soil and the way that the sun is like, you know, that’s just what you want

00:28:30 ►

to look at. I’ve, I’ve experienced feeling all those things through not my five human senses,

00:28:37 ►

but through other senses that I didn’t know I had. And I’ve, I’ve felt that. So that’s,

00:28:42 ►

that is like my teacher. I don’t get to decide what the lesson is.

00:28:46 ►

I just have to show up.

00:28:48 ►

And I have shown up for many psychedelic trips being like, yeah, I’m open.

00:28:53 ►

I’m open.

00:28:53 ►

Give me whatever.

00:28:54 ►

And then that’s actually not the case.

00:28:56 ►

I’m like, give me whatever.

00:28:58 ►

I have this idea about what that will be.

00:29:00 ►

And so how did you feel at the end of all of those days and you were done and

00:29:05 ►

knew you were heading back? Oh, there’s always the fear of going back. And I was afraid of

00:29:14 ►

Iketos being overwhelming because it’s so loud. The trips themselves, the ceremonies,

00:29:23 ►

I took notes. I always take notes during ayahuasca because I just don’t have

00:29:28 ►

like my ability to write doesn’t get impaired. And I find I can’t really remember anything after,

00:29:33 ►

which is okay. It’s okay that, you know, you don’t have to remember everything,

00:29:35 ►

but I like to take notes. My, the ceremonies were okay. Um, the content coming through was

00:29:41 ►

hard to understand in a lot of times, but I had these dreams that were profound.

00:30:05 ►

And so leaving the site, I continued having dreams with some very obvious messages of me working out childhood stuff, childhood feelings about being chased and not being able to get away or trying to get something to happen and not being able to actualize it and that frustration.

00:30:12 ►

So as these various dreams came to me, it was kind of eased my way back into modern society.

00:30:18 ►

And then of course, being with the women was really great. I had a moment in Lima before going home where I felt suicidal. I’ve never had plans or any thoughts like that, but I have had moments of

00:30:29 ►

feeling like, couldn’t I just die right now and not feel this anymore? And so as I started to

00:30:35 ►

feel that, I’m like, okay, I’m going to smoke some Mapacho. Mapacho is the sacred tobacco that

00:30:40 ►

the Shipibo people use. It’s a jungle tobacco. It’s wild. It has 16 times the nicotine

00:30:45 ►

content of what we would, you know, commercial tobacco here. And you don’t really inhale it into

00:30:51 ►

the lungs. You just sort of breathe it into the mouth and then you let it out to let out your

00:30:56 ►

prayers. It’s like a kind of like a smudge or a blessing. And so I, you know, I’ve never been a

00:31:01 ►

smoker. I’ve always had like a ceremonial relationship to tobacco. It really just came into my life when I found psychedelics.

00:31:08 ►

So I went outside with the mapacho, and I prayed with the mapacho.

00:31:11 ►

I just let the smoke kind of wash away what was jarring me from letting negative things come and flow through.

00:31:19 ►

It’s like everything was stuck in me.

00:31:21 ►

And we were in the middle of the city, but there was this like potted plant and it was so nice. And I retreat. So in some lineage that regards tobacco in a sacred way,

00:31:50 ►

the spirit of tobacco is like the gateway or like the ambassador to letting us know other plants.

00:31:57 ►

And they definitely feel that way about ayahuasca,

00:31:59 ►

that it’s like the ayahuasca needs the mapacho around to like bridge the gap and it like is like a connector.

00:32:06 ►

So it connected me back to myself and, um, I’ve used it. I’ve used mapacho ceremonially a few

00:32:14 ►

more times since getting home. That’s been really beautiful. You, you want to bring these ally

00:32:18 ►

experiences back with you so that, um, it’s not so weird to, to, you know, it becomes normal to pee outside and to, you

00:32:28 ►

know, to like brush your teeth with your water bottle.

00:32:30 ►

And then when you start going back to the old things, it’s kind of like leaving rehab

00:32:34 ►

and going right back to where you were before.

00:32:36 ►

It’s like you’re quite susceptible to falling back into that conditioning.

00:32:39 ►

So having those little things was a great aid to me.

00:32:44 ►

Yeah, the reintegration is such a, uh, a key and hard part of it. Um,

00:32:48 ►

so where did you, uh,

00:32:50 ►

how did you set yourself up for when you came home and what were the plans,

00:32:53 ►

uh, back here in the States?

00:32:56 ►

Oh, well,

00:32:57 ►

I was getting ready to move to this farm that I’m now living on happy acres

00:33:01 ►

farm in Sherman, Connecticut. And I had a few things in place.

00:33:11 ►

Well, I had to speak at a conference as soon as I got back. And that was good because my talk was

00:33:18 ►

called What the Psychedelic Movement Can Learn from Permaculture, which I would love to show you sometime, Lex. Oh, that sounds cool.

00:33:26 ►

Yeah, the principles of permaculture basically govern the way that we would look at working

00:33:34 ►

the land. And it’s not as capital, it’s not as like the most we can get out of it, but rather

00:33:41 ►

how we can set up systems that sustain themselves and that even regenerate what’s been lost. So replenishing nutrients in the soil, cleaning the water,

00:33:50 ►

and things that will go on beyond human intervention that they don’t need to be

00:33:55 ►

kept up with, like agriculture. So creating that was a good focus for my mind. And then I came to the farm. And let’s see, I want to mention

00:34:07 ►

something about food. So, you know, per usual, I didn’t have any grand enlightenments about my,

00:34:15 ►

you know, my sexy body or, you know, to like, just, I didn’t have a revolution in looking at

00:34:22 ►

food as sacred anymore. I still looked at it as something that relieves my tension.

00:34:27 ►

And yet I started setting stronger boundaries with other people

00:34:31 ►

because I realized that when I felt violated,

00:34:38 ►

even just depleted by someone else wanting more from me

00:34:42 ►

than what I could easily give,

00:34:46 ►

I would just give it all out.

00:34:52 ►

I’d have nothing left and I would replenish myself by eating lots of food. So I started cultivating more respect and space for myself and where I would give out 110% before,

00:35:00 ►

giving out even less than I thought I should, like giving out 50 or 60% and just letting

00:35:06 ►

that be all that I could give. And it’s nice when you can give what you don’t expect anything back

00:35:12 ►

from. I think that these are things I’ve realized since coming to this farm and working on the land

00:35:18 ►

here, which is a really great integration tool, by the way, is like gardening, weeding, picking up

00:35:23 ►

heavy things, taking care of animals,

00:35:25 ►

whatever is accessible to you, getting your hands dirty. I’ve learned that there’s always give and

00:35:31 ►

take. And you can’t give with the expectation that something’s going to come back to you.

00:35:36 ►

And you certainly can’t give and then take because you’ve given. So shifting into a mindset of what I can freely give and then receiving what’s being given to me and honoring my food in that way, not using it like I discovered in my LSD trip, right?

00:35:55 ►

Like that we use everything, but rather accepting what’s being given to us and what’s here to sustain me so I can do my important work.

00:36:04 ►

That’s been a good part of the

00:36:06 ►

integration. I did a meditation here on the land for four days, three nights. I went into the

00:36:12 ►

sacred grove, which is out of sight of the house, the main house and amongst these amazing trees.

00:36:18 ►

I saw all kinds of wildlife during it. And I meditated and I allowed myself to read and journal and do yoga and explore. And I found all

00:36:28 ►

these cool wild plants around that were so supportive. Like wild stinging nettle is

00:36:34 ►

extremely nutritious, more so than spinach. It makes a great tea. You can use it like a green

00:36:39 ►

and you have to be careful when you pick it because it has histamines in these little spiky

00:36:44 ►

hairs.

00:36:47 ►

So if you graze your hand, it will sting you.

00:36:50 ►

And on my skin, at least, it leaves a hive for like three hours that hurts.

00:37:00 ►

So just like this plant teaching me about learning how the plant wants to be picked or, you know, taking things with respect and with attention.

00:37:02 ►

That’s been a huge part of my integration.

00:37:03 ►

It’s still going on. And so what are you seeing for the future with your projects? And what are you most

00:37:08 ►

excited about coming up? The psychedelic community is in a phase of

00:37:13 ►

grappling with the same issues that non-psychedelic people and just like regular

00:37:17 ►

communities deal with sexual harassment and assault and identity politics and racism and classism and privilege, et cetera, and white

00:37:27 ►

fragility. So I guess that’s probably why I’m not excited is just because I see so much work ahead

00:37:34 ►

of us. And yet I’m eager to be a voice in that work because I care about this movement. I care about people having access to healing and to safe exploration of their mind,

00:37:47 ►

to our freedoms,

00:37:51 ►

freedoms of sovereignty over our consciousness.

00:37:55 ►

And so I’m looking forward to whatever is going to come my way

00:37:59 ►

as to how I can be an ally to um to marginalized voices and to all the people that email me like daily now i think

00:38:11 ►

it’s the michael pollan tour i’m getting all these emails because i’m on the maps integration website

00:38:15 ►

um asking me all these questions so i’m looking forward to supporting that transition and

00:38:19 ►

um yeah i’m like i’m on the farm till december working the csa that’s community shared agriculture

00:38:27 ►

grow a bunch of vegetables we share it with the community people like pay a portion and

00:38:31 ►

um going to a cool kind of psychedelic wedding in the summer yeah that’s that’s all i got that’s

00:38:37 ►

great oh in the detroit sorry the detroit psychedelic conference hosted by kalindi ee

00:38:43 ►

would you like to explain who he is?

00:38:46 ►

Oh, man, he’s the best.

00:38:48 ►

He’s one of the favorite people I’ve ever had on stage.

00:38:51 ►

Whenever I can get him on our stage, I always do.

00:38:56 ►

He believes in the power of mushrooms at much higher levels than most people are willing to talk about.

00:39:02 ►

He’s a student of martial arts going a long time back, and he sounds like a big Baptist preacher.

00:39:05 ►

He just – his delivery is amazing.

00:39:09 ►

And he talks about how you kind of have to sneak up on taking 30 grams of mushrooms.

00:39:10 ►

He wakes up.

00:39:11 ►

He’s like, maybe today will be the day.

00:39:13 ►

He almost takes them but then doesn’t and backs off.

00:39:15 ►

He’s like, well, maybe tomorrow.

00:39:22 ►

But he says that for that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon aspect of martial arts, he’s like, it does exist.

00:39:26 ►

But it’s more at the 25 grams of mushroom uh kind of level and uh he’s uh believes and sees evidence for a large uh psychedelic influence on a lot of the

00:39:33 ►

beginnings of these uh martial arts around the world that they were using various head twisters

00:39:38 ►

wherever they were to help them continue to enhance their mind just Just like meditators, very experienced meditators, when

00:39:45 ►

acid hit the scene, they found out that this could accelerate the rate of their progress in

00:39:52 ►

meditation, just a little bit of experimenting with LSD. And he’s seen the same thing with

00:39:57 ►

martial arts, where the idea that it might help you as you’re getting started, then after a while,

00:40:01 ►

you might not need it anymore. But it’s a helpful ingredient in your practice, whether that be mind training or body training. So Kalindi

00:40:10 ►

is just a great speaker. Yeah, he also thinks that mushrooms influenced architecture. I don’t

00:40:15 ►

know if you’ve ever heard about that. Oh, yeah, not from him. But yeah, that’s an old idea.

00:40:22 ►

Especially of the the like the when you look at a lot of African architecture and how there is sacred geometry in how the stuff is laid out in the various villages and things like that.

00:40:34 ►

So the last question I’ll ask before I let you go is more of a fun one. get you a big grant to do whatever you wanted for a year or two or perhaps start a foundation?

00:40:45 ►

What kind of work would be most important to you or what would you see growing with

00:40:50 ►

that seed money?

00:40:51 ►

Oh, great.

00:40:52 ►

Well, my Venmo is lfriedman.psy.

00:40:56 ►

And here’s what I would do.

00:40:58 ►

I already know I’ve held this idea dear for a long time.

00:41:07 ►

already know I’ve held this idea dear for a long time. First, I would get land in an area where there’s a threat of pipelines or power plants, and there’s just like some activity going on to

00:41:14 ►

resist that. So I would buy up land in that area. And on that land, I would use sustainable and

00:41:20 ►

regenerative cultivation methods, permaculture, et cetera, to build what would become a school.

00:41:26 ►

And it would be a very alternative school for folks on the autism spectrum and people with

00:41:33 ►

developmental disabilities, quote unquote disabilities. And what we would be doing is

00:41:39 ►

basically students who are disenfranchised with the mental health field, like such as myself

00:41:44 ►

long ago, and I didn’t really know that there were other options, they would come and intern.

00:41:50 ►

And together, there would be this communal situation of working the land, regenerating

00:41:56 ►

natural systems with micro remediation, that’s using fungi to clean soil, clean water, and also fungi to supply this amazing medicine

00:42:07 ►

and protein source for us, and using healing herbs and delicious vegetables and some animals.

00:42:18 ►

It would just be like a complete system. And so it would be a place for people to come and learn,

00:42:22 ►

people who had been failed by the systems that we have in place for for humans to thrive.

00:42:29 ►

And then after all that has gone on for a long time and I can pass it on to somebody else.

00:42:36 ►

This is, you know, this grant that I got for a couple of years.

00:42:39 ►

Right. I just ran with the momentum of it and I’m going strong and I’m like 50 years old because I’ve worked in academia for a few years now. I’ve been an adjunct psychology professor. I would start my own East

00:42:49 ►

Coast school that would be like CIIS in California, Institute of Integral Studies, where the whole

00:42:55 ►

school would be about the study of visionary experiences. So we’d have like a neuropsychology

00:43:02 ►

track where people would be neuroimaging, you know, folks on LSD or

00:43:06 ►

whatever. And we’d have like a history major where you could study the history of entheogens and

00:43:11 ►

altered consciousness experiences. And we’d have psychology, of course, and we’d have like

00:43:15 ►

nursing. And so just be an entire university of psychedelic studies. And the professors would all

00:43:23 ►

be my friends like you lex and all the other

00:43:26 ►

people that i know who we are like working on the ground right now we’re going to accrue all

00:43:30 ►

these experiences and then we’re all going to teach these courses and it’s going to be accredited

00:43:34 ►

because the world’s going to recognize that psychedelics have always played a role in the

00:43:39 ►

evolution of humanity and we’re going to finally acknowledge and validate that it’s an important

00:43:44 ►

role and we need to learn more about it leah that is one of the best answers I’ve heard yet.

00:43:49 ►

I hope to see it happen. And I hope to see you on the stage with Michael Pollan

00:43:53 ►

at some point in the near future. Thank you, Lex. I hope you’ll come teach at my school.

00:43:59 ►

What class do you want to teach? Absolutely. A class on Shulgin maybe. No, go ahead. Tell me. The neurochemical

00:44:05 ►

history of drugs. That’s the first thing that comes to mind. Okay. Yeah. You’re in. It’s all

00:44:11 ►

guesses. Yeah. A series of missteps would be the subtitle of the class. Yeah. Well, Leah, thanks

00:44:19 ►

so much for taking the time to talk to us and for all the work you do out there. And yeah, best of

00:44:24 ►

luck there on the farm and heading to Detroit. Thank you, Lex. It was a pleasure.

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