055 - Matt Pallamary Live in the Psychedelic Salon

Program Notes §

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Guest speaker: Matt Pallamary

Matt Pallamary delivering his 2007 Palenque Norte Lecture

Date this lecture was recorded: January 21, 2019

Today’s podcast features a recording from a recent live session of the Psychedelic Salon in which writer and ayahuasca researcher Matt Pallamary regaled us with his tales of jungle adventures.

Matt Pallamary’s Website

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Transcript §

00:00:00 ► §

Greetings from cyberdelic space.

00:00:19 ► §

This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.

00:00:24 ► §

And this is going to be the beginning of a slightly modified schedule here in the salon.

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As you know, my wife and I will be moving to a new apartment at the end of next month.

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And the main difficulty in that, besides packing, moving, and unpacking,

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is the fact that we still haven’t found a new place to live yet, so I have to admit

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that I’m a little bit distracted right now. But the good news is that beginning next week,

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I’ll be releasing those Terrence McKenna podcasts that I only played a preview of on the salon’s

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classic RSS feeds. So while my Patreon supporters may not get as many first-run podcasts as normal, I still will be hosting a live salon every Monday night at 6.30 p.m. Pacific time.

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And, yeah, I realize that this time isn’t great for some of our fellow salonners who don’t live in the States,

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but, well, that hasn’t stopped some of our friends from around the world joining us from time to time,

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and I really appreciate that.

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Now, once I get settled in a new place to live, I’ll be scheduling featured guests to join us each week in the live salon.

00:01:32 ► §

And for today’s podcast, I’m going to play a recording from last Monday evening’s conversation,

00:01:37 ► §

where my friend Matt Palomary was our guest.

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Now, these live salons are hosted on Zoom, and while a few people joined via telephone,

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most of us were also using video. So, those of us who had joined using our computers,

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well, our screens were full of little windows with the video feeds of everyone there.

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And while it isn’t quite as good as being together in person, well, being able to see each other actually does add a really nice

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element to it all. Anyway, at this time, I’d like to welcome you to join me, Matt Palomary, and a few

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dozen of our fellow salonners for an open-ended conversation about, well, whatever was on our

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minds last Monday night. And Mateo, it’s good to see you again, brother. It’s been a little while.

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Yeah, we’re overdue. Hey, dude, I want to let you know that the

00:02:29 ► §

Entheo Medicine people are really singing your praise.

00:02:34 ► §

Well, let’s not go there. But I did just post the podcast of that talk. So

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it’s out there now and people can decide themselves. But, you know, I just got up there

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and just told some stories. But I left all, I just got up there and just told some stories.

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But I left all the stories about you and I out just because I know you’re going back up there to a sold-out crowd.

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And I didn’t want to spook anybody.

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Yeah, right.

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Then I’ll be running if they knew me really well, right?

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Well, they might be running towards you, Mateo.

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Oh, there you go.

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Hey, really quick.

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Are we going for an hour and a half tonight?

00:03:04 ► §

Yeah, if you can. If you go. Hey, really quick. Is this, are we going for an hour and a half tonight? Yeah. If you can, if you can.

00:03:07 ► §

Yeah, I will. I just want to let my, uh, my homies know. Yeah.

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And, and the way I’ve been doing it is, you know, we, if,

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if you want to give a little intro to where you want the conversation to kind

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of head, that’s, that’s a good way to start it. And then, uh, uh,

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hopefully others have joined in with questions.

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I think probably most of them have, uh have heard one or more of your podcasts.

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And, yeah, I had a great time up there this weekend in Santa Barbara.

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That’s a great group of people.

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I’m looking forward to reconnecting.

00:03:36 ► §

I’m heading up Wednesday night.

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They’ve got things planned out really well, so I’m looking forward to that.

00:03:43 ► §

I saw you in Santa Barbara, Lorenzo.

00:03:46 ► §

Oh, were you there?

00:03:47 ► §

Yeah, I was there.

00:03:49 ► §

Oh, why didn’t you come up and say hi?

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I ended up – I live in Ventura, so I ended up leaving a little early.

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But sorry about that.

00:03:57 ► §

Next time.

00:03:58 ► §

Yeah, well, I appreciate you coming.

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That was a really interesting evening.

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It was excellent.

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Thank you.

00:04:04 ► §

Thank you. Yeah.

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Thank you for your talk.

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I was very, very inspiring on many dimensions.

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It was a lot of fun.

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And I just,

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I just podcast the talk,

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but I did,

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I did cut out a couple of,

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you know,

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names and places that I gave to you guys.

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So it’s,

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it’s been sanitized a little bit.

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We got the, we got the, uh, the real deal, the download.

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So, uh, yeah. Uh, Mateo has been out on the road. He’s been, uh,

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you’ve been down in Florida, right? By the way, uh, Mateo, I,

00:04:44 ► §

it’s Matt Palomary. I call him Mateo. I also call him Casawack. But when I was up in Santa Barbara this weekend, I was talking about Mateo and they didn’t know I was talking about you.

00:04:52 ► §

Oh, you know, I’ve been in the writing community at the center of that writing community for 30 years, you know.

00:04:57 ► §

Well, yeah, but these people, you know, they only know you from the psychedelic community, the ones that I was with this weekend.

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They only know you from the psychedelic community, the ones that I was with this weekend.

00:05:05 ► §

Yeah.

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Well, I’m a cast of thousands, so I’ll take all of them.

00:05:14 ► §

It was great.

00:05:17 ► §

Yeah, are we officially started?

00:05:18 ► §

Yeah.

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Yeah, let’s go ahead and kick it off here. And to begin with, let me just kind of introduce you to uh we’re getting

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a little feedback from somebody if you guys think you’ve got background noise in your room if you’d

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mute your mics that’d be really great because it’s feeding through and we’re trying to record this

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but uh anyhow uh yeah Mateo and I uh we go back a long way you, he lived with us for a while and we’ve had experiences in the jungle.

00:05:47 ► §

And I think the thing people know about you most, of course, is your talks about ayahuasca and

00:05:53 ► §

the, well, you’ve spent all these years studying it in the jungle and in the mountains and desert

00:05:59 ► §

and studying all these medicines. So there’s just so many different directions we could go.

00:06:06 ► §

Why don’t we start out?

00:06:07 ► §

And I guess the thing that I left out, the most important thing,

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is while he is much of an adventurer and a psychonaut,

00:06:16 ► §

his ground zero handle is he’s a writer, a very prolific writer.

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He’s got a whole bunch of books that I hope he tells us about,

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and they’re in a number of languages.

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He’s been a pillar of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference for many years, and that’s sort of the premier writers conference in the country.

00:06:34 ► §

He teaches there. I don’t know tonight where the direction will lead us.

00:06:38 ► §

Mateo, do you want to talk about writing or the jungle or everything in between?

00:06:43 ► §

about writing or the jungle or everything in between?

00:06:44 ► §

Yes.

00:06:49 ► §

The thing I like to do whenever I’m speaking and all that is I really want anybody who is taking the time to participate to make sure that they go away

00:06:55 ► §

with something, you know?

00:06:56 ► §

So like I’m totally open to questions about all of the above.

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I just finished a great tour for anybody who doesn’t know the famous

00:07:04 ► §

ayahuasca painter Pablo Amaringo.

00:07:08 ► §

I just did a wonderful tour with his students, his art and his students.

00:07:14 ► §

And we went from Central Florida down to Miami and then back to Central Florida, then up to Yakima, Washington, outside of Seattle, and then back here.

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then up to Yakima, Washington, outside of Seattle, then back here.

00:07:29 ► §

And we also did the United States premiere of Bufo Alvarez,

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the infamous 5-MEO toad.

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And I was lucky to be able to take a taste of the toad while I was down there in Miami.

00:07:44 ► §

As you well know, Lorenzo, I did a lot of work with that stuff back in the day when it was legal.

00:07:48 ► §

That’s that is an understatement.

00:07:55 ► §

Okay. I don’t know if you can hear me or not. Oh yeah. We’ve got you.

00:08:00 ► §

Got you loud and clear. Okay. And let me, let me, uh, suggest this to,

00:08:01 ► §

in fact, to all of you is what I do.

00:08:06 ► §

You go up to the top right corner of your screen.

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I think it defaults to gallery view, and then the speaker is in a big window.

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But if you change it to speaker view, then you can see all of us,

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and I think that’s a better way to watch the unfolding.

00:08:23 ► §

Okay, I’m on the big screen, and I’ve got a lot of people onto the right.

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Is that correct? Well, yeah, but you can click that little thing that changes it from a grid to a list.

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Okay, I can see everybody here.

00:08:33 ► §

Yeah.

00:08:35 ► §

Isn’t that better?

00:08:39 ► §

Tim Katt looks totally psychedelic.

00:08:39 ► §

I know that.

00:08:48 ► §

So, Lorenzo, you know me better than everybody, obviously. you know how to pick my brain what is what’s in there um i’ve been lecturing a lot about shamanism lately and about the writing

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and about the the tie-ins with shamanism and storytelling why don’t why don’t we back up a

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little bit because one of the things that i don’t think we’ve done in a podcast,

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and if we did, it was quite a few years ago,

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is tell us about that intensive two-year shamanism study course

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where you went from the mountains to the deserts to the jungle.

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What all was involved in that?

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How did it unfold?

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Sure.

00:09:21 ► §

Okay.

00:09:21 ► §

So it was a two-year shamanic study course, and roughly once every two months,

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we went down in the jungle, and we did lots of ayahuasca with the Shipibos,

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and then we went up to the Andes, and we worked with San Pedro, otherwise known as Huachuma,

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which if anybody doesn’t know, it contains mescaline, but it’s a different tradition than peyote.

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And then we went into the desert and we did the whole peyote hunt,

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the overnight ceremony and ritual and the pilgrimage to Mount Camaro.

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And then we went up to Four Corners and we did a lot of walkabouts up there.

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We had a concoction of San Pedro and shroomies,

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which was very interesting mixture.

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And then we spent a lot of time in New Mexico also doing wilderness solos,

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like we’d go out for a three-day wilderness solo,

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basically fasting in San Pedro and spent a lot of time alone,

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which I love to do.

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And some people were like, when I did it, I was already been going to the jungle in the Amazon,

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working with the plants down there four or five years.

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But when I took this course, it kind of filled in all the gaps for me and rounded out my knowledge.

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And things that I learned there and from those different cultures, uh, are still playing out a lot for me.

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One of the best experiences I had was really high in the Indies, um,

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doing San Pedro in the,

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with the water wings in these mineral hot springs and getting massaged by the

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shaman and the stuff that came out, um,

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was very powerful and cleansing and healing.

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was very powerful and cleansing and healing.

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So I ended up going all over Peru in the mountains, in the deserts, throughout all the jungles.

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And for my graduation, I got a big condor feather, which was great.

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So it was a really good experience.

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It really rounded out my knowledge.

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I’d already taken some college courses,

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an honors course in anthropology

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on South American Indian religions.

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And one of the main things about shamanism

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is direct experiential knowledge,

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you know, as opposed to reading it in books.

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So this was tons of hands-on,

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some real wild adventures.

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One I almost didn’t come back from.

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I almost croaked.

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I was actually, my life was literally saved by an acupuncturist.

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The regular medical community here had no idea.

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They said, we can’t find anything.

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And another woman who had the same thing I had ended up dying.

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Tell the whole story.

00:12:04 ► §

Expand on that one.

00:12:06 ► §

Yeah, sure. So I went to a place outside of Iquitos to a camp with the Shipibos and some other people. And we did some

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work. And I got really sick down there. And it was right after my mom’s death. And I thought maybe it

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had something to do with that. Lorenzo, you got to meet my mom there.

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Not in Iquitos, but here when I was having my big book signing.

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Anyway, I got this.

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I was like delirious.

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I couldn’t even see straight.

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I was sweating.

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I could barely even function mentally to dial the phone.

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And I went to the doctors.

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They took all these tests and said,

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we can’t find anything wrong with you.

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And I was just getting increasingly incoherent.

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So out of desperation, I called my acupuncturist.

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And I will never forget, as long as I lived,

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the look on her face when she saw me and did her work

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scared the shit out of me more than anything else.

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It really scared me. And she said my heart was down to 30%. My liver was down to 30. My kidneys

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were down to 20. My whole body was shutting down. And I’ve done acupuncture a number of times. And

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I got to tell you, this time when she put the needles in, it really, really hurt, like poking a really big sensitive bruise. And she hit me hard with bovine hormones and all these other stuff. And she treated me like

00:13:31 ► §

three times every other day straight up. And it finally broke. But it was really scary. And this

00:13:38 ► §

other woman had the same thing. And she was a nurse. So she went into the hospital. She ended up going into a coma and dying.

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And it was the same thing.

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So it really freaked me out.

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And I was glad I had the presence of mind to go outside the box, so to speak.

00:13:54 ► §

I’ve never been a big fan of traditional medicine anyway, which is one of the reasons I do go to the jungle.

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I mean, you know, there’s a time and a place for it.

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If you break an arm or some things, you need intervention like that.

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But overall, I’m not a fan of it.

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And this is a really good example.

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And not to defend them, but the acupuncturist said I had a virus and a bacteria that were kind of working together and kind of eating me alive in a way.

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So I was really lucky.

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Did they ever figure out how you contracted it?

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It was with the people, you know.

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So when I go to my usual place in the jungle where I’ve been going for 20 years,

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even though they’re mestizo, they’re much more traditional.

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So only one person handles the food.

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They bring you your food.

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It’s much cleaner.

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When I was in the Shipibo village, there’d be like eight people preparing food,

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and then a little kid with shitty diapers and a runny nose would run by,

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and then a pig would run by, and then a mangy-looking dog would run by,

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and then a chicken.

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And I think I’m pretty sure that because they were in their place in the jungle, they had immunities to those things.

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But it just was not a healthy environment.

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It wasn’t clean.

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These guys in the jungle where I usually go are very, very clear.

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And traditionally, if you study ayahuasca in depth, traditionally only one person is supposed to handle the food.

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There’s a whole cleanliness thing about it.

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So those things weren’t followed.

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It was everybody and their mother was putting their hands in the food.

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And I think that’s how I got it.

00:15:35 ► §

Yeah, that sure makes a lot of sense.

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In fact, you might want to describe, before we open it up for questions,

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what it was like when you you you went uh up the river

00:15:46 ► §

to the camp the whole experience of the jungle that is what was going on during all your two

00:15:51 ► §

years of shamanic studies but every summer you’d go to the jungle too with our friends uh you might

00:15:55 ► §

want to tell how that uh how the the spirit experience unfolds how you get there and what

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it’s like while you’re there sure absolutely this. This is an ayahuasca retreat now.

00:16:06 ► §

Yeah. And these guys, even though they’re mestizos,

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they are the purest tradition.

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I spent one year in the jungle with one of their mentors and I love what he

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said. He said to me, he said to all of us, I am a plant man.

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My father was a plant man before him.

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His father was a plant man before him. His father was a plant man before him.

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And his father was a plant man before him all the way back.

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And that’s the tradition I worked in.

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And I like being a plant man or a vegetalista.

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I do not like being called a shaman.

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But too many people are calling me it.

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So I’m not fighting anymore because I call attention to it.

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And as a matter of fact, I recently did a podcast.

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And now my standard response is everybody is a shaman, only most of us don attention to it. And as a matter of fact, I recently did a podcast, and now my standard response is,

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everybody is a shaman, only most of us don’t know it.

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I like that.

00:16:50 ► §

Yeah.

00:16:51 ► §

So anyway, this is a sideways plug,

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because I wouldn’t be a writer worth my salt if I didn’t give a plug.

00:16:56 ► §

But my first jungle experience, which was very intense,

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is in my memoir, Spirit Matters,

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which is an e-book, a tree book, and an audio book.

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So also I figured out that during the course of my studies,

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when I was deep in the shamanic study program,

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I figured it out and I was doing ayahuasca 30 times a year for a couple of years,

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along with everything else, and the fun stuff and the shroomies and everything else.

00:17:23 ► §

So what we do when we go down there is we leave out of Los Angeles.

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It’s about an eight-hour flight to Lima.

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From Lima, we have a little bit of a layover, sometimes six hours maybe,

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and then we take an hour flight from Lima to Pacalpa,

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which is a wild, woolly jungle town,

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kind of a frontier town.

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And then we usually spend a day there at the shaman’s compound.

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And then from there, we take beat-up cars down muddy, pot-holy, dusty roads,

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depending for two hours to a smaller village.

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And then from the small village, we go two hours up river.

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This is like a tributary of a tributary of a tributary of the Amazon to the shaman’s camp.

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And then once we get there, depending on the height of the river,

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we’ll hike in sometimes maybe 45 minutes.

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And then when we get there, there’s a main area, just a kitchen.

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And then there is the maloca.

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And by the way, I got pictures of a lot of this stuff on my website.

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So everybody’s welcome to look on my website, mattpalomary.com.

00:18:36 ► §

And so then we have the maloca where we do the ceremonies.

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And then there are open-air huts called tombos, for those of you guys who don’t know and my tombo

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was the last one at the end of the line and so you spend most of your time alone they bring you

00:18:53 ► §

your food twice a day and there’s no soap no shampoo no sense no toothpaste no sense of any

00:19:01 ► §

kind and you get a picture every day of a plant or plants. Every year I go,

00:19:07 ► §

they hit me harder with more plants. And then every other night, you do an ayahuasca session.

00:19:14 ► §

And then if you’re, for lack of better words, an advanced hardcore masochist like me, and they know

00:19:20 ► §

it, then you’ll do ayahuasca a couple of times during the day by yourself.

00:19:26 ► §

So it really turns into one big, long, 10-day ayahuasca session. And a lot of magical things

00:19:33 ► §

happen. So every day you’ll get either oatmeal, quinoa, or rice boiled. Baked or boiled plantain

00:19:41 ► §

which is a non-ripe banana. If you’ve ever tried to eat a cardboard box, you know what they taste like.

00:19:46 ► §

And then a piece of chicken or fish.

00:19:49 ► §

That’s it.

00:19:50 ► §

And the plants, like I said, no soap, no shampoo, no salt for 10 days.

00:19:55 ► §

And then your dreaming and your visions and your waking all start to blend together.

00:20:06 ► §

And incidentally, in indigenous cultures,

00:20:09 ► §

waking and dreaming and visions, for them, it’s all one continuum.

00:20:15 ► §

It’s just different states of consciousness,

00:20:17 ► §

but they don’t separate them like we do in our culture.

00:20:20 ► §

So over the course of doing the dieta there,

00:20:23 ► §

the boundaries between your conscious and your subconscious blur,

00:20:28 ► §

and all your shit comes up, all your shadow comes up,

00:20:30 ► §

and you’re spending most of the time alone,

00:20:32 ► §

so there’s nobody to project it onto, nobody to blame,

00:20:35 ► §

and you basically got to face your demons.

00:20:38 ► §

But it’s a very powerful, wonderful experience.

00:20:40 ► §

I hope to do it more.

00:20:42 ► §

It’s been a couple of years since I’ve gone because financial situations.

00:20:47 ► §

But it’s not for everybody. I always like to say, don’t worry about it. I went for you.

00:20:55 ► §

By the way, Matteo, in the background behind me, you see, in honor of you tonight, I went back to the Chan Ka Hotel.

00:21:04 ► §

Love that place usually my background is

00:21:07 ► §

my office from uh 2004 in in long beach because i’m sitting you know where i’m sitting in this

00:21:12 ► §

little bitty room in our house yeah and uh we won’t be here long we’re we’re looking for a new

00:21:18 ► §

place now so all that’s in kind of turmoil too so let’s uh let me get back to this. And I’m going to unmute everybody.

00:21:25 ► §

And if somebody has some questions, we’ll head in a direction here.

00:21:32 ► §

And I think I unmuted everybody.

00:21:36 ► §

Now you can remute yourself if you’d like, and we’ll see if somebody has questions.

00:21:43 ► §

Hey, Mateo, I have a couple straight off the bat so the first one was

00:21:46 ► §

Wilkus I was told that Wilkus was the path to God or the path to the angels like there was some some

00:21:53 ► §

kind of ayahuasca ritual that was done at 3 a.m in the morning and when I talked to a couple of

00:21:58 ► §

the different people in Peru they told me that was the Wilkus plant do you have any kind of

00:22:02 ► §

experience with that or do you know what you know what they may be talking about?

00:22:07 ► §

No.

00:22:08 ► §

So when we do the sessions there, we typically meet about, oh, say, 6 at night,

00:22:15 ► §

and we’ll do usually an hour or two integration because there’s more stuff going on.

00:22:21 ► §

You’re out there by yourself in the jungle, and stuff’s happening.

00:22:24 ► §

more stuff going on you’re out there by yourself in the jungle and stuff’s happening and then usually we’ll drink about eight or nine and we’ll go till um sometimes three or four in the morning

00:22:32 ► §

and um it’s very intense and sometimes some of the uh helper plants that you drink during the day

00:22:40 ► §

some of them are mildly hallucinatory or visionary. Some of them are very powerful.

00:22:46 ► §

But these guys

00:22:48 ► §

that I work with, like at one point some years back,

00:22:50 ► §

in fact, Lorenzo, you were part of this for a bit too.

00:22:52 ► §

I actually put a couple

00:22:54 ► §

of datura leaves in.

00:22:56 ► §

They’re called toei.

00:22:58 ► §

And that got pretty wild for a couple of years.

00:23:00 ► §

And then the shaman decided, he said,

00:23:01 ► §

we don’t need that. We get plenty of colors from the shakruna.

00:23:05 ► §

We don’t have to do that anymore.

00:23:07 ► §

It’s kind of overkill.

00:23:10 ► §

But we had some experiments like that.

00:23:12 ► §

And I’ve worked with some very, very exotic plants.

00:23:15 ► §

But it’s strictly been ayahuasca, nothing.

00:23:18 ► §

Gotcha, gotcha.

00:23:18 ► §

They said wilkus was a master and ayahuasca was a teacher.

00:23:22 ► §

And so there’s supposed to be like three or four master plants.

00:23:24 ► §

One of them is datura. And then there’s supposed to be six teachers, I think. And one of them is ayahuasca was a teacher. And so there’s supposed to be like three or four master plants. One of them is Datura.

00:23:25 ► §

And then there’s supposed to be six teachers, I think.

00:23:27 ► §

And one of them is ayahuasca.

00:23:28 ► §

I didn’t, again, I didn’t know if you had known much about it because you had said you don’t know like the shamanic.

00:23:33 ► §

Yeah.

00:23:33 ► §

So I may miss some, but let me just think about this for a second.

00:23:39 ► §

So I’ve worked with, obviously, ayahuasca and chacruna.

00:23:41 ► §

Obviously, Ayahuasca, Tencha, Karuna.

00:23:46 ► §

And then there’s Chuchuwasi, Ushpawasha, Unidegato,

00:23:50 ► §

Clavo, Ayahuasca, Renakia, Komalonga,

00:23:54 ► §

Bobinsana, Lupuna.

00:23:57 ► §

That’s a great Incarus, too, by the way,

00:23:58 ► §

the Bobinsana song, yeah.

00:23:59 ► §

Oh, that was my favorite.

00:24:02 ► §

I had my, well, that was my first experience where I had the most profound, lucid, and spiritual dream I ever had in my life.

00:24:09 ► §

I may be missing a couple more of them.

00:24:11 ► §

They come and go.

00:24:12 ► §

And, you know, once you spend 10 days with those plants, ingesting them, they’re with you forever.

00:24:17 ► §

And when I’m in ceremony and I’m singing Icaros, they come to me at different times for different reasons.

00:24:23 ► §

There’s also Ajo Sacha, jungle garlic, wayusa.

00:24:27 ► §

And last time I went, I said to the shaman, you know,

00:24:31 ► §

the last few journeys here have been really a bit rough.

00:24:35 ► §

I was thinking of taking it easy and maybe just doing bobin sana.

00:24:39 ► §

And he looks at me and he says, well, you can do bobin sana,

00:24:43 ► §

but we’re going to hit you hard.

00:24:45 ► §

And I’m like, oh, God, okay.

00:24:47 ► §

And they did.

00:24:47 ► §

He gave me this concoction of five different plants.

00:24:50 ► §

And it was really interesting.

00:24:52 ► §

I was super, super energized.

00:24:55 ► §

And I think I slept two hours a night.

00:24:58 ► §

And I didn’t feel tired at all.

00:24:59 ► §

I felt like Superman.

00:25:01 ► §

And I also did five ceremonies at night and two during the day.

00:25:08 ► §

I could have done three during the day, but two was really starting to push it. It gets really

00:25:12 ► §

rough toward the end because you’re not taking any salt and your body’s starting to cramp up

00:25:16 ► §

and all that. And then that took me like probably a month to integrate that. That was intense. And

00:25:23 ► §

they know that I’ve worked with most of their plants.

00:25:25 ► §

So when I come down, they really give me the business.

00:25:29 ► §

But it’s only because I’ve been going now, you know, about 20 years.

00:25:36 ► §

And then the other thing, we work somewhat with tobacco.

00:25:39 ► §

And they say that, if I remember correctly,

00:25:42 ► §

ayahuasca is the mother of tobacco.

00:25:45 ► §

And, you know, I know there’s probably some plants I haven’t done.

00:25:49 ► §

Just like I always like to say I’ve done almost every substance I can get my hands on,

00:25:53 ► §

a lot of the experimental ones, but I probably missed a few.

00:25:57 ► §

But I’ve made it a career of trying out as much as I could.

00:26:01 ► §

Lorenzo can attest to that.

00:26:02 ► §

You know, Mateo and I actually met in an

00:26:07 ► §

ayahuasca ceremony, and he just happened to sit down next to me, and it was, you know, ahead of

00:26:11 ► §

time we get talking, and you’ve heard the story probably in the podcast, but it’s interesting that

00:26:17 ► §

we probably wouldn’t be here together without ayahuasca, because that’s what brought us together,

00:26:22 ► §

strangely. It’s made some of the biggest

00:26:26 ► §

changes in my life and some of the most amazing people that i’ve met but without some of the other

00:26:31 ► §

people that we’ve both done medicine with are some are celebrities some are powerful people and

00:26:36 ► §

and some are wealthy people and all but uh it’s it’s a good leveler and a good way that that you

00:26:42 ► §

can uh you know get people back to their basics and get rid of some of these filters that we put in for social filters.

00:26:51 ► §

I don’t want to use the word political correctness, but you know what I’m talking about.

00:26:57 ► §

I do.

00:26:58 ► §

I will say this, and then I’ll shut up for a minute and see if there’s more questions. But in my humble opinion and in my experience,

00:27:07 ► §

ayahuasca leads you from being head-centered, intellectually-centered,

00:27:11 ► §

caught up with your personality and all your egos.

00:27:14 ► §

Like myself, I’m the first to admit I’m a cast of thousands.

00:27:19 ► §

And it leads you from being head-centered to heart-centered.

00:27:22 ► §

And I think when you connect heart-centered,

00:27:24 ► §

you have more instances of telepathy.

00:27:27 ► §

And I think that’s where the bullshit filters go away and you get to be really honest with yourself.

00:27:32 ► §

And, you know, that’s what happened with Brother Sting and other people like that.

00:27:37 ► §

I agree.

00:27:39 ► §

Yeah.

00:27:40 ► §

So, Mark, you have more questions?

00:27:43 ► §

Anybody else?

00:27:44 ► §

I got a question.

00:27:46 ► §

Yeah, go ahead.

00:27:47 ► §

Oh, go ahead. Someone else?

00:27:49 ► §

No, David. Go ahead, David.

00:27:50 ► §

Okay. So I have experience with psilocybin, with mushrooms and MDMA. Anyway, I’ve never done ayahuasca.

00:28:01 ► §

And so I have a two-part question is is I’m getting ready to take the medicine with a

00:28:08 ► §

group and prepare for that so is there any recommendation that you would have on how to

00:28:12 ► §

prepare for that and that’s sort of the sub part of that is somebody recommended it’s been about

00:28:18 ► §

20 years since I’ve used mushrooms but maybe to do a micro dose of mushrooms to kind of get the synapses firing

00:28:25 ► §

before the ayahuasca.

00:28:29 ► §

That’s a great question, bro.

00:28:33 ► §

A couple of things I want to mention. First off, Lorenzo did a podcast with me,

00:28:37 ► §

bro. It was, I think it was 10 or 11 years ago.

00:28:41 ► §

Ayahuasca diets and rituals. I think it’s called.

00:28:44 ► §

I will look for it and put it up on the screen if I find it easily.

00:28:47 ► §

Yeah. So first off, I recommend that.

00:28:49 ► §

But the most important thing is there’s a couple of important things.

00:28:54 ► §

One of the most important things is to go in there with the respect for the

00:28:57 ► §

plants and the teachers.

00:29:00 ► §

You know, I look back now, I says,

00:29:02 ► §

if somebody says dumber than a house plant, I’m like, dude, you’re out to lunch, man, because guess what? They’re a lot smarter than you think. So having the respect for it is one. Two, the closer you get to doing it, the more you can follow the diet, in my humble opinion, the better experience you’ve had, you’ll have.

00:29:24 ► §

you’ll have. I now, you know, I’ve had a,

00:29:31 ► §

almost a half a century love affair with cannabis and also coffee.

00:29:34 ► §

It’s like writer’s crack, cannabis and coffee, right?

00:29:38 ► §

Usually a week, maybe two weeks before when I’m going to do the work,

00:29:40 ► §

I stop them and I get them out of there.

00:29:45 ► §

And there are some traditions who say, oh, yeah, cannabis,

00:29:47 ► §

the dining might even use cannabis.

00:29:48 ► §

One of them does, I think.

00:29:51 ► §

But in the tradition that we’ve worked in,

00:29:55 ► §

they say that ayahuasca is another woman.

00:29:57 ► §

You know, you’ve got the sensimia with the cannabis,

00:29:59 ► §

and you’ve got the ayahuasca.

00:30:01 ► §

And they say she’s jealous and she doesn’t like that shit.

00:30:03 ► §

And I’ve experimented with it.

00:30:11 ► §

And I really believe that the more pure you are going in and the more focused your intention is, the more you will benefit from it.

00:30:12 ► §

One.

00:30:19 ► §

The other thing I want to stress is that you have to experience the light and the dark.

00:30:26 ► §

I have people tell me, oh, you know, I just want to do ecstasy and I just want to love everybody and I just want to see the light.

00:30:26 ► §

Well, that’s bullshit.

00:30:29 ► §

You can’t have the light without the dark.

00:30:34 ► §

How are you going to learn everything without experiencing both?

00:30:44 ► §

And it’s important to experience both and to see it because how else are you going to find the center unless you experience both and treat them equally? Because the more light there is, the darker the dark is.

00:30:46 ► §

And the darker the dark is, the more the light is.

00:30:48 ► §

And you’ve got to experience them both.

00:30:50 ► §

So when I first did ayahuasca, my first sessions were blissful.

00:30:56 ► §

And I went like maybe my first dozen sessions were blissful.

00:31:00 ► §

And then I was like, oh, yeah, I’m made for this stuff.

00:31:04 ► §

I’m not kookinging i’m not chatting i’m

00:31:06 ► §

really this is i made this and then like for the next dozen it’s all i do is shit and puke right

00:31:11 ► §

and then at one point i said bring on the darkness whoa buddy i went through about three years of

00:31:17 ► §

that i mean i’ve been to hell and back many times and i’ve been to heaven and back many times. But the beauty of it is that once I went to a lot of those dark places and

00:31:28 ► §

experienced them,

00:31:29 ► §

then I would see somebody who in the past I may have judged.

00:31:34 ► §

And because I’ve experienced that energy and that vibe,

00:31:37 ► §

I can have compassion for them and I can help them.

00:31:40 ► §

And one of the things I say, and I’ve,

00:31:42 ► §

and I’ve been leading lots of ceremonies and one of the things I say, and I’ve been leading lots of ceremonies, and one of the things I say to people, and I mean this full on,

00:31:47 ► §

I will go anywhere in the dark with you, anywhere.

00:31:52 ► §

And I will be there right beside you, and I’ll guide you through it.

00:31:56 ► §

I’ll be there.

00:31:56 ► §

I’ll go where we need to go.

00:31:59 ► §

And unless you go there and experience something directly

00:32:03 ► §

and know what it’s about,

00:32:04 ► §

how can you truly have compassion and help somebody, right?

00:32:07 ► §

So that’s really a big thing of mine.

00:32:09 ► §

So, you know, don’t think you may want to have a blissful experience.

00:32:14 ► §

So I’m not trying to say, oh, you know, hell’s coming.

00:32:17 ► §

You may or may not.

00:32:18 ► §

But the key to it all is learning how to navigate.

00:32:23 ► §

And the way that you navigate, I like the analogy of dancing.

00:32:27 ► §

And the other thing one of my mentors told me, which I love,

00:32:30 ► §

is he said that ayahuasca is the river,

00:32:34 ► §

and the icaros and the music are the boats that carry you along the river.

00:32:39 ► §

And then you remember when you take it that you did take something,

00:32:43 ► §

and that no matter what happens, it’s temporary.

00:32:45 ► §

It’s not, even though, I got to tell you,

00:32:47 ► §

sometimes it feels like it’s an eternity, right?

00:32:50 ► §

But the other thing is that what they say in the jungle

00:32:54 ► §

is that all of the discomfort that you go through

00:32:56 ► §

is what you have to do in order to prove you’re worthy

00:33:01 ► §

of the gifts and the knowledge that the plants have to give you.

00:33:05 ► §

So when I hear people say, oh, yeah, I want to go to the jungle.

00:33:08 ► §

I want to do ayahuasca.

00:33:08 ► §

I look them in the eye and I go, it’s an ordeal.

00:33:12 ► §

And it’s not always fun.

00:33:14 ► §

But you are always, always better in the end.

00:33:18 ► §

You just got to work with it and flow with it and not fight it.

00:33:20 ► §

And if you find yourself in difficult situations, you breathe deep and breathe through it and realize.

00:33:25 ► §

I like to think of it as a storm front.

00:33:27 ► §

It’s a passing storm.

00:33:30 ► §

Is that a good answer for you?

00:33:31 ► §

That’s great.

00:33:32 ► §

Thank you.

00:33:33 ► §

Let me go ahead.

00:33:34 ► §

David, I’m going to share this screen here.

00:33:37 ► §

And this is the podcast he was talking about, podcast number 89.

00:33:42 ► §

00:33:43 ► §

From April 25, 2007. ayahuasca diet rituals and

00:33:47 ► §

power powers and uh there’s a a picture of uh of mateo that was on my balcony in our last apartment

00:33:56 ► §

so uh yeah that’s actually that’s back when i was doing program notes where

00:34:02 ► §

the quotes that i put in i put the minutes and seconds that you can find into the thing.

00:34:07 ► §

That was really a pain in the ass to do that if you guys want to know the truth.

00:34:13 ► §

Excellent.

00:34:14 ► §

Thank you.

00:34:15 ► §

Yeah, my pleasure, brother.

00:34:16 ► §

And, you know, if anything comes up, you want to reach out, you can find me through my website.

00:34:22 ► §

If something comes up or you have a, you have a pressing issue. This stuff is really

00:34:26 ► §

important and

00:34:28 ► §

now I’m leading groups sometimes

00:34:30 ► §

20 to 25 people

00:34:32 ► §

and

00:34:34 ► §

obviously when I do that

00:34:36 ► §

Lorenzo will tell you I’m Mr.

00:34:38 ► §

hardhead mega doser for everything

00:34:40 ► §

everything has been kamikaze

00:34:42 ► §

but when I’m leading

00:34:44 ► §

the groups, I take

00:34:45 ► §

a half a dose or less

00:34:47 ► §

because I need to be coherent and I feel personally

00:34:49 ► §

responsible for everybody in that room.

00:34:52 ► §

Just like I feel personally

00:34:53 ► §

responsible for all you guys who have tuned in now.

00:34:56 ► §

It’s very important

00:34:57 ► §

for everybody to be fully informed and go into

00:34:59 ► §

everything with their eyes wide open.

00:35:02 ► §

I’m on a mission from dog.

00:35:03 ► §

You know what I’m saying?

00:35:04 ► §

Let me give an example of how he he concerned about people and takes care of

00:35:10 ► §

us so that i i can remember on more than one occasion where there’d be oh eight or ten of us

00:35:16 ► §

and uh we’d spend uh uh we’d we’d have some sort of a ceremony and and an experience in the evening

00:35:24 ► §

we’re all going to stay in the same place at night.

00:35:26 ► §

And we had a couple of big places we could do that in.

00:35:29 ► §

And after everybody had come down, we kind of broke the circle

00:35:32 ► §

and everybody go to their beds.

00:35:35 ► §

And this was back when 5-MEO was still legal.

00:35:38 ► §

Mateo would come around to each of us and tuck us in with his little MEO pipe.

00:35:42 ► §

And we all take a couple of hits of 5-MEO to drift off to the other land.

00:35:47 ► §

Now, that’s how conscientious he is.

00:35:50 ► §

Got to send him off with the love, baby.

00:35:55 ► §

Now, actually, that’s probably a little too much fun and recreational

00:36:00 ► §

for a lot of our more scientific people.

00:36:02 ► §

But, you know, I have to admit that if it wasn’t fun doing this stuff too,

00:36:06 ► §

none of us probably would have ever got into it

00:36:08 ► §

as deep as we have.

00:36:10 ► §

You know, it’s gotta be a pleasureful too.

00:36:12 ► §

Yeah, you know, too,

00:36:14 ► §

when we were, a lot of the stuff we were doing,

00:36:15 ► §

we were really, really pioneering.

00:36:18 ► §

Nobody knew what a lot of the stuff was.

00:36:20 ► §

And we didn’t know sometimes

00:36:22 ► §

what was gonna happen when we took something.

00:36:25 ► §

And so that’s why now it’s really important.

00:36:27 ► §

I’m doing that next weekend in Santa Barbara, this coming weekend,

00:36:30 ► §

about psychedelic integration because of all the experience I had

00:36:33 ► §

because there was nobody to guide us.

00:36:36 ► §

You know, my first LSD was 71 or 72.

00:36:41 ► §

I grew up in Boston and we had a chemist at MIT, which we called Mental Institute for the Touch.

00:36:49 ► §

And he went by My Favorite Martian.

00:36:51 ► §

And it took seven or eight times of doing a hit of what he had before I could handle the whole hit.

00:36:56 ► §

I’d have to do like two-thirds, which was blowing my brains out then.

00:37:00 ► §

Everything was megadosed then.

00:37:01 ► §

There was no such thing as microdosing any of that.

00:37:03 ► §

So, yeah, we had fun, but we were also experimenting and pioneering,

00:37:07 ► §

and we were always there for each other, too.

00:37:11 ► §

And we saw a few bad results from people who weren’t being responsible.

00:37:15 ► §

So that’s why, for me, it’s very important that I’m getting more and more vocal now

00:37:19 ► §

as time goes on so that everybody goes in with their eyes wide open.

00:37:24 ► §

By the way, Mateo,

00:37:25 ► §

that workshop you’re going to be doing in Santa Barbara is sold out.

00:37:28 ► §

Yee-haw.

00:37:31 ► §

Loving it.

00:37:32 ► §

That should be a really interesting workshop.

00:37:34 ► §

Yeah.

00:37:34 ► §

What’s the workshop on?

00:37:36 ► §

It’s on psychedelic integration,

00:37:39 ► §

integrating psychedelic experiences.

00:37:41 ► §

I’d love to thank you for the clap over there,

00:37:42 ► §

bro.

00:37:43 ► §

And it’s,

00:37:44 ► §

it’s for licensed therapists and psychologists only over there, bro. It’s for

00:37:46 ► §

licensed therapists and psychologists

00:37:47 ► §

only.

00:37:50 ► §

It dawned on me.

00:37:52 ► §

All these people were like, hi, I’m a psychedelic

00:37:54 ► §

integration specialist.

00:37:55 ► §

I’m looking and listening. I’m thinking to myself,

00:37:57 ► §

you don’t know shit.

00:38:00 ► §

Not in a facetious,

00:38:02 ► §

nepotistical way either. I’ve been at this shit for

00:38:03 ► §

50 years, pretty much 50 years.

00:38:05 ► §

And I’ve done a lot.

00:38:06 ► §

And I’ve taken hundreds of people on journeys with numerous substances.

00:38:13 ► §

Lorenzo will tell you, for about 10 years, I was Mr. 5-MeO.

00:38:17 ► §

As a matter of fact, I the Palenque and Theobotany conferences attracted 80 people over

00:38:27 ► §

one week, and then another 80 people the next week, and there are about 20 presenters.

00:38:32 ► §

And those people came from all over the world. And for a couple years, Mateo took almost every

00:38:39 ► §

one of us on our first 5MEO trip. He’d lead us out into the jungle and get his pipe. And a lot of the buzz about 5-MeO

00:38:49 ► §

that started springing up all over the place came out of those seminars down there. And so he was

00:38:55 ► §

sort of a Johnny Appleseed of that chemical. And it’s come back to bite a few people, of course,

00:39:00 ► §

too. Yeah, that’s why it was was interesting i took a uh i took a break uh because people were

00:39:08 ► §

getting uh irresponsible with it and not being an integrity and i got to the point where i did so

00:39:14 ► §

much of it that it just really wasn’t affecting me anymore so i don’t know lorenzo you said this

00:39:18 ► §

to me was it alan watts that said you’ve gotten the message you can hang up the phone now

00:39:21 ► §

yeah actually uh that was uh g Gary Fisher was at the dinner party.

00:39:26 ► §

It was a dinner party at Laura Huxley’s house.

00:39:30 ► §

And Laura and Aldis were still alive, and Alan Watts was there.

00:39:35 ► §

And the woman sitting next to Alan says, well, I heard that you don’t do LSD anymore.

00:39:41 ► §

And he says, madam, once you get the message, you hang up the phone.

00:39:46 ► §

Or in fact, by that time that Gary told me that, he was in his early 70s.

00:39:54 ► §

And I’d been trying to get him to do acid with me because Myron was.

00:39:59 ► §

And Gary just wouldn’t.

00:40:00 ► §

He just kept chuckling.

00:40:01 ► §

He says, you’ll find out.

00:40:03 ► §

You’ll find out.

00:40:04 ► §

And I got to where, well, it’s been a little over three years now since I’ve done ayahuasca.

00:40:10 ► §

And for a couple of reasons.

00:40:13 ► §

Mateo, you brought out an interesting thing and an important thing about ayahuasca and cannabis both being female.

00:40:22 ► §

And how in our tradition, you know, we had to give up cannabis for the week before and the week after.

00:40:28 ► §

And I found that to be the most difficult part of the dieta for me because,

00:40:32 ► §

you know, cannabis is my ally. And so finally,

00:40:36 ► §

actually it was my last ayahuasca trip. That was my,

00:40:39 ► §

my intent going in and to discover why I, you know,

00:40:44 ► §

why the conflict is it really, you know,

00:40:46 ► §

most other people, some people smoke it during an ayahuasca experience. And so I had the conversation

00:40:52 ► §

with Lady Ayahuasca. And she says, you know, Santa Maria is your ally. And why don’t you spend your

00:41:01 ► §

time with her? If you ever need me again, come back. But don’t try to stay away from her again.

00:41:06 ► §

So at least that’s the rationale that went through my mind because I was getting old and these things were taking a toll on me.

00:41:14 ► §

Yeah, you know, one of the things I always like to say when I’m talking about this stuff, and I say it a lot to younger people,

00:41:28 ► §

lot to younger people um if you spend enough time in numerous variations of altered states and you’re doing shit all the time then if you go baseline baseline becomes an altered state

00:41:35 ► §

so it’s really a good thing to do myself right now i’m on about a three-month hiatus with the weed

00:41:42 ► §

um i was leading a lot of ceremonies in different places

00:41:46 ► §

and so i thought let’s take a break and stay clear um you know and i was leading and then you know

00:41:52 ► §

my throat was getting a bit raw and you know this stuff they got now is nothing like what it was

00:41:57 ► §

when i was coming up i’ll tell you that for sure i mean jesus you know fruitcake, deluxe, Girl Scout, cookie, hybrid, indica.

00:42:08 ► §

Let me kind of interject again here because a couple years ago, my blood pressure got pretty high.

00:42:15 ► §

And for the first time in my life, I had to take a prescription medicine.

00:42:18 ► §

I didn’t want to have a stroke.

00:42:21 ► §

But I started talking to my doctor about it. And we did an experiment where I would take a couple of tokes of cannabis every hour, hour and a half. And we determined

00:42:33 ► §

that I was able to stop taking blood pressure medicine because cannabis lowered my blood

00:42:38 ► §

pressure sufficiently. And I take it every day. So I I’m up on it. And so it’s been over a year

00:42:43 ► §

since I’ve taken any medicine. I’m 76 years old. I take zero prescription day, so I’m up on it. It’s been over a year since I’ve taken any medicine.

00:42:45 ► §

I’m 76 years old.

00:42:46 ► §

I take zero prescription medicine, and I smoke cannabis all day, every day.

00:42:51 ► §

That’s my baseline, Matteo.

00:42:55 ► §

In fact, tell the story about when you first went working in the high security tech company,

00:43:01 ► §

how you were stoned for the first six months and then when you quit smoking

00:43:05 ► §

before work they thought you were on drugs yeah well so actually it was the united states air

00:43:11 ► §

force and um i i didn’t go overseas but i’m a vietnam era veteran and so uh a typical day

00:43:21 ► §

i would get up in the morning and i would get out my trusty bong,

00:43:29 ► §

and I would pull out a book of matches, and I would do 20 bong hits.

00:43:31 ► §

And then I’d go into work.

00:43:35 ► §

And then when I’d get into work, and me and the boys would sneak off somewhere,

00:43:36 ► §

and then I had a secret clearance.

00:43:37 ► §

I was working on spy planes.

00:43:41 ► §

So we’d sneak off, you know, mid-morning and have a smoke-a-thon,

00:43:46 ► §

and I’d come back, and then we’d sneak off to lunch, and we’d go to the barracks, and we’d put towels under the door,

00:43:47 ► §

and we’d smoke out.

00:43:51 ► §

And then we’d take an afternoon break and sneak off,

00:43:52 ► §

and then I’d get home from work, and I would do it.

00:43:54 ► §

So I was constantly stoned, and I loved it.

00:43:55 ► §

I worked all this stuff really good.

00:43:58 ► §

So I got to the point, which happens to me,

00:44:01 ► §

I’m smoking so much, and it just doesn’t affect me anymore. And I think, shit, I’m wasting good weed.

00:44:02 ► §

I need to take a break and hit the reset button. So I did. I took a break, and I went straight, and they accused me’t affect me anymore. And I think, shit, I’m wasting good weed. I need to take a break and hit the reset button.

00:44:06 ► §

So I did.

00:44:06 ► §

I took a break and I went straight

00:44:07 ► §

and they accused me of being stoned.

00:44:11 ► §

So go figure, right?

00:44:15 ► §

So somebody else have a question here.

00:44:18 ► §

I see somebody in there.

00:44:19 ► §

Is that Darlene?

00:44:19 ► §

I don’t have my glasses on.

00:44:21 ► §

I just wanted to say, and I’ve got both your books.

00:44:23 ► §

Yeah, so I bought both your books last time you were on, November 26th.

00:44:26 ► §

One is Afterlife.

00:44:27 ► §

The other one is Center of the Universe.

00:44:29 ► §

But I wanted to say that’s awesome, man.

00:44:30 ► §

Thank you so much for coming back.

00:44:32 ► §

I didn’t realize that was you.

00:44:33 ► §

Sorry.

00:44:34 ► §

Oh, no.

00:44:34 ► §

Bless you.

00:44:35 ► §

Bless you.

00:44:35 ► §

I owe you eternally.

00:44:36 ► §

You have my undying love and gratitude forever.

00:44:38 ► §

You fed me by buying my books.

00:44:40 ► §

Thank you.

00:44:40 ► §

Thank you.

00:44:41 ► §

Thank you.

00:44:42 ► §

And listen, if any of you are science fiction fans,

00:44:45 ► §

you’ve got to read Nothing, his sci-fi novel that actually features a famous living person,

00:44:54 ► §

and it’s a page turner. And you want to talk about that at all? Yeah, sure. Briefly, I’m

00:45:01 ► §

obligated to pitch the prequel. The first one is called Dreamland.

00:45:06 ► §

It’s about computer-generated dreaming.

00:45:11 ► §

And in fact, Lorenzo, when I got you into the Independent E-Book Awards there,

00:45:13 ► §

it took first place in the horror thriller category.

00:45:16 ► §

And I wrote it with a famous DJ.

00:45:19 ► §

He was big in San Diego. And then in Pittsburgh back in the 70s,

00:45:20 ► §

he was one of the very first people to break in long play on FM radio.

00:45:24 ► §

He went by Brother Love.

00:45:26 ► §

He was breaking in

00:45:27 ► §

Jimi Hendrix,

00:45:29 ► §

Pink Floyd, playing album

00:45:32 ► §

sides and all that. We wrote that.

00:45:34 ► §

Then

00:45:35 ► §

he left the planet about 10 years ago.

00:45:37 ► §

I don’t know if you ever got to meet him, Lorenzo, or not.

00:45:39 ► §

I didn’t. I didn’t meet him.

00:45:41 ► §

Anyway,

00:45:42 ► §

wasn’t he at your book signing? Yeah. I remember the meet him. Anyway, so my nephew. Wasn’t he at your book signing?

00:45:46 ► §

Yeah.

00:45:47 ► §

Yeah, that’s right.

00:45:48 ► §

I remember the brother love.

00:45:49 ► §

I can’t pull his face out right now, but I did at least shake his hand, yeah.

00:45:53 ► §

Yeah, so you didn’t meet him.

00:45:54 ► §

Anyway, my nephew is a video game rock star in a game called Counter-Strike.

00:46:02 ► §

And he’s one of the top three guys in the world.

00:46:04 ► §

He’s a rock star. He flies all over the world and competes. And he’s one of the top three guys in the world. He’s a rock star.

00:46:05 ► §

He flies all over the world and competes.

00:46:08 ► §

And he’s one of the best guys.

00:46:10 ► §

And so I named the book after him.

00:46:17 ► §

And so the original computer-generated dreaming ends in a disaster.

00:46:23 ► §

It’s called dreamland and uh in the sequel

00:46:27 ► §

the government undercover cia nsa type spooky guys pick up the project and they recruit him

00:46:34 ► §

and his team to go into dreams of ptsd veterans and they actually in the in the dreams of the

00:46:42 ► §

computer generated dreams they go into battle and go into traumatic situations with the veterans.

00:46:49 ► §

And they help them resolve their traumas by living through it with them.

00:46:54 ► §

Only problem is, is they start taking on the traumas themselves.

00:46:58 ► §

And they start having nightmares.

00:47:00 ► §

So they invent another dream that we call the crack dream.

00:47:05 ► §

And think about ecstasy times a thousand.

00:47:08 ► §

And they end up getting addicted between the nightmares and the crack dream.

00:47:14 ► §

And that’s a problem that arises.

00:47:17 ► §

And there are lots of dark, sinister forces behind things.

00:47:19 ► §

And some of them are supernatural.

00:47:22 ► §

So he is a real person.

00:47:24 ► §

And he was one of the main characters in the book.

00:47:28 ► §

The second person, has anybody ever heard of Dr. Stanley Krippner?

00:47:32 ► §

Well, briefly, Stan Krippner, he ran the Maimonides Dream Research Institute for 10 years in the 70s.

00:47:38 ► §

Let me just insert a little thing here.

00:47:46 ► §

insert a little thing here. Stan Krippner goes so far back in the elder category that his dream lab is where Charlie Grobe was working before he went to medical school. And he was one of the

00:47:54 ► §

attendants at night and he was sitting in the, you know, monitoring all the people who were sleeping.

00:48:00 ► §

And Krippner had this whole library of psychedelics books there. And so Charlie started reading the books in the library at night and finally told his dad that he wanted to get into psychedelic research.

00:48:12 ► §

And his dad said, well, first, you’ve got to get a credential, go to medical school.

00:48:15 ► §

And that’s that’s how Charlie Grove, who is the only person that’s done MDMA, psilocybin and ayahuasca research that’s sponsored and approved by governments,

00:48:24 ► §

MDMA, psilocybin, and ayahuasca research that’s sponsored and approved by governments all came through Stan Krippner’s Dream Lab one night.

00:48:30 ► §

So that’s another connection that Stan has been an important figure in this community for a long time.

00:48:37 ► §

Yeah, thanks for adding that.

00:48:39 ► §

So Stan and I have a mad love affair.

00:48:41 ► §

We’re huge fans of each other.

00:48:43 ► §

He’s been really, really supportive of my writing.

00:48:46 ► §

So I asked Stan, I said, hey, Stan, can I put you in the book too?

00:48:49 ► §

As a real person in a novel?

00:48:51 ► §

And he’s like, sure.

00:48:53 ► §

So I put Stan in there.

00:48:55 ► §

So I have two real people in a novel, a story.

00:48:58 ► §

And he really loved it.

00:49:00 ► §

I asked him, did I portray him okay?

00:49:02 ► §

He’s like, oh, yeah, dude, you made me look good.

00:49:01 ► §

loved it. I asked him, did I portray him okay?

00:49:03 ► §

He’s like, oh yeah, dude, you made me look good.

00:49:06 ► §

And they’re both in it and Lorenzo

00:49:08 ► §

and Stan, independently

00:49:10 ► §

of each other, and correct me if I’m wrong, Lorenzo,

00:49:12 ► §

but independently of each other, they both said

00:49:14 ► §

it’s the best description of an ayahuasca

00:49:16 ► §

ceremony they’ve ever read. Is that

00:49:18 ► §

correct, Lorenzo? Yeah, we hadn’t

00:49:20 ► §

talked about it before and

00:49:21 ► §

the reason I

00:49:23 ► §

you all would probably agree if you have if you

00:49:28 ► §

read the novel because it’s the final the the novel ends really by describing this ayahuasca

00:49:34 ► §

experience but it builds because you know the inside the minds of all the people that are

00:49:39 ► §

participating you know their inner histories and then this ayahuasca experience brings that all

00:49:44 ► §

together through the different facets of the journey that happened to you over a number of times.

00:49:50 ► §

But it’s just one experience, but it’s experienced by so many people in different ways.

00:49:56 ► §

It’s really a masterpiece, an ayahuasca description, Mateo.

00:50:00 ► §

And I haven’t said that to you before, but’s I read it a second time about oh about three

00:50:05 ► §

or four months ago and it’s incredible it really is thank thank you for that because I’ve been

00:50:11 ► §

struggling so I’ve been writing I’ve been writing for 36 years I’ve been teaching for 30 at the

00:50:16 ► §

Santa Barbara Writers Conference Southern California Writers Conference and tons of other places

00:50:20 ► §

and um my struggle has been all this time to try to take visionary experience,

00:50:26 ► §

which is non-rational and non-verbal by its very nature,

00:50:30 ► §

and putting it in a way so that readers can experience it by curiosity.

00:50:33 ► §

I’ve been struggling with that all of my life.

00:50:35 ► §

So it was good to hear from you independently and from Stan that I achieved that.

00:50:41 ► §

And I had a lot of fun with it.

00:50:43 ► §

Anybody here perspiring writers at all

00:50:45 ► §

or interested in writing?

00:50:48 ► §

Okay, I’m going to tell you this really briefly.

00:50:51 ► §

A little bit of inside dope about the dope.

00:50:54 ► §

I wrote the whole novel

00:50:56 ► §

from alternating two points of view

00:50:58 ► §

and there’s like a dozen characters,

00:51:04 ► §

but I alternated the whole novel from two points of view,

00:51:07 ► §

and then when I went into the ayahuasca session,

00:51:09 ► §

I went into all the different separate points of view,

00:51:11 ► §

each in a chapter of their own,

00:51:13 ► §

and I think that added to the impact and the effectiveness of it,

00:51:17 ► §

with all the things that can happen.

00:51:18 ► §

Somebody had an experience,

00:51:19 ► §

and somebody else watched them across the room

00:51:21 ► §

and kind of saw the same thing,

00:51:22 ► §

and those kind of things,

00:51:23 ► §

so I thought I’d share that,

00:51:31 ► §

because that was gas, it was a lot of fun to write um the other little thing is

00:51:38 ► §

i targeted the market for gamers and commercially it didn’t do very well and i struggled over it for a long time because i know the writing is solid and what i came to the realization is that gamers don’t read they’re always gaming

00:51:46 ► §

so that was an eye-opener for me but i’m still in love with the book i’m happy with it it’s my

00:51:52 ► §

biggest book i think yeah you know eventually these gamers are going to burn out because they

00:51:58 ► §

they most do in their mid-30s or so a lot of them do and that’s where you start marketing

00:52:02 ► §

it to the burned out gamers you know yeah well my nephew’s right around the corner right

00:52:07 ► §

do you want to want to tell the story uh the story about when he got swatted

00:52:13 ► §

oh yeah sure sure yeah yeah so he’s really big i mean he’s he’s like international they fly him

00:52:21 ► §

around the world and he’s really funny he says says, you know, over here in the States,

00:52:25 ► §

girls think you’re just a geek or a gearhead or something,

00:52:28 ► §

but he says in Europe we’re rock stars.

00:52:31 ► §

Yeah, he’s a big rock star.

00:52:33 ► §

So they practice a lot,

00:52:36 ► §

and sometimes they let their fans participate in their practices.

00:52:39 ► §

It’s all online.

00:52:41 ► §

And a couple of the videos, I think they caught them, the ones that did it,

00:52:43 ► §

and they sent them away, which they should. it. Yeah, they did. They should.

00:52:45 ► §

Yeah.

00:52:49 ► §

So they do this thing called swatting.

00:52:53 ► §

So Jody’s online and they’re taping their session and somebody swatted them.

00:52:56 ► §

And tell them what swatting is.

00:52:59 ► §

They called the SWAT team and said they were like terrorists

00:53:02 ► §

and bombs in the house, right?

00:53:04 ► §

So here he is online being recorded.

00:53:07 ► §

And they’re like, yeah, you know, you got the bomb and I’m going in and all this.

00:53:10 ► §

This is what they’re saying.

00:53:10 ► §

It’s the game.

00:53:12 ► §

So there’s all this noise.

00:53:14 ► §

And then Jordy goes, oh, wait a minute, guys.

00:53:17 ► §

Something’s going on.

00:53:20 ► §

I’ll be right back.

00:53:22 ► §

I got to go see what’s going on.

00:53:23 ► §

So he goes out.

00:53:25 ► §

And then they’re all like, well, where’s Jordy?

00:53:27 ► §

Where’s Jordy?

00:53:28 ► §

What’s going on?

00:53:29 ► §

What’s going on?

00:53:29 ► §

For like two or three minutes.

00:53:31 ► §

And then all of a sudden, the door to his room opens.

00:53:33 ► §

And in comes the fucking SWAT guys.

00:53:35 ► §

SWAT locked and loaded.

00:53:36 ► §

SWAT jackets.

00:53:37 ► §

I mean, you know, going for it.

00:53:39 ► §

And they had his poor dad out in the front lawn, cuffed,

00:53:42 ► §

faces down in the dirt.

00:53:42 ► §

And they had his poor dad out in the front lawn cuff,

00:53:43 ► §

face down in the dirt.

00:53:49 ► §

And his dad and his older brother were doing a legal,

00:53:52 ► §

at the time, this was three or four years ago,

00:53:57 ► §

cannabis grow in the garage for dispensaries.

00:53:57 ► §

Oh, my God.

00:54:00 ► §

So they take them all through the house,

00:54:03 ► §

all this locked and loaded shit, and they go into his dad,

00:54:05 ► §

and they’re like, what’s in this room and he said

00:54:06 ► §

it’s cannabis

00:54:06 ► §

I’m going through dispensaries

00:54:07 ► §

and San Diego police

00:54:09 ► §

and they go

00:54:09 ► §

okay that’s good

00:54:10 ► §

we’re not interested in that

00:54:11 ► §

and they finally

00:54:12 ► §

got it out

00:54:13 ► §

so

00:54:14 ► §

it was all recorded

00:54:17 ► §

the whole thing was recorded

00:54:18 ► §

and

00:54:19 ► §

I think it’s

00:54:21 ► §

if you go on YouTube

00:54:22 ► §

I think it’s

00:54:22 ► §

nothing gets swatted

00:54:24 ► §

and some of his fans and other gamer guys put like And I think it’s, if you go on YouTube, I think it’s nothing gets swatted.

00:54:33 ► §

And some of his fans and other gamer guys put like voice balloons and thought balloons and stuff like that on it.

00:54:34 ► §

And they made it into a thing.

00:54:38 ► §

And these idiots who swatted him were jealous of him.

00:54:41 ► §

And they actually made him like 100 times more popular than he was to begin with.

00:54:45 ► §

Yeah, can you imagine watching this guy in the game?

00:54:49 ► §

Because you see the game, and then you see in the inset, you see him,

00:54:53 ► §

and all of a sudden the game has kind of gone dead and a real swap.

00:54:57 ► §

It’s like he set this up to bring the game to life almost. It probably was really fascinating.

00:55:00 ► §

Oh, yeah, and, hey, I’m loading my ak-47 now and my m14 multiple round you know

00:55:06 ► §

bazooka killer and all the stuff they do in the game right and they’re talking about bombs and

00:55:11 ► §

all this stuff because that’s what the game is uh they did catch some of them and you know they

00:55:16 ► §

would do before that like they ordered 50 pizzas to his house and um and they came down on him hard

00:55:23 ► §

which they should because somebody could have got killed

00:55:25 ► §

or really hurt with that

00:55:26 ► §

somebody got arrested about a month ago

00:55:29 ► §

that had been swatting people

00:55:31 ► §

and somebody got killed in one of the swats

00:55:32 ► §

and so this person has been arrested for murder now

00:55:35 ► §

yeah that’s really stupid

00:55:37 ► §

stupid shit so yeah

00:55:38 ► §

anyway yeah that’s that story

00:55:40 ► §

well we’ve gotten kind of far

00:55:43 ► §

away from ayahuasca and

00:55:44 ► §

shamanism you You went to nothing. So

00:55:47 ► §

oh, yeah, it’s my my, my, my diversion. And I really do recommend you guys read that book.

00:55:55 ► §

If you like fiction at all, it’s, it’s really good, because it brings in everything psychedelic

00:56:01 ► §

science fiction, you know, dreaming, computers fiction you know dreaming computers you

00:56:05 ► §

know virtual reality and and it gives you so many neat little things to think

00:56:10 ► §

about it’s one of those books that you’ll read a chapter and you sit down

00:56:13 ► §

and it’ll give you it’ll give you a pause to reflect it’s well done so where

00:56:19 ► §

do we go now somebody have another question could I ask three quick

00:56:23 ► §

questions well you don’t have to be quick.

00:56:26 ► §

Go ahead.

00:56:27 ► §

Well, I’ll just list them and then hopefully you’ll remember and I’ll just.

00:56:31 ► §

Why don’t you listen?

00:56:32 ► §

Why don’t you ask them one at a time?

00:56:35 ► §

Because it’s hard to really think about it all.

00:56:38 ► §

You’ll get lost.

00:56:39 ► §

Well, I’ll start with San Pedro.

00:56:42 ► §

Mateo, did you purge?

00:56:47 ► §

And was it the kind of purge that we deal with ayahuasca? The second question is how many people are in your team when

00:56:53 ► §

you’re working with 20 people? And the third question is what’s your hit on

00:56:59 ► §

salvia divinorum? Good questions and I can answer them all pretty good. Thanks.

00:57:06 ► §

First off, San Pedro,

00:57:08 ► §

it’s very, very bitter, and it’s very

00:57:10 ► §

alkaline.

00:57:12 ► §

And the secret is to drink, like,

00:57:13 ► §

orange juice or lemon juice with citric

00:57:16 ► §

acid.

00:57:18 ► §

And it’s not

00:57:20 ► §

the same vomiting like ayahuasca,

00:57:22 ► §

but when you drink, so when you take

00:57:23 ► §

something that’s very alkaline, and you add an acid, it neutralizes it and creates a base.

00:57:31 ► §

So when we did the peyote ritual in Mexico, we were eating oranges.

00:57:37 ► §

And if you eat enough of them, you don’t really, first your stomach feels like there’s a rock

00:57:42 ► §

in there.

00:57:43 ► §

But if you eat enough of the citrus, it neutralizes it,

00:57:46 ► §

and you don’t have the gastric distress like you would with ayahuasca.

00:57:50 ► §

So that’s the key.

00:57:52 ► §

I even cheated one time and took emergency, you know, the powdered fizzy stuff.

00:57:58 ► §

And that did the trick too.

00:58:00 ► §

So that was the first.

00:58:02 ► §

There’s your first question.

00:58:04 ► §

The second one, obviously obviously second or the third

00:58:07 ► §

but when we’re working with 20 to 25 people we typically have about five sitters to help

00:58:14 ► §

uh with stuff and every once in a while you got to take somebody out and you know even something

00:58:20 ► §

like trying to put down your pants to go to the bathroom is a major ordeal so sometimes you really need help so with a group that big um there’s about five sitters and then there’s me um another

00:58:32 ► §

guy and a musician there’s three of us leading um so everything’s covered and everybody’s you know

00:58:40 ► §

integrity and people people say is utmost important. That’s that one. There was one other one. What was the other one?

00:58:49 ► §

The third one

00:58:50 ► §

is Salvia Divinorum.

00:58:52 ► §

Oh, yeah.

00:58:53 ► §

Give me a little bit of your feedback on that.

00:58:56 ► §

Try it at once.

00:58:58 ► §

I’ve done lots of things.

00:59:01 ► §

When I was at

00:59:02 ► §

the Entheobotany Seminars in Ushma,

00:59:04 ► §

this young guy came up to me and he really built up how great it was and this and that. I don’t want to try it. I was at the entheobotany seminars in Ushma, this young guy came up to me

00:59:05 ► §

and he really built up how great it was

00:59:07 ► §

and this and that and don’t want to try it.

00:59:09 ► §

And I was like, okay.

00:59:10 ► §

So I took a good hit and it was like mild DMT,

00:59:14 ► §

but he built it up so much

00:59:16 ► §

that I was actually kind of disappointed.

00:59:19 ► §

And I was like, eh, so what?

00:59:21 ► §

But as Lorenzo can attest to,

00:59:28 ► §

I can do really big, like for years and years and years and years, whenever I took somebody on their first acid trip, I always did twice as much as they did.

00:59:34 ► §

And then if they’d start to freak, I’d look at them and go, what’s up, dude?

00:59:36 ► §

I did twice as much as you and I’m okay, right?

00:59:39 ► §

And that was good.

00:59:40 ► §

So it was a little, I was a little disappointed in it.

00:59:47 ► §

And then I did it a few more times.

00:59:49 ► §

And for me personally, I found it a bit dissociative

00:59:54 ► §

and I really didn’t care for that.

00:59:56 ► §

You know, it’s like, we’re all different.

00:59:59 ► §

We’re all different neurochemical cocktails.

01:00:04 ► §

Some people just have to look at something

01:00:05 ► §

and they’re blasted out of their gourd forever.

01:00:07 ► §

Some of us have to take, you know, gallons.

01:00:11 ► §

Everybody’s a little different,

01:00:12 ► §

so things affect people in different ways.

01:00:14 ► §

I know in my experience,

01:00:15 ► §

and I know Lorenzo can confirm this,

01:00:17 ► §

generally speaking, like with MDMA,

01:00:19 ► §

guys need to take a little bit more

01:00:20 ► §

because women are more sensitive.

01:00:23 ► §

So, you know, to me, mild DMT didn’t impress me that much,

01:00:26 ► §

but some people really like it.

01:00:28 ► §

You know, it’s like I love the LSD, but I didn’t really –

01:00:32 ► §

I tried heroin a bunch of times.

01:00:34 ► §

I didn’t care for it.

01:00:35 ► §

So everybody’s a little different.

01:00:37 ► §

One of the things I’m going to be teaching in the workshop this coming weekend

01:00:41 ► §

is this isn’t original, but it’s what I refer to

01:00:45 ► §

as radical subjectivity.

01:00:48 ► §

Because everybody’s different.

01:00:50 ► §

Everybody’s had different types of traumas.

01:00:52 ► §

Somebody who,

01:00:53 ► §

for argument’s sake,

01:00:54 ► §

is neurochemically imbalanced,

01:00:55 ► §

like an extreme case,

01:00:56 ► §

like schizophrenia,

01:00:57 ► §

you don’t want them near ayahuasca.

01:00:59 ► §

Right?

01:00:59 ► §

So everybody’s a little different,

01:01:00 ► §

is my point.

01:01:02 ► §

Thank you.

01:01:02 ► §

Is that a good answer?

01:01:03 ► §

Yes, excellent.

01:01:04 ► §

Thank you very much you’re welcome

01:01:06 ► §

i have a bunch of questions i just want to ask maybe two specific does ayahuasca

01:01:15 ► §

in your opinion or experience or and uh pardon my ignorance help to heal the physical body? Maybe because it helps with the mind-body connection?

01:01:28 ► §

Yeah.

01:01:29 ► §

And please don’t say, excuse my ignorance,

01:01:34 ► §

because there’s no such thing as a stupid question.

01:01:37 ► §

So you’re straight on that one.

01:01:40 ► §

Cool.

01:01:41 ► §

Yeah, you know, interestingly enough,

01:01:43 ► §

among other things, ayahuasca is anti-parasitic.

01:01:47 ► §

It’s also anti-inflammatory.

01:01:52 ► §

And a lot of times you can have – so when you get traumatized, oftentimes your body will store that energy in different places in your body.

01:02:05 ► §

Certain traumas can be stored in the liver.

01:02:08 ► §

Like I’ll never know absolutely for sure, but my mom died of colon cancer,

01:02:12 ► §

and I think it’s because she held all her anger there.

01:02:15 ► §

So when you drink ayahuasca and you purge, it’s an energetic release.

01:02:23 ► §

So if you’re holding tension for 20 years

01:02:26 ► §

and your body’s holding, holding, holding

01:02:27 ► §

you know, if you’re like my mom was stoic, right?

01:02:31 ► §

It’s going to take an effect.

01:02:33 ► §

But when you release it

01:02:34 ► §

because ayahuasca and

01:02:36 ► §

shamanism is all about

01:02:38 ► §

energy. Everything

01:02:40 ► §

is energy. So when

01:02:42 ► §

you release the energy in different ways and you

01:02:43 ► §

release the trauma and you really let it go, you’re getting rid of that blockage. So when you release the energy in different ways and you release the trauma and you really let it go,

01:02:47 ► §

you’re getting rid of that blockage.

01:02:49 ► §

So it can do a lot of very good things physiologically,

01:02:53 ► §

but I was just,

01:02:53 ► §

I’ve got to talk to somebody tomorrow.

01:02:55 ► §

Somebody’s going down,

01:02:56 ► §

they have lung cancer

01:02:57 ► §

and they’re hoping to get healed.

01:02:58 ► §

Well, it’s not going to be any magic bullet.

01:03:00 ► §

There’s no guarantees.

01:03:02 ► §

It could cure it,

01:03:03 ► §

but it’s not going to…

01:03:05 ► §

People think shamanism

01:03:07 ► §

and plants, right?

01:03:10 ► §

Oh, it’s going to cure my cancer.

01:03:12 ► §

It’s going to cure it. No.

01:03:13 ► §

If you go and you do it, and then you go back

01:03:16 ► §

to doing the same things, let’s say you have liver problems

01:03:17 ► §

and you go back to drinking like a fish,

01:03:19 ► §

it’s not going to do anything. The important thing

01:03:21 ► §

you need to get from an ayahuasca

01:03:23 ► §

experience is that you will get things put in your face,

01:03:26 ► §

and you’ll see them very clearly, and you’ll think, oh, it’s solved.

01:03:30 ► §

Well, no, it’s not.

01:03:31 ► §

You were just shunned.

01:03:33 ► §

Now you’ve got to follow through on your regular everyday waking consciousness, day-to-day life,

01:03:37 ► §

and put that into action and make it become your reality.

01:03:41 ► §

If you don’t, you’re just deluding yourself.

01:03:44 ► §

So, yes, it can cure things. Yes,

01:03:45 ► §

it’s anti-inflammatory. A lot of the stuff that I do on the dieta is indeed anti-inflammatory.

01:03:54 ► §

And I had a doctor who was following what I was doing very closely. So generally speaking,

01:04:00 ► §

stress is acidic. What feeds cancer the most is like sugar and acidity.

01:04:08 ► §

And in our toxic environment,

01:04:10 ► §

whether it’s the ecological environment of toxic people,

01:04:14 ► §

the stuff that goes on and creates an acidic condition.

01:04:18 ► §

Ayahuasca is neutralizing.

01:04:21 ► §

You become alkaline from this dieta.

01:04:22 ► §

I had a doctor amazed.

01:04:26 ► §

He checked me before I went and he checked me when I came back and he was blown away at how alkaline I was and how

01:04:32 ► §

the stress was gone and everything else. So when you get rid of the conditions that make those

01:04:38 ► §

things happen and stay with you, then you can get resolution. But sometimes it’s too far out of control.

01:04:46 ► §

There are other factors that come into play that you can’t, you know,

01:04:49 ► §

if I were to even say somebody worked with asbestos and they got lung cancer

01:04:53 ► §

from asbestos, we’re pretty much too far gone by then.

01:04:56 ► §

So it’s not a magic bullet, but it’s really good medicine.

01:05:00 ► §

Is that a good answer?

01:05:02 ► §

That’s awesome.

01:05:03 ► §

I’m a nurse practitioner, and I had a retinal detachment, but I wanted to follow up one more question.

01:05:10 ► §

I have like five, but as a medical professional engaging in what I don’t love Western medicine either in many ways,

01:05:22 ► §

and the more I learn about psychedelic science and different

01:05:25 ► §

types of plant medicine the more I want to change it I want to change it as a nurse practitioner

01:05:30 ► §

I’m in Asheville North Carolina I’m not in Northern California but I wonder if you as a

01:05:36 ► §

person who has done so much and given so much of your life and experience and shared how you’ve

01:05:42 ► §

grown like do you have any advice for nurses, doctors,

01:05:46 ► §

Western medical practitioners on how can we change things for the better,

01:05:52 ► §

like for patients?

01:05:52 ► §

Okay.

01:05:53 ► §

So the first thing I want to say to you is thank you for your work.

01:05:58 ► §

Seriously.

01:05:59 ► §

Thank you.

01:06:00 ► §

No problem.

01:06:01 ► §

Thank you for being there with what you’re doing because you’re performing a

01:06:03 ► §

great service that other people just don’t have it in them.

01:06:07 ► §

So, yeah, no, thank you.

01:06:10 ► §

And thank you for thanking me,

01:06:11 ► §

for thanking you, for thanking me,

01:06:12 ► §

for thanking you.

01:06:13 ► §

All that.

01:06:16 ► §

One of the things I’m going to be really, really stressing

01:06:19 ► §

in this thing I’m going to be teaching this coming weekend

01:06:21 ► §

is there can be some serious interactions.

01:06:26 ► §

So for argument’s sake um ayahuasca um has uh nao inhibitors um does anybody not know the combination of ayahuasca

01:06:37 ► §

do i need to get a little dmt and. Yeah, I’ll tell you very briefly.

01:06:45 ► §

So the plant they call chacruna is Psychotria viridis.

01:06:51 ► §

It’s a bush, and it contains DMT in the leaves.

01:06:54 ► §

You can eat it all day, and you won’t get off.

01:06:59 ► §

Ayahuasca, the vine, which the drink is named after,

01:07:02 ► §

has beta-carbolines, which act as an MAO inhibitor.

01:07:07 ► §

So when you mix the two together and you drink the brew, then the MAO inhibitors in the ayahuasca vine makes the DMT become morally active and you have your journey.

01:07:19 ► §

If you’re taking any type of SSRI or if somebody has done a lot of ecstasy,

01:07:25 ► §

that can be deadly.

01:07:26 ► §

You can go into convulsions.

01:07:28 ► §

You can die.

01:07:29 ► §

That’s one of the reasons why the dieta is so important, to stick with it.

01:07:34 ► §

You’ve got to be in that, for lack of better words,

01:07:36 ► §

chemically pure state to have a good experience with it.

01:07:39 ► §

So there are a lot of interactions that are not healthy at all.

01:07:44 ► §

There’s some that are, but a lot of them are not.

01:07:47 ► §

So you have to really, really pay attention.

01:07:49 ► §

And, you know, there is the whole mind-body connection.

01:07:51 ► §

So heal the mind, heal the body in a lot of ways.

01:07:54 ► §

Yeah.

01:07:56 ► §

One of the, you know, the dangers, like I’m talking about with convulsions,

01:07:59 ► §

is serotonin overload.

01:08:01 ► §

So aside from puking and shitting, myelostomia and getting rid of your energetic

01:08:07 ► §

traumas, also physiologically speaking, when your body gets into that state where you’re getting to

01:08:13 ► §

its serotonin overload, it’s the body’s way of balancing it, literally like blowing steam off

01:08:17 ► §

of a steam kettle, so you don’t explode. So there’s a whole physiological aspect of it.

01:08:23 ► §

So the interactions are very, very important. They need to be paid attention to. And typically the core of the traumas that

01:08:30 ► §

need to be dealt with are more psychological than other things. But, you know, they do go

01:08:39 ► §

hand in hand. You’ve probably seen things like this where somebody has some weird physical

01:08:43 ► §

condition, even if it’s a twitch or something like like that and it goes back to some trauma that’s inside of

01:08:48 ► §

them and so there are uh conditions and situations that can totally disappear but but i want to

01:08:56 ► §

stress that it uh it’s not a magic you know you’re not going to go to the jungle and get healed the

01:09:03 ► §

other thing i want to mention briefly without without getting off track, is they try to isolate compounds from these things and say,

01:09:11 ► §

oh this can cure cancer and they, you know, the pharmaceutical companies try to refine it. But

01:09:17 ► §

what they’re not taking into consideration, like when I go into the jungle, is it’s a very specific

01:09:20 ► §

diet. You’re in a tropical environment, You’re sweating. You’re purging.

01:09:27 ► §

The food is there to clear you out.

01:09:33 ► §

And it’s literally prehistoric cleansing, detoxing, and psychotherapy.

01:09:38 ► §

So the other thing is, and I’m sure you’ve experienced this a lot,

01:09:41 ► §

is that a lot of doctors are totally locked into what they got taught in medical school.

01:09:43 ► §

Right.

01:09:44 ► §

You know, one of the standards in practice is you have to follow this.

01:09:47 ► §

And then, of course, the pharmaceutical companies are, hey, dude,

01:09:50 ► §

you want to swim in pool, prescribe some more Prozac, right?

01:09:53 ► §

So there’s that whole stuck mindset that you’re up against.

01:09:56 ► §

So you have to be very careful when you bring these things up,

01:09:59 ► §

who and where you are and what you’re around.

01:10:03 ► §

And the other thing is if you are going to bring it up,

01:10:05 ► §

go in there totally armed with logic.

01:10:08 ► §

Find the clinical studies, you know, and say, look,

01:10:11 ► §

here’s what happened with so-and-so.

01:10:13 ► §

You know, there’s a lot of real groundbreaking work done years back

01:10:16 ► §

in Israel with PTSD because there was so much shit going on.

01:10:20 ► §

So kind of lastly along these lines, I have a technical background.

01:10:24 ► §

I worked in technology a lot

01:10:26 ► §

and if people started getting in my face and bugging me about getting something fits and all

01:10:30 ► §

that i would just overwhelm them with so much stuff i knew they couldn’t even get that was

01:10:34 ► §

technical if they go run away but go in there armed that’s my point go in there armed with the

01:10:40 ► §

studies and show clinical that they you show those people that are really left-brained and,

01:10:45 ► §

and total sort of, you know,

01:10:47 ► §

divide and conquer Western scientific method.

01:10:49 ► §

And you’re going there with a really solid study from wherever, you know,

01:10:52 ► §

Johns Hopkins or wherever. And you show them that, that’ll shut them up.

01:10:57 ► §

Yeah. My boss is an awesome psychiatrist.

01:11:00 ► §

I do psychiatric medication management, which is like, yeah,

01:11:03 ► §

turn up the Prozac or turn it down.

01:11:06 ► §

It’s, you know, I’m not, I’m glad to do it, but I’m also like, I want to change it, you know?

01:11:11 ► §

And I was telling, I decided to tell my boss, who’s not that conservative, but she goes on vacations at Disney World all the time.

01:11:20 ► §

But anyway, like, I can’t figure that out.

01:11:22 ► §

But anyway, like I can’t figure that out.

01:11:30 ► §

But I told her that I read the Michael Pollan book and Lauren Slater wrote this book called Blue Dreams, which is really amazing.

01:11:35 ► §

And so she was like, oh, it’s just a bunch of new chemicals.

01:11:36 ► §

It’s just a bunch more chemicals.

01:11:40 ► §

I was like, no, like you don’t understand.

01:11:45 ► §

You know, maybe people won’t have to take a daily pill that’s going to ruin their bodies i mean this this paradigm shift is going to happen but i just i’m wondering how to how to make it happen

01:11:51 ► §

thank you you are you are a frontier ambassador i hope so right now i’m on medical leave with my

01:12:00 ► §

eye so we’re gonna yeah i’m i’m serious about that and when people say to me like

01:12:07 ► §

oh that’s drugs i’ll say to them did you have any coffee this morning you know oh you’re on drugs

01:12:13 ► §

you are right or did you take an aspirin you’re on drugs and and you go through your day every

01:12:20 ► §

moment of your day is in an altered state you wake up from sleeping you’re awake that’s an

01:12:23 ► §

altered state you have coffee it’s an altered state. You wake up from sleeping, you’re awake, that’s an altered state. You have coffee, it’s an altered state.

01:12:25 ► §

You get in your car and somebody pisses you off, that’s an altered state.

01:12:30 ► §

So the thing I’ve learned that I’ve been working at a lot is disarming people.

01:12:37 ► §

So if you disarm them with good, solid knowledge and clinical studies,

01:12:40 ► §

you’ll shut them up.

01:12:41 ► §

They won’t bother you anymore.

01:12:42 ► §

So that’s my piece of advice for you.

01:12:45 ► §

Thank you. Awesome. You’re most welcome.

01:12:49 ► §

Mateo, I have a quick question for you. One of the problems I’ve had with ayahuasca is I

01:12:53 ► §

continuously get to the point where I get the voice, where it’s the critical voice before you

01:12:57 ► §

get over. And I don’t, like, again, for me, there seems to be two levels. One is that, you know,

01:13:02 ► §

it’s that guy that wants to talk to you, or excuse me, since I’m a, you know, I want to talk to myself and tell me about everything I’ve

01:13:08 ► §

been wrong and people I need to love more and all that other stuff. And then there’s that breakthrough

01:13:12 ► §

level where I start seeing things that I don’t believe are me and they, you know, whatnot.

01:13:16 ► §

The problem that I seem to have is I get through that really critical self right before the higher

01:13:20 ► §

self. First off, do you see that two-stage difference part?

01:13:25 ► §

And the second one is, what do you do to disarm yourself?

01:13:28 ► §

Because you already know all your own tricks.

01:13:30 ► §

So good question.

01:13:34 ► §

Let me think.

01:13:35 ► §

I want to respond good for you.

01:13:38 ► §

So there’s a couple of things.

01:13:42 ► §

I really do.

01:13:43 ► §

I’m fond of saying this.

01:13:44 ► §

I’m a cast of thousands.

01:13:46 ► §

couple of things I really do I’m fond of saying this I’m a cast of thousands now I want to explain it in this way and hopefully this will make sense to you

01:13:51 ► §

I’ve always been a cosmic blast-off guy like if I don’t punch through that

01:13:56 ► §

cosmic realm and you usually write about when it’s the most is when I’m purging

01:14:03 ► §

purging is like that’s the level where I’m really

01:14:06 ► §

gotten cosmically off into the realms of even though it’s the most uncomfortable

01:14:12 ► §

the most profound experiences. But here’s the thing with ayahuasca and think

01:14:18 ► §

about this. The voices is the ego or the egos, the personalities.

01:14:25 ► §

And they’re kind of scared shit.

01:14:28 ► §

I had a very high-level PhD.

01:14:31 ► §

It was a friend of Lorenzo’s and I.

01:14:33 ► §

He knows who I’m talking about, and I won’t mention his name.

01:14:35 ► §

But he was very much intellectually centered.

01:14:39 ► §

And when he finally came to the jungle, he spent his first three sessions curled up in my lap in a fetal position.

01:14:46 ► §

Because he was so used to resolving everything with his head.

01:14:49 ► §

And he drank the ayahuasca and that didn’t work anymore.

01:14:52 ► §

And he was totally lost and terrified.

01:14:55 ► §

So the more intellectually centered people are, the more terrified and lost they are.

01:15:01 ► §

Because it’s unprecedented for them.

01:15:02 ► §

They literally don’t know how to act.

01:15:05 ► §

They don’t know how to deal with it.

01:15:07 ► §

Now, having said that, here’s what happens when you drink ayahuasca.

01:15:12 ► §

You have your right brain and your left brain.

01:15:15 ► §

When you go to sleep at night, your left brain finally gets a rest.

01:15:21 ► §

And when it does and your left brain takes a nap your right brain comes out to play now your left

01:15:30 ► §

brain is analytical it’s it’s serialized like I’m talking to you guys right now I’m stringing words

01:15:36 ► §

into a sentence you’re taking a word at a time and you’re reassembling in your mind to try to

01:15:40 ► §

interpret what I’m saying to you your right right brain is conceptual, it’s symbolic,

01:15:47 ► §

and it speaks in literally, for lack of better words,

01:15:50 ► §

it’s like an alien language.

01:15:52 ► §

It’s symbolic.

01:15:53 ► §

It’s why women’s intuition is superior,

01:15:55 ► §

because they’re more connected.

01:15:56 ► §

This is all generalizations, but they’re more connected right brain.

01:15:59 ► §

So they could take 27 different things and suddenly go, ah, oh, that’s it.

01:16:04 ► §

That’s what intuition is whereas

01:16:05 ► §

a guy’s like oh i gotta let me see the knee bones connected to the foot bone you know i’m gonna

01:16:10 ► §

figure this out i’m gonna fix everything and the women are just like they know so you can be in a

01:16:15 ► §

dreaming state and you can be flying on a feathered purple horse with pink polka dots and when you’re

01:16:22 ► §

in that state in that dream it’s totally normal. You’re like, yeah,

01:16:25 ► §

of course I’m flying on a pink horse

01:16:26 ► §

with purple polka dots or whatever.

01:16:28 ► §

You accept it.

01:16:29 ► §

In the bizarre situations,

01:16:31 ► §

when you’re there,

01:16:31 ► §

you accept it.

01:16:32 ► §

Okay?

01:16:33 ► §

And then you wake up

01:16:36 ► §

and it’s like,

01:16:37 ► §

Jesus, that was a weird dream

01:16:38 ► §

because you left friends

01:16:39 ► §

coming back online.

01:16:40 ► §

But while you’re in that state,

01:16:42 ► §

you’re accepting them.

01:16:44 ► §

So when you drink

01:16:45 ► §

ayahuasca what happens is your right brain gets turned on and your left brain

01:16:50 ► §

still going and your left brain is trying to figure it out and that’s where

01:16:53 ► §

all the monkey mind shit comes from so I’m constantly constantly telling people

01:16:58 ► §

when you’re in the experience you may figure some things out but don’t

01:17:02 ► §

struggle to try to figure it out. Let it roll.

01:17:05 ► §

Just roll with it.

01:17:07 ► §

That’s what integration is really all about.

01:17:09 ► §

Integration is about letting the left logical mind catch up.

01:17:13 ► §

Everything goes on because the information comes to you in that state fast and furious.

01:17:18 ► §

You don’t have time to think.

01:17:20 ► §

It’s beyond thinking.

01:17:21 ► §

It’s a gazillion miles an hour.

01:17:23 ► §

It’s going, going, going, and it’s symbolic, and it’s visual, and it’s emotional.

01:17:28 ► §

It’s all those things at once.

01:17:29 ► §

And you can’t, in those moments, most of the time, you can’t comprehend.

01:17:34 ► §

That’s where you learn to navigate.

01:17:35 ► §

It’s why when I went and I did seven sessions and drank all those plants the last time I was down,

01:17:40 ► §

it’s why it took me a month to integrate.

01:17:42 ► §

Because you’ve got to give your left brain time to catch up.

01:17:46 ► §

And if you happen to be someone who is intellectually centered like that

01:17:48 ► §

and you go into that state and you haven’t

01:17:50 ► §

been there, it’s unprecedented. You don’t know

01:17:52 ► §

how to act. You don’t know how to deal with it.

01:17:53 ► §

Your tools that you normally use are gone.

01:17:55 ► §

They don’t work anymore.

01:17:57 ► §

And then you try to figure it out. And of course, the more

01:17:59 ► §

you try to figure it out and the more you struggle

01:18:01 ► §

with it, the more you go to hell.

01:18:04 ► §

That’s why i said

01:18:05 ► §

a little while ago one of our mentors lorenzo knows what i’m talking about here said um ayahuasca

01:18:11 ► §

is the river and the icaros and the music and the songs are the boats that carry you along under the

01:18:16 ► §

river so don’t fight it somebody who’s making a joke surrender dorothy right and let it let it

01:18:24 ► §

roll you’ll figure it out later.

01:18:25 ► §

But when you get struggled, so for me,

01:18:27 ► §

I have this whole relationship with my cast of thousands here.

01:18:30 ► §

By the way, I figured out over all these years, it’s led by a gang.

01:18:35 ► §

The gang leader for me is the baby, the infant.

01:18:39 ► §

He’s got the wise guy.

01:18:41 ► §

He’s got the muscle.

01:18:42 ► §

And he’s got the comedian.

01:18:43 ► §

And they work together.

01:18:44 ► §

And sometimes they trade off roles, but they do all these

01:18:47 ► §

things because they’re, even though they’re misguided, they’re trying to protect us.

01:18:52 ► §

And when they get in a situation where they can’t, all their tricks don’t work anymore,

01:18:56 ► §

they’ll freak out.

01:18:57 ► §

They, you know, you may go, they may try to convince you that you’ve been poisoned, that

01:19:01 ► §

you’re going to die, all those things you go through, because that part of your mind that you’ve been relying on all your life isn’t working

01:19:07 ► §

the way it normally does.

01:19:09 ► §

So when you realize that your whole brain is getting turned on, and you accept that,

01:19:14 ► §

and you just roll with it, then your intellectual mind will catch up in the aftermath.

01:19:18 ► §

And that’s what integration is truly all about.

01:19:20 ► §

Does that make sense?

01:19:22 ► §

I want to add by closing and saying, you know, Mateo has said a

01:19:26 ► §

couple times tonight that he’s a thousand characters, and that brings to mind the Walt

01:19:31 ► §

Whitman quote, where he said, do I contradict myself? Very well. I contradict myself because

01:19:37 ► §

I’m great. I contain multitudes. And Mateo, you are certainly great. You do contain multitudes. And I appreciate you being here tonight.

01:19:48 ► §

And I’m sure everybody else does.

01:19:49 ► §

If you guys would like to say goodnight to him, feel free.

01:19:53 ► §

Thank you so much.

01:19:55 ► §

That was awesome.

01:19:56 ► §

Thank you, guys, for participating because you all make it worth all the effort

01:19:59 ► §

and all the blood, sweat, and tears for sure.

01:20:03 ► §

Thanks, man.

01:20:04 ► §

Thank you.

01:20:04 ► §

Thank you. Thank you.

01:20:07 ► §

Thank you.

01:20:07 ► §

We’ll do this again.

01:20:11 ► §

I like your hat.

01:20:12 ► §

His endo’s great.

01:20:13 ► §

Thank you.

01:20:15 ► §

Thanks.

01:20:19 ► §

We’ll have him back again soon.

01:20:21 ► §

So thanks again, Mateo, and I’ll talk to you offline before long.

01:20:24 ► §

Thanks for coming, you guys. Travel safe. Fly high.

01:20:28 ► §

Bye, guys. Keep the old faith and stay high.

01:20:35 ► §

You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives

01:20:39 ► §

one thought at a time. Well, if you’re interested

01:20:43 ► §

in seeing that SWAT video that Matt talked about,

01:20:47 ► §

I’ve embedded it in today’s program notes,

01:20:49 ► §

which you will find at psychedelicsalon.com.

01:20:53 ► §

Also, I’ve added a link to Matt’s personal website

01:20:55 ► §

with a listing of many of his books.

01:20:58 ► §

Well, I’ve got to get back to packing now,

01:21:01 ► §

but don’t forget that next week I’ll begin posting those Terrence McKenna talks

01:21:06 ► §

that I played on the Salon’s first run RSS feed on Patreon back in November.

01:21:12 ► §

But for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from cyberdelic space.

01:21:17 ► §

Be well, my friends. Thank you.