May 27, 2025 • 43 mins
He was electrocuted—and came back with a blueprint for existence.
In February 2018, Adam Tapp was doing some woodworking in his front yard when a freak accident electrocuted him. Paramedics revived him—but not before he crossed into another realm.
What he experienced during those moments mirrored earlier psychedelic journeys, yet went even deeper. In his near-death state, Adam gained a radical new understanding of consciousness, fear, and the chemical nature of reality. His fear of death dissolved—and what replaced it was a profound curiosity about life itself.
This episode is a mind-expanding look at how close encounters with death—and the brain’s own internal pharmacy—can shift our understanding of everything.
Story producer: Kate Sweeney.
For more about Adam and his exploration of the fascinating world of psychoactive substances and their therapeutic use, tune in to his podcast Tapped Into Psychedelics
Warning: This series contains graphic descriptions of trauma, violence, abuse, and other content that may not be suitable for certain listeners.
* If you have a transformative experience to share, we’d love to hear your story. Please email us at aliveagainproject@gmail.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psychopia Pictures
and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
My name is Adam Zapp. I had a near death
experience by electrocution in February of twenty eighteen, in which
I was dead for eleven point five minutes, and I
remember trying to force some thought, just to make sense
of what was going on, and I thought, I think
I'm being electrocuted, and then all of a sudden, it
(00:36):
was just puff like I'd just woken up in this
place that I had always been from a nap. And
I wasn't Adam, I wasn't alive, I wasn't dead, I
wasn't anything.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
It was just the state of absolute contentment.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous accounts
of human fragility and resilience from people who lives were
forever altered after.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Having almost died.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
These are first hand accounts of near death experiences and,
more broadly, brushes with death. Our mission is simple, find, explore,
and share these stories to remind us all of our
shared human condition. Please keep in mind these stories are
true and maybe triggering for some listener, and discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I grew up in northern Ontario with a really small
rural community of like three hundred people, sort of in
like the Northern Canadian shield of just straight bush and
rolling hills and stuff, you know. I grew up in
I wouldn't say a religious family, but my mom was
Irish Catholic.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
My dad was Irish.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Protestant, you know, And very early on I always spount
it weird that my dad wouldn't be able to go
to a Catholic Mass, and then going to this Protestant thing,
and I just remember going to Catholic Mass, you just feel.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Like this intense sense of guilty levied on people.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
And oddly enough I.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Was supposed to go for like confirmation or something or
whatever it is when you do at like a young age.
I think I was in elementary school and I just
packed a big bag of cheerios and I took my
dog and I just left for the entire day in
the bush. And I remember my grandma was losing her
mind and we have to do this, and my mom
would just like these made a decision, let's just leave
that be. And then when I got into high school,
(02:25):
I was starting getting into significant amounts of trouble, and
I remember I didn't know what I wanted to do,
and my mom just you know, my husband ammerg nurse
for twenty five years, and she just said, why didn't
you try paramids? And I was like, okay, that's a
great idea. And so I ended up getting accepted to
a couple of different colleges and I picked the one
that was furthest away from where I was living, because
it's just just need to get away from that. I
(02:47):
did paramiedics and I don't think there's another job that
could reflect my personality as much as being a paramedic,
where you just your indoors, your outdoors.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
You're a people's homes. It can be calm, it can
be wild.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
It's just all these extremes of difference that you and
you never have any idea what's going to happen.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
And I really appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
It's an interesting way to you know, you just go
into work and you're like, well, let's see what happens today.
And that statement keep me a lot of different things.
So the story really picks up about twelve years ago.
A friend of mine, he had got into opioids, you know,
(03:25):
he got in a car accident when he was in
high school. And this was in the old fashioned era
where they're like, oh, you have some pain, here's ten
thousand oxyconton good luck, come back, we need to refill.
And so obviously he got very addicted. That addiction turned
into introvie with drug use, and he was suicidal. And
he had tried to rehabit a bunch of different things.
(03:46):
Nothing was working, and so he had read about this
kind of a hail mary iboca or eyebolgain, which is
an African psychedelic derived from the inner root bark of
the ibogatry. His parents took him down to Mexico and
he did this big.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Experience and it alleviated his addiction.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Completely and he came back highly spiritual, and he, you know,
all this drug use was gone. So after his experience,
I think the gravity of him being able to work
through his addiction, he felt somewhat obligated to help other
people and help them work through their addictions. And he
(04:29):
wanted to use iboga because of this significant impact it
had upon himself. But there are some interesting physiological side
effects that can occur with iboga. It's metabolized heavily in
your liver, and it can cause a prolonged q teth
period in your heart, which means the top of the
bottom part of your heart beat just a little bit
more separately. And that's not a big deal until it
(04:51):
gets further and further, and then it can become problematic.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
And this doesn't.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Really occur in a lot of people, but if you're
trying to treat some someone who's been a drug addict
for twenty years, chances are they have some lever and
heart issues and so you're taking a very vulnerable population
and then giving them something that is a big treatment
for their body, so to speak. And so it was like,
I wuntch you down and we do this.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
You're a paramedic.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
And this at the time was not a schedule with
substance in Canada, so this was legal, entirely legal, and
so I read incredibly about it, like a lot of information,
and it was actually funny those these you know, physicians
writing these reports and they're just.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Like, we don't know how it does it, but it doesn't.
It just completely alleviates people's addiction in these massive doses.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
And so I took a microdose of it and it
just sort of made it very clear of the amount
of anxiety and stress that with dealing with like, you know,
you see a bunch of really horrible things that were
dead kids and this and that, and in the moment
you ever really have an opportunity to deal with something
because you can't. Like our job fundamentally is to apply
a level of order to a very chaotic situation. And
(06:02):
there was also sort of a culture of suck it up,
walk it off, rub some dirty on it, get back
to what you're doing. I was drinking a lot. My
relationship with my girlfriend at the time, who became my wife,
was you know, strained, just because I wasn't capable of
being vulable with anyone, let alone myself, and we just
(06:25):
were progressing down this path, and so I just felt
that I needed to try this, and so I did
it really small, like a microdose, and then something like
a light just flicked inside me, and I was like,
I need to do a full experience. I was ready
to let go of all of this stuff I was
holding onto, and my parents were like, you shouldn't do this,
(06:49):
it's dangerous. My wife was freaking out, and I'm like,
I don't think anything could have stopped me, I'm like,
I need to do this, and I ended up having
this I Boga experience. It was it was wild, and
it was like twelve hours of having all of these
(07:11):
horrible things I'd seen brought back up. And I remember
when it started, I was trying to look away from
it because I don't want to see, you know, somebody
inviscerated or the brain contents. And I remember this very
deep masculine voice. I was like, no, look at it,
and I was like okay. And I just spent the
time just seeing this and feeling very uncomfortable and sad
(07:33):
and scared, and then over the whole experience, I just
started feeling better. And I was just like, oh my god,
how does something like this exist? And people are just
wandering around holding on to every single thing that ever
happened to them, you know, and just bearing the weight
(07:55):
of life and fair because a lot of people do it.
But that's sort of made me realize the exploration of myself.
You know, going out and backpacking and seeing the world
is a very small facet of what you can experience
when you look inward. The Secondlary experience with iboga sort
(08:18):
of allowed me to realize how much issues I had
inside myself, how much insecurities and fear, and it was
like scratching the surface. It's almost as if you develop
this identity when you're born. You're sort of this empty vessel,
and you're given a name, you're given an identity by
your parents, and then your behaviors are encouraged or they're
(08:40):
refuted by your parents and then your peer groups, and
then you just keep giving these positive negatives that you
identify yourself with. But that's not really you as much
as it is an accumulated identity. And it was understanding
that there was more to me than then accumulated identity,
a lot more to me than that, and it was
trying to get to a point of understanding what that was,
(09:02):
because all I'd ever really understood was that I am
just add up and a bunch of accumulated experiences. Several
years later, in twenty eighteen, February twenty eighth, I was
had been doing quite a bit of woodworking, and its
always been sort of a hobby of mine since I
was kind of a kid. It just allows me to
(09:22):
sort of just be in a moment kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
And a friend of mine.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Wanted me to build in this big epoxy table. But
there's this wood edging mechanism.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
People call it fractal woodburning.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
You have two wires coming from a transformer, and on
one side you attach it to a metal or steel
spike or nail, and the other side you attach it
to a do or steel nail, and then you put
the nails on the wood. And so it's allowing the
electricity to go from the wires to the nail, and
the nail is just adding as a fundamental contact point.
(09:53):
You strip every possible safety feature from it. And what
it does is it takes one hundred and ten volts
of as from your wall and turn into like twelve
thousand of bold dcs and it basically burns or etches
this coral fractalesque pattern. But now there's one clever thing
that also does it kills a bunch of people.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
I'm not recommending this, and if I can really accentuate,
this is dangerous and it's weird. Normally I researched everything
quite significantly, and this I just didn't, you know, I
really what I just told you was learned afterwards. And
so we were at.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
My house, at my shop, and we were.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Outside grabbing a beer, chatting, and ironically enough, he had
taken a high.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Bolted safety course like a week before.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
And so I'm using this and I'm kind of looking
at him, talking to him, and I got my insulated
boots on, and I'm holding the one electrode and I
had set it down, and I was getting ready to
move the other one with my other hand, and it
was incredibly humid out and as I was about to grab,
dropped the other one sort of arc into my hand,
(11:05):
and there was sort of just this snap into this
incredibly energetic and painful experience of just having twelve thousand
volts of direct current flowing through me. And it was
almost like someone just flipped a switch where it just
went from conversation with.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Mark to just ungodly amounts of pain.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
It was just like my entire cellular structure as being
ripped into pieces.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
And I just was trying to form thoughts in that.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Moment, but it was just it was so much energy
just flowing through my one arm, across my chest and
out the other arm, completely devoid of any sense of
physicality or anything visually.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
All I could see was just these cylinders.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Or bars that went up and down forever that were
sort of iridescent green with orange somehow like overlapped on it.
And it was difficult to even think, you know, it
was like someone telling you do a math test while
you have headphones with death metal on at full volume.
Like it was just difficult to do anything. And I
remember trying to force the thought just to make sense
(12:15):
of what was going on. And I thought, I think
I'm being electrocuted, and I don't think I'm breathing, and
then I just felt like I was falling for like
a prolonged period of time, and then all of a
sudden it was just in a ways like as I
was falling, I was getting smaller, and then all of
(12:39):
a sudden, it was just puff like I'd just woken
up in this place that I had always been from
a nap. And I wasn't at him, I wasn't alive,
I wasn't dead, I wasn't anything. It was just the
state of absolute contentment, and it was like should have
just floating in this singular point, devoid of a body,
(13:00):
no identity existing, and seeing spherically outwards from a singular point.
It wasn't so much as a void as it was
seemingly like outer space, but in the distance you could
see like these structures and gas clouds, stars and stuff.
But in this point that I was in was just pure, inking,
perfect blackness.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
And I just felt absolute contentment.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And I was there for whatever amount of time and
it's like timed in wasn't relevant, and I was just
being it was wonderful. And then all of a sudden,
I felt sort of this It was like a frequency
washing through me. It was like the rainbow fractals for
a lack of better term. It was like you had
(13:43):
just completely refracted white light into the rainbow of colors
and it was moving through me, and it was like
buffeting me, like was rolling through and it was sort
of this juxtaposition of like thoughts.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
And feelings and emotions.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Like something was kind of communicating with and I guess
the gist of it was like it's okay. And I
didn't know what that meant because I was okay and
I'm like, yeah, it is okay. And then I just
started being like pulled into pieces and we just becoming
the fabric of the universe. And it was the most
(14:20):
natural thing that ever could have happened. It was just like, yeah,
this is what happens next. It was the natural conclusion
to an existence. And as that was occurring, I started
being electrocuted again. That sort of jarred me out of
(14:43):
that state of contentment. I was being defibrillated. A paramedic
crew that I know quite well had showed up and
been like, oh, Adam's dead, and so they started Interassi's
needle on my shoulder, were giving me cardiac medications, and
they had defibrillated me at that point, and a defibrillation
takes point five seconds, but here was like prolonged and
spaced out, and now all of a sudden, as opposed
(15:06):
to just being this identity less consciousness, I was like
back to being Adam in space and I'm like, okay,
I don't I'm dead. I recall being electrocuted and now
I'm just in space. And I was there for like
a prolonged period of time and seemed that was just
thinking about myself and perhaps coming to terms with who
(15:28):
I was or decisions I had made. And I started
being electrocuted again, and that was the second to fibrillation.
And again there's two minutes in between the fibrillations, and
each defibrillation is zo point five seconds. But this whole
thing was like drawn out over this massive amount of time.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
And then after the.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Second or during the second electrocution or defibrillation, I just
felt myself being like pull sucked or something.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
And again that's this kind of I.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Think I'm just grasping at a term for describe something
that can't really be described. And then I perhaps was
vaguely aware of being in my body. Again, I think
I smelt burnt flesh, which would have been me. And
then I was in a coma for like six or
eight hours, and so you know, I eventually woke up
in the ICU at that point and then you know,
(16:20):
kind of opened my eyes and was like, h I
just died. It's a very confusing thing to try and express.
It's like, you know, if a picture says a thousand words,
a psychedelic experience says a million pictures. And this, to
(16:42):
me is a psychedelic experience. So, you know, I woke
up from this coma in the ICU and I'm innobated,
which means that I have basically a tube going into
my lungs so that I can be artificially breathing, and
I have a bunch of difference.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
You know, I have a hole drilled in.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
My bone with intrivenous access or terrassious access technically. And
I remember just waking up and my mom was standing
at the edge of the bed and.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
She looked at me.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
I remember her saying, she's like, not funny at him,
and I kind of smiled and she was like, he's fine,
he's not brain dead and not fair enough. That was
a pretty good way of acknowledging that. And you know,
everyone's giving me hugs. My hands are really badly burned.
I had third degree burns on both in my hands.
My finger was mostly burned off. All of my strnom
(17:34):
had basically been dislocated from my ribs from the CPR,
which is good because that's how you do CPR. And
so I was a little sore, obviously, and as people
are hugging me, and I'm like breathing and looking around,
and I just was like what I felt that I'd
just been downgraded from this crazy supercomputer to this commodore
(17:57):
two thy sixteen bit garbage, Like I just got put
into this monkey suit that needs to breathe and defecate
and urinate, and my smell I remember just smelling my
arm and being like I am a stinking monkey, like
this is this is ridiculous?
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Then it was.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
It was like arguably slightly disappointing that I just now
went from something that had no physical constraints to being
physically constrained and what one could argue was a very
frail real container. And that lasted for like a couple
of months of just being like like so hyper aware
(18:42):
of breathing, like every time I take a breath, I'm
like here we go, okay then, and and just my
so hyper aware of my smell and not like my
armpits or something, but like my hand, my arm, like
my natural ferymodal smell that we all have and we
communicate with quite a bit. We just seemingly do acknowledge it.
(19:03):
And that was sort of an interesting experience because I've
never had felt.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Foreign in my body.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Even like very early on after waking up, was just
like this isn't real, Like this is not real, Like
what I had just come from was the true nature
of reality.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
This is the dream.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
And I remember kind of like feeling like I'm just
going to go to sleep one night and then just
wake back up there. And that's what part of me
really wanted and not to suggest I was suicidal, because
I wasn't. It was more like, if I have to
convince myself that a dream is reality to exist in
the dream, that that's fine too.
Speaker 5 (19:40):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
I actually walked out of the ICU like six hours
later to I just I don't know, I don't want
to be there. There's something to be said for medical
professionals make absolutely terrible patients.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
I one hundred.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Percent and part of that stereotype, and so I just
walked out of what I need to go home. I
don't want to here anymore, and they wanted me to
stay for quite a bit longer. The recovery was surprisingly difficult,
but I didn't resent it. It was okay because you know,
like I have this incredible experience, everything has a.
Speaker 6 (20:13):
Cost, and if this was the cost, then I'm paying
and it's okay.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
And the months afterwards I had all kinds of people
asking me like, oh, have you read about other people's
native experiences, and people wanting me to do interviews, and
I was just kind of like, no, Like I've told
people the story, which I was comfortable with, but I
just the human brain is so fragile.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
And valuable that.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
You know, I read someone else's story and then I
start perhaps subconsciously incorporating pieces of that into my own,
or then trying to justify someone else's experience within my own,
or vice versa or something. So to me, it was
almost like I just want to be with experience for
a while before I even attempt to start reading about
someone else's or getting these big.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Discussions about it.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
And then eventually when I started reading to other people's
it was just sort of like, yeah, interesting the other
experiences that people had, but I'd already processed or integrated
my own experience, you know. I think the biggest part
of trying to make sense of my experience to me
was relating it to the chemicals in my brain. Back
(21:27):
in the sixties and seventies, it was scientific fact that
we had trace amounts of die methyl trip to mean
or DMT and or urine in blood, and that was
thought to just be some fairly irrelevant thing. But then
in twenty eighteen studies were done and where it shows
that you have equatable amounts of DMT in your brain
as you do is dopamine or serotonin, and either of
(21:49):
those neurotransmitters contribute to almost all of your emotions and
your experience, your conscious experience, dreaming, your wound, healing, your
spatial recognition like it's is a lot. And if you
have equal amounts of dimethyl trip to me your DMT
in your brain as these other.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Compounds, what is that doing?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
And they took it a step further and induced cardiac
arrest and derodent specifically rats, which is a very common
practice because anydotally they're a very good.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Fit for a human brain.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
And when doing so, you would see ten to fifteen
full of increases of dimethyl trip to mean in their brain.
And it just so happens at DMT is an incredibly
powerful psychedelic And now you also have other hallucinerenic compounds
that are in dodges in your brain, like five methyloxy
die methyl trips. And these two compounds are referred to
lolocally as the spirit molecule, in the God molecule, because
(22:39):
you would lisit these incredibly spiritual and omni present like experiences.
So when I was a educated, you know, it was
twelve thousand bolts of direct current flowing from one hand
to the next, passing through my heart and disrupting my
(23:00):
natural electrical pathways which put me into a ventricular arrest,
specifically ventricular flibrillation, which is basically sporadic electrical conduction in
my heart, which is a form of cardiac arrest. In
the event of a cardiac arrest, you have this massive release,
ten to fifteen fold release of highly, highly llucinogenic and
(23:21):
spiritual compounds that go into your body.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
That doesn't seem entirely unlikely to me that that would
be responsible for the near death experience. People will very
commonly get upset over that because that it somehow whittles
their deeply spiritual experience down to a series of chemical
reactions in brain. But you can still be going somewhere
(23:47):
else as a result of a chemical reaction in your brain,
like one doesn't limit the other, Like these two things
can coexist simultaneous. And to me, it's almost as if
these two compounds that are in your brain, which and
I'm sure a whole plethora of other compounds than dodges
to yourself were also released, all contribute to you basically
(24:08):
becoming a higher version of yourself. You know, I feel
that people have a tendency to think linearly, and if
you look at it from this perspective, this whole thing
might make sense. Like I'm atom, and I'm made up
of a bunch of cells. Those cells are made up
of organelles. Those organicals are made up molecules. Of molecules
are made up of atoms, and atoms are made up
(24:29):
of subatomic particles. But there's a lot of space between
those subatomic particles. And if I took that sub atomic
screen and then brought it up to something that's representational
of us, it's like the space of a football field
between these atoms. So we are mostly by a very
large margin, we are empty space. But because everything is
(24:50):
at such a larger level and there's so much stuff
above that empty space, we don't perceive it that way.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
And the space.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Between everything is called the zero point field, which is
basic like the canvas of the universe in which this
pixelatic expression.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Is painted upon it like a pointilist.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
But the zero point feel is the canvas of the
universe and represents the vast majority of everything. And it
seems to me that this energetic space is where cautiousness
is emitted from. So by the very nature everything in
existence has consciousness within it, and then we just filter consciousness.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Through the biology that we have.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
So a blade of grass would experience cautiousness. A blade
of grass, a slide mold experience is cautiouness in the
slime mold through the lens of its biology, and so
consciousness simply it just experienced as an expression of our biology.
And to me, the idea of having these chemical compounds
uniquely move within your consciousness and affect their nature of
(25:54):
reality and effect the experience that you have when you're dying,
does it necessarily mean it that's a distinguished of the
spiritual nature of your experience. I read incredible amounts of books,
(26:14):
and you know, whether it's reading on Eastern philosophy and
religions or quantum physics, seemingly there's a lot of overlap
to what they represent. And it was anything I could
drop from my experience, whether it is with like high
dose psychedelics and my near death experience, is that we're
all just facets of an infinite complexity experiencing itself subjectively.
(26:40):
Now that I find when I see people sort of
confronting their own mortality and those layers of existential dread,
I feel very empathetic towards it, partially because we all
have that and that I was exposed to it and
had to confront it, and not an obligation, but I
just feel the need to be like, hey, we share
(27:01):
some things here, and perhaps there's some way that I
can help this person. You know, when I'm at work,
it's interesting the conversations like that with people.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
You know, someone's in stage four cancer and they're dying.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
And you can you can see underneath it all that
this is not something that they're looking forward to, and
fair enough, sometimes I mentioned like, yeah, I died a
couple of years ago and had a really interesting experience
that I'll leave it at that because I'm not going
to start regurgitating my experience on someone. And if they're like,
yay man, can you want to talk about that, I'll
tell them about it, because it does more than often
(27:32):
give someone at least pause in the anxiety.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
That they're experiencing.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I think everyone has that existential fear of not existing,
but we do a really good job of just ignoring
it because I'm young, I'm good, I'm healthy. I don't
need to think about this. I don't want to think
about this. Why would I waste my energy trying to
ponder the esistential nature of existence. But at some point
in time, that shit's going to become relevant when you
have stage four cancer, or when you're like ninety, or
any number of things, or perhaps a fleeting moments as
(27:59):
you're flying upside down in a car accident. At some
point in time, everyone's ticket's going.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
To get punished.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
It is inevitable, and that in itself gives value to
everything that we experience. You know, Like, I'm not afraid
of death at all, but at the same time, I
don't want to die. Like I have young children, I
want to be there as a parent. I want them
to have an emotionally healthy childhood, not lamenting the dead
them their father. When I'm with my children, I love
(28:28):
the moment and I just be in the moment and
I'm thinking about anything else because I don't mean to.
And at some point in I'm even in memory of
this within this physical.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Body is not going to exist.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
So the only thing we have is right now.
Speaker 7 (29:00):
Welcome back.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
This is a live again joining me for a conversation
about today's story. Are my other Alive against story producers
Kate Sweeney, Nicholas Takowski and Brent Day, and I'm your host,
Dan Bush.
Speaker 8 (29:13):
One thing that really struck me about Adam's story as
I talked to him is, you know, well, I'm just
going to say, you know, I come to everything as
a skeptic, you know, like I believe in science.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Da da da da da.
Speaker 8 (29:28):
But what I found really fascinating And Dan, actually I
was really thankful that you actually threw this interview my way,
and I was really really grateful for that because what
I found fascinating is that I love that Adam didn't
really have this sort of either or mentality of you know,
an order for a near death experience to be quote
(29:50):
unquote real or spiritual. This cannot be an experience triggered
by the chemicals, you know, running through our body. And
he sort of says, no, maybe it is, maybe that's
exactly what it is. But you know what, basically, maybe
all of our life experiences are hugely influenced by the
chemicals running through our body, and so why can't that
(30:11):
also be a spiritual experience? And I just found that
to be fascinating, he says.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
He says, you can still be going somewhere else as
a result of a chemical reaction in your brain. And
he also says one doesn't negate the other, that can coexist,
you know, they both mutually contribute to you becoming a
higher version of yourself. And I love how he took
it out of the realm of like, is there an afterlife?
Speaker 5 (30:38):
Is there?
Speaker 1 (30:38):
He's sort of going, And a lot of people end
up in this place of does it matter right if
you're evolving, if you're growing in whatever way, whether you
call it you're growing, your soul is evolving, or whether
you say I'm just you know, expanding consciousness.
Speaker 9 (30:53):
And having done DMT, which is the chemical he's talking
about that's released into the brain and mass quantities. I'll
be honest with you, I've done it one time in
my life. And the experience that I had, whereas it
didn't necessarily make me believe in God necessarily, it definitely
(31:15):
made me feel like I touched something divine. I felt
like I could feel the structure of time. I felt
like I could understand the universe. It lasts twenty minutes,
it felt like it lasted a week. And when I
came out it was I felt changed. Now Like every
epiphany it fades, life gets on top of it and
(31:36):
it just kind of becomes something else in the background.
But in that moment, I felt like I had touched something, right,
So I mean to actually touch that again while you
are in the process, like to have your brain do
that for you while you're in the process.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
I don't know.
Speaker 9 (31:53):
I think that, you know, I think that a chemical
shift like that can unlock something bigger, you know, And
I think that way, Hey, who knows what if you know,
the DMT is like the thing that gets you over
the threshold into the afterlife.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
I don't know.
Speaker 7 (32:10):
He also started talking about zero point field and the
space between particles, and he had sort of a football field.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Analogy of you know, how much massive more emptiness there
is than matter, And from that point of view, it's
just kind of that's always a great thing of people
when there's an argument about science or spirituality or what's
measurable and what's not and where the two meet and
where they fall away from each other. But that's always
(32:40):
an interesting place because it just points directly at well,
we don't there's so much unknown, there's so much room
for you know, continued science and knowledge. That to be
dog we talked about this before, but to be dogmatic
one way or the other seems way beyond the point.
Why would What is it about us that makes us
want to be so dogmatic or to be like, I
(33:01):
know this, I know the I know the mind of God,
or you know, I know that there is no God,
you know. But I love this zero point field because it,
you know, as this canvas that the universe can express
itself through, and you look at yourself and you're like, actually,
there is no me, you know. It's it's it's a
very scientific way of understanding that the self actually does
(33:23):
not exist. There is no point at which I stop
and the electrons outside it and the air start.
Speaker 7 (33:28):
It's all when you get down that small it's all.
Speaker 9 (33:30):
Continuous certainty is comforting. And we're not creatures who are
constantly searching for the big answers. We're creatures that want
the big answers given to us. We want to already
have the big answers so we don't have to worry
about it. I think that like big questions are terrifying,
you know. I think that like knowing what's going to
(33:52):
happen today, knowing what's going to happen tomorrow, knowing what's
going to happen when I close my eyes, seeing the
white tunnel is the most comforting thing in the world.
And when you think about, like when you start like
really picking things apart, when you really start picking through
like the amount of space between our atoms and stuff
like that, that just leads to more questions and more
(34:13):
uncertainty and an understanding that, like you can't really be
sure of anything.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
I always found it so much more calming to know
that these questions are way beyond our comprehension and I
don't have to have an answer for everything. Right, I'm
a Christian. But was Jesus the son of God?
Speaker 4 (34:35):
Yeah? Maybe maybe not? Is there a God? Maybe maybe not?
Does our soul go on? Maybe maybe not?
Speaker 5 (34:43):
So I think when you let go of just having
to know, then you don't have to be dogmatic and
defend it and have your world shattered when something challenges
that view. And I think the constant quest for that answer,
whether it's coming from science or art or religion, makes
(35:04):
life really exciting, you know. I just think it makes
it like, oh, what flavor of ice cream will I
have today?
Speaker 4 (35:10):
You know?
Speaker 5 (35:10):
I mean it's I've never understood this need to define things,
you know, Like.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
When he was talking about the zero field theory. I
was thinking, it's the same thing as.
Speaker 5 (35:21):
Like evolution, Like could evolution did we It's like, did
God snap his fingers and we were here as fully
formed humans? Or did we evolve from fish? Couldn't have
both happened? Could God have made us evolve from fish?
Speaker 4 (35:37):
Yeah? Or could God not have made us evolve for fish?
And it's a natural process?
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (35:42):
Who knows? Why does it matter?
Speaker 2 (35:44):
You know?
Speaker 8 (35:45):
That's fascinating because for me, what tends to hook me
or where I find fascination are these points at which
science ends up intercepting like zen Buddhism, you know, like, oh,
we find that the teachings of these great searchers who've
(36:07):
been you know, working at this for we have the
teachings of hundreds of years sometimes you know, from the
generations and generations ago, and then they intersect with the science.
I'm gonna be honest with you. When he started talking
about the zero point field, part of me kind of
wanted to disconnect a little bit because I was thinking, like, Okay,
(36:28):
this just kind of just sounds like stone or talk.
But by the time he got to the end of
that explanation, I was in and I was just you know,
he finished talking and he sort of paused, and I
was like, wow, that is extremely compelling. And that is
the thing I ended up talking with my spouse about
that night, saying, okay, so I got to tell you something.
(36:49):
One of my interviewees, you know, was talking about today
and we and then he and I sat around talking
about it. So, yeah, I think it's interesting that we
all have these different intersections at which, you know.
Speaker 7 (37:00):
The Dell of physics, Yeah, yeah, you're his.
Speaker 5 (37:03):
I had to stop and rewind that section like wait
a minute, because I was doing housework or something. I'm like,
wait a minute, what is he talking about? Yeah, but
it was one of those things where I was like,
this has got a big reward if I put the
work in.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
To understand what he's talking about. That was fantastic.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Did you stay with our podcast?
Speaker 8 (37:20):
If you rewind it three or four times, there will
be a payoff. But just you know, do it a
few times, and we promise.
Speaker 7 (37:27):
Did I tell you guys the Roman story?
Speaker 3 (37:28):
I think I did.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Where he I was telling him that, he was like,
he asked me, what's at the end of the universe,
you know, and I said, well, there's no known into
the universe. And he said, well, but you know what's
on the other like wherever it stops? Where does it stop?
And I said, well, even if it stopped, there would
be something on the other side of that one in
there and a thought that most people find terrifying and
(37:50):
extremely you know, alienating, and makes you feel like nothing
like insignificant in the stream of time and space. My
like five year old just started giggling hysterically to the poem.
Was the point where he was almost crying, and he
thought that the endlessness of the universe was the most
hilarious thing.
Speaker 5 (38:09):
It's like a joke with no punchline.
Speaker 7 (38:14):
It's like the joke that just thought it was fucking hilarious. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
I remember, like my grandma when she stayed with us, she.
Speaker 7 (38:21):
Used to it is kind of an absurd condition, isn't it?
Speaker 6 (38:24):
Her?
Speaker 5 (38:24):
And I my grandma when she used to stay with us,
you know, she'd sleep in my room and we would
talk about these things. As I was fascinated by that,
and I asked her that question and she told me
there's no end And I remember I just felt like
I'd just been thrown off a cliff, like it was
just like the most terrifying thought. So maybe it's because
I wrestled with it when I was five years old,
you know.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
But right well, I think that, you know, a lot
of these big concepts of life and death, and even
in the tragedies that we hear about in these stories
and the trauma, there's there's room for gallows humor, I think,
because what else.
Speaker 7 (38:55):
You know, I mean, yeah, what's gonna do? Mm hmm. Yeah.
And I like how he when he was talking about
I guess it was some sort.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
Of care for people who were oh yeah, you know,
and he was the sort of deathbed care or whatever,
and he.
Speaker 7 (39:10):
Was saying, you know, I died was.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
You know, I'm not going to force it on him,
but if they want to talk about it, I've got
some insights, you know.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
I loved that.
Speaker 8 (39:19):
I love the idea of somebody saying that to me
and then just being like the person that has said
to you, just being like whatever, like not responding. Okay.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
I've got an old friend named Rick Doblin who I
knew years ago in Charlotte, North Carolina. He's now he's
he's pretty famous now. He's he started this thing called maps,
which I'm sure Adam knows all about MAPS is the
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. And Rick is a Harvard,
Harvard guy, and he's worked really hard to get MDMA,
(39:52):
you know, legalized for therapy therapeutic use, and he spent
a lot of time with you know, administering it in
therapy with people who are on their deathbeds, as well
as a lot of like you know, Gulf war Vets
who have severe PTSD. And you know, we were learning
now more about how psychedelics relative to trauma have a
(40:13):
really significant impact.
Speaker 7 (40:15):
If done right.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
And it's not so much the experience while you're on
the psychedelic, but it's it's the way your brain rebuilds afterwards.
Speaker 7 (40:25):
And in the right therapeutic settings.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Your brain has a lot of plasticity and can and
wonderful things can happen. But anyway, I'm trying to get
him on the show if I can. I haven't talked
to him in twenty years, but he's fascinating guy. Yeah, absolutely,
Adam's story reminded me of Rick. Yeah, but he's been
on rogue and he's done all kinds of cool.
Speaker 5 (40:48):
One thing in his story that good out to me
is when he said that this memory in this physical
body will eventually not exist and all we have is
right now. Because what I've wrestled with is some of
these ideas of that, Oh, I come back to this home.
Like so many of these people who've had a near
death experience, I felt like I woke up from a
nap and I was in my home where I've always been.
(41:08):
And then I'm like, well, why do we fight so
much to stay alive? Like why do we have this
instinct to stay alive? And I think it's because we
only get to experience who we are as we are
in this one lifetime, you know. And I think that's
what makes the experience of being a human being such
a precious thing, you know, because I was like, well,
(41:29):
why what does it matter if you die? If you
just go back into this continuum, you know, So every
minute that we get to experience, I think that, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
I'm like, you might have a reincarnation, who knows what
lies beyond, but this is the only this life you.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
Will ever right.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Next week on the Live Again, we have the honor
and privilege of bringing you a conversation with Rick Doblin,
the founder and executive director of the Multi Disciplinary Association
for Psychedelic Studies or MAPS, a nonprofit that has been
at the forefront of exploring the therapeutic potential of psychedelics
for over thirty five years. His groundbreaking work has helped
transform how we approach healing, trauma, recovery, and end of
(42:18):
life care. Rick's dedication to this field has given countless
individuals and their families hope, understanding, and peace in the
face of immense challenges, including terminal illness.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
The brain is so complex and so whether DMT is
actually released at death or not, the explanation doesn't matter
so much as how we confront death.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
What is the process?
Speaker 1 (42:39):
In our conversation, we explore the intersection of his work
with the themes of this podcast, trauma, recovery, how we
approach healing, transformation and adaptation. Our story producers are Dan Bush,
Kate Sweeney, Brent die Nicholas Dakowski, and Lauren Vogelbaum. Music
by Ben Lovett, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive
(43:00):
producers are Matthew Frederick and Trevor Young. Special thanks to
Alexander Williams for additional production support. Our studio engineers are
rima il KLi and Nomes Griffin. Our editors are Dan Bush,
Gerhart Slovitchka, Brent Die and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing by Ben
Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez. I'm your host Dan Bush. Special
(43:22):
thanks to Adam Tapp. For more about Adam and his
exploration of the fascinating world of psychoactive substances and their
therapeutic use. Tune into his podcast, Tapped into Psychedelics. Alive
Again as a production of iHeartRadio and Psychopia Pictures. If
you have a transformative near death experience to share, we'd
love to hear your story. Please email us at Alive
(43:44):
Again Project at gmail dot com. That's a l I
v e A g A I N p R O
j E C t at gmail dot com.
You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psychopia Pictures
and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
My name is Adam Zapp. I had a near death
experience by electrocution in February of twenty eighteen, in which
I was dead for eleven point five minutes, and I
remember trying to force some thought, just to make sense
of what was going on, and I thought, I think
I'm being electrocuted, and then all of a sudden, it
(00:36):
was just puff like I'd just woken up in this
place that I had always been from a nap. And
I wasn't Adam, I wasn't alive, I wasn't dead, I
wasn't anything.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
It was just the state of absolute contentment.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous accounts
of human fragility and resilience from people who lives were
forever altered after.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Having almost died.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
These are first hand accounts of near death experiences and,
more broadly, brushes with death. Our mission is simple, find, explore,
and share these stories to remind us all of our
shared human condition. Please keep in mind these stories are
true and maybe triggering for some listener, and discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I grew up in northern Ontario with a really small
rural community of like three hundred people, sort of in
like the Northern Canadian shield of just straight bush and
rolling hills and stuff, you know. I grew up in
I wouldn't say a religious family, but my mom was
Irish Catholic.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
My dad was Irish.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Protestant, you know, And very early on I always spount
it weird that my dad wouldn't be able to go
to a Catholic Mass, and then going to this Protestant thing,
and I just remember going to Catholic Mass, you just feel.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Like this intense sense of guilty levied on people.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
And oddly enough I.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Was supposed to go for like confirmation or something or
whatever it is when you do at like a young age.
I think I was in elementary school and I just
packed a big bag of cheerios and I took my
dog and I just left for the entire day in
the bush. And I remember my grandma was losing her
mind and we have to do this, and my mom
would just like these made a decision, let's just leave
that be. And then when I got into high school,
(02:25):
I was starting getting into significant amounts of trouble, and
I remember I didn't know what I wanted to do,
and my mom just you know, my husband ammerg nurse
for twenty five years, and she just said, why didn't
you try paramids? And I was like, okay, that's a
great idea. And so I ended up getting accepted to
a couple of different colleges and I picked the one
that was furthest away from where I was living, because
it's just just need to get away from that. I
(02:47):
did paramiedics and I don't think there's another job that
could reflect my personality as much as being a paramedic,
where you just your indoors, your outdoors.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
You're a people's homes. It can be calm, it can
be wild.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
It's just all these extremes of difference that you and
you never have any idea what's going to happen.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
And I really appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
It's an interesting way to you know, you just go
into work and you're like, well, let's see what happens today.
And that statement keep me a lot of different things.
So the story really picks up about twelve years ago.
A friend of mine, he had got into opioids, you know,
(03:25):
he got in a car accident when he was in
high school. And this was in the old fashioned era
where they're like, oh, you have some pain, here's ten
thousand oxyconton good luck, come back, we need to refill.
And so obviously he got very addicted. That addiction turned
into introvie with drug use, and he was suicidal. And
he had tried to rehabit a bunch of different things.
(03:46):
Nothing was working, and so he had read about this
kind of a hail mary iboca or eyebolgain, which is
an African psychedelic derived from the inner root bark of
the ibogatry. His parents took him down to Mexico and
he did this big.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Experience and it alleviated his addiction.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Completely and he came back highly spiritual, and he, you know,
all this drug use was gone. So after his experience,
I think the gravity of him being able to work
through his addiction, he felt somewhat obligated to help other
people and help them work through their addictions. And he
(04:29):
wanted to use iboga because of this significant impact it
had upon himself. But there are some interesting physiological side
effects that can occur with iboga. It's metabolized heavily in
your liver, and it can cause a prolonged q teth
period in your heart, which means the top of the
bottom part of your heart beat just a little bit
more separately. And that's not a big deal until it
(04:51):
gets further and further, and then it can become problematic.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
And this doesn't.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Really occur in a lot of people, but if you're
trying to treat some someone who's been a drug addict
for twenty years, chances are they have some lever and
heart issues and so you're taking a very vulnerable population
and then giving them something that is a big treatment
for their body, so to speak. And so it was like,
I wuntch you down and we do this.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
You're a paramedic.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
And this at the time was not a schedule with
substance in Canada, so this was legal, entirely legal, and
so I read incredibly about it, like a lot of information,
and it was actually funny those these you know, physicians
writing these reports and they're just.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Like, we don't know how it does it, but it doesn't.
It just completely alleviates people's addiction in these massive doses.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
And so I took a microdose of it and it
just sort of made it very clear of the amount
of anxiety and stress that with dealing with like, you know,
you see a bunch of really horrible things that were
dead kids and this and that, and in the moment
you ever really have an opportunity to deal with something
because you can't. Like our job fundamentally is to apply
a level of order to a very chaotic situation. And
(06:02):
there was also sort of a culture of suck it up,
walk it off, rub some dirty on it, get back
to what you're doing. I was drinking a lot. My
relationship with my girlfriend at the time, who became my wife,
was you know, strained, just because I wasn't capable of
being vulable with anyone, let alone myself, and we just
(06:25):
were progressing down this path, and so I just felt
that I needed to try this, and so I did
it really small, like a microdose, and then something like
a light just flicked inside me, and I was like,
I need to do a full experience. I was ready
to let go of all of this stuff I was
holding onto, and my parents were like, you shouldn't do this,
(06:49):
it's dangerous. My wife was freaking out, and I'm like,
I don't think anything could have stopped me, I'm like,
I need to do this, and I ended up having
this I Boga experience. It was it was wild, and
it was like twelve hours of having all of these
(07:11):
horrible things I'd seen brought back up. And I remember
when it started, I was trying to look away from
it because I don't want to see, you know, somebody
inviscerated or the brain contents. And I remember this very
deep masculine voice. I was like, no, look at it,
and I was like okay. And I just spent the
time just seeing this and feeling very uncomfortable and sad
(07:33):
and scared, and then over the whole experience, I just
started feeling better. And I was just like, oh my god,
how does something like this exist? And people are just
wandering around holding on to every single thing that ever
happened to them, you know, and just bearing the weight
(07:55):
of life and fair because a lot of people do it.
But that's sort of made me realize the exploration of myself.
You know, going out and backpacking and seeing the world
is a very small facet of what you can experience
when you look inward. The Secondlary experience with iboga sort
(08:18):
of allowed me to realize how much issues I had
inside myself, how much insecurities and fear, and it was
like scratching the surface. It's almost as if you develop
this identity when you're born. You're sort of this empty vessel,
and you're given a name, you're given an identity by
your parents, and then your behaviors are encouraged or they're
(08:40):
refuted by your parents and then your peer groups, and
then you just keep giving these positive negatives that you
identify yourself with. But that's not really you as much
as it is an accumulated identity. And it was understanding
that there was more to me than then accumulated identity,
a lot more to me than that, and it was
trying to get to a point of understanding what that was,
(09:02):
because all I'd ever really understood was that I am
just add up and a bunch of accumulated experiences. Several
years later, in twenty eighteen, February twenty eighth, I was
had been doing quite a bit of woodworking, and its
always been sort of a hobby of mine since I
was kind of a kid. It just allows me to
(09:22):
sort of just be in a moment kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
And a friend of mine.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Wanted me to build in this big epoxy table. But
there's this wood edging mechanism.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
People call it fractal woodburning.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
You have two wires coming from a transformer, and on
one side you attach it to a metal or steel
spike or nail, and the other side you attach it
to a do or steel nail, and then you put
the nails on the wood. And so it's allowing the
electricity to go from the wires to the nail, and
the nail is just adding as a fundamental contact point.
(09:53):
You strip every possible safety feature from it. And what
it does is it takes one hundred and ten volts
of as from your wall and turn into like twelve
thousand of bold dcs and it basically burns or etches
this coral fractalesque pattern. But now there's one clever thing
that also does it kills a bunch of people.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
I'm not recommending this, and if I can really accentuate,
this is dangerous and it's weird. Normally I researched everything
quite significantly, and this I just didn't, you know, I
really what I just told you was learned afterwards. And
so we were at.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
My house, at my shop, and we were.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Outside grabbing a beer, chatting, and ironically enough, he had
taken a high.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Bolted safety course like a week before.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
And so I'm using this and I'm kind of looking
at him, talking to him, and I got my insulated
boots on, and I'm holding the one electrode and I
had set it down, and I was getting ready to
move the other one with my other hand, and it
was incredibly humid out and as I was about to grab,
dropped the other one sort of arc into my hand,
(11:05):
and there was sort of just this snap into this
incredibly energetic and painful experience of just having twelve thousand
volts of direct current flowing through me. And it was
almost like someone just flipped a switch where it just
went from conversation with.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Mark to just ungodly amounts of pain.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
It was just like my entire cellular structure as being
ripped into pieces.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
And I just was trying to form thoughts in that.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Moment, but it was just it was so much energy
just flowing through my one arm, across my chest and
out the other arm, completely devoid of any sense of
physicality or anything visually.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
All I could see was just these cylinders.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Or bars that went up and down forever that were
sort of iridescent green with orange somehow like overlapped on it.
And it was difficult to even think, you know, it
was like someone telling you do a math test while
you have headphones with death metal on at full volume.
Like it was just difficult to do anything. And I
remember trying to force the thought just to make sense
(12:15):
of what was going on. And I thought, I think
I'm being electrocuted, and I don't think I'm breathing, and
then I just felt like I was falling for like
a prolonged period of time, and then all of a
sudden it was just in a ways like as I
was falling, I was getting smaller, and then all of
(12:39):
a sudden, it was just puff like I'd just woken
up in this place that I had always been from
a nap. And I wasn't at him, I wasn't alive,
I wasn't dead, I wasn't anything. It was just the
state of absolute contentment, and it was like should have
just floating in this singular point, devoid of a body,
(13:00):
no identity existing, and seeing spherically outwards from a singular point.
It wasn't so much as a void as it was
seemingly like outer space, but in the distance you could
see like these structures and gas clouds, stars and stuff.
But in this point that I was in was just pure, inking,
perfect blackness.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
And I just felt absolute contentment.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And I was there for whatever amount of time and
it's like timed in wasn't relevant, and I was just
being it was wonderful. And then all of a sudden,
I felt sort of this It was like a frequency
washing through me. It was like the rainbow fractals for
a lack of better term. It was like you had
(13:43):
just completely refracted white light into the rainbow of colors
and it was moving through me, and it was like
buffeting me, like was rolling through and it was sort
of this juxtaposition of like thoughts.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
And feelings and emotions.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Like something was kind of communicating with and I guess
the gist of it was like it's okay. And I
didn't know what that meant because I was okay and
I'm like, yeah, it is okay. And then I just
started being like pulled into pieces and we just becoming
the fabric of the universe. And it was the most
(14:20):
natural thing that ever could have happened. It was just like, yeah,
this is what happens next. It was the natural conclusion
to an existence. And as that was occurring, I started
being electrocuted again. That sort of jarred me out of
(14:43):
that state of contentment. I was being defibrillated. A paramedic
crew that I know quite well had showed up and
been like, oh, Adam's dead, and so they started Interassi's
needle on my shoulder, were giving me cardiac medications, and
they had defibrillated me at that point, and a defibrillation
takes point five seconds, but here was like prolonged and
spaced out, and now all of a sudden, as opposed
(15:06):
to just being this identity less consciousness, I was like
back to being Adam in space and I'm like, okay,
I don't I'm dead. I recall being electrocuted and now
I'm just in space. And I was there for like
a prolonged period of time and seemed that was just
thinking about myself and perhaps coming to terms with who
(15:28):
I was or decisions I had made. And I started
being electrocuted again, and that was the second to fibrillation.
And again there's two minutes in between the fibrillations, and
each defibrillation is zo point five seconds. But this whole
thing was like drawn out over this massive amount of time.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
And then after the.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Second or during the second electrocution or defibrillation, I just
felt myself being like pull sucked or something.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
And again that's this kind of I.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Think I'm just grasping at a term for describe something
that can't really be described. And then I perhaps was
vaguely aware of being in my body. Again, I think
I smelt burnt flesh, which would have been me. And
then I was in a coma for like six or
eight hours, and so you know, I eventually woke up
in the ICU at that point and then you know,
(16:20):
kind of opened my eyes and was like, h I
just died. It's a very confusing thing to try and express.
It's like, you know, if a picture says a thousand words,
a psychedelic experience says a million pictures. And this, to
(16:42):
me is a psychedelic experience. So, you know, I woke
up from this coma in the ICU and I'm innobated,
which means that I have basically a tube going into
my lungs so that I can be artificially breathing, and
I have a bunch of difference.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
You know, I have a hole drilled in.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
My bone with intrivenous access or terrassious access technically. And
I remember just waking up and my mom was standing
at the edge of the bed and.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
She looked at me.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
I remember her saying, she's like, not funny at him,
and I kind of smiled and she was like, he's fine,
he's not brain dead and not fair enough. That was
a pretty good way of acknowledging that. And you know,
everyone's giving me hugs. My hands are really badly burned.
I had third degree burns on both in my hands.
My finger was mostly burned off. All of my strnom
(17:34):
had basically been dislocated from my ribs from the CPR,
which is good because that's how you do CPR. And
so I was a little sore, obviously, and as people
are hugging me, and I'm like breathing and looking around,
and I just was like what I felt that I'd
just been downgraded from this crazy supercomputer to this commodore
(17:57):
two thy sixteen bit garbage, Like I just got put
into this monkey suit that needs to breathe and defecate
and urinate, and my smell I remember just smelling my
arm and being like I am a stinking monkey, like
this is this is ridiculous?
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Then it was.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
It was like arguably slightly disappointing that I just now
went from something that had no physical constraints to being
physically constrained and what one could argue was a very
frail real container. And that lasted for like a couple
of months of just being like like so hyper aware
(18:42):
of breathing, like every time I take a breath, I'm
like here we go, okay then, and and just my
so hyper aware of my smell and not like my
armpits or something, but like my hand, my arm, like
my natural ferymodal smell that we all have and we
communicate with quite a bit. We just seemingly do acknowledge it.
(19:03):
And that was sort of an interesting experience because I've
never had felt.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Foreign in my body.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Even like very early on after waking up, was just
like this isn't real, Like this is not real, Like
what I had just come from was the true nature
of reality.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
This is the dream.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
And I remember kind of like feeling like I'm just
going to go to sleep one night and then just
wake back up there. And that's what part of me
really wanted and not to suggest I was suicidal, because
I wasn't. It was more like, if I have to
convince myself that a dream is reality to exist in
the dream, that that's fine too.
Speaker 5 (19:40):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
I actually walked out of the ICU like six hours
later to I just I don't know, I don't want
to be there. There's something to be said for medical
professionals make absolutely terrible patients.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
I one hundred.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Percent and part of that stereotype, and so I just
walked out of what I need to go home. I
don't want to here anymore, and they wanted me to
stay for quite a bit longer. The recovery was surprisingly difficult,
but I didn't resent it. It was okay because you know,
like I have this incredible experience, everything has a.
Speaker 6 (20:13):
Cost, and if this was the cost, then I'm paying
and it's okay.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
And the months afterwards I had all kinds of people
asking me like, oh, have you read about other people's
native experiences, and people wanting me to do interviews, and
I was just kind of like, no, Like I've told
people the story, which I was comfortable with, but I
just the human brain is so fragile.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
And valuable that.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
You know, I read someone else's story and then I
start perhaps subconsciously incorporating pieces of that into my own,
or then trying to justify someone else's experience within my own,
or vice versa or something. So to me, it was
almost like I just want to be with experience for
a while before I even attempt to start reading about
someone else's or getting these big.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Discussions about it.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
And then eventually when I started reading to other people's
it was just sort of like, yeah, interesting the other
experiences that people had, but I'd already processed or integrated
my own experience, you know. I think the biggest part
of trying to make sense of my experience to me
was relating it to the chemicals in my brain. Back
(21:27):
in the sixties and seventies, it was scientific fact that
we had trace amounts of die methyl trip to mean
or DMT and or urine in blood, and that was
thought to just be some fairly irrelevant thing. But then
in twenty eighteen studies were done and where it shows
that you have equatable amounts of DMT in your brain
as you do is dopamine or serotonin, and either of
(21:49):
those neurotransmitters contribute to almost all of your emotions and
your experience, your conscious experience, dreaming, your wound, healing, your
spatial recognition like it's is a lot. And if you
have equal amounts of dimethyl trip to me your DMT
in your brain as these other.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Compounds, what is that doing?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
And they took it a step further and induced cardiac
arrest and derodent specifically rats, which is a very common
practice because anydotally they're a very good.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Fit for a human brain.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
And when doing so, you would see ten to fifteen
full of increases of dimethyl trip to mean in their brain.
And it just so happens at DMT is an incredibly
powerful psychedelic And now you also have other hallucinerenic compounds
that are in dodges in your brain, like five methyloxy
die methyl trips. And these two compounds are referred to
lolocally as the spirit molecule, in the God molecule, because
(22:39):
you would lisit these incredibly spiritual and omni present like experiences.
So when I was a educated, you know, it was
twelve thousand bolts of direct current flowing from one hand
to the next, passing through my heart and disrupting my
(23:00):
natural electrical pathways which put me into a ventricular arrest,
specifically ventricular flibrillation, which is basically sporadic electrical conduction in
my heart, which is a form of cardiac arrest. In
the event of a cardiac arrest, you have this massive release,
ten to fifteen fold release of highly, highly llucinogenic and
(23:21):
spiritual compounds that go into your body.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
That doesn't seem entirely unlikely to me that that would
be responsible for the near death experience. People will very
commonly get upset over that because that it somehow whittles
their deeply spiritual experience down to a series of chemical
reactions in brain. But you can still be going somewhere
(23:47):
else as a result of a chemical reaction in your brain,
like one doesn't limit the other, Like these two things
can coexist simultaneous. And to me, it's almost as if
these two compounds that are in your brain, which and
I'm sure a whole plethora of other compounds than dodges
to yourself were also released, all contribute to you basically
(24:08):
becoming a higher version of yourself. You know, I feel
that people have a tendency to think linearly, and if
you look at it from this perspective, this whole thing
might make sense. Like I'm atom, and I'm made up
of a bunch of cells. Those cells are made up
of organelles. Those organicals are made up molecules. Of molecules
are made up of atoms, and atoms are made up
(24:29):
of subatomic particles. But there's a lot of space between
those subatomic particles. And if I took that sub atomic
screen and then brought it up to something that's representational
of us, it's like the space of a football field
between these atoms. So we are mostly by a very
large margin, we are empty space. But because everything is
(24:50):
at such a larger level and there's so much stuff
above that empty space, we don't perceive it that way.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
And the space.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Between everything is called the zero point field, which is
basic like the canvas of the universe in which this
pixelatic expression.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Is painted upon it like a pointilist.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
But the zero point feel is the canvas of the
universe and represents the vast majority of everything. And it
seems to me that this energetic space is where cautiousness
is emitted from. So by the very nature everything in
existence has consciousness within it, and then we just filter consciousness.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Through the biology that we have.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
So a blade of grass would experience cautiousness. A blade
of grass, a slide mold experience is cautiouness in the
slime mold through the lens of its biology, and so
consciousness simply it just experienced as an expression of our biology.
And to me, the idea of having these chemical compounds
uniquely move within your consciousness and affect their nature of
(25:54):
reality and effect the experience that you have when you're dying,
does it necessarily mean it that's a distinguished of the
spiritual nature of your experience. I read incredible amounts of books,
(26:14):
and you know, whether it's reading on Eastern philosophy and
religions or quantum physics, seemingly there's a lot of overlap
to what they represent. And it was anything I could
drop from my experience, whether it is with like high
dose psychedelics and my near death experience, is that we're
all just facets of an infinite complexity experiencing itself subjectively.
(26:40):
Now that I find when I see people sort of
confronting their own mortality and those layers of existential dread,
I feel very empathetic towards it, partially because we all
have that and that I was exposed to it and
had to confront it, and not an obligation, but I
just feel the need to be like, hey, we share
(27:01):
some things here, and perhaps there's some way that I
can help this person. You know, when I'm at work,
it's interesting the conversations like that with people.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
You know, someone's in stage four cancer and they're dying.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
And you can you can see underneath it all that
this is not something that they're looking forward to, and
fair enough, sometimes I mentioned like, yeah, I died a
couple of years ago and had a really interesting experience
that I'll leave it at that because I'm not going
to start regurgitating my experience on someone. And if they're like,
yay man, can you want to talk about that, I'll
tell them about it, because it does more than often
(27:32):
give someone at least pause in the anxiety.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
That they're experiencing.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I think everyone has that existential fear of not existing,
but we do a really good job of just ignoring
it because I'm young, I'm good, I'm healthy. I don't
need to think about this. I don't want to think
about this. Why would I waste my energy trying to
ponder the esistential nature of existence. But at some point
in time, that shit's going to become relevant when you
have stage four cancer, or when you're like ninety, or
any number of things, or perhaps a fleeting moments as
(27:59):
you're flying upside down in a car accident. At some
point in time, everyone's ticket's going.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
To get punished.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
It is inevitable, and that in itself gives value to
everything that we experience. You know, Like, I'm not afraid
of death at all, but at the same time, I
don't want to die. Like I have young children, I
want to be there as a parent. I want them
to have an emotionally healthy childhood, not lamenting the dead
them their father. When I'm with my children, I love
(28:28):
the moment and I just be in the moment and
I'm thinking about anything else because I don't mean to.
And at some point in I'm even in memory of
this within this physical.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Body is not going to exist.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
So the only thing we have is right now.
Speaker 7 (29:00):
Welcome back.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
This is a live again joining me for a conversation
about today's story. Are my other Alive against story producers
Kate Sweeney, Nicholas Takowski and Brent Day, and I'm your host,
Dan Bush.
Speaker 8 (29:13):
One thing that really struck me about Adam's story as
I talked to him is, you know, well, I'm just
going to say, you know, I come to everything as
a skeptic, you know, like I believe in science.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Da da da da da.
Speaker 8 (29:28):
But what I found really fascinating And Dan, actually I
was really thankful that you actually threw this interview my way,
and I was really really grateful for that because what
I found fascinating is that I love that Adam didn't
really have this sort of either or mentality of you know,
an order for a near death experience to be quote
(29:50):
unquote real or spiritual. This cannot be an experience triggered
by the chemicals, you know, running through our body. And
he sort of says, no, maybe it is, maybe that's
exactly what it is. But you know what, basically, maybe
all of our life experiences are hugely influenced by the
chemicals running through our body, and so why can't that
(30:11):
also be a spiritual experience? And I just found that
to be fascinating, he says.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
He says, you can still be going somewhere else as
a result of a chemical reaction in your brain. And
he also says one doesn't negate the other, that can coexist,
you know, they both mutually contribute to you becoming a
higher version of yourself. And I love how he took
it out of the realm of like, is there an afterlife?
Speaker 5 (30:38):
Is there?
Speaker 1 (30:38):
He's sort of going, And a lot of people end
up in this place of does it matter right if
you're evolving, if you're growing in whatever way, whether you
call it you're growing, your soul is evolving, or whether
you say I'm just you know, expanding consciousness.
Speaker 9 (30:53):
And having done DMT, which is the chemical he's talking
about that's released into the brain and mass quantities. I'll
be honest with you, I've done it one time in
my life. And the experience that I had, whereas it
didn't necessarily make me believe in God necessarily, it definitely
(31:15):
made me feel like I touched something divine. I felt
like I could feel the structure of time. I felt
like I could understand the universe. It lasts twenty minutes,
it felt like it lasted a week. And when I
came out it was I felt changed. Now Like every
epiphany it fades, life gets on top of it and
(31:36):
it just kind of becomes something else in the background.
But in that moment, I felt like I had touched something, right,
So I mean to actually touch that again while you
are in the process, like to have your brain do
that for you while you're in the process.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
I don't know.
Speaker 9 (31:53):
I think that, you know, I think that a chemical
shift like that can unlock something bigger, you know, And
I think that way, Hey, who knows what if you know,
the DMT is like the thing that gets you over
the threshold into the afterlife.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
I don't know.
Speaker 7 (32:10):
He also started talking about zero point field and the
space between particles, and he had sort of a football field.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Analogy of you know, how much massive more emptiness there
is than matter, And from that point of view, it's
just kind of that's always a great thing of people
when there's an argument about science or spirituality or what's
measurable and what's not and where the two meet and
where they fall away from each other. But that's always
(32:40):
an interesting place because it just points directly at well,
we don't there's so much unknown, there's so much room
for you know, continued science and knowledge. That to be
dog we talked about this before, but to be dogmatic
one way or the other seems way beyond the point.
Why would What is it about us that makes us
want to be so dogmatic or to be like, I
(33:01):
know this, I know the I know the mind of God,
or you know, I know that there is no God,
you know. But I love this zero point field because it,
you know, as this canvas that the universe can express
itself through, and you look at yourself and you're like, actually,
there is no me, you know. It's it's it's a
very scientific way of understanding that the self actually does
(33:23):
not exist. There is no point at which I stop
and the electrons outside it and the air start.
Speaker 7 (33:28):
It's all when you get down that small it's all.
Speaker 9 (33:30):
Continuous certainty is comforting. And we're not creatures who are
constantly searching for the big answers. We're creatures that want
the big answers given to us. We want to already
have the big answers so we don't have to worry
about it. I think that like big questions are terrifying,
you know. I think that like knowing what's going to
(33:52):
happen today, knowing what's going to happen tomorrow, knowing what's
going to happen when I close my eyes, seeing the
white tunnel is the most comforting thing in the world.
And when you think about, like when you start like
really picking things apart, when you really start picking through
like the amount of space between our atoms and stuff
like that, that just leads to more questions and more
(34:13):
uncertainty and an understanding that, like you can't really be
sure of anything.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
I always found it so much more calming to know
that these questions are way beyond our comprehension and I
don't have to have an answer for everything. Right, I'm
a Christian. But was Jesus the son of God?
Speaker 4 (34:35):
Yeah? Maybe maybe not? Is there a God? Maybe maybe not?
Does our soul go on? Maybe maybe not?
Speaker 5 (34:43):
So I think when you let go of just having
to know, then you don't have to be dogmatic and
defend it and have your world shattered when something challenges
that view. And I think the constant quest for that answer,
whether it's coming from science or art or religion, makes
(35:04):
life really exciting, you know. I just think it makes
it like, oh, what flavor of ice cream will I
have today?
Speaker 4 (35:10):
You know?
Speaker 5 (35:10):
I mean it's I've never understood this need to define things,
you know, Like.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
When he was talking about the zero field theory. I
was thinking, it's the same thing as.
Speaker 5 (35:21):
Like evolution, Like could evolution did we It's like, did
God snap his fingers and we were here as fully
formed humans? Or did we evolve from fish? Couldn't have
both happened? Could God have made us evolve from fish?
Speaker 4 (35:37):
Yeah? Or could God not have made us evolve for fish?
And it's a natural process?
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (35:42):
Who knows? Why does it matter?
Speaker 2 (35:44):
You know?
Speaker 8 (35:45):
That's fascinating because for me, what tends to hook me
or where I find fascination are these points at which
science ends up intercepting like zen Buddhism, you know, like, oh,
we find that the teachings of these great searchers who've
(36:07):
been you know, working at this for we have the
teachings of hundreds of years sometimes you know, from the
generations and generations ago, and then they intersect with the science.
I'm gonna be honest with you. When he started talking
about the zero point field, part of me kind of
wanted to disconnect a little bit because I was thinking, like, Okay,
(36:28):
this just kind of just sounds like stone or talk.
But by the time he got to the end of
that explanation, I was in and I was just you know,
he finished talking and he sort of paused, and I
was like, wow, that is extremely compelling. And that is
the thing I ended up talking with my spouse about
that night, saying, okay, so I got to tell you something.
(36:49):
One of my interviewees, you know, was talking about today
and we and then he and I sat around talking
about it. So, yeah, I think it's interesting that we
all have these different intersections at which, you know.
Speaker 7 (37:00):
The Dell of physics, Yeah, yeah, you're his.
Speaker 5 (37:03):
I had to stop and rewind that section like wait
a minute, because I was doing housework or something. I'm like,
wait a minute, what is he talking about? Yeah, but
it was one of those things where I was like,
this has got a big reward if I put the
work in.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
To understand what he's talking about. That was fantastic.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Did you stay with our podcast?
Speaker 8 (37:20):
If you rewind it three or four times, there will
be a payoff. But just you know, do it a
few times, and we promise.
Speaker 7 (37:27):
Did I tell you guys the Roman story?
Speaker 3 (37:28):
I think I did.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Where he I was telling him that, he was like,
he asked me, what's at the end of the universe,
you know, and I said, well, there's no known into
the universe. And he said, well, but you know what's
on the other like wherever it stops? Where does it stop?
And I said, well, even if it stopped, there would
be something on the other side of that one in
there and a thought that most people find terrifying and
(37:50):
extremely you know, alienating, and makes you feel like nothing
like insignificant in the stream of time and space. My
like five year old just started giggling hysterically to the poem.
Was the point where he was almost crying, and he
thought that the endlessness of the universe was the most
hilarious thing.
Speaker 5 (38:09):
It's like a joke with no punchline.
Speaker 7 (38:14):
It's like the joke that just thought it was fucking hilarious. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
I remember, like my grandma when she stayed with us, she.
Speaker 7 (38:21):
Used to it is kind of an absurd condition, isn't it?
Speaker 6 (38:24):
Her?
Speaker 5 (38:24):
And I my grandma when she used to stay with us,
you know, she'd sleep in my room and we would
talk about these things. As I was fascinated by that,
and I asked her that question and she told me
there's no end And I remember I just felt like
I'd just been thrown off a cliff, like it was
just like the most terrifying thought. So maybe it's because
I wrestled with it when I was five years old,
you know.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
But right well, I think that, you know, a lot
of these big concepts of life and death, and even
in the tragedies that we hear about in these stories
and the trauma, there's there's room for gallows humor, I think,
because what else.
Speaker 7 (38:55):
You know, I mean, yeah, what's gonna do? Mm hmm. Yeah.
And I like how he when he was talking about
I guess it was some sort.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
Of care for people who were oh yeah, you know,
and he was the sort of deathbed care or whatever,
and he.
Speaker 7 (39:10):
Was saying, you know, I died was.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
You know, I'm not going to force it on him,
but if they want to talk about it, I've got
some insights, you know.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
I loved that.
Speaker 8 (39:19):
I love the idea of somebody saying that to me
and then just being like the person that has said
to you, just being like whatever, like not responding. Okay.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
I've got an old friend named Rick Doblin who I
knew years ago in Charlotte, North Carolina. He's now he's
he's pretty famous now. He's he started this thing called maps,
which I'm sure Adam knows all about MAPS is the
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. And Rick is a Harvard,
Harvard guy, and he's worked really hard to get MDMA,
(39:52):
you know, legalized for therapy therapeutic use, and he spent
a lot of time with you know, administering it in
therapy with people who are on their deathbeds, as well
as a lot of like you know, Gulf war Vets
who have severe PTSD. And you know, we were learning
now more about how psychedelics relative to trauma have a
(40:13):
really significant impact.
Speaker 7 (40:15):
If done right.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
And it's not so much the experience while you're on
the psychedelic, but it's it's the way your brain rebuilds afterwards.
Speaker 7 (40:25):
And in the right therapeutic settings.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Your brain has a lot of plasticity and can and
wonderful things can happen. But anyway, I'm trying to get
him on the show if I can. I haven't talked
to him in twenty years, but he's fascinating guy. Yeah, absolutely,
Adam's story reminded me of Rick. Yeah, but he's been
on rogue and he's done all kinds of cool.
Speaker 5 (40:48):
One thing in his story that good out to me
is when he said that this memory in this physical
body will eventually not exist and all we have is
right now. Because what I've wrestled with is some of
these ideas of that, Oh, I come back to this home.
Like so many of these people who've had a near
death experience, I felt like I woke up from a
nap and I was in my home where I've always been.
(41:08):
And then I'm like, well, why do we fight so
much to stay alive? Like why do we have this
instinct to stay alive? And I think it's because we
only get to experience who we are as we are
in this one lifetime, you know. And I think that's
what makes the experience of being a human being such
a precious thing, you know, because I was like, well,
(41:29):
why what does it matter if you die? If you
just go back into this continuum, you know, So every
minute that we get to experience, I think that, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
I'm like, you might have a reincarnation, who knows what
lies beyond, but this is the only this life you.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
Will ever right.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Next week on the Live Again, we have the honor
and privilege of bringing you a conversation with Rick Doblin,
the founder and executive director of the Multi Disciplinary Association
for Psychedelic Studies or MAPS, a nonprofit that has been
at the forefront of exploring the therapeutic potential of psychedelics
for over thirty five years. His groundbreaking work has helped
transform how we approach healing, trauma, recovery, and end of
(42:18):
life care. Rick's dedication to this field has given countless
individuals and their families hope, understanding, and peace in the
face of immense challenges, including terminal illness.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
The brain is so complex and so whether DMT is
actually released at death or not, the explanation doesn't matter
so much as how we confront death.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
What is the process?
Speaker 1 (42:39):
In our conversation, we explore the intersection of his work
with the themes of this podcast, trauma, recovery, how we
approach healing, transformation and adaptation. Our story producers are Dan Bush,
Kate Sweeney, Brent die Nicholas Dakowski, and Lauren Vogelbaum. Music
by Ben Lovett, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive
(43:00):
producers are Matthew Frederick and Trevor Young. Special thanks to
Alexander Williams for additional production support. Our studio engineers are
rima il KLi and Nomes Griffin. Our editors are Dan Bush,
Gerhart Slovitchka, Brent Die and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing by Ben
Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez. I'm your host Dan Bush. Special
(43:22):
thanks to Adam Tapp. For more about Adam and his
exploration of the fascinating world of psychoactive substances and their
therapeutic use. Tune into his podcast, Tapped into Psychedelics. Alive
Again as a production of iHeartRadio and Psychopia Pictures. If
you have a transformative near death experience to share, we'd
love to hear your story. Please email us at Alive
(43:44):
Again Project at gmail dot com. That's a l I
v e A g A I N p R O
j E C t at gmail dot com.
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