August 5, 2026 • 62 mins
For 15 years I've been trying to figure out how to stem the tide of suicides taking my teammates — and today's guest is on the front line of that fight. Jonathan Dickinson is the CEO and co-founder of Ambio Life Sciences, the world's leading ibogaine clinic, and this conversation gave me more genuine hope than anything I've encountered.
What you'll hear:
• David breaks down why he calls this the most meaningful episode in show history
• Jonathan explains the Stanford study published in Nature Medicine — and the 88% reduction in PTSD symptoms
• Why the "signature wound" of the GWOT era was brain damage misread as PTSD
• What ibogaine actually restores: "a choice where you didn't have a choice before"
• How Ambio protects a sacred Gabonese tradition while scaling from 4 patients a week to 40
• The April 2026 executive order that moved this medicine from the underground to the White House
Jonathan Dickinson is a Mexico-licensed psychologist with 15+ years working with ibogaine in clinical and ceremonial contexts. His book, "Ibogaine and the Bicameral Mind," releases September 8 — preorder at jonathandickinson.ca.
✅ Sponsors: ☕️ Black Rifle Coffee: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/
🏫 Get coaching by David Rutherford: https://www.froglogicinstitute.com/
🕘 Timestamps:
00:00 – Preview
00:30 – The Stanford study: what magnesium–ibogaine did to 30 operators
08:11 – It was never just PTSD: blast waves and the brain
14:08 – Addiction, agency, and "a choice where you didn't have a choice"
22:39 – Identity, transition & why people die when they retire
26:38 – Protecting the ritual while scaling
31:55 – Malta: Europe's first physician-led ibogaine clinic
34:57 – The executive order, new clinics & the risks
40:28 – Gabon, Bwiti & the Nagoya Protocol
44:24 – The bicameral mind, SSRI's, subjectivity
53:10 – Writing the book & stewarding the medicine
59:34 – How to support Ambio + book preorder
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What we saw I began doing in the early days.
You know, we attributed at first to it's you know,
it's just helping with opioid withdrawal, and now like working
with veterans and with other people, it's it's become a
lot more clear. What it seems to be doing is
just making a really difficult transition a lot easier, gives
(00:23):
it back to this sense of agency where maybe you
didn't feel like you have that.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome back to the David Rutherford Show. Today's show is
a show that has.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
A deeper meaning than almost any other show I've ever
done in the history of me being doing shows all
the way back to twenty thirteen. And the reason for
that is because kind of the most devastating impact of
my service has not been the impact that it's had
on me physiologically or emotionally, but it's more so the
(00:59):
impact it's had on my friends and the result of
that impact leading to a pandemic of suicides that has
taken place. And so for the last fifteen years of
my life, I've been trying to figure out how to
stem the tide of these suicides, to address these root
(01:20):
cause issues that are impacting my brothers, my operator friends
in ways that are destroying their lives, their families' lives,
their children's lives, and the lives of everybody who loves them.
And so today I'm honored to welcome a gentleman that
is on the front line of trying to figure out
(01:43):
how to stem the tides of those suicides. A person
that has dedicated his life not only to serving veterans,
to serving all types of human beings that are in
various forms of struggles in their life, trying to bring
them to a place where they can regain dignity through
a profound sense of meaning and hope through his organization
(02:07):
that he co founded with Trevor Miller and jose And
Zunza called Ambio Life Sciences. So I'd like to welcome
mister Jonathan Dickinson to the show. Jonathan welcome.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Thanks so much, David, it's an honor to be here.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I appreciate that. Well.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
I mean, obviously, there's, as I said before, there's a
bunch of different paths that we can go down. But
the one that I think really had the most significant
impact on me was the research paper that you and
your colleagues published in Nature medicine journal called Magnesium I
(02:47):
Begain Therapy and Veterans with Traumatic Brain injuries. For me,
it was the first time I read a journal paper
that really mapped out the clare of how profound the
impacts are from blast wave exposure toward to all the
(03:07):
other different.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Aspects of you.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
You know, your endocrine system, your mood, your behavioral states.
So can you just describe why, how you came up
with the idea for the paper and then what you
learned as a result as it relates to the various scores,
whether it was the DSM five PSD protocol, the Montgomery
(03:35):
ASPERG Dispression scale rating, the Hamilton Anxiety rating, and then others,
and what this mystic protocol looks like in what it
is in the research.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Sure, So I mean credit where credits due. This was
a study that was run out of Stanford University's Brain
Stimulation Lab and the principal investigator was doctor Nolan Williams.
The late stock for Nolan Williams, there's a not for
profit that's incorporated that was a major mover in bringing
(04:08):
this to Nolan's attention and recruiting for the study and
you know, making it happen so Vetts has been providing
grants for seals and other special operators to come down
for IBAN treatment for years, and this study was the
first time where we got a very good look at
(04:30):
what's going on behind the scenes. We'd been working like
you know, you named Trevor Miller and jose and Zunza,
the co founders. Each of us had been working with
IBAN for over a decade before we started seeing any
veterans come down, especially in these kind of numbers. So
we had been working with people primarily who were coming
(04:52):
off of heroin or other opiates, increasingly fence and all
that kind of thing. So we saw a lot of
big changes in people's health afterwards, but most of the
time we would associate that with the fact that they
were no longer using the drugs taking. It was a
little bit hard to tease out what was happening. And
this was the first study where there was an extreme, concrete,
(05:16):
unignorable signal that something was happening structurally to the brain,
to the physiology of the brain, not only to receptor
connections and whatever. But but yeah, that's that was what
was remarkable. And so we saw people going in with
you know, this signature wound of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts,
(05:39):
which was minor traumatic brain injury, meaning that they had
chronic exposure to blasts or other things that would be
moving the brain relative to the skull and creating pressure
on neural tissue and you know, over time that created
a very specific kind of powder learn that researchers were
(06:02):
starting to identify but didn't know what to do anything about.
So the study was showing that, you know, not only
was there something happening psychologically for people going through but
this underlying neural damage was being addressed. So that the
paper that you mentioned was the first publication of several
(06:24):
and you know, it did actually only look at some
of the subjective measurements like the symptoms of post traumatic
stress disorder, depression, anxiety, disability. And what's interesting about that,
what's been challenging about it is that it shows a
great improvement, but it also maybe, like from my point
(06:51):
of view, we're looking at PTSD like it's a diagnosis
that could screen someone in for treatment, and unfortunately, you know,
the actual problem that guys were dealing with with minor
traumatic brain injury, which shares so many symptoms with PTSD.
(07:12):
So when somebody comes in and says, now, does ibogain
post traumatic stress disorder? I have no idea because we
don't know what PTSD is for other populations, you know
what I mean. Can I think we can say that
we've got a really clear signal that I Begain's treating
this kind of traumatic brain injury. But for PTSD, we're
(07:35):
still dealing in the realm of very subjective measurements. In
other areas of medicine, we've kind of moved away from
those kind of symptomatic diagnoses and we kind of look
for like the holy grail as we were looking for
biomarkers that we're able to identify a physiological illness and
(07:59):
predict if physiological improvement. And so I think that's what
was so remarkable about this was that it gave us
something to focus in on, and it was that neurological damage. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
I I because I remember, you know, when you know,
the early two thousands when CTE there was the great
documentary about CTE in professional football. You know, you had
the Junior Seau incident, you know, and so it was like, oh,
here is this, you know, incredibly damaging after effects of
(08:36):
you know, a lifetime of you know, subdermal humatomas from
deceleration injuries at speed, right, you know, and like they
started correlating it and then you know, here you go,
and then the after effects after they present, you know,
ten years out of the league, you start to see
it and they go back and they were they seeing it.
(08:57):
And then I remember, like the guy started killing themselves
from our group, and I was like, there's got to
be some type of correlation to that. And it was
doctor free who really you know, they had some research
at Methodist Hospital in Houston where he was doing the
initial research with Aloke Madon about operator syndrome, and they
(09:21):
were saying that the blast wave exposure really was causing
even more damage because the depths that could penetrate into the.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Gray matter, right.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
And there were several instances where we had team guys
that killed themselves and then in their note that said hey,
please take the brain, and you know, they took it
to Niko and they saw the profound, profound impact from
you know, mostly through breaching exposure. Right, these guys that
were at Tier one units doing a hundred hundred explosive
(09:56):
breaches in a week, you know for training.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
You're like, oh my.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
God, this is this is compounding and then leading to
the other things. So you know, to see you guys
focus on the thing that I believe is one of
the primary sources of what the first part of the
decline right are are these traumatic brain injuries. And then
I you know, the other aspect obviously is kind of
(10:23):
the endocrine dysfunction that that takes place too, but we
can talk about that a little bit later. So when
you guys saw the positive impacts, you saw those kind
of basic score ratings improve.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Was it was?
Speaker 3 (10:42):
It was it one of those like, oh, okay, now
we have some real finite data that then we can
take us to the next iteration of exploration or the
next iteration of research. Is that what happened? Or have
you always just been had a focal point of what
(11:04):
you imagined? Were those those those hard data points that
you were going to be able to find those in
these particular types of studies.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Now I think that there's there's two things. So from
our perspective, none of the results in terms of you know,
improvements of PTSD scores, depression, anxiety, none of that was surprising.
That's what we witness day in and day out, right,
So you know, we we knew that people were sharing
(11:37):
those kinds of subjective reports. I think the impact of
the study really was political because it was the first
time where somebody validated what we you know, what's like
a Monday afternoon for us, like and that turned into
a title wave of support and this like outpouring of
(11:59):
now research funding and so I mean, that's a that's
a whole other topic. But what happened in addition to
that for us, and where we really had the opportunity
to learn, was that when the guys are going through
the study, they were also doing fMRIs before after in
a month out from the treatment, and so the first
(12:22):
paper didn't analyze the fMRI data, but no one was
talking aboutter to conferences, you know, we were you know,
talking with them about it and learning what it was.
And now there's papers that are out that sort of
discuss what was happening. And early on even you know,
he was talking about it wasn't even just the fact
that there was changes deep in the gray matter, is
(12:44):
that there was structural changes in the white matter of
the brain, which it doesn't normally happen when you take
a drub orally, it was a remarkable change over a
very short time span. And you know, one of the
things that they said correlated best with the improvements in
(13:07):
the PTSD scores, which were remarkable, right like there was
a a some odd percent drop to the point where
you know, people were not would not be diagnosed with
PTSD if they'd you know, done the questionnaire going going
out of the study. So you know, what what they
(13:28):
said was the best correlation physiologically with those outcomes was
changes in the structure of the insular or cortex, which
is like a part of the brain that's involved in interoception,
which means basically the ability to interpret signals that are
coming from inside of the body, another kind of sense
(13:51):
organ on most and so so those are the kinds
of things that sort of grounded what we were seeing
in a new language, and that's given us a lot
of traction in terms of being able to imagine how
we can help other people going forward. That's where we
had the opportunity to learn the most.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
That's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Yeah, for me, I think a big wake up call
was when I began to understand what the insula does
and it's the critical nature of between that parasympathetic and sympathetic.
You know, what is it the interaction that's so pivotal
about our systems and how we function, you know, because
I believe, you know, the greatest impact in all of
(14:35):
these places, whether it's first responders or people that experience
years and years of trauma, addicts and the hell they
go through. Now with Parkinson's, you're incorporating that, and you know,
there's you know, this this physiological impact on your systems.
(14:56):
That's all, you know, regulated by your nervous system. And
it almost feels like there's a fragility of the nervous
system that once it seems to go beyond and that
really what that hyper alostatic load, where it just it collapses.
(15:16):
It almost feels like it's almost impossible to rehabilitate it, right,
to get back to some type of what a normative homeostasis,
right where you can function every day, where all of
those other aspects of your life don't feel like, you know,
a thousand times the weight that they actually are. Right,
(15:38):
you have that subjective perception becomes much more tolerable than
on the other side of it. And so you know,
it's remarkable to me that you guys had been witnessing
this for as long as you had, you said, ten
years prior before the first VET. Can you just describe,
(16:00):
you know, for you, obviously you get you, you are attracted,
and you tell a great story about your own experience
with psychedelics and how that triggered your curiosity, and that's
a really beautiful story. But to take you know, curiosity
towards your own sense of healing and then to project
it into a greater context, which ultimately became ambientized, that's
(16:23):
a huge endeavor. Can you describe the experiences that continued
to provoke you going deeper and deeper and deeper. What
were you witnessing in these these early years.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Yeah, I mean in the early years it was again
a lot of people coming off of different substances, heroine
and you know, crystal math, alcohol, holy substance here. So
you know, those transformations were dramatic and humbling to be around.
(17:00):
And at the same time, you know, you recognize that
what's actually happening isn't that somebody's behavior is being sterilized
like it was infected and they took an antibiotic. They're
being given an opportunity to be able to make changes
(17:20):
where some behavior had become automatic, and that's what an
addiction is. I think when we think about an addiction,
it's not just habituation to a substance. It's like the
point when you can't not do the thing, Like if
(17:41):
the thing comes into your mind, you're already doing it.
There's no way that you can reroute that behavior, even
when that behavior starts to cause harm. It's like a
problem with learning, and I think the challenges for the
brain and our interface with the nervous system is that
(18:05):
we try to automate as much as we can, because
consciousness is a really narrow band, like you can only
process so much information, so you have to Learning is
the process of how do you sort of structure behaviors
into routines and patterns that you can mimic. That's how
you get as a as a seal to be able
(18:27):
to do incredible things is by training it into muscle memory.
And so I think that one of them.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
The iterable, right, the forced iteration of consequential behavior that
results in a in a a in an imperative outcome
something like that, right.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yes, So I think one of the problems, like you
know we were seeing with guys was obviously the boss exposure. Obviously,
there is an emotional and psychological and spiritual weights, you
know that the rest of us maybe don't understand, and
maybe that's part of it is that we don't understand,
(19:07):
you know, it's but I think part of it was
also for a lot of guys the fact that they
were now longer doing that thing that they'd been trained
so powerfully to do and that they were great at,
you know, And so I think part of the problem
was bunched up in all of this was the it
(19:30):
made it harder to transition or like relearn another pattern
that would be satisfying enough, you know, where you could
derive meaning and find some balance, because they's such an
extreme right, And I think that that parallel is actually
pretty well with why we would see the same types
(19:51):
of symptoms in athletes who hadn't had anything traumatic happened
to them. I mean, they maybe lost some games or
didn't win a champion and ship, but even guys who
are extremely successful, we're having trouble getting up off the
couch afterwards, and we're blowing up at their kids. And
so it was it was the exact same story and
(20:14):
the same factors were in play regarding that massive life
transition and the physiological, you know, neurological damage that potentially
made that transition a lot harder. So I think what
what we saw I began doing in the early days,
you know, we attributed at first to it's, you know,
(20:37):
it's just helping with opioid withdrawal, and now like working
with veterans and with other people, it's it's become a
lot more clear that what it seems to be doing
is just making a really difficult transition a lot easier.
It's why, you know, somebody you can go back and
use heroin afterwards, but you had a choice where you
(20:58):
didn't have a choice before. Work gives it back this
sense of agency where maybe you didn't feel like you
have that.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
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(21:26):
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(21:47):
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Speaker 2 (21:54):
For me. It's my morning coffee.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
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Speaker 2 (22:15):
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Speaker 3 (22:16):
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(22:37):
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Speaker 2 (22:39):
Well you you you.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
It's it's funny man in the in the promotional video,
which is brilliant, by the way, on your site, there's
a quote that I that I took that just hit
me like a sledgehammer in my face. Right, And hope
isn't something found, it's awakened by the right conditions.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
And and as you extrapolate condition right, the condition of identity,
the condition of placement of the identity right in the
in the associative terms of of whatever your group or
you know that the purpose behind the group, whether it's
your family, and you know, and how do you take
(23:24):
that thing of hunting down terrorists right and then replace
it with making sure your kids good at t ball? Right?
And and because the right those conditions are so the
frame of reference for that consciously are so juxtapose that
(23:45):
I think most human beings, regardless of you know, their willpower,
the level of the wearpower, many of these guys are
off the charts.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
And you know the guys that I know that have
come down and you've.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Saved their lives, these are superhuman potentially right and in
the feats before, which makes it so I think striking
that they struggle so much to get to this, to
reverse the the what the credence and the testimony affiliated
with the inversion right to say, oh, I controlled the shift,
(24:17):
I am aware of the shift and can I can
re establish the importance of this to replace this, right,
But you can't do that if there's these profound interruptions, right,
if these or or not even interruptions.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
I wonder what word you would use.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
What is the thing that impedes that based on what
you've seen, the ability to flow to restructure that subjective perception.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, I don't, I don't know, but I do think
it's interesting how much energy goes into the identity construction
and when you're becoming a seal, like the ritual, the
there's a lot built into that, whether it's done consciously
(25:10):
or circumstantially, that is about producing that identity and that
camaraderie in addition to the skill and where I think
we you know, I think it's not just the fact
that the military doesn't have a great formula for how
(25:31):
to help with the transition out. It's that outside of
the military, we don't have a lot of opportunities for
that kind of right of passage or like marking major
transitional events, so we you know, wrestle through it on
our own, with the help of our spouse or whatever.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Like. You know.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
It's the same reason why I think, isn't it in general,
people die at a higher rate when they retire. It
doesn't matter if they were sitting at a desk their
entire light, but just the shift and identity and meaning
and how you place yourself in your purpose as such
a powerful effect. So I don't I think that we
(26:18):
lack in general the structure and the narrative about how
to facilitate that transition. And you know, in the military
it's been replaced by you know, cognitive behavioral therapy for
PTSD or something like that. That's the way that that
gets framed.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Right, That's a beautiful description of it, it really is.
And you know, I remember one of the first studies
I found that I felt like was relative to this
type of thing. There was a study about psilocybin and
they gave hero doses to elderly patients, geriatric elderly patients
(27:00):
who had terminal cancer and the positive impacts for how
they began to process the transition to death right and.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
The alleviated weight of the.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Anxiety the depression that was affiliated, and the numbers were
pretty were pretty high, if I if I remember correctly,
they were in the high seventies or eighties in terms
of the positive impacts and so as I you know, obviously,
as this industry becomes I don't know, targeted, let's say
(27:42):
targeted right for.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Mass corporations.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
I just saw Eli Lilly paid some guy three hundred
and twenty million for his company and that was doing
psychedelic research or whatever, you know.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
And as you begin to see this unfold, as.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
It it's becoming more of a business, how.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Are you guys protecting.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
The ritual right? Because I know there's a strong traditional
legacy of what this ritual actually is in the medicine itself,
and you've gone through multiple accreditations the wrong word for
the tribes that are allowing you to be affiliated with
the ritual of it. But there's this kind of outside influence.
(28:34):
How are you guys at Ambio Life Sciences protecting the
integrity of the ritual and then but also at the
same time seeking the funding and growing and being able
to deliver.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
The type of numbers.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
And maybe you could talk about how those numbers in
the beginning versus what the numbers are now that you're servicing.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Sure, well, I think we have this benefit of having
come out of the long, slow period of development before this,
and so I you know, I think about it, like
it's useful to have a personal experience with psychiolics, especially
(29:18):
if you're going to work with them, but that doesn't
provide you with clinical experience. Like the clinical experience is
something that you gain after seeing many people go through
it and you start to see the range of different outcomes.
You start to be able to, you know, one of
the questions that we have to answer most often for
(29:41):
people going through is this normal? How long does this
last you? So you start to be able to understand
and be able to trust your own answer like, yeah,
this is this is normal, and this is you know
what you can kind of expect, you know. I think
the way that we do things is set up around that.
It's set up around this very subjective, qualitative, kind of
(30:09):
experiential data that we have from working with for a
long time. If we've developed our methodology by looking at
the scientific papers that were out so far, it would
be not appropriate kind of to facilitate the deep, intense
personal journey that people are going through. So we kind
(30:31):
of have this benefit of the way that we do
things has grown over time really organically, I would say that,
and that's one of the things that when you know,
my business partners, and I came together with Ambio was
that we wanted to try to preserve that. We kind
of knew that, you know, the veteran community coming to
the table, things were going to grow really rapidly, and
(30:56):
so we knew that, you know, if things are going
to go at scale, you know, how can we preserve
some of this knowledge about you know, how things can
be done in a good, honorable way. And you know,
the way that we think about it is treatment has
multiple meanings. One of them is, you know, sometimes a
(31:19):
professional looking at you objectively and trying to find which
levers to pull or whatever they're doing. And the other
part of how you treat somebody is subjective, and it
just has to do with how you retain their dignity
and their agency in the process of interacting with them.
(31:40):
And so that's a lot of what it is. I think,
you know, psychedelics make us very sensitive to how we're treated,
you know, in addition to the beautiful potential neural regenerative
effects that I've that's a great way.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
To put it. It really is.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
I saw recently you guys have opened up a facility
in Malta. Is is is what's the intention behind choosing
Malta And do you expect there'll be a similar reaction
potentially from former Ukrainian soldiers or Russian soldiers or IDF soldiers.
(32:25):
I know they're going through a profound negative impact as
a result of you know, three years of sustaining four
years of sustained combat, but also just addicts in the
area and other people are what's what's the rationale behind
opening in Malta and expanding inter internationally.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah, so I mean to answer your question from before.
When Ambio opened we had room for four guys a week.
Now we're up to ten times that. Wow, you know,
over over forty people going through a week. And so
(33:07):
in part, you know, growing into Malta was just responding
to the demand that we had at first from the
United States. We knew that, you know, the places in
Mexico were filling up, and you know, we were in
touch with some excellent doctors from Malta who were really
(33:27):
motivated to to do this, and so it was a
natural partnership. But it also was you know, to try
to understand to develop the competency to grow because that's
what we think, you know, the world is going to
demand at a vibe gain is that it be offered
at scale. So this was our opportunity to try to
(33:49):
learn how does it what does it look like to
be able to to grow and to expand and to
operationalize what we're doing while retaining that strong like human
or so that's what it was. And in Malta has
a very similar kind of legal status for I begin
and five me O d M T as as Mexico does.
(34:13):
And uh so it's also its beautiful. It's spent two
weeks there and there's a lot of really old megalithic sites.
There was an amazing country to tour around that I
didn't know much about. But I don't know exactly what
it is or you know, if it's maybe just uh
(34:36):
just creature comforts. But for some reason, I begin likes
warmer climates. You know, I don't. We didn't. We didn't
on purpose. It didn't go to like Norway or something
like that yet, but you know, it's nice to be
it's nice to be warm. In Malta stays like that
all year.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yeah, that's that's awesome.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
I begin likes warmer clients, or is it what emerges
out of I beginning to like warmer clients. Oh man,
that's that's interesting. Well, I think it's it's exciting. I mean, obviously,
you know, I'm sure you know you've you've got some
really strong people behind it. You know, I did a
(35:17):
I used to have a really big podcast with Marcus
Latrelle for many years, and that's when we first started
hearing about it back in sixteen and seventeen. And you know,
he had some friends Joe Rogan was talking about, you know,
psychedelics and the ayahuasca exploit, you know, phenomenon of seventeen
and eighteen and what was going on, and and you know,
(35:41):
I was really happy to see Morgan and Governor Perry
Secretary Perry get behind it, you know, to kind of
give it some of that that heightened awareness at scale
in particular, you know, I mean Governor Or I keep
calling him God, that's how I remember him as Governor Perry,
but Ford be Kaeen, Secretary Perry, but you know, Secretary Perry,
(36:03):
you know, being kind of that old school boomer mentality
and then crossing over and and and recognizing the impact.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Of it of it.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
And now that the President has signed an executive order,
it was great to see that.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Does that put uh.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Any unwonted scrutiny or our people uh trying to do
you think that the space of development might become a
little proselytized or impacted in a negative way at all?
Are there do you imagine there'll be programs that pop up?
(36:43):
I just saw one pop up in Thailand, I saw,
you know, I'm seeing them all pop up all over
the place.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
And is there a worry that that the the.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Credibility might deteriorate as a result of maybe some of
these clinics popping up that don't have the type of
you know, mattical oversight, because you know, I mean obviously
there are heart conditions that are affiliated potentially with it,
And but is there is there a worry that it
might become polluted in some way?
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Well, I mean yeah, you said it like there's there's
no biological free lunch. Like something that's going to have
that deep of a profound of a you know, impact
on the nervous system has systemic effects, and so you
know there's risk associated with that, especially when you start
delivering it to a lot of people in that respect,
(37:38):
you know, for what it does, I think I begin
as relatively safe I think there's more and more that
we're learning about how to mitigate them, and it's become
a lot safer. So I think that's that's sort of
the first risk that you think of, like when people
are coming into the space, is you know, how well
equipped are they to be able to manage the medical risk.
(38:01):
There's been fatalities. There was a recent paper that showed,
you know, historically there were fatalities for a variety of reasons.
More recently, you know, since we published clinical guidelines for
how to mitigate those risks, the fatalities that have occurred
(38:24):
since then are exclusively, at least in the clinics who
participated in the study, were only related to people who
were using fentanyl. So anyways, that to say, there's definitely
still risks, and that would be the question, you know,
would be how well equipped our new you know, new
(38:46):
entrants into the clinical space. But as far as, like
in general the effects, I think it's definitely brought a
lot of attention and a lot of increased the demand
for iby game. So that's what people are responding to,
and my my hope is that over time it also
(39:06):
just gives us a lot of opportunities to continue to
learn more, like to be able to work with more
research partners. It's become very interesting for a lot of
you know, really well equipped researchers all of a sudden.
So I think we're going to start to gain massively
from that. So I hope you know net net positive.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah, me too, I really do.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
I I I I hope that, like you said, the
sacredness of the medicine, Like, I think that's a major
component of this. And I really I hope as as
you know, big, bigger money gets involved.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
And more, you know, more.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
I don't know, sig players, whether it's the US government
or foreign governments or big farm or whatever. I think
there's I really hope that that that portion of it,
you know, the care that you guys are giving in
the midst of these transformational experience, you know, and staying
true to that, the ritual of it too, it stays intact.
(40:22):
I think that's a major part of the experience from
what from what all my friends have told me. For sure,
Can you talk a little bit about that about the
relationship to uh, the plant, where it comes from the culture,
because it seems like that that's a very important aspect
(40:42):
for you uh, and this medicine.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yes, I mean it's been it's been important to me,
I think just as somebody who's interested in the experience
and wants to know more about how it works. You know,
the relationship with traditional practitioners in Gabon has been extremely
rich because even though it's a different worldview, different language.
(41:09):
I mean not not only you know that people are
speaking French, but just like a completely different language about
how to think about I've a gain or eboga and
what it is and what it's doing. I think all
it does is open up new ways of looking at
it and understanding it and its potential. And so it's
(41:31):
been yeah, massively influential for me. And I think what's
been really encouraging is the openness in Gabon to have
partnerships and dialogue. You know, Ambio is the first clinic
(41:53):
that we can say it's compliant with the Nagoya Protocol
and the Nigoya protocols a un tree that's designed to
protect access and benefits for people who have traditional knowledge
about genetic resources that are from a specific place. So
(42:13):
Ibogo from Gabon fits fits neatly into that. And the
idea is that you know, in terms of access. You know,
the NEGOA Protocol is supposed to help to you know,
we're all supposed to work together to try to ensure
that traditional practitioners continue to have access to a bog,
they carry out the traditions as before, and that they're
somehow participating in the benefits, not just like you know,
(42:38):
fair trade, we buy it for a good price, but
like there's actually some downstream benefits that go back to people.
And so some of that's monetary and Ambio does that
share monetary benefits, but there's also non monetary benefits. So
that where there's ways that we're exploring trying to work
(42:58):
with groups and Gabon with like doctors who want to
be able to provide addiction recovery care in their country.
And you know that knowledge about how to work with
drug interactions or how to get people off of tramat
all or the other opiates that are you know, ending
up on the shores of Libreville doesn't exist in the traditions,
(43:22):
and so that's another way that we can provide benefits
back to you know, Gabon into the community there. So
we're we're always looking for ways to partner on that
and try to make sure that the medicine that we
use is those to the highest standard possible and available
(43:42):
for you know, ethical sourcing, you know, having low impact
on traditional practitioners, unless that's going to be a positive one.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
That's interesting.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
You know one of the things I think is beginning
to kind of perme its way, permeate its way into
the social consciousness of people who what are interested in philosophy, theology, right, metaphysics, whatever,
You're trying to figure out who am i and why
(44:16):
am I here? Right? This this concept right of of
the bicameraal mind, which is included into your new book
that's coming out. Maybe we can pivot towards this a
little bit. And one of the things that really hit
(44:36):
me was, you know, the way you describe subconscious problem solving,
the way you talk about open up, opening up, what
the reconstruction of flow, the flow state, you know, all
of these ideas that are also kind of interesting related
(44:58):
to a gentleman who I I had no idea until
I started doing the research on your book. This guy
Jillian Jane Jane's with this idea of the big by
camera mind. Can you can you describe first off, you
know what that means, and then how it relates to
the book and what you're trying to accomplish by uh,
(45:21):
the release of the book coming up here next month.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Sure. So the by Camera Mind was Gillian Jane's theory
about where consciousness originated, and you know, maybe the more
controversial part of his theories of the timing. He was
essentially trying to narrow and give better shape to what
(45:48):
we're talking about when we're saying consciousness, and so he was,
you know, trying to narrow it down to like, when
we're talking about consciousness, we're talking about this ability to
be able to sort of model a problem potentially in
like a three dimensional type space and then play out
potential solutions in that kind of model. And that to
(46:10):
the extent that we can do that, we can you know,
avoid a lot of misturns. And so when we get
presented with something novel, it's the ability to be able
to understand the potential forces that would act upon that
situation and all that. So the degree to which we're
able to map out reality is you know, essentially the
(46:33):
underlies you know, technology. But he's saying our cognitive process
as well. So before that, before we developed this this
form of consciousness. He was saying that our ancient ancestors
relied on what he called the bicameral mind, which was
essentially that the mind had two distinct parallel parts. One
(46:58):
was sort of embedded into you know, they were aware,
they were able to reason and had logic. It maybe
not the same kind of you know, frontal problem solving
mechanisms we had, but they were able to follow their
habits and customs and traditions and you know, the savoir faire,
(47:20):
like the know how of you know, how to go
about things day to day. But when presented with a
novel situation. You know, he's drawing this from literature as well.
But he was saying that they would often hear a
voice that would speak to them and provide them with
a solution rather than mapping it out right. So it
(47:41):
was something that happened in this other part of the mind,
so the chamber of the mind. And so he he
basically is saying that that's another part of the problem
solving apparatus, and it would give like the best guess
about what to do in the situation. And so at
different times that voice would be attributed to our ancestors
(48:05):
or to you know, kings or gods or spirits or
to God you know, and you know, you know, I
guess over history saying like the people who developed that
type of problem solving the best kind of one, the
story about what the voice was or who the voice was,
(48:27):
or who belonged to and anyways. The reason why that
was interesting was because it gave me a language to
try to describe something that was really common in the
IBE Gain experience, which was that people often feel like
they're interacting with something that's not too too alien from them,
(48:47):
like it feels in some way deeply familiar. A lot
of people even describe it like it is a part
of themselves, you know, and and that feeling of like
that the the sperience is structured linguistically so common that
even when people are just describing their experience, they often
(49:10):
say it like it showed me or you know, it
told me, just sort of like embedded in the syntax
of like how you describe what this is is something like,
I guess the feeling is very distinct that you're aware
of who you are, where you are in the room,
even your normal thought process is there, but there's something
(49:30):
else that's being presented, and there's a logic and a
language to that, right, And so anyways, I was just
at first trying to describe something that I found really
interesting because the way that scientific papers would describe the
experience didn't really speak much about what people were actually
(49:51):
saying to me every day. So, you know, it was
just trying to clarify some of the other elements you know,
that get looked. And I think, what potentially the value
of this, the value of having a language about this,
is that this is our subjectivity. This is like this
(50:16):
experience of being a subject and being a participant in
this and having to navigate through. It's not something that
you find some finality with, like a language is something
that you're embedded in that you learn to speak, that
you get better at. Like if this is if this
is how our minds are are formed, you know, what
(50:37):
it's describing is our ability to become strong subjects in
our own life, you know, And I think too much
of the time psychiatry and the way that we try
to medicalize behavior and thought, it makes us into objects,
(50:59):
you know, even the way that we tried to manage
things with kind of cognitive behavioral therapy or like programming.
Over and over we sort of tried to, you know,
the way that we try to measure everything. It sort
of places us into this role of being almost objectified.
But the mind resists that, and I think that's one
(51:22):
of the things that bubbles to the surface. So like
as like you when you when people take eye again,
I think that's what comes up. And one of the
maybe contrasts to this is there was an interesting study
that came out recently that showed that when people were
getting diagnosed with depression and prescribed SSRI medications, that there
(51:44):
was a drop in this sense of personal agency, which
makes sense. You know, it's somebody else who's sort of
just trying to name what's happening for you, you know.
And I think, what, I don't know how to how
to structure this study. I'd love to talk to somebody
if they're interested. But I think by going to the
(52:07):
IBE gaining experience, the way that people come to it,
the way that people prepare for it, the way that
it puts you into this deeply subjective experience, I think
it's the opposite. I think it sort of forces you
to engage with things in a very deeply experiential way.
(52:28):
And to reason through things in a way that forces
you back into that subjectivity. It makes the names that
people have given to us from outside sort of not
so useful because it brings so much other data and
nuance and novelty to the surface that doesn't fit into
(52:51):
that We have to we have to ration rationalize our
way through it on our own.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
So that for me is the most fascinating aspect of
what you're doing, right, I mean, you know, as a
person that's really trying to understand those aspects of the
human condition that make us human for the last thirty
years of my life, you know, like that's that's the
(53:18):
hard thing, right, what makes us human? And then what
aspect of that conscious awareness of us in our human state, right,
which makes it, like you said, through that metacognition piece,
like I can generate who I want to be in
ten years and put myself on a path, and that
(53:41):
path if I'm not operating as a tool or a
function of someone else's influence, but my own deep rooted influence,
and that influence that comes from what the genetic makeup
of twenty five generations, right, the rituals of the cultural dynamics.
(54:02):
I've been integrated into right all of these you know,
the the the millions of data points that I've have
crossed across my subconscious since my birth or my my
what my my recollective birth right.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
You know, it's it's.
Speaker 3 (54:22):
Man, all of that, and the fact that you're attempting
to tackle that is really awesome. Like I cannot wait
to read your book, man, because I think there's there's
no greater endeavor, and it's been the principal endeavor for
any any I think, genuine human being that really wants
(54:45):
to try and understand who I am and why am
I here? You know, I think this I be a
gain in psychedelics as a whole. In the right environment
and the right circumstances can open up those vehicles, those
those channels to be able to access that subjectivity that
you talk about. And it seems like ibagain does it
(55:07):
on a level unlike all the rest. So it's really
exciting for your book. When when you were writing the book,
did you did you expect it would take you in
the direction it did or did you learn something new
(55:28):
about how you were perceiving what you've witnessed And then your.
Speaker 2 (55:33):
Own journey as a uh what uh what do you
call it? When you're the.
Speaker 3 (55:42):
You're the steward of this medicine, right, that's transformational. It
helps human beings in those transitions, and so you're kind
of the steward for this this new direction in people's lives.
What kind of the dynamics of that process for you?
Speaker 1 (56:03):
Like, yeah, I mean I think when I started writing,
I knew some of the broad strokes. You know, it
was already twelve years in, so I had some ideas,
but you know, sitting down and having to put things
to words that are supposed to end up in more
(56:23):
or less in a logical sequence, you know, forces you
to put some structure to what you think and forces
you to you know, interrogate some of your own ideas,
and so there was a lot of that, and I
think mostly what it's done is to help to provide
(56:46):
a language for some of the things that we were
instinctually moving towards. And that's really what I was hoping was,
you know, as ambio grows, how do we communicate years
of experience or fifteen years of experience to the staff
that are starting, you know, as it moves into the
(57:08):
rest of the world and we build partnerships or want
to work with different institutions or researchers, like how can
we you know, have a basis of like where are
we coming from with this? How have we been thinking
about it?
Speaker 2 (57:22):
You know?
Speaker 1 (57:22):
Like I know that there's there's a couple of researchers
who have tried to develop I've again like molecules, hoping
I think, to maybe tweak the molecule to remove some
of the cardiac risk or in some cases even that
subjective experience that comes up. And my thinking, and you know,
(57:45):
from a lot of conversations that have had with people,
is like, I begain so complex the way that the
molecules formed, it's it's like an extremely interesting shape. The
way that it just fits into so many receptors or
with so many different things at once, it's like extremely efficient.
(58:08):
So be really hard. We don't really understand how it
works now, so it's going to be very hard to
tweak it to do what we want and control it,
you know what I mean. So my thinking was always like,
if it's doing this with traumatic brain injury, or it's
doing this with you know, opioid addiction, why is it
(58:33):
also doing this? Why is it also making it making
us go through such a challenging internal journey because by
all accounts, it is why is it forcing us to,
you know, do this kind of self psychoanalysis at the
same time that it's doing this innerological thing like why
(58:53):
is why are all of these things aspects of the
same healing process? And yeah, I don't think we can.
I don't think we can ignore that. So that's all
it is. It's trying to I begain It's very difficult
to you know, wrap your head around because it touches
so many different things. And so that's what it was
(59:14):
was to try to say, here's the whole package. Some
parts of this are very inconvenient and are not going
to fit easily into it a box. But if we're
going to try to scale a service around this or
integrate this into a healthcare system, we have to take
it as a whole for what it does is.
Speaker 2 (59:32):
Well.
Speaker 3 (59:35):
I again, I just all I can do is just
say thank you as many times since I can, and
just continue praying for everything that you guys are doing.
I feel so blessed that, you know, so many people
are experiencing the relief. I think there's a consciousness that's
(59:59):
changing in our society that's a derivative of this, and
it's profoundly positive in a time where we need this
type of positivity. And you know, you and your your
staff and all the people that are assisting in the
(01:00:19):
consortium of people who really care about other human beings
are making a huge impact. And I just feel really
grateful that you would come and spend some time with
me in my audience. And I just I look forward
to your book coming out, and I just I can't
thank you enough.
Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
Jonathan, Right, Well, thank you, brothers. I appreciate the support.
And yeah, like I was saying before, it's just it's
been amazing to witness, you know what, the you know,
the community that's that's come to this and looking for help,
and and just to see that day after day. It's
still you know, it's still how people in such a
(01:01:00):
profound way. It's really you know, humbling to be able
to be at the side of that and witness it
so awesome.
Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
How can people contribute support and help you guys in your.
Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
Mission, Well, you know, follow us online. You know, you
can find Ambio at Ambio dot life and there's all
the social media stuff if you want to. You know,
we do regular updates about the research and everything that's
going on, so you can find us there. And if
you're interested in the book, my name Jonathandickinson. Dot ca
(01:01:38):
A is a website where you can go and purchase it.
You can even pre order. It comes out September eighth,
and I hope you like it. I hope you share
it with people who might benefit from knowing more about
it as well.
Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
Awesome, Jonathan, thank you so much. God bless you.
Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Thanks David, God bless y
What we saw I began doing in the early days.
You know, we attributed at first to it's you know,
it's just helping with opioid withdrawal, and now like working
with veterans and with other people, it's it's become a
lot more clear. What it seems to be doing is
just making a really difficult transition a lot easier, gives
(00:23):
it back to this sense of agency where maybe you
didn't feel like you have that.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome back to the David Rutherford Show. Today's show is
a show that has.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
A deeper meaning than almost any other show I've ever
done in the history of me being doing shows all
the way back to twenty thirteen. And the reason for
that is because kind of the most devastating impact of
my service has not been the impact that it's had
on me physiologically or emotionally, but it's more so the
(00:59):
impact it's had on my friends and the result of
that impact leading to a pandemic of suicides that has
taken place. And so for the last fifteen years of
my life, I've been trying to figure out how to
stem the tide of these suicides, to address these root
(01:20):
cause issues that are impacting my brothers, my operator friends
in ways that are destroying their lives, their families' lives,
their children's lives, and the lives of everybody who loves them.
And so today I'm honored to welcome a gentleman that
is on the front line of trying to figure out
(01:43):
how to stem the tides of those suicides. A person
that has dedicated his life not only to serving veterans,
to serving all types of human beings that are in
various forms of struggles in their life, trying to bring
them to a place where they can regain dignity through
a profound sense of meaning and hope through his organization
(02:07):
that he co founded with Trevor Miller and jose And
Zunza called Ambio Life Sciences. So I'd like to welcome
mister Jonathan Dickinson to the show. Jonathan welcome.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Thanks so much, David, it's an honor to be here.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I appreciate that. Well.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
I mean, obviously, there's, as I said before, there's a
bunch of different paths that we can go down. But
the one that I think really had the most significant
impact on me was the research paper that you and
your colleagues published in Nature medicine journal called Magnesium I
(02:47):
Begain Therapy and Veterans with Traumatic Brain injuries. For me,
it was the first time I read a journal paper
that really mapped out the clare of how profound the
impacts are from blast wave exposure toward to all the
(03:07):
other different.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Aspects of you.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
You know, your endocrine system, your mood, your behavioral states.
So can you just describe why, how you came up
with the idea for the paper and then what you
learned as a result as it relates to the various scores,
whether it was the DSM five PSD protocol, the Montgomery
(03:35):
ASPERG Dispression scale rating, the Hamilton Anxiety rating, and then others,
and what this mystic protocol looks like in what it
is in the research.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Sure, So I mean credit where credits due. This was
a study that was run out of Stanford University's Brain
Stimulation Lab and the principal investigator was doctor Nolan Williams.
The late stock for Nolan Williams, there's a not for
profit that's incorporated that was a major mover in bringing
(04:08):
this to Nolan's attention and recruiting for the study and
you know, making it happen so Vetts has been providing
grants for seals and other special operators to come down
for IBAN treatment for years, and this study was the
first time where we got a very good look at
(04:30):
what's going on behind the scenes. We'd been working like
you know, you named Trevor Miller and jose and Zunza,
the co founders. Each of us had been working with
IBAN for over a decade before we started seeing any
veterans come down, especially in these kind of numbers. So
we had been working with people primarily who were coming
(04:52):
off of heroin or other opiates, increasingly fence and all
that kind of thing. So we saw a lot of
big changes in people's health afterwards, but most of the
time we would associate that with the fact that they
were no longer using the drugs taking. It was a
little bit hard to tease out what was happening. And
this was the first study where there was an extreme, concrete,
(05:16):
unignorable signal that something was happening structurally to the brain,
to the physiology of the brain, not only to receptor
connections and whatever. But but yeah, that's that was what
was remarkable. And so we saw people going in with
you know, this signature wound of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts,
(05:39):
which was minor traumatic brain injury, meaning that they had
chronic exposure to blasts or other things that would be
moving the brain relative to the skull and creating pressure
on neural tissue and you know, over time that created
a very specific kind of powder learn that researchers were
(06:02):
starting to identify but didn't know what to do anything about.
So the study was showing that, you know, not only
was there something happening psychologically for people going through but
this underlying neural damage was being addressed. So that the
paper that you mentioned was the first publication of several
(06:24):
and you know, it did actually only look at some
of the subjective measurements like the symptoms of post traumatic
stress disorder, depression, anxiety, disability. And what's interesting about that,
what's been challenging about it is that it shows a
great improvement, but it also maybe, like from my point
(06:51):
of view, we're looking at PTSD like it's a diagnosis
that could screen someone in for treatment, and unfortunately, you know,
the actual problem that guys were dealing with with minor
traumatic brain injury, which shares so many symptoms with PTSD.
(07:12):
So when somebody comes in and says, now, does ibogain
post traumatic stress disorder? I have no idea because we
don't know what PTSD is for other populations, you know
what I mean. Can I think we can say that
we've got a really clear signal that I Begain's treating
this kind of traumatic brain injury. But for PTSD, we're
(07:35):
still dealing in the realm of very subjective measurements. In
other areas of medicine, we've kind of moved away from
those kind of symptomatic diagnoses and we kind of look
for like the holy grail as we were looking for
biomarkers that we're able to identify a physiological illness and
(07:59):
predict if physiological improvement. And so I think that's what
was so remarkable about this was that it gave us
something to focus in on, and it was that neurological damage. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
I I because I remember, you know, when you know,
the early two thousands when CTE there was the great
documentary about CTE in professional football. You know, you had
the Junior Seau incident, you know, and so it was like, oh,
here is this, you know, incredibly damaging after effects of
(08:36):
you know, a lifetime of you know, subdermal humatomas from
deceleration injuries at speed, right, you know, and like they
started correlating it and then you know, here you go,
and then the after effects after they present, you know,
ten years out of the league, you start to see
it and they go back and they were they seeing it.
(08:57):
And then I remember, like the guy started killing themselves
from our group, and I was like, there's got to
be some type of correlation to that. And it was
doctor free who really you know, they had some research
at Methodist Hospital in Houston where he was doing the
initial research with Aloke Madon about operator syndrome, and they
(09:21):
were saying that the blast wave exposure really was causing
even more damage because the depths that could penetrate into the.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Gray matter, right.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
And there were several instances where we had team guys
that killed themselves and then in their note that said hey,
please take the brain, and you know, they took it
to Niko and they saw the profound, profound impact from
you know, mostly through breaching exposure. Right, these guys that
were at Tier one units doing a hundred hundred explosive
(09:56):
breaches in a week, you know for training.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
You're like, oh my.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
God, this is this is compounding and then leading to
the other things. So you know, to see you guys
focus on the thing that I believe is one of
the primary sources of what the first part of the
decline right are are these traumatic brain injuries. And then
I you know, the other aspect obviously is kind of
(10:23):
the endocrine dysfunction that that takes place too, but we
can talk about that a little bit later. So when
you guys saw the positive impacts, you saw those kind
of basic score ratings improve.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Was it was?
Speaker 3 (10:42):
It was it one of those like, oh, okay, now
we have some real finite data that then we can
take us to the next iteration of exploration or the
next iteration of research. Is that what happened? Or have
you always just been had a focal point of what
(11:04):
you imagined? Were those those those hard data points that
you were going to be able to find those in
these particular types of studies.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Now I think that there's there's two things. So from
our perspective, none of the results in terms of you know,
improvements of PTSD scores, depression, anxiety, none of that was surprising.
That's what we witness day in and day out, right,
So you know, we we knew that people were sharing
(11:37):
those kinds of subjective reports. I think the impact of
the study really was political because it was the first
time where somebody validated what we you know, what's like
a Monday afternoon for us, like and that turned into
a title wave of support and this like outpouring of
(11:59):
now research funding and so I mean, that's a that's
a whole other topic. But what happened in addition to
that for us, and where we really had the opportunity
to learn, was that when the guys are going through
the study, they were also doing fMRIs before after in
a month out from the treatment, and so the first
(12:22):
paper didn't analyze the fMRI data, but no one was
talking aboutter to conferences, you know, we were you know,
talking with them about it and learning what it was.
And now there's papers that are out that sort of
discuss what was happening. And early on even you know,
he was talking about it wasn't even just the fact
that there was changes deep in the gray matter, is
(12:44):
that there was structural changes in the white matter of
the brain, which it doesn't normally happen when you take
a drub orally, it was a remarkable change over a
very short time span. And you know, one of the
things that they said correlated best with the improvements in
(13:07):
the PTSD scores, which were remarkable, right like there was
a a some odd percent drop to the point where
you know, people were not would not be diagnosed with
PTSD if they'd you know, done the questionnaire going going
out of the study. So you know, what what they
(13:28):
said was the best correlation physiologically with those outcomes was
changes in the structure of the insular or cortex, which
is like a part of the brain that's involved in interoception,
which means basically the ability to interpret signals that are
coming from inside of the body, another kind of sense
(13:51):
organ on most and so so those are the kinds
of things that sort of grounded what we were seeing
in a new language, and that's given us a lot
of traction in terms of being able to imagine how
we can help other people going forward. That's where we
had the opportunity to learn the most.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
That's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Yeah, for me, I think a big wake up call
was when I began to understand what the insula does
and it's the critical nature of between that parasympathetic and sympathetic.
You know, what is it the interaction that's so pivotal
about our systems and how we function, you know, because
I believe, you know, the greatest impact in all of
(14:35):
these places, whether it's first responders or people that experience
years and years of trauma, addicts and the hell they
go through. Now with Parkinson's, you're incorporating that, and you know,
there's you know, this this physiological impact on your systems.
(14:56):
That's all, you know, regulated by your nervous system. And
it almost feels like there's a fragility of the nervous
system that once it seems to go beyond and that
really what that hyper alostatic load, where it just it collapses.
(15:16):
It almost feels like it's almost impossible to rehabilitate it, right,
to get back to some type of what a normative homeostasis,
right where you can function every day, where all of
those other aspects of your life don't feel like, you know,
a thousand times the weight that they actually are. Right,
(15:38):
you have that subjective perception becomes much more tolerable than
on the other side of it. And so you know,
it's remarkable to me that you guys had been witnessing
this for as long as you had, you said, ten
years prior before the first VET. Can you just describe,
(16:00):
you know, for you, obviously you get you, you are attracted,
and you tell a great story about your own experience
with psychedelics and how that triggered your curiosity, and that's
a really beautiful story. But to take you know, curiosity
towards your own sense of healing and then to project
it into a greater context, which ultimately became ambientized, that's
(16:23):
a huge endeavor. Can you describe the experiences that continued
to provoke you going deeper and deeper and deeper. What
were you witnessing in these these early years.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Yeah, I mean in the early years it was again
a lot of people coming off of different substances, heroine
and you know, crystal math, alcohol, holy substance here. So
you know, those transformations were dramatic and humbling to be around.
(17:00):
And at the same time, you know, you recognize that
what's actually happening isn't that somebody's behavior is being sterilized
like it was infected and they took an antibiotic. They're
being given an opportunity to be able to make changes
(17:20):
where some behavior had become automatic, and that's what an
addiction is. I think when we think about an addiction,
it's not just habituation to a substance. It's like the
point when you can't not do the thing, Like if
(17:41):
the thing comes into your mind, you're already doing it.
There's no way that you can reroute that behavior, even
when that behavior starts to cause harm. It's like a
problem with learning, and I think the challenges for the
brain and our interface with the nervous system is that
(18:05):
we try to automate as much as we can, because
consciousness is a really narrow band, like you can only
process so much information, so you have to Learning is
the process of how do you sort of structure behaviors
into routines and patterns that you can mimic. That's how
you get as a as a seal to be able
(18:27):
to do incredible things is by training it into muscle memory.
And so I think that one of them.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
The iterable, right, the forced iteration of consequential behavior that
results in a in a a in an imperative outcome
something like that, right.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yes, So I think one of the problems, like you
know we were seeing with guys was obviously the boss exposure. Obviously,
there is an emotional and psychological and spiritual weights, you
know that the rest of us maybe don't understand, and
maybe that's part of it is that we don't understand,
(19:07):
you know, it's but I think part of it was
also for a lot of guys the fact that they
were now longer doing that thing that they'd been trained
so powerfully to do and that they were great at,
you know, And so I think part of the problem
was bunched up in all of this was the it
(19:30):
made it harder to transition or like relearn another pattern
that would be satisfying enough, you know, where you could
derive meaning and find some balance, because they's such an
extreme right, And I think that that parallel is actually
pretty well with why we would see the same types
(19:51):
of symptoms in athletes who hadn't had anything traumatic happened
to them. I mean, they maybe lost some games or
didn't win a champion and ship, but even guys who
are extremely successful, we're having trouble getting up off the
couch afterwards, and we're blowing up at their kids. And
so it was it was the exact same story and
(20:14):
the same factors were in play regarding that massive life
transition and the physiological, you know, neurological damage that potentially
made that transition a lot harder. So I think what
what we saw I began doing in the early days,
you know, we attributed at first to it's, you know,
(20:37):
it's just helping with opioid withdrawal, and now like working
with veterans and with other people, it's it's become a
lot more clear that what it seems to be doing
is just making a really difficult transition a lot easier.
It's why, you know, somebody you can go back and
use heroin afterwards, but you had a choice where you
(20:58):
didn't have a choice before. Work gives it back this
sense of agency where maybe you didn't feel like you
have that.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
I just want to really talk about my incredible partnership
with one of my best friends, and that's Evan Hayfer
and the boys over at Black Rifle Coffee. I'm so
honored to be a part of their organization and just
really can't thank them enough for allowing me to participate.
(21:26):
What I want you to do is go to Black
Riflecoffee dot com and I want to check out their
new energy drinks. They have these incredible energy drinks that
you can buy at all different kinds of stores Walmart,
Bath Sports and others. Or you can go online in
order and if you want to put in your little
(21:47):
promo code frog Logic to zero. There you get a
little discount on stuff there. I highly recommend that.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
For me. It's my morning coffee.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
I am addicted to Black Rifle coffees us black. I
think the Tiger Stripe canbo definitely reels me in. The
other one I love is the Ak Espresso. This one
right here is phenomenal. Love these but they have so
many different things that you could get at Black Rifle Coffee.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
You will love it.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Uh Again, when you go over Black Riflecoffee dot com
and you're checking out, type in frog Logic to zero,
get your little discount quote and tell them, ohready rut
send you. So to all those folks out there who
love coffee like I do, please do yourself a favor
and go over and check out my brothers at b
(22:37):
R C C.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Well you you you.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
It's it's funny man in the in the promotional video,
which is brilliant, by the way, on your site, there's
a quote that I that I took that just hit
me like a sledgehammer in my face. Right, And hope
isn't something found, it's awakened by the right conditions.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
And and as you extrapolate condition right, the condition of identity,
the condition of placement of the identity right in the
in the associative terms of of whatever your group or
you know that the purpose behind the group, whether it's
your family, and you know, and how do you take
(23:24):
that thing of hunting down terrorists right and then replace
it with making sure your kids good at t ball? Right?
And and because the right those conditions are so the
frame of reference for that consciously are so juxtapose that
(23:45):
I think most human beings, regardless of you know, their willpower,
the level of the wearpower, many of these guys are
off the charts.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
And you know the guys that I know that have
come down and you've.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Saved their lives, these are superhuman potentially right and in
the feats before, which makes it so I think striking
that they struggle so much to get to this, to
reverse the the what the credence and the testimony affiliated
with the inversion right to say, oh, I controlled the shift,
(24:17):
I am aware of the shift and can I can
re establish the importance of this to replace this, right,
But you can't do that if there's these profound interruptions, right,
if these or or not even interruptions.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
I wonder what word you would use.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
What is the thing that impedes that based on what
you've seen, the ability to flow to restructure that subjective perception.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, I don't, I don't know, but I do think
it's interesting how much energy goes into the identity construction
and when you're becoming a seal, like the ritual, the
there's a lot built into that, whether it's done consciously
(25:10):
or circumstantially, that is about producing that identity and that
camaraderie in addition to the skill and where I think
we you know, I think it's not just the fact
that the military doesn't have a great formula for how
(25:31):
to help with the transition out. It's that outside of
the military, we don't have a lot of opportunities for
that kind of right of passage or like marking major
transitional events, so we you know, wrestle through it on
our own, with the help of our spouse or whatever.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Like. You know.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
It's the same reason why I think, isn't it in general,
people die at a higher rate when they retire. It
doesn't matter if they were sitting at a desk their
entire light, but just the shift and identity and meaning
and how you place yourself in your purpose as such
a powerful effect. So I don't I think that we
(26:18):
lack in general the structure and the narrative about how
to facilitate that transition. And you know, in the military
it's been replaced by you know, cognitive behavioral therapy for
PTSD or something like that. That's the way that that
gets framed.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Right, That's a beautiful description of it, it really is.
And you know, I remember one of the first studies
I found that I felt like was relative to this
type of thing. There was a study about psilocybin and
they gave hero doses to elderly patients, geriatric elderly patients
(27:00):
who had terminal cancer and the positive impacts for how
they began to process the transition to death right and.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
The alleviated weight of the.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Anxiety the depression that was affiliated, and the numbers were
pretty were pretty high, if I if I remember correctly,
they were in the high seventies or eighties in terms
of the positive impacts and so as I you know, obviously,
as this industry becomes I don't know, targeted, let's say
(27:42):
targeted right for.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Mass corporations.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
I just saw Eli Lilly paid some guy three hundred
and twenty million for his company and that was doing
psychedelic research or whatever, you know.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
And as you begin to see this unfold, as.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
It it's becoming more of a business, how.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Are you guys protecting.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
The ritual right? Because I know there's a strong traditional
legacy of what this ritual actually is in the medicine itself,
and you've gone through multiple accreditations the wrong word for
the tribes that are allowing you to be affiliated with
the ritual of it. But there's this kind of outside influence.
(28:34):
How are you guys at Ambio Life Sciences protecting the
integrity of the ritual and then but also at the
same time seeking the funding and growing and being able
to deliver.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
The type of numbers.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
And maybe you could talk about how those numbers in
the beginning versus what the numbers are now that you're servicing.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Sure, well, I think we have this benefit of having
come out of the long, slow period of development before this,
and so I you know, I think about it, like
it's useful to have a personal experience with psychiolics, especially
(29:18):
if you're going to work with them, but that doesn't
provide you with clinical experience. Like the clinical experience is
something that you gain after seeing many people go through
it and you start to see the range of different outcomes.
You start to be able to, you know, one of
the questions that we have to answer most often for
(29:41):
people going through is this normal? How long does this
last you? So you start to be able to understand
and be able to trust your own answer like, yeah,
this is this is normal, and this is you know
what you can kind of expect, you know. I think
the way that we do things is set up around that.
It's set up around this very subjective, qualitative, kind of
(30:09):
experiential data that we have from working with for a
long time. If we've developed our methodology by looking at
the scientific papers that were out so far, it would
be not appropriate kind of to facilitate the deep, intense
personal journey that people are going through. So we kind
(30:31):
of have this benefit of the way that we do
things has grown over time really organically, I would say that,
and that's one of the things that when you know,
my business partners, and I came together with Ambio was
that we wanted to try to preserve that. We kind
of knew that, you know, the veteran community coming to
the table, things were going to grow really rapidly, and
(30:56):
so we knew that, you know, if things are going
to go at scale, you know, how can we preserve
some of this knowledge about you know, how things can
be done in a good, honorable way. And you know,
the way that we think about it is treatment has
multiple meanings. One of them is, you know, sometimes a
(31:19):
professional looking at you objectively and trying to find which
levers to pull or whatever they're doing. And the other
part of how you treat somebody is subjective, and it
just has to do with how you retain their dignity
and their agency in the process of interacting with them.
(31:40):
And so that's a lot of what it is. I think,
you know, psychedelics make us very sensitive to how we're treated,
you know, in addition to the beautiful potential neural regenerative
effects that I've that's a great way.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
To put it. It really is.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
I saw recently you guys have opened up a facility
in Malta. Is is is what's the intention behind choosing
Malta And do you expect there'll be a similar reaction
potentially from former Ukrainian soldiers or Russian soldiers or IDF soldiers.
(32:25):
I know they're going through a profound negative impact as
a result of you know, three years of sustaining four
years of sustained combat, but also just addicts in the
area and other people are what's what's the rationale behind
opening in Malta and expanding inter internationally.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah, so I mean to answer your question from before.
When Ambio opened we had room for four guys a week.
Now we're up to ten times that. Wow, you know,
over over forty people going through a week. And so
(33:07):
in part, you know, growing into Malta was just responding
to the demand that we had at first from the
United States. We knew that, you know, the places in
Mexico were filling up, and you know, we were in
touch with some excellent doctors from Malta who were really
(33:27):
motivated to to do this, and so it was a
natural partnership. But it also was you know, to try
to understand to develop the competency to grow because that's
what we think, you know, the world is going to
demand at a vibe gain is that it be offered
at scale. So this was our opportunity to try to
(33:49):
learn how does it what does it look like to
be able to to grow and to expand and to
operationalize what we're doing while retaining that strong like human
or so that's what it was. And in Malta has
a very similar kind of legal status for I begin
and five me O d M T as as Mexico does.
(34:13):
And uh so it's also its beautiful. It's spent two
weeks there and there's a lot of really old megalithic sites.
There was an amazing country to tour around that I
didn't know much about. But I don't know exactly what
it is or you know, if it's maybe just uh
(34:36):
just creature comforts. But for some reason, I begin likes
warmer climates. You know, I don't. We didn't. We didn't
on purpose. It didn't go to like Norway or something
like that yet, but you know, it's nice to be
it's nice to be warm. In Malta stays like that
all year.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yeah, that's that's awesome.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
I begin likes warmer clients, or is it what emerges
out of I beginning to like warmer clients. Oh man,
that's that's interesting. Well, I think it's it's exciting. I mean, obviously,
you know, I'm sure you know you've you've got some
really strong people behind it. You know, I did a
(35:17):
I used to have a really big podcast with Marcus
Latrelle for many years, and that's when we first started
hearing about it back in sixteen and seventeen. And you know,
he had some friends Joe Rogan was talking about, you know,
psychedelics and the ayahuasca exploit, you know, phenomenon of seventeen
and eighteen and what was going on, and and you know,
(35:41):
I was really happy to see Morgan and Governor Perry
Secretary Perry get behind it, you know, to kind of
give it some of that that heightened awareness at scale
in particular, you know, I mean Governor Or I keep
calling him God, that's how I remember him as Governor Perry,
but Ford be Kaeen, Secretary Perry, but you know, Secretary Perry,
(36:03):
you know, being kind of that old school boomer mentality
and then crossing over and and and recognizing the impact.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Of it of it.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
And now that the President has signed an executive order,
it was great to see that.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Does that put uh.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Any unwonted scrutiny or our people uh trying to do
you think that the space of development might become a
little proselytized or impacted in a negative way at all?
Are there do you imagine there'll be programs that pop up?
(36:43):
I just saw one pop up in Thailand, I saw,
you know, I'm seeing them all pop up all over
the place.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
And is there a worry that that the the.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Credibility might deteriorate as a result of maybe some of
these clinics popping up that don't have the type of
you know, mattical oversight, because you know, I mean obviously
there are heart conditions that are affiliated potentially with it,
And but is there is there a worry that it
might become polluted in some way?
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Well, I mean yeah, you said it like there's there's
no biological free lunch. Like something that's going to have
that deep of a profound of a you know, impact
on the nervous system has systemic effects, and so you
know there's risk associated with that, especially when you start
delivering it to a lot of people in that respect,
(37:38):
you know, for what it does, I think I begin
as relatively safe I think there's more and more that
we're learning about how to mitigate them, and it's become
a lot safer. So I think that's that's sort of
the first risk that you think of, like when people
are coming into the space, is you know, how well
equipped are they to be able to manage the medical risk.
(38:01):
There's been fatalities. There was a recent paper that showed,
you know, historically there were fatalities for a variety of reasons.
More recently, you know, since we published clinical guidelines for
how to mitigate those risks, the fatalities that have occurred
(38:24):
since then are exclusively, at least in the clinics who
participated in the study, were only related to people who
were using fentanyl. So anyways, that to say, there's definitely
still risks, and that would be the question, you know,
would be how well equipped our new you know, new
(38:46):
entrants into the clinical space. But as far as, like
in general the effects, I think it's definitely brought a
lot of attention and a lot of increased the demand
for iby game. So that's what people are responding to,
and my my hope is that over time it also
(39:06):
just gives us a lot of opportunities to continue to
learn more, like to be able to work with more
research partners. It's become very interesting for a lot of
you know, really well equipped researchers all of a sudden.
So I think we're going to start to gain massively
from that. So I hope you know net net positive.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah, me too, I really do.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
I I I I hope that, like you said, the
sacredness of the medicine, Like, I think that's a major
component of this. And I really I hope as as
you know, big, bigger money gets involved.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
And more, you know, more.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
I don't know, sig players, whether it's the US government
or foreign governments or big farm or whatever. I think
there's I really hope that that that portion of it,
you know, the care that you guys are giving in
the midst of these transformational experience, you know, and staying
true to that, the ritual of it too, it stays intact.
(40:22):
I think that's a major part of the experience from
what from what all my friends have told me. For sure,
Can you talk a little bit about that about the
relationship to uh, the plant, where it comes from the culture,
because it seems like that that's a very important aspect
(40:42):
for you uh, and this medicine.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yes, I mean it's been it's been important to me,
I think just as somebody who's interested in the experience
and wants to know more about how it works. You know,
the relationship with traditional practitioners in Gabon has been extremely
rich because even though it's a different worldview, different language.
(41:09):
I mean not not only you know that people are
speaking French, but just like a completely different language about
how to think about I've a gain or eboga and
what it is and what it's doing. I think all
it does is open up new ways of looking at
it and understanding it and its potential. And so it's
(41:31):
been yeah, massively influential for me. And I think what's
been really encouraging is the openness in Gabon to have
partnerships and dialogue. You know, Ambio is the first clinic
(41:53):
that we can say it's compliant with the Nagoya Protocol
and the Nigoya protocols a un tree that's designed to
protect access and benefits for people who have traditional knowledge
about genetic resources that are from a specific place. So
(42:13):
Ibogo from Gabon fits fits neatly into that. And the
idea is that you know, in terms of access. You know,
the NEGOA Protocol is supposed to help to you know,
we're all supposed to work together to try to ensure
that traditional practitioners continue to have access to a bog,
they carry out the traditions as before, and that they're
somehow participating in the benefits, not just like you know,
(42:38):
fair trade, we buy it for a good price, but
like there's actually some downstream benefits that go back to people.
And so some of that's monetary and Ambio does that
share monetary benefits, but there's also non monetary benefits. So
that where there's ways that we're exploring trying to work
(42:58):
with groups and Gabon with like doctors who want to
be able to provide addiction recovery care in their country.
And you know that knowledge about how to work with
drug interactions or how to get people off of tramat
all or the other opiates that are you know, ending
up on the shores of Libreville doesn't exist in the traditions,
(43:22):
and so that's another way that we can provide benefits
back to you know, Gabon into the community there. So
we're we're always looking for ways to partner on that
and try to make sure that the medicine that we
use is those to the highest standard possible and available
(43:42):
for you know, ethical sourcing, you know, having low impact
on traditional practitioners, unless that's going to be a positive one.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
That's interesting.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
You know one of the things I think is beginning
to kind of perme its way, permeate its way into
the social consciousness of people who what are interested in philosophy, theology, right, metaphysics, whatever,
You're trying to figure out who am i and why
(44:16):
am I here? Right? This this concept right of of
the bicameraal mind, which is included into your new book
that's coming out. Maybe we can pivot towards this a
little bit. And one of the things that really hit
(44:36):
me was, you know, the way you describe subconscious problem solving,
the way you talk about open up, opening up, what
the reconstruction of flow, the flow state, you know, all
of these ideas that are also kind of interesting related
(44:58):
to a gentleman who I I had no idea until
I started doing the research on your book. This guy
Jillian Jane Jane's with this idea of the big by
camera mind. Can you can you describe first off, you
know what that means, and then how it relates to
the book and what you're trying to accomplish by uh,
(45:21):
the release of the book coming up here next month.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Sure. So the by Camera Mind was Gillian Jane's theory
about where consciousness originated, and you know, maybe the more
controversial part of his theories of the timing. He was
essentially trying to narrow and give better shape to what
(45:48):
we're talking about when we're saying consciousness, and so he was,
you know, trying to narrow it down to like, when
we're talking about consciousness, we're talking about this ability to
be able to sort of model a problem potentially in
like a three dimensional type space and then play out
potential solutions in that kind of model. And that to
(46:10):
the extent that we can do that, we can you know,
avoid a lot of misturns. And so when we get
presented with something novel, it's the ability to be able
to understand the potential forces that would act upon that
situation and all that. So the degree to which we're
able to map out reality is you know, essentially the
(46:33):
underlies you know, technology. But he's saying our cognitive process
as well. So before that, before we developed this this
form of consciousness. He was saying that our ancient ancestors
relied on what he called the bicameral mind, which was
essentially that the mind had two distinct parallel parts. One
(46:58):
was sort of embedded into you know, they were aware,
they were able to reason and had logic. It maybe
not the same kind of you know, frontal problem solving
mechanisms we had, but they were able to follow their
habits and customs and traditions and you know, the savoir faire,
(47:20):
like the know how of you know, how to go
about things day to day. But when presented with a
novel situation. You know, he's drawing this from literature as well.
But he was saying that they would often hear a
voice that would speak to them and provide them with
a solution rather than mapping it out right. So it
(47:41):
was something that happened in this other part of the mind,
so the chamber of the mind. And so he he
basically is saying that that's another part of the problem
solving apparatus, and it would give like the best guess
about what to do in the situation. And so at
different times that voice would be attributed to our ancestors
(48:05):
or to you know, kings or gods or spirits or
to God you know, and you know, you know, I
guess over history saying like the people who developed that
type of problem solving the best kind of one, the
story about what the voice was or who the voice was,
(48:27):
or who belonged to and anyways. The reason why that
was interesting was because it gave me a language to
try to describe something that was really common in the
IBE Gain experience, which was that people often feel like
they're interacting with something that's not too too alien from them,
(48:47):
like it feels in some way deeply familiar. A lot
of people even describe it like it is a part
of themselves, you know, and and that feeling of like
that the the sperience is structured linguistically so common that
even when people are just describing their experience, they often
(49:10):
say it like it showed me or you know, it
told me, just sort of like embedded in the syntax
of like how you describe what this is is something like,
I guess the feeling is very distinct that you're aware
of who you are, where you are in the room,
even your normal thought process is there, but there's something
(49:30):
else that's being presented, and there's a logic and a
language to that, right, And so anyways, I was just
at first trying to describe something that I found really
interesting because the way that scientific papers would describe the
experience didn't really speak much about what people were actually
(49:51):
saying to me every day. So, you know, it was
just trying to clarify some of the other elements you know,
that get looked. And I think, what potentially the value
of this, the value of having a language about this,
is that this is our subjectivity. This is like this
(50:16):
experience of being a subject and being a participant in
this and having to navigate through. It's not something that
you find some finality with, like a language is something
that you're embedded in that you learn to speak, that
you get better at. Like if this is if this
is how our minds are are formed, you know, what
(50:37):
it's describing is our ability to become strong subjects in
our own life, you know, And I think too much
of the time psychiatry and the way that we try
to medicalize behavior and thought, it makes us into objects,
(50:59):
you know, even the way that we tried to manage
things with kind of cognitive behavioral therapy or like programming.
Over and over we sort of tried to, you know,
the way that we try to measure everything. It sort
of places us into this role of being almost objectified.
But the mind resists that, and I think that's one
(51:22):
of the things that bubbles to the surface. So like
as like you when you when people take eye again,
I think that's what comes up. And one of the
maybe contrasts to this is there was an interesting study
that came out recently that showed that when people were
getting diagnosed with depression and prescribed SSRI medications, that there
(51:44):
was a drop in this sense of personal agency, which
makes sense. You know, it's somebody else who's sort of
just trying to name what's happening for you, you know.
And I think, what, I don't know how to how
to structure this study. I'd love to talk to somebody
if they're interested. But I think by going to the
(52:07):
IBE gaining experience, the way that people come to it,
the way that people prepare for it, the way that
it puts you into this deeply subjective experience, I think
it's the opposite. I think it sort of forces you
to engage with things in a very deeply experiential way.
(52:28):
And to reason through things in a way that forces
you back into that subjectivity. It makes the names that
people have given to us from outside sort of not
so useful because it brings so much other data and
nuance and novelty to the surface that doesn't fit into
(52:51):
that We have to we have to ration rationalize our
way through it on our own.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
So that for me is the most fascinating aspect of
what you're doing, right, I mean, you know, as a
person that's really trying to understand those aspects of the
human condition that make us human for the last thirty
years of my life, you know, like that's that's the
(53:18):
hard thing, right, what makes us human? And then what
aspect of that conscious awareness of us in our human state, right,
which makes it, like you said, through that metacognition piece,
like I can generate who I want to be in
ten years and put myself on a path, and that
(53:41):
path if I'm not operating as a tool or a
function of someone else's influence, but my own deep rooted influence,
and that influence that comes from what the genetic makeup
of twenty five generations, right, the rituals of the cultural dynamics.
(54:02):
I've been integrated into right all of these you know,
the the the millions of data points that I've have
crossed across my subconscious since my birth or my my
what my my recollective birth right.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
You know, it's it's.
Speaker 3 (54:22):
Man, all of that, and the fact that you're attempting
to tackle that is really awesome. Like I cannot wait
to read your book, man, because I think there's there's
no greater endeavor, and it's been the principal endeavor for
any any I think, genuine human being that really wants
(54:45):
to try and understand who I am and why am
I here? You know, I think this I be a
gain in psychedelics as a whole. In the right environment
and the right circumstances can open up those vehicles, those
those channels to be able to access that subjectivity that
you talk about. And it seems like ibagain does it
(55:07):
on a level unlike all the rest. So it's really
exciting for your book. When when you were writing the book,
did you did you expect it would take you in
the direction it did or did you learn something new
(55:28):
about how you were perceiving what you've witnessed And then your.
Speaker 2 (55:33):
Own journey as a uh what uh what do you
call it? When you're the.
Speaker 3 (55:42):
You're the steward of this medicine, right, that's transformational. It
helps human beings in those transitions, and so you're kind
of the steward for this this new direction in people's lives.
What kind of the dynamics of that process for you?
Speaker 1 (56:03):
Like, yeah, I mean I think when I started writing,
I knew some of the broad strokes. You know, it
was already twelve years in, so I had some ideas,
but you know, sitting down and having to put things
to words that are supposed to end up in more
(56:23):
or less in a logical sequence, you know, forces you
to put some structure to what you think and forces
you to you know, interrogate some of your own ideas,
and so there was a lot of that, and I
think mostly what it's done is to help to provide
(56:46):
a language for some of the things that we were
instinctually moving towards. And that's really what I was hoping was,
you know, as ambio grows, how do we communicate years
of experience or fifteen years of experience to the staff
that are starting, you know, as it moves into the
(57:08):
rest of the world and we build partnerships or want
to work with different institutions or researchers, like how can
we you know, have a basis of like where are
we coming from with this? How have we been thinking
about it?
Speaker 2 (57:22):
You know?
Speaker 1 (57:22):
Like I know that there's there's a couple of researchers
who have tried to develop I've again like molecules, hoping
I think, to maybe tweak the molecule to remove some
of the cardiac risk or in some cases even that
subjective experience that comes up. And my thinking, and you know,
(57:45):
from a lot of conversations that have had with people,
is like, I begain so complex the way that the
molecules formed, it's it's like an extremely interesting shape. The
way that it just fits into so many receptors or
with so many different things at once, it's like extremely efficient.
(58:08):
So be really hard. We don't really understand how it
works now, so it's going to be very hard to
tweak it to do what we want and control it,
you know what I mean. So my thinking was always like,
if it's doing this with traumatic brain injury, or it's
doing this with you know, opioid addiction, why is it
(58:33):
also doing this? Why is it also making it making
us go through such a challenging internal journey because by
all accounts, it is why is it forcing us to,
you know, do this kind of self psychoanalysis at the
same time that it's doing this innerological thing like why
(58:53):
is why are all of these things aspects of the
same healing process? And yeah, I don't think we can.
I don't think we can ignore that. So that's all
it is. It's trying to I begain It's very difficult
to you know, wrap your head around because it touches
so many different things. And so that's what it was
(59:14):
was to try to say, here's the whole package. Some
parts of this are very inconvenient and are not going
to fit easily into it a box. But if we're
going to try to scale a service around this or
integrate this into a healthcare system, we have to take
it as a whole for what it does is.
Speaker 2 (59:32):
Well.
Speaker 3 (59:35):
I again, I just all I can do is just
say thank you as many times since I can, and
just continue praying for everything that you guys are doing.
I feel so blessed that, you know, so many people
are experiencing the relief. I think there's a consciousness that's
(59:59):
changing in our society that's a derivative of this, and
it's profoundly positive in a time where we need this
type of positivity. And you know, you and your your
staff and all the people that are assisting in the
(01:00:19):
consortium of people who really care about other human beings
are making a huge impact. And I just feel really
grateful that you would come and spend some time with
me in my audience. And I just I look forward
to your book coming out, and I just I can't
thank you enough.
Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
Jonathan, Right, Well, thank you, brothers. I appreciate the support.
And yeah, like I was saying before, it's just it's
been amazing to witness, you know what, the you know,
the community that's that's come to this and looking for help,
and and just to see that day after day. It's
still you know, it's still how people in such a
(01:01:00):
profound way. It's really you know, humbling to be able
to be at the side of that and witness it
so awesome.
Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
How can people contribute support and help you guys in your.
Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
Mission, Well, you know, follow us online. You know, you
can find Ambio at Ambio dot life and there's all
the social media stuff if you want to. You know,
we do regular updates about the research and everything that's
going on, so you can find us there. And if
you're interested in the book, my name Jonathandickinson. Dot ca
(01:01:38):
A is a website where you can go and purchase it.
You can even pre order. It comes out September eighth,
and I hope you like it. I hope you share
it with people who might benefit from knowing more about
it as well.
Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
Awesome, Jonathan, thank you so much. God bless you.
Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Thanks David, God bless y
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