July 12, 2023 • 36 mins
In this special episode, Grammy and Oscar award winning singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge joins our hosts Clayton English and Greg Glod for a personal and thought-provoking conversation about advances in plant-based medicine in treating conditions such as depression, PTSD, opioid withdrawal, and addiction.
To learn more, visit:
https://www.etheridgefoundation.org/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
All right, agreg when are illegal drugs good for your
mental health?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Thought we already talked about this, We might have, but
we got more to talk about.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
Some heartbreaking news for Melissa Ethridge.
Speaker 4 (00:12):
The singer announced yesterday that her son, Beckett Ceipher, has died.
My son was given vicodin and from there he just
never got off of it. He went from vicodin to
heroin to the last few days it was spentinels.
Speaker 5 (00:28):
On Twitter, singer Melissa Ethridge wrote in part I joined
the hundreds of thousands of families who have lost loved ones.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
To opioid addiction.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
He will be missed by those who loved him.
Speaker 5 (00:39):
How do you turn that sadness from the loss of
backet into the great work that you're doing right now?
Speaker 4 (00:45):
The Etharch Foundation was set up to help people who
are understanding how much psychedelics can do for pain and
opioid use disorders. You know, there is no other compound
that will stop somebody from physically withdrawing on yet. We
have been working with a group out of Africa that
has used the Eboga root.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
But you make eyebigam.
Speaker 6 (01:07):
If successful, this mysterious compound could have the power to
heal millions while seriously disrupting the multimillion dollar opoid.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Market and the results that we've gotten back that not
only are these users of fifteen twenty years completely off
opioids and heroin, but they just turn their life completely around.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I'm Greg Lad, I'm Clayton, England and this is the
War on Drugs. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
We are back with another War on Drugs podcast.
Speaker 6 (01:46):
You thought you got rid of us, man, Nope, you
can't get rid of us.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Man.
Speaker 6 (01:50):
We like drugs, just like the drug warm where ain't
going anywhere.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Just like drugs, We're not going anywhere, and we're slightly addictive,
so you know, we just give it people.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
They fix man.
Speaker 6 (02:00):
Yeah, no, absolutely, How you.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Been man, it's good. We in the summer, you know.
Speaker 6 (02:04):
Yeah, no, I've been good man. Yeah, how you been.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I'm great, man, I'm great. Son just had a birthday.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, we didn't have the big party this time, so
that was a relief.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Any though.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
The case oh two, he's two, so it's too fast,
too furious, of course, yeah, he's too fast, and he's
often very.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Furious about things. My mom made it.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
My mom made the race car cake, like she every
year she's stepping up on her cake. So this one
was like she made little race cars that were edible
and all types of stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
She went crazy, Oh wow, yeah.
Speaker 6 (02:38):
All right, I need to bring your mom over for Yeah,
maybe I'll do there.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
You go, I'm telling you.
Speaker 6 (02:44):
The Big three six coming out.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Awesome.
Speaker 6 (02:48):
Well we'll get into all that later. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
Well we could talk birthdays all day. But yeah, even
a very special occasion. I was getting leiss Athraage to
come on and talk plant based medicine. And I mean, Clayton,
we already did the interview, recorded it. That was just
an amazing conversation and talking to her one of someone
that you know, we all kind of grew up with
listen radio.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Especially if you're from that MTV era, if you that
MTV generation, you know those songs, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
The videos to go with them. So oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
When they sent the email like would you be interested
in interviewing Melissa Ethridge about hallucinogens and plant based medicine? Yes, man, Yes,
I didn't even read the other parts. Like some things
you just asked me when can I do them? You
don't have to ask me if I want to do them.
Speaker 5 (03:32):
But you know, she's so raw and honest about everything.
You know, she she had breast cancer and how plant
based medicines helped her through that, and then she started
the Melissa Athers Foundation, you know, really spurred from you know,
the tragic passing of her Sun Beckett, who died of
an opioid overdose. And you know, the whole crux of
the foundation is to research and fund studies on a
(03:53):
lot of plant based medicines. I've been able to help
treat depression, PTSD, opioated withdraw addiction, and so we continue
to kind of push that down because the War on
Drugs prohibits a lot of this funding, this research and
actually criminalizes doing some of this stuff. And so the
fact that we're slowly starting to see shreds of research
and funding come back again made possible by you know,
(04:13):
foundations like hers, I think it's it's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 6 (04:16):
So it was great to talk to her about.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
All of this.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, man, And it's just one of those things where
we don't know what we don't know, and there's so
much research that hasn't been done, and everything is pushed
to the pharmaceutical side, and we know the SADE effects,
but I really think like just as a whole society
got to take a step back.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
That's it.
Speaker 5 (04:35):
Just let let these have a seat of the table
and let them, you know, work on their own parts.
Speaker 6 (04:40):
Like that's all.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, let the sciences science, let them science man like.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
So again, this was it was just an amazing conversation.
It's an amazing career, amazing life. And she's so open
and raw and honest about it. Yeah, I can't recommend
listening to my podcast that I need you to listen to.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Yeah about that. Let's get too, Let's get into it.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Hey, Melissa, thank you so much for coming here today
with us, for being on the War on Drugs podcast
with me and.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Greg my pleasure.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
We love what you're doing, and we just kind of
want to get into it. I mean, I'm not sure
the best way, but give us your personal history with
the War on Drugs. That is our podcast, so we
know everybody has their own personal battle.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
So you know, I grew up in the Midwest in
the sixties and seventies, and I had a big dream
of becoming a rock star. And in the seventies and
the early eighties, I saw a lot of my heroes
and stuff have trouble with drugs, and I saw a
lot of what the world was kind of going through,
and so I chose a very I wasn't against anything,
(05:53):
I just wasn't participating it. And I was more concerned
with making my career go than sort of losing myself
in something that was going to numb me out. So I,
you know, put that aside, and I didn't drink. I
was a very strange rock star in that I didn't
participate in any of that, you know. But I would recreationally,
(06:13):
you know, have fun with my friends with cannabis and
psilocybin and and but you know, not a lot. And
I never you know, got it myself. It was always
just you know, somebody else. Then in two thousand and
and four, I got breast cancer and started using cannabis
instead of all of the gosh they handed me like
(06:37):
for chemotherapy. They hand me like five, you know, prescription drugs,
and I was like, you know, and then the the
drugs that help with the side effects of those drugs,
and and I was like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, wait,
what are you doing? And and it was it was
medicinal in California cannabis was even though it was very
hard to get, you know, it's like they were still
busting everybody back then. But I was able to, you know,
(07:00):
find the roadie that knew, the roadie that could get
me some cannabis. And I finally used it every day
for medicinal purposes, and I'd never done that before.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Was it was to feel normal.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
And after you know, three months of using it and
helping me so much, keeping me out of the hospital,
giving me an appetite, helping with depression and pain and
all these things that it was so good for, I thought,
I want everyone to at least know this information, and
hopefully they could if they wanted to.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Everyone should have a choice to use this.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
And that's what really kind of threw me into the
more political space of plant medicine and quickly realizing that
there's a big difference between pharmaceuticals and plant medicine that's
play around for thousands and thousands of years. You know,
it's just huge, and you can't you cannot lump them together.
(07:53):
So I really took a journey with that and it
led me to ayahuasca. It led me to my own
soul's searching. It led me to changing my life and
spiritual awakening and all these things that it led me to,
which helped when my son who was a teenager sixteen,
(08:13):
seventeen years old and wanted to be a professional snowboarder
and was trying out with an Aspen snowboard team and
he broke his ankle, It broke his dreams, and it
just broke him and he was given vicodint and from
there he just never got off of it. He went
from vicodin too heroin to the last few days it
(08:38):
was fentanyl. And so I've lost my son to the pharmaceuticals,
and I have really then put so much of my
own energy and effort into having the world understand and
bringing the research and data that needs to be collected
to legalize plant medicine and that won't kill us.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
Well, it's so sad to hear about Beckett and his story,
but I want to ask, so you you start the
Etherrets Foundation, really out this trauma, and how do you
turn that frustration sadness from the loss of Beckett into
you know, the great work that you're doing right now?
Can you talk a little about what the Ethers Foundation.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Does right after he died, I was very frustrated.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
I was sad. And a family when someone is struggling
with opoid use disorder and it's there's so much shame
and guilt and stuff that the family doesn't know what
to do with. You don't know whether to you know,
give him money, give him help, or take everything away
(09:43):
or you know what, what are you supposed to do?
And no matter what you do, it's not right because
they have to come out of it themselves.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
That's that's the only way.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
And so towards the last couple of weeks of his life,
I knew that it was a very good possibility that
he would not survive this, and I was prepared in
a way. You know, of course, you never are fully
prepared for that when it happens. But so when he
passed away, I thought, I've got to do something positive.
(10:13):
I don't want to be against things. I believe that
there's more power in being for something. And I really
believe that these plant medicines, these entheogens and psychedelics, they
can if a person is open to it, if they
want to walk that path.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
It's not.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
I don't think psychedelics are like here, try this and
your life will totally change. It might if you are
open to it, but a lot of it has to
do with the person. So the Etharge Foundation was set
up to help people who are understanding how much psychedelics
can do for pain and opioid use disorder and generally
(10:59):
just for the well being of human beings. And yet
they're thrown into the Schedule one category where there's no
medicinal value and we can't even do any research on it,
which is like, you know, you can't get credit unless
you have credit. You know, it's stuck in this this
saying well, no, well we don't have any research. So
(11:20):
I said, well, we need to find the research. We
need to go do this, and so we have been.
We actually are the only foundation that is specifically focused
on opioid use disorder, and the people that are running
these trials are just just you know, frontline miracle workers
and we're getting amazing, amazing.
Speaker 5 (11:41):
Yeah, it just does almost sound like a trap, like, yeah, hey,
are you using illicit drugs? Come on by to this
discovery exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
You know, are you on drugs? Would you like some more?
Come by? And we got you.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
I love what you're doing because so much of the
things are misunderstanding and we haven't done the research and
haven't had the ability to.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Really do it.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
And when we look at pharmaceuticals and just the way
they're so quick to put opioids in people's hands when
they're in pain, but at the same time they'll cut
them off at the drop of a hat, knowing how
addictive they are, and nobody really even talks about that.
Nobody's like, hey, okay, well maybe this is leading people
(12:30):
down a path of.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
Yeah, they put so much on the person, the own
personal well, you you shouldn't get addicted, you know. It's
like wait a minute, right, So really, these antheogens, the
psychedelics do so much for a person's spirit and soul,
and once again, it's still a lot has to do
(12:53):
with the person and their own life force. So it's
a it's not in the pharmaceutical categories because we pharmaceuticals
come from the place of one pill is going to
fix everybody on this, right, and how can you compete
(13:14):
with that When you're saying, look, every person has a
choice of all this and what fits them. It's a
whole different way of looking at wellness and medicine and health.
So it's it's a long road we're gonna walk care.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, I'm all for the plant based medicines. And you
said one thing, we put so much trust in the
pharmaceuticals and big pharma and they call the plant medicine
and things that have been around for thousands of years,
that's the alternative medicine.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
When how has it been here longer?
Speaker 1 (13:48):
And it's the alternative and it's been proven throughout history.
But this so it's one of those things to distance
it and make it seem foreign, dangerous, or will.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Take take it to your chance with it if you
want to. It might alter you.
Speaker 5 (14:02):
Yeah, like you know, you should really start to unravel
this whole thing where none of this is really based
in evidence and science. It's all based in propaganda and
what you can control and what you can't.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
And undoing that. Yeah, that's the work that we try
to do here, and we see you're doing it. It's
it's hard. It's like you said, years and.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
Years information education, that's all you know.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Research.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
That's why it's like, look, let's we're gonna get these
things one after another. And it's slowly and once again,
it's not for everybody. You know, there's some people you're
not going to get to, hey, here's some psilocybin, it'll
it'll you know, change your life or whatever. You know,
it's it's not gonna work. They're going to just think
that's really weird. You You really have to have your
own personal journey with it. So it's it's it's not easy.
(14:49):
It's not a one pill fix it all thing.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Right, Can you talk about that a little bit, just
as far as the journey and what do they need
to decide that they want out of it?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Wow?
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Well, first of all, if they're listening to your podcast,
they got to be pretty cool, and they got to
be you know, they've got they've got to be a
certain you know, understanding going on. I think a lot
of it's generational. You know, the younger generation is a
is a bit more open and they know that they've
been lied to about cannabis. They that you can see
that as years go by and one by one the
(15:22):
states are legalizing, so you can see, oh, well, massive
amounts of people haven't gone crazy or nuts on cannabis.
So maybe that whole refer madness.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Was a lie. Oh yeah, it was. It was a lie.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
And so you know, so you kind of start that
and you check what your own understanding of it is,
and you have to you're looking for harmony in your life.
You're looking for some kind of harmony, and that one
path that so many of us are on.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
We got to get up, go to our job.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
We've got to do this, got to take care of
the kids, and we've got to solve all the problems
and then try to get it to go nights sleep.
But we can't because we're all caffeined and we're all
worried and the stress. You have to kind of look
at that first and go, that's the biggest problem. That
might be why I have back pain, right, not because
there's something.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Wrong with me.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
And once you kind of make that choice, if that's
what you're looking for, then psychedelics can help you.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
If you understand, oh, I need to change some behavior here.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
I need an answer, not just oh God, my back hurts,
give me a pill, because you're gonna keep going down
that road.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Right.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
If you're ready to make a change, then cannabis can help.
And a little bit of THC can help because it
kind of spreads time and space out for you and
you go, oh, there's more to this than what I've
thought now some people it's a hard jump to go
from left brain to let your right brain sort of
do some things. But if you're reading helps, talking to
(16:56):
other people, information, your podcasts, these things help, and then
it's a road and before you know it, you're at
some ayahuasca circle and you're journeying and you're discovering that
you are light and love and the world is a
full of a full of love.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
What you said about the psilocybin.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Definitely, I've had some experiences where it's okay, I need
to let things go, and it's simple stuff. If you're
allowed to be in that space, it's like breathing. You're like, wow,
this feels good. Oh, this is what I'm not doing
when I get upset. This is why my shoulders hurt,
this is why my neck. I can hardly turn around
(17:37):
without you know, spinning my whole body.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
So, yeah, it's to take our population and the majority,
if we can get them out of the pill, fix
it all and gets them back on the construction line.
Quality of life is really important, and not everyone's gonna
do that. You know, people are always going to think
that hard work gets you somewhere, you know, and and boy,
(18:03):
you know, yeah, one one little nice journey with psilocybin
can really teach you that breathing is an incredibly important
thing to do.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
Yeah, And it must have been so trying to flip
that off, because I mean, being the megastar that you
are and the amount of work that that takes, and
then being a female in the time that you were
coming up and that, and then being a part of
the LGBTQ community and trying to.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Do as all that.
Speaker 6 (18:26):
Yeah, I mean there is you had.
Speaker 5 (18:28):
To bust your ass in the way that you did
to get there, and then to kind of say like
I have to balance this or turn that. That must
have been such a challenging experience.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
And so well, you know, I got breast cancer.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
It eventually, you know it eventually, will you know, burn
yourself up till you finally go, well, okay, I got
a change, and that change is what saves your life.
Every time my even doctors, bless their heart, they would say, well,
we have found people that make a change in their
lives are the ones that survive. So it's kind of
(19:00):
simple there, and even they've seen that it's about finding
that thing, whether it's the family, whether it's your mother,
you know, whether it's your you know, what you think
you should do is a job, what you should make
and all those things. No, that's not what life is about.
Life is not just some sort of race that we're
on that That is not how it is. It's it's
(19:21):
joy is ridiculously important in life, and we just don't
ever put it first.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Yeah, very true. You felt that in your life the nineties.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
The nineties was when you know, I was huge and
was the you know, playing stadiums and arenas, and it's
like I was there, and I've seen many many people
that get there and you go, ha wow. It was
a lot more fun getting too there than it is
being there, because being there lasts a day maybe, you know,
and it moves on, and life moves on in the
(19:54):
light of fame moves on. It's very fickle. It never
stays in one place. And you see these people that
make it and then they keep trying. Then then they're like,
oh God, I got to get up there. I've got
to I've got to do that again. I've got to
have that level and there's something can sustain it, you know,
for a long time, but eventually you got to just
you know, love it yourself, no matter what the outcome is,
(20:19):
no matter what people, how many you sell, or you know,
whatever is happening, you got to love it. That's what
saved me is it's like, oh no, I love doing this,
but I can be myself when I'm paying. I don't
have to be I don't have to make myself up
to be something else. And that that's the way it is.
Speaker 5 (20:36):
And it's that high chase it feels like to what
you're talking about and people trying to maintain and getting
that from other sources in Clayton, I know this is
something you talked about in your stand up where there
can't be a better high than like being up there.
And you've seen it with people trying to maintain that.
You've lost some friends in the comedy you know world,
and how difficult that is, and I see those parallels.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Yeah, yeah, and I mean it's but one thing about
it is the love is what got you in it,
and it's what keeps you there. And from what you're
telling me, Melissa, is what can save you too.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Amen. So exactly.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
Yeah, We'll be right back with the War on Drugs Podcast.
Speaker 7 (21:26):
The War on Drugs Podcast is sponsored by Stand Together.
Stand Together is a philanthropic community that partners with America's
boldest change makers to tackle the root causes of our
country's biggest problems. Like many others who experienced addiction, Scott
Stroude was using drugs and alcohol to number the pain.
For him, it was childhood trauma. In his early twenties,
Scott was invited into a boxing gym by a friend
(21:47):
and that's where he discovered the healing power of sport
and community. In two thousand and six, Scott founded The Phoenix,
a free, sober active community that uses the transformative power
of sport to help people treat and heal from addiction.
Scott Strode is one of many entrepreneurs partnering with Stand
Together to drive solutions in education, healthcare, poverty, and criminal justice.
(22:09):
To learn more of visit Standogether dot org.
Speaker 5 (22:20):
Melissa, I was listening to one of your interview I
think it was with Rolling Stone, and you talked about
doing like a hero dosage of cannabis heroic. Yeah, can
you talk about that a little bit? And you actually said,
like it actually really you know, it's funny, but like
it really helped you and you kind of fell into
it yeah, I'd love to hear about that.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Oh yeah, no, break yeah, break it, you got it.
I'm going to tell you the story.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
So I was had just been through my first divorce.
It was this the late nineties, and a friend had
given me just a massive amount of cannabis and I
was starting to to know cannabis better.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
It was relaxing me.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
My girlfriend at the time was really fun, especially when
we would smoke. And in one weekend, I said, Oh,
my gosh, have you ever done like, you know, pop
brownies or you know, eating it to edibles and and
she was like no, and I hadn't done it in
a long time.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
And I was like, oh, it's so much fun, you know.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
And my girlfriend was the kind that she was from
the Midwest, and she baked really well, like really made
really good cookies, right. And she was also the kind
of was like, hey, if a quarter cup is good,
then a whole cup's got to be fantastic, right, And
so she puts all this cannabis in, but she makes
it taste so good in the in the cookie, and
(23:41):
so you know, I ate one, and it's the you're
eating one and you're waiting twenty minutes maybe and You're like,
I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. Well let's
have another. And I ate another one and it started
to kind of come on, and then I got the munchies,
so I ate another one, you know, and she passed out.
She fell asleep, which, ladies and gentle, if you don't know,
you can't overdose on cannabis.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
You just fall asleep.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
But before I fell asleep, I went on what I
call a heroic dose journey. It was so much cannabis
that my right brain, my intuitive brain, completely took over
my inner being and connected to the non physical and
the spiritual was completely wide open.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
And of course I thought I was dying.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
That's what that's what you think. How many phone calls,
how many police phone calls have we heard of I'm dying.
I've taken too much cannabis and my heart's founding and
I'm dying, and you know, and I did.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
I went through that. I went, oh God, I'm dying.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
And then after a few moments of Okay, I'm dying,
it was like, well, if I'm dying, it's not so bad.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
This is not so bad. And I started thinking about, well,
why are we so afraid of death?
Speaker 4 (24:56):
We just it's because my soul felt like it was
so big that I was I was definitely going to
continue forever.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
So what am I afraid of dying for?
Speaker 4 (25:09):
So that was the first thing that changed my life,
was overcoming, like really seriously overcoming the fear of death
because that that holds so many of us back.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
And for Heaven's sakes, we're all gonna die, really we are.
And and let's let's make this breakings. Yeah it's great. Yeah,
we're all dying. Guess what.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
But I know, no matter what they say, we are
all gonna die someday.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
The funny thing is, you know when you get too
high and you think you're about to die, you always
associated with stuff your body's supposed to do, Like my
heart's beating, Like I can feel the blood flowing through
my veins, my lungs keep getting bigger, and then they
get smaller.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
I don't know what's going on, Like this is.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
All yeah, just understanding and being comfortable with death and
taking that head on. And that's a major area of this.
And you know, we talked to Ishmael Ali from maps Or.
They're doing some amazing work and there I think they're
in their third trials of m DMA and taking combat
veterans with severe PTSD and.
Speaker 6 (26:12):
Actually curing them.
Speaker 5 (26:14):
And the shame of it is, you know, most of
these medicines, we had hundreds of research papers and trials
you know, in the fifties and the sixties, and then
prohibition comes on all these things and it just stops.
And because of foundations like yours, you know, they're helping
kind of move that through and we're getting there. But
I always just think about what a shame it is
that we've lost, you know, decades of research and therapeutics
(26:36):
on this, and that's that's the biggest thing. And so,
you know, we talked about some of the regulatory aspects
and prohibition and things like that. What are some of
the other impediments that you have seen with your work
with the foundation to actually get these things off the ground.
And how can people help your foundation? How can they
help in their individual capacity? We love to you know,
always end on callbacks.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
Well please look AT's ethargefoundation dot org. And course money
is what makes us go, because that's what enables us
to do these the research, you know, do the research
and these trials. And you can go to the website
Foundation dot org and you can read what we're doing
and you can see the incredible results that we're just
(27:20):
starting to get. We are also starting the very first
clinical trial.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
We're doing.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
It's like a pre trial so that we can go
to the next step of it of ayahuasca. Once again,
very hard because of the legal ramifications. There's a scientist
in Australia who's able to use Australian vine and leaf
down there to create the ayahuasca medicine down there, and
we are just starting that and if you check out
(27:49):
ETHERG Foundation dot org you can find more information about that.
We've also one of our this is one of the
favorite things that we're doing. One of the first things
we did is Spain, who provides a methadone to their
heroin addicts. It's a government supplied system. They now have
people on methadone for fifteen twenty years and they are
(28:11):
looking to us to find a way to get them off.
And we have been working with a group out of
Africa that has used the Aboga route which you make
ibi gain, which is very similar to ayahuasca, but even deeper.
And these are not recreational drugs whatsoever. This is really
(28:32):
hard soul searching work and the results that we've gotten
back from Spain that not only are these users of
fifteen twenty years of methadone completely off, opioids and methadone
and heroin completely off, but they stopped drinking, they stopped smoking.
They just turn their life completely around.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
You know.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
Once again, it's not one hundred percent because the person
also has a lot to do with it, but remark
like like eight out of ten or something, I think
really had incredible results with that, and so that's what
we're doing.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
Yeah, if you ever want to know about the War
on drugs and it not being about drugs, understand the
addiction of the drug that they put you on to
take you off another addiction that is methadone, and then
they counts cannabis as a Schedule one drug. And this
is all honky dory.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
It's here, we are insanity where we're working on it.
Speaker 6 (29:29):
Thanks guys, thank you so much, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
We'll be right back with the War on drugs. Man,
that's it, greg our first celebrity guest man.
Speaker 6 (29:52):
Well, we did have air condo.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
I forgot, I forgot, we got we got celebrities on
our show were.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
So humble man and there, Yeah, I forget. Yeah, well, I.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
Guess you're so big now, like what you consider celebrity now?
Speaker 2 (30:04):
No, no, no, that's probably not kidding.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Saron Andre is definitely a celebrity and I know him.
That's that's like my dude, So that might be why.
But nah, that was great just to hear what she's
doing with the foundation and what it's able to do.
And I like the point that she brought up that
is not necessarily one cure for everybody, right, Like, there's
(30:29):
still work that has to be done. Some of these
things might work for you, some of them may not,
but just having that option gives people a chance to
not be subject to getting addicted. And I love the
work they're doing, you know, I want to know more exactly.
Speaker 5 (30:44):
This is not going to solve all your problems. This
is not you know, one hundred percent money back guarantee.
It's just give all this stuff a chance to at
least like come out. Because what we're doing right now,
sure as helling, we're right, you know, we're tipping over
one hundred thousand overdose tests a year, and so these
types of things really help and that's one we kind
of wanted to touch on with our end credits. Here,
(31:05):
our producer, Michael, one of the hardest working men in
the book, send us his story of Goward.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
He's scoured Stex and scoured the x of information, went.
Speaker 5 (31:15):
To a library, filled out an application for a library card
to the whole thing.
Speaker 6 (31:19):
Yeah, he got late fees and everything.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
So he found this story about this guy, Howard, lots
of you know, we're talking nineteen sixty two. This guy
was addicted to heroin at nineteen and then he decided
he wanted to ingest iba game, which is this extract
from a West African shrub called the aboga. You know,
now we kind of know that it's helpful with you know,
opioid with drawls, heroin withdrawals, and actually can reduce the
(31:43):
cravings for heroin.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
I mean, I guess kind of the way he took it.
He said he had a friend who had a lot
of drugs and a freezer and was going through it
and just kind of offered it.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Hey, you might like this.
Speaker 5 (31:53):
Yeah, you know, here's a great quote from him, just
kind of telling the story. This is from a lecture
that he did in two thousand and eight. I follow
the tree up in the sky and I saw these
clouds in the sky, and I realized, for the first
time in my life, I wasn't afraid. And that brought
me to the understanding that at least certain drug addiction
is fear and anxiety driven, and that fear and anxiety
were gone for the first time of my life.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
And it gets you high for like thirty six hours.
And he said he took it, and he was like,
all right, I'm going to go to sleep for a
week and I'm never doing this again. And that's when
that realization that you just spoke about kind of hit him.
And most of the reviews of people that I've seen
that have taken eyeb again or either the boga plant
(32:35):
all kind of say that same thing about that fear
being lifted. It's a thread you want to follow and
you want to be like, Okay, well, let's find out more.
Let's find out so.
Speaker 6 (32:45):
Let's pull on this a little bit.
Speaker 5 (32:47):
Yeah, yeah, And again, this guy took this in nineteen
sixty two.
Speaker 6 (32:50):
This is not some new weight loss drug or miracle drug.
Speaker 5 (32:55):
But a lot of the results that we hear from
this stuff is all anecdotal, where it's just like this
I doing this thing, or a couple of people doing
out here because the government blocks so much studies and research.
And now we're talking. I mean, gosh, I'm not great
at math. What is that sixty years ago?
Speaker 1 (33:10):
This guy was in for sixty years. We don't have
any more info, you know what I mean? We have some,
but yeah, we have nearly what would be if people
would actually study it are allowed to study it.
Speaker 6 (33:24):
Exactly.
Speaker 5 (33:24):
It's still Schedule one drug and so it's still considered
to not have any you know, medical value whatsoever, which
seems kind of bullshit. Yeah, and so you know, the
Ethers Foundation is actually given to a lot of organizations
that are studying this. And something I just saw Clayton
was the state of Kentucky, of all places, just set
aside like forty two million dollars to research I begain
(33:45):
to help with opiate addiction and withdrawals because they lose
about I think the last thing I saw was like
two thousand to three thousand people every year to overdome.
So again, slowly but surely we're seeing this to start
to move. And so we're at this amazing time right
now where things are getting better of a man. You
just how many lives have been lost, how many how
much the research could have been done that just was
(34:06):
blocked because of the drugs.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
And at this point it feels like, oh, we're trying
these things because we're desperate now, like we've let it,
we've shut it down so long and we haven't done research,
and we could be so much further ahead.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
Yeah, and Howard Lotsov he died in twenty ten, and
so he didn't really get to see kind of what
he was doing. Come to this kind of we're not
there full circle, but at least you know it's getting
national exposure, and you know it just again just kind
of takes you back to the lives that have been
lost like Melissa Sun Beckett and thousands and thousands of
others have struggled with addiction when these types of cures
(34:42):
and medicines could have been out there. But there is
some positives coming out of here, and so you know,
even though Howard didn't get to see it, even though
many were not able to see kind of like the
full clinical aspects of a lot of these plant based
medicines come to light. I think we're getting to a
better place. And so you know, like we always try
to say, we try to leave positive note. I think
that is the positive note.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
I want to find out more. I'm not quite sure
I want to partake on the BOGA. I don't think
being hilfh for thirty four hours is if you do
anything for thirty four hours you should get a paycheck
at the end of it. There's no way like that's
that's not recreational anymore.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
So.
Speaker 6 (35:19):
But yeah, now that's what we call a bender.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, that is bent. That is bent, almost broken. You
hear me.
Speaker 7 (35:30):
With that.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
I'm Greg Glad, I'm Clayton, English and.
Speaker 5 (35:34):
Thanks for listening to War on Drugs. Make sure you
follow the War on Drugs podcast so you don't miss
any new episodes. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Executive producers for War on Drugs are Jason Flahm and
Kevin Wadas.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Our Senior producer is.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Michael Epstein, Editing by Nick Massetti and Michael Epstein, Associate
producer and mixed and mastering by Nick Massetti. Additional production
by Jeff Cladbone.
Speaker 5 (36:00):
Sure to follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook
at Lava for Good. You can follow Greg on Twitter
at Greglott, and you can follow Clayton English on Instagram
at Clayton nabors. The War on Drugs is a production
of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company
Number one.
Speaker 6 (36:18):
I'm your host, Greg Lott.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
And I'm Clayton English. Thanks for listening.
All right, agreg when are illegal drugs good for your
mental health?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Thought we already talked about this, We might have, but
we got more to talk about.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
Some heartbreaking news for Melissa Ethridge.
Speaker 4 (00:12):
The singer announced yesterday that her son, Beckett Ceipher, has died.
My son was given vicodin and from there he just
never got off of it. He went from vicodin to
heroin to the last few days it was spentinels.
Speaker 5 (00:28):
On Twitter, singer Melissa Ethridge wrote in part I joined
the hundreds of thousands of families who have lost loved ones.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
To opioid addiction.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
He will be missed by those who loved him.
Speaker 5 (00:39):
How do you turn that sadness from the loss of
backet into the great work that you're doing right now?
Speaker 4 (00:45):
The Etharch Foundation was set up to help people who
are understanding how much psychedelics can do for pain and
opioid use disorders. You know, there is no other compound
that will stop somebody from physically withdrawing on yet. We
have been working with a group out of Africa that
has used the Eboga root.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
But you make eyebigam.
Speaker 6 (01:07):
If successful, this mysterious compound could have the power to
heal millions while seriously disrupting the multimillion dollar opoid.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Market and the results that we've gotten back that not
only are these users of fifteen twenty years completely off
opioids and heroin, but they just turn their life completely around.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I'm Greg Lad, I'm Clayton, England and this is the
War on Drugs. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
We are back with another War on Drugs podcast.
Speaker 6 (01:46):
You thought you got rid of us, man, Nope, you
can't get rid of us.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Man.
Speaker 6 (01:50):
We like drugs, just like the drug warm where ain't
going anywhere.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Just like drugs, We're not going anywhere, and we're slightly addictive,
so you know, we just give it people.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
They fix man.
Speaker 6 (02:00):
Yeah, no, absolutely, How you.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Been man, it's good. We in the summer, you know.
Speaker 6 (02:04):
Yeah, no, I've been good man. Yeah, how you been.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I'm great, man, I'm great. Son just had a birthday.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, we didn't have the big party this time, so
that was a relief.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Any though.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
The case oh two, he's two, so it's too fast,
too furious, of course, yeah, he's too fast, and he's
often very.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Furious about things. My mom made it.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
My mom made the race car cake, like she every
year she's stepping up on her cake. So this one
was like she made little race cars that were edible
and all types of stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
She went crazy, Oh wow, yeah.
Speaker 6 (02:38):
All right, I need to bring your mom over for Yeah,
maybe I'll do there.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
You go, I'm telling you.
Speaker 6 (02:44):
The Big three six coming out.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Awesome.
Speaker 6 (02:48):
Well we'll get into all that later. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
Well we could talk birthdays all day. But yeah, even
a very special occasion. I was getting leiss Athraage to
come on and talk plant based medicine. And I mean, Clayton,
we already did the interview, recorded it. That was just
an amazing conversation and talking to her one of someone
that you know, we all kind of grew up with
listen radio.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Especially if you're from that MTV era, if you that
MTV generation, you know those songs, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
The videos to go with them. So oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
When they sent the email like would you be interested
in interviewing Melissa Ethridge about hallucinogens and plant based medicine? Yes, man, Yes,
I didn't even read the other parts. Like some things
you just asked me when can I do them? You
don't have to ask me if I want to do them.
Speaker 5 (03:32):
But you know, she's so raw and honest about everything.
You know, she she had breast cancer and how plant
based medicines helped her through that, and then she started
the Melissa Athers Foundation, you know, really spurred from you know,
the tragic passing of her Sun Beckett, who died of
an opioid overdose. And you know, the whole crux of
the foundation is to research and fund studies on a
(03:53):
lot of plant based medicines. I've been able to help
treat depression, PTSD, opioated withdraw addiction, and so we continue
to kind of push that down because the War on
Drugs prohibits a lot of this funding, this research and
actually criminalizes doing some of this stuff. And so the
fact that we're slowly starting to see shreds of research
and funding come back again made possible by you know,
(04:13):
foundations like hers, I think it's it's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 6 (04:16):
So it was great to talk to her about.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
All of this.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, man, And it's just one of those things where
we don't know what we don't know, and there's so
much research that hasn't been done, and everything is pushed
to the pharmaceutical side, and we know the SADE effects,
but I really think like just as a whole society
got to take a step back.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
That's it.
Speaker 5 (04:35):
Just let let these have a seat of the table
and let them, you know, work on their own parts.
Speaker 6 (04:40):
Like that's all.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, let the sciences science, let them science man like.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
So again, this was it was just an amazing conversation.
It's an amazing career, amazing life. And she's so open
and raw and honest about it. Yeah, I can't recommend
listening to my podcast that I need you to listen to.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Yeah about that. Let's get too, Let's get into it.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Hey, Melissa, thank you so much for coming here today
with us, for being on the War on Drugs podcast
with me and.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Greg my pleasure.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
We love what you're doing, and we just kind of
want to get into it. I mean, I'm not sure
the best way, but give us your personal history with
the War on Drugs. That is our podcast, so we
know everybody has their own personal battle.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
So you know, I grew up in the Midwest in
the sixties and seventies, and I had a big dream
of becoming a rock star. And in the seventies and
the early eighties, I saw a lot of my heroes
and stuff have trouble with drugs, and I saw a
lot of what the world was kind of going through,
and so I chose a very I wasn't against anything,
(05:53):
I just wasn't participating it. And I was more concerned
with making my career go than sort of losing myself
in something that was going to numb me out. So I,
you know, put that aside, and I didn't drink. I
was a very strange rock star in that I didn't
participate in any of that, you know. But I would recreationally,
(06:13):
you know, have fun with my friends with cannabis and
psilocybin and and but you know, not a lot. And
I never you know, got it myself. It was always
just you know, somebody else. Then in two thousand and
and four, I got breast cancer and started using cannabis
instead of all of the gosh they handed me like
(06:37):
for chemotherapy. They hand me like five, you know, prescription drugs,
and I was like, you know, and then the the
drugs that help with the side effects of those drugs,
and and I was like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, wait,
what are you doing? And and it was it was
medicinal in California cannabis was even though it was very
hard to get, you know, it's like they were still
busting everybody back then. But I was able to, you know,
(07:00):
find the roadie that knew, the roadie that could get
me some cannabis. And I finally used it every day
for medicinal purposes, and I'd never done that before.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Was it was to feel normal.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
And after you know, three months of using it and
helping me so much, keeping me out of the hospital,
giving me an appetite, helping with depression and pain and
all these things that it was so good for, I thought,
I want everyone to at least know this information, and
hopefully they could if they wanted to.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Everyone should have a choice to use this.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
And that's what really kind of threw me into the
more political space of plant medicine and quickly realizing that
there's a big difference between pharmaceuticals and plant medicine that's
play around for thousands and thousands of years. You know,
it's just huge, and you can't you cannot lump them together.
(07:53):
So I really took a journey with that and it
led me to ayahuasca. It led me to my own
soul's searching. It led me to changing my life and
spiritual awakening and all these things that it led me to,
which helped when my son who was a teenager sixteen,
(08:13):
seventeen years old and wanted to be a professional snowboarder
and was trying out with an Aspen snowboard team and
he broke his ankle, It broke his dreams, and it
just broke him and he was given vicodint and from
there he just never got off of it. He went
from vicodin too heroin to the last few days it
(08:38):
was fentanyl. And so I've lost my son to the pharmaceuticals,
and I have really then put so much of my
own energy and effort into having the world understand and
bringing the research and data that needs to be collected
to legalize plant medicine and that won't kill us.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
Well, it's so sad to hear about Beckett and his story,
but I want to ask, so you you start the
Etherrets Foundation, really out this trauma, and how do you
turn that frustration sadness from the loss of Beckett into
you know, the great work that you're doing right now?
Can you talk a little about what the Ethers Foundation.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Does right after he died, I was very frustrated.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
I was sad. And a family when someone is struggling
with opoid use disorder and it's there's so much shame
and guilt and stuff that the family doesn't know what
to do with. You don't know whether to you know,
give him money, give him help, or take everything away
(09:43):
or you know what, what are you supposed to do?
And no matter what you do, it's not right because
they have to come out of it themselves.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
That's that's the only way.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
And so towards the last couple of weeks of his life,
I knew that it was a very good possibility that
he would not survive this, and I was prepared in
a way. You know, of course, you never are fully
prepared for that when it happens. But so when he
passed away, I thought, I've got to do something positive.
(10:13):
I don't want to be against things. I believe that
there's more power in being for something. And I really
believe that these plant medicines, these entheogens and psychedelics, they
can if a person is open to it, if they
want to walk that path.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
It's not.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
I don't think psychedelics are like here, try this and
your life will totally change. It might if you are
open to it, but a lot of it has to
do with the person. So the Etharge Foundation was set
up to help people who are understanding how much psychedelics
can do for pain and opioid use disorder and generally
(10:59):
just for the well being of human beings. And yet
they're thrown into the Schedule one category where there's no
medicinal value and we can't even do any research on it,
which is like, you know, you can't get credit unless
you have credit. You know, it's stuck in this this
saying well, no, well we don't have any research. So
(11:20):
I said, well, we need to find the research. We
need to go do this, and so we have been.
We actually are the only foundation that is specifically focused
on opioid use disorder, and the people that are running
these trials are just just you know, frontline miracle workers
and we're getting amazing, amazing.
Speaker 5 (11:41):
Yeah, it just does almost sound like a trap, like, yeah, hey,
are you using illicit drugs? Come on by to this
discovery exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
You know, are you on drugs? Would you like some more?
Come by? And we got you.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
I love what you're doing because so much of the
things are misunderstanding and we haven't done the research and
haven't had the ability to.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Really do it.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
And when we look at pharmaceuticals and just the way
they're so quick to put opioids in people's hands when
they're in pain, but at the same time they'll cut
them off at the drop of a hat, knowing how
addictive they are, and nobody really even talks about that.
Nobody's like, hey, okay, well maybe this is leading people
(12:30):
down a path of.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
Yeah, they put so much on the person, the own
personal well, you you shouldn't get addicted, you know. It's
like wait a minute, right, So really, these antheogens, the
psychedelics do so much for a person's spirit and soul,
and once again, it's still a lot has to do
(12:53):
with the person and their own life force. So it's
a it's not in the pharmaceutical categories because we pharmaceuticals
come from the place of one pill is going to
fix everybody on this, right, and how can you compete
(13:14):
with that When you're saying, look, every person has a
choice of all this and what fits them. It's a
whole different way of looking at wellness and medicine and health.
So it's it's a long road we're gonna walk care.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, I'm all for the plant based medicines. And you
said one thing, we put so much trust in the
pharmaceuticals and big pharma and they call the plant medicine
and things that have been around for thousands of years,
that's the alternative medicine.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
When how has it been here longer?
Speaker 1 (13:48):
And it's the alternative and it's been proven throughout history.
But this so it's one of those things to distance
it and make it seem foreign, dangerous, or will.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Take take it to your chance with it if you
want to. It might alter you.
Speaker 5 (14:02):
Yeah, like you know, you should really start to unravel
this whole thing where none of this is really based
in evidence and science. It's all based in propaganda and
what you can control and what you can't.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
And undoing that. Yeah, that's the work that we try
to do here, and we see you're doing it. It's
it's hard. It's like you said, years and.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
Years information education, that's all you know.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Research.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
That's why it's like, look, let's we're gonna get these
things one after another. And it's slowly and once again,
it's not for everybody. You know, there's some people you're
not going to get to, hey, here's some psilocybin, it'll
it'll you know, change your life or whatever. You know,
it's it's not gonna work. They're going to just think
that's really weird. You You really have to have your
own personal journey with it. So it's it's it's not easy.
(14:49):
It's not a one pill fix it all thing.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Right, Can you talk about that a little bit, just
as far as the journey and what do they need
to decide that they want out of it?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Wow?
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Well, first of all, if they're listening to your podcast,
they got to be pretty cool, and they got to
be you know, they've got they've got to be a
certain you know, understanding going on. I think a lot
of it's generational. You know, the younger generation is a
is a bit more open and they know that they've
been lied to about cannabis. They that you can see
that as years go by and one by one the
(15:22):
states are legalizing, so you can see, oh, well, massive
amounts of people haven't gone crazy or nuts on cannabis.
So maybe that whole refer madness.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Was a lie. Oh yeah, it was. It was a lie.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
And so you know, so you kind of start that
and you check what your own understanding of it is,
and you have to you're looking for harmony in your life.
You're looking for some kind of harmony, and that one
path that so many of us are on.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
We got to get up, go to our job.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
We've got to do this, got to take care of
the kids, and we've got to solve all the problems
and then try to get it to go nights sleep.
But we can't because we're all caffeined and we're all
worried and the stress. You have to kind of look
at that first and go, that's the biggest problem. That
might be why I have back pain, right, not because
there's something.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Wrong with me.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
And once you kind of make that choice, if that's
what you're looking for, then psychedelics can help you.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
If you understand, oh, I need to change some behavior here.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
I need an answer, not just oh God, my back hurts,
give me a pill, because you're gonna keep going down
that road.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Right.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
If you're ready to make a change, then cannabis can help.
And a little bit of THC can help because it
kind of spreads time and space out for you and
you go, oh, there's more to this than what I've
thought now some people it's a hard jump to go
from left brain to let your right brain sort of
do some things. But if you're reading helps, talking to
(16:56):
other people, information, your podcasts, these things help, and then
it's a road and before you know it, you're at
some ayahuasca circle and you're journeying and you're discovering that
you are light and love and the world is a
full of a full of love.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
What you said about the psilocybin.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Definitely, I've had some experiences where it's okay, I need
to let things go, and it's simple stuff. If you're
allowed to be in that space, it's like breathing. You're like, wow,
this feels good. Oh, this is what I'm not doing
when I get upset. This is why my shoulders hurt,
this is why my neck. I can hardly turn around
(17:37):
without you know, spinning my whole body.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
So, yeah, it's to take our population and the majority,
if we can get them out of the pill, fix
it all and gets them back on the construction line.
Quality of life is really important, and not everyone's gonna
do that. You know, people are always going to think
that hard work gets you somewhere, you know, and and boy,
(18:03):
you know, yeah, one one little nice journey with psilocybin
can really teach you that breathing is an incredibly important
thing to do.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
Yeah, And it must have been so trying to flip
that off, because I mean, being the megastar that you
are and the amount of work that that takes, and
then being a female in the time that you were
coming up and that, and then being a part of
the LGBTQ community and trying to.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Do as all that.
Speaker 6 (18:26):
Yeah, I mean there is you had.
Speaker 5 (18:28):
To bust your ass in the way that you did
to get there, and then to kind of say like
I have to balance this or turn that. That must
have been such a challenging experience.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
And so well, you know, I got breast cancer.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
It eventually, you know it eventually, will you know, burn
yourself up till you finally go, well, okay, I got
a change, and that change is what saves your life.
Every time my even doctors, bless their heart, they would say, well,
we have found people that make a change in their
lives are the ones that survive. So it's kind of
(19:00):
simple there, and even they've seen that it's about finding
that thing, whether it's the family, whether it's your mother,
you know, whether it's your you know, what you think
you should do is a job, what you should make
and all those things. No, that's not what life is about.
Life is not just some sort of race that we're
on that That is not how it is. It's it's
(19:21):
joy is ridiculously important in life, and we just don't
ever put it first.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Yeah, very true. You felt that in your life the nineties.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
The nineties was when you know, I was huge and
was the you know, playing stadiums and arenas, and it's
like I was there, and I've seen many many people
that get there and you go, ha wow. It was
a lot more fun getting too there than it is
being there, because being there lasts a day maybe, you know,
and it moves on, and life moves on in the
(19:54):
light of fame moves on. It's very fickle. It never
stays in one place. And you see these people that
make it and then they keep trying. Then then they're like,
oh God, I got to get up there. I've got
to I've got to do that again. I've got to
have that level and there's something can sustain it, you know,
for a long time, but eventually you got to just
you know, love it yourself, no matter what the outcome is,
(20:19):
no matter what people, how many you sell, or you know,
whatever is happening, you got to love it. That's what
saved me is it's like, oh no, I love doing this,
but I can be myself when I'm paying. I don't
have to be I don't have to make myself up
to be something else. And that that's the way it is.
Speaker 5 (20:36):
And it's that high chase it feels like to what
you're talking about and people trying to maintain and getting
that from other sources in Clayton, I know this is
something you talked about in your stand up where there
can't be a better high than like being up there.
And you've seen it with people trying to maintain that.
You've lost some friends in the comedy you know world,
and how difficult that is, and I see those parallels.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Yeah, yeah, and I mean it's but one thing about
it is the love is what got you in it,
and it's what keeps you there. And from what you're
telling me, Melissa, is what can save you too.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Amen. So exactly.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
Yeah, We'll be right back with the War on Drugs Podcast.
Speaker 7 (21:26):
The War on Drugs Podcast is sponsored by Stand Together.
Stand Together is a philanthropic community that partners with America's
boldest change makers to tackle the root causes of our
country's biggest problems. Like many others who experienced addiction, Scott
Stroude was using drugs and alcohol to number the pain.
For him, it was childhood trauma. In his early twenties,
Scott was invited into a boxing gym by a friend
(21:47):
and that's where he discovered the healing power of sport
and community. In two thousand and six, Scott founded The Phoenix,
a free, sober active community that uses the transformative power
of sport to help people treat and heal from addiction.
Scott Strode is one of many entrepreneurs partnering with Stand
Together to drive solutions in education, healthcare, poverty, and criminal justice.
(22:09):
To learn more of visit Standogether dot org.
Speaker 5 (22:20):
Melissa, I was listening to one of your interview I
think it was with Rolling Stone, and you talked about
doing like a hero dosage of cannabis heroic. Yeah, can
you talk about that a little bit? And you actually said,
like it actually really you know, it's funny, but like
it really helped you and you kind of fell into
it yeah, I'd love to hear about that.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Oh yeah, no, break yeah, break it, you got it.
I'm going to tell you the story.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
So I was had just been through my first divorce.
It was this the late nineties, and a friend had
given me just a massive amount of cannabis and I
was starting to to know cannabis better.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
It was relaxing me.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
My girlfriend at the time was really fun, especially when
we would smoke. And in one weekend, I said, Oh,
my gosh, have you ever done like, you know, pop
brownies or you know, eating it to edibles and and
she was like no, and I hadn't done it in
a long time.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
And I was like, oh, it's so much fun, you know.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
And my girlfriend was the kind that she was from
the Midwest, and she baked really well, like really made
really good cookies, right. And she was also the kind
of was like, hey, if a quarter cup is good,
then a whole cup's got to be fantastic, right, And
so she puts all this cannabis in, but she makes
it taste so good in the in the cookie, and
(23:41):
so you know, I ate one, and it's the you're
eating one and you're waiting twenty minutes maybe and You're like,
I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. Well let's
have another. And I ate another one and it started
to kind of come on, and then I got the munchies,
so I ate another one, you know, and she passed out.
She fell asleep, which, ladies and gentle, if you don't know,
you can't overdose on cannabis.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
You just fall asleep.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
But before I fell asleep, I went on what I
call a heroic dose journey. It was so much cannabis
that my right brain, my intuitive brain, completely took over
my inner being and connected to the non physical and
the spiritual was completely wide open.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
And of course I thought I was dying.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
That's what that's what you think. How many phone calls,
how many police phone calls have we heard of I'm dying.
I've taken too much cannabis and my heart's founding and
I'm dying, and you know, and I did.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
I went through that. I went, oh God, I'm dying.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
And then after a few moments of Okay, I'm dying,
it was like, well, if I'm dying, it's not so bad.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
This is not so bad. And I started thinking about, well,
why are we so afraid of death?
Speaker 4 (24:56):
We just it's because my soul felt like it was
so big that I was I was definitely going to
continue forever.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
So what am I afraid of dying for?
Speaker 4 (25:09):
So that was the first thing that changed my life,
was overcoming, like really seriously overcoming the fear of death
because that that holds so many of us back.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
And for Heaven's sakes, we're all gonna die, really we are.
And and let's let's make this breakings. Yeah it's great. Yeah,
we're all dying. Guess what.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
But I know, no matter what they say, we are
all gonna die someday.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
The funny thing is, you know when you get too
high and you think you're about to die, you always
associated with stuff your body's supposed to do, Like my
heart's beating, Like I can feel the blood flowing through
my veins, my lungs keep getting bigger, and then they
get smaller.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
I don't know what's going on, Like this is.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
All yeah, just understanding and being comfortable with death and
taking that head on. And that's a major area of this.
And you know, we talked to Ishmael Ali from maps Or.
They're doing some amazing work and there I think they're
in their third trials of m DMA and taking combat
veterans with severe PTSD and.
Speaker 6 (26:12):
Actually curing them.
Speaker 5 (26:14):
And the shame of it is, you know, most of
these medicines, we had hundreds of research papers and trials
you know, in the fifties and the sixties, and then
prohibition comes on all these things and it just stops.
And because of foundations like yours, you know, they're helping
kind of move that through and we're getting there. But
I always just think about what a shame it is
that we've lost, you know, decades of research and therapeutics
(26:36):
on this, and that's that's the biggest thing. And so,
you know, we talked about some of the regulatory aspects
and prohibition and things like that. What are some of
the other impediments that you have seen with your work
with the foundation to actually get these things off the ground.
And how can people help your foundation? How can they
help in their individual capacity? We love to you know,
always end on callbacks.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
Well please look AT's ethargefoundation dot org. And course money
is what makes us go, because that's what enables us
to do these the research, you know, do the research
and these trials. And you can go to the website
Foundation dot org and you can read what we're doing
and you can see the incredible results that we're just
(27:20):
starting to get. We are also starting the very first
clinical trial.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
We're doing.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
It's like a pre trial so that we can go
to the next step of it of ayahuasca. Once again,
very hard because of the legal ramifications. There's a scientist
in Australia who's able to use Australian vine and leaf
down there to create the ayahuasca medicine down there, and
we are just starting that and if you check out
(27:49):
ETHERG Foundation dot org you can find more information about that.
We've also one of our this is one of the
favorite things that we're doing. One of the first things
we did is Spain, who provides a methadone to their
heroin addicts. It's a government supplied system. They now have
people on methadone for fifteen twenty years and they are
(28:11):
looking to us to find a way to get them off.
And we have been working with a group out of
Africa that has used the Aboga route which you make
ibi gain, which is very similar to ayahuasca, but even deeper.
And these are not recreational drugs whatsoever. This is really
(28:32):
hard soul searching work and the results that we've gotten
back from Spain that not only are these users of
fifteen twenty years of methadone completely off, opioids and methadone
and heroin completely off, but they stopped drinking, they stopped smoking.
They just turn their life completely around.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
You know.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
Once again, it's not one hundred percent because the person
also has a lot to do with it, but remark
like like eight out of ten or something, I think
really had incredible results with that, and so that's what
we're doing.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
Yeah, if you ever want to know about the War
on drugs and it not being about drugs, understand the
addiction of the drug that they put you on to
take you off another addiction that is methadone, and then
they counts cannabis as a Schedule one drug. And this
is all honky dory.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
It's here, we are insanity where we're working on it.
Speaker 6 (29:29):
Thanks guys, thank you so much, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
We'll be right back with the War on drugs. Man,
that's it, greg our first celebrity guest man.
Speaker 6 (29:52):
Well, we did have air condo.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
I forgot, I forgot, we got we got celebrities on
our show were.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
So humble man and there, Yeah, I forget. Yeah, well, I.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
Guess you're so big now, like what you consider celebrity now?
Speaker 2 (30:04):
No, no, no, that's probably not kidding.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Saron Andre is definitely a celebrity and I know him.
That's that's like my dude, So that might be why.
But nah, that was great just to hear what she's
doing with the foundation and what it's able to do.
And I like the point that she brought up that
is not necessarily one cure for everybody, right, Like, there's
(30:29):
still work that has to be done. Some of these
things might work for you, some of them may not,
but just having that option gives people a chance to
not be subject to getting addicted. And I love the
work they're doing, you know, I want to know more exactly.
Speaker 5 (30:44):
This is not going to solve all your problems. This
is not you know, one hundred percent money back guarantee.
It's just give all this stuff a chance to at
least like come out. Because what we're doing right now,
sure as helling, we're right, you know, we're tipping over
one hundred thousand overdose tests a year, and so these
types of things really help and that's one we kind
of wanted to touch on with our end credits. Here,
(31:05):
our producer, Michael, one of the hardest working men in
the book, send us his story of Goward.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
He's scoured Stex and scoured the x of information, went.
Speaker 5 (31:15):
To a library, filled out an application for a library card
to the whole thing.
Speaker 6 (31:19):
Yeah, he got late fees and everything.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
So he found this story about this guy, Howard, lots
of you know, we're talking nineteen sixty two. This guy
was addicted to heroin at nineteen and then he decided
he wanted to ingest iba game, which is this extract
from a West African shrub called the aboga. You know,
now we kind of know that it's helpful with you know,
opioid with drawls, heroin withdrawals, and actually can reduce the
(31:43):
cravings for heroin.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
I mean, I guess kind of the way he took it.
He said he had a friend who had a lot
of drugs and a freezer and was going through it
and just kind of offered it.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Hey, you might like this.
Speaker 5 (31:53):
Yeah, you know, here's a great quote from him, just
kind of telling the story. This is from a lecture
that he did in two thousand and eight. I follow
the tree up in the sky and I saw these
clouds in the sky, and I realized, for the first
time in my life, I wasn't afraid. And that brought
me to the understanding that at least certain drug addiction
is fear and anxiety driven, and that fear and anxiety
were gone for the first time of my life.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
And it gets you high for like thirty six hours.
And he said he took it, and he was like,
all right, I'm going to go to sleep for a
week and I'm never doing this again. And that's when
that realization that you just spoke about kind of hit him.
And most of the reviews of people that I've seen
that have taken eyeb again or either the boga plant
(32:35):
all kind of say that same thing about that fear
being lifted. It's a thread you want to follow and
you want to be like, Okay, well, let's find out more.
Let's find out so.
Speaker 6 (32:45):
Let's pull on this a little bit.
Speaker 5 (32:47):
Yeah, yeah, And again, this guy took this in nineteen
sixty two.
Speaker 6 (32:50):
This is not some new weight loss drug or miracle drug.
Speaker 5 (32:55):
But a lot of the results that we hear from
this stuff is all anecdotal, where it's just like this
I doing this thing, or a couple of people doing
out here because the government blocks so much studies and research.
And now we're talking. I mean, gosh, I'm not great
at math. What is that sixty years ago?
Speaker 1 (33:10):
This guy was in for sixty years. We don't have
any more info, you know what I mean? We have some,
but yeah, we have nearly what would be if people
would actually study it are allowed to study it.
Speaker 6 (33:24):
Exactly.
Speaker 5 (33:24):
It's still Schedule one drug and so it's still considered
to not have any you know, medical value whatsoever, which
seems kind of bullshit. Yeah, and so you know, the
Ethers Foundation is actually given to a lot of organizations
that are studying this. And something I just saw Clayton
was the state of Kentucky, of all places, just set
aside like forty two million dollars to research I begain
(33:45):
to help with opiate addiction and withdrawals because they lose
about I think the last thing I saw was like
two thousand to three thousand people every year to overdome.
So again, slowly but surely we're seeing this to start
to move. And so we're at this amazing time right
now where things are getting better of a man. You
just how many lives have been lost, how many how
much the research could have been done that just was
(34:06):
blocked because of the drugs.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
And at this point it feels like, oh, we're trying
these things because we're desperate now, like we've let it,
we've shut it down so long and we haven't done research,
and we could be so much further ahead.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
Yeah, and Howard Lotsov he died in twenty ten, and
so he didn't really get to see kind of what
he was doing. Come to this kind of we're not
there full circle, but at least you know it's getting
national exposure, and you know it just again just kind
of takes you back to the lives that have been
lost like Melissa Sun Beckett and thousands and thousands of
others have struggled with addiction when these types of cures
(34:42):
and medicines could have been out there. But there is
some positives coming out of here, and so you know,
even though Howard didn't get to see it, even though
many were not able to see kind of like the
full clinical aspects of a lot of these plant based
medicines come to light. I think we're getting to a
better place. And so you know, like we always try
to say, we try to leave positive note. I think
that is the positive note.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
I want to find out more. I'm not quite sure
I want to partake on the BOGA. I don't think
being hilfh for thirty four hours is if you do
anything for thirty four hours you should get a paycheck
at the end of it. There's no way like that's
that's not recreational anymore.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
So.
Speaker 6 (35:19):
But yeah, now that's what we call a bender.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, that is bent. That is bent, almost broken. You
hear me.
Speaker 7 (35:30):
With that.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
I'm Greg Glad, I'm Clayton, English and.
Speaker 5 (35:34):
Thanks for listening to War on Drugs. Make sure you
follow the War on Drugs podcast so you don't miss
any new episodes. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Executive producers for War on Drugs are Jason Flahm and
Kevin Wadas.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Our Senior producer is.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Michael Epstein, Editing by Nick Massetti and Michael Epstein, Associate
producer and mixed and mastering by Nick Massetti. Additional production
by Jeff Cladbone.
Speaker 5 (36:00):
Sure to follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook
at Lava for Good. You can follow Greg on Twitter
at Greglott, and you can follow Clayton English on Instagram
at Clayton nabors. The War on Drugs is a production
of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company
Number one.
Speaker 6 (36:18):
I'm your host, Greg Lott.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
And I'm Clayton English. Thanks for listening.
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