June 13, 2025 • 24 mins
We’ve been sold a story—that ayahuasca heals, that psilocybin cures, and that plant medicine is medicine.
But what if that story isn’t just misleading… what if it’s holding people back from actually healing?
In this episode, I break down what these psychedelic tools do—and what they don’t do.
I share my personal journey through hundreds of ceremonies, the trap I fell into, and the uncomfortable truth that most people don’t want to hear:
These substances aren’t the cure.
They can open doors—but you have to walk through them.
If you’ve ever felt stuck after a ceremony, chased the next “breakthrough,” or wondered why nothing’s actually changing… this video might give you the insight you didn’t know you needed.
Drop a comment below and let’s have a real conversation.
#psychedelics #ayahuasca #healingjourney #plantmedicine #integration #spiritualawakening #entheogens #podcast
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Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction: Are Psychedelics Really Medicines?
02:30 Historical Perspectives on Psychedelics
03:48 The Global Health Situation and Misleading Terms
06:26 The Aubrey Marcus Podcast and Plant Medicine Use
08:16 Personal Experiences and Reflections
11:09 The Role of Integration in Healing
13:31 Challenges with Microdosing and Western Medicine
15:13 Proactive vs. Reactive Healing Approaches
20:11 Final Thoughts and Call to Action
Don't miss any of the action (Ian's links):
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Hey, I’m Ian Vogel—host of Alternate Timelines. My journey started on a small farm in the midwest, where I always felt a little out of place. After years of skepticism and even a stint as an atheist, a near-death experience changed my perspective on everything. Since then, I’ve explored plant medicine, past life memories, and the mysteries of consciousness. Now, I’m sharing those experiences to help others navigate their own awakening. Through real stories, deep conversations, and wild explorations of the unknown, we’re building a community where it’s okay to question reality. You’re not alone in the unknown. 👽✨
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ian Vogel (00:00):
Both ayahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms are often
called plant medicines.
But if a medicine is defined asa compound or preparation used
for the treatment or preventionof a disease, then neither of
these substances meet thatcriteria.
And I'm not the first person topoint this out.
So why do we continue to callthese psychedelic substances
(00:21):
medicines?
In this video, I'm gonna talkabout what these substances do,
what they don't do, and I'd liketo open up a dialogue and have a
conversation around how we cantalk about these very important
and impactful substances in away that's accurate and doesn't
give people a false impressionof what they do.
(00:45):
What's up?
I'm Ian with alternatetimelines, and I've been
thinking about this for a coupleof years now.
At a certain point in myjourney, it became abundantly
clear to me that no, thesesubstances are not medicines.
And yes, the words we use todescribe them are important, and
many people are coming to theseplant medicines with the
(01:06):
preconceived notion that just bysimply ingesting them, that they
will have some sort of tangibleresult or they will receive some
sort of healing or medicinalbenefit when in most cases,
that's simply not what happens.
Now I have no intention to tryto downplay just how impactful
these substances can be.
(01:27):
I personally have a deep respectand so much love for both
ayahuasca and psilocybinmushrooms.
They both had immeasurableimpacts on my life, and for that
I simply don't have words todescribe how much gratitude I
feel for each of them.
And throughout my journey I'vecome to realize through my own
experiences and through seeingpeople around me that working
(01:50):
with these substances can bekind of like a double-edged
sword.
So if these substances aren'ttechnically medicines, then what
are they?
Well, I like to think of them ascatalysts for change.
They don't actually do thechange work for you, but they
create a situation either bygiving you knowledge or helping
you see your situation in adifferent context in which you
(02:12):
are able to then do the changeand create the healing for
yourself.
Neither ayahuasca nor psilocybinmushrooms actually do the
healing work.
The healing is theresponsibility of the person
who's taken those substances.
This is something that's beenrecognized by many of the
pioneers and early researchersin this field.
Stanislav Grof who was theinventor of holotropic breathing
(02:33):
and one of the major researchersback in the late sixties, he
describes these substances asnon-specific amplifiers, and
what he means by that is thatthey don't give you anything.
They simply show you what'salready there and amplify the
signal that is already present.
the late and great Allen Watts.
(02:55):
He liked to describepsychedelics as diagnostic
tools, and the metaphor he oftenused was that of a microscope,
meaning the microscope helps yousee what's already there that
you can't typically see withyour normal vision.
Again, not giving you anythingbut helping you to perceive your
situation in a different light.
The distinction in these twodifferent ways of talking about
(03:16):
these substances is that whenyou call it a medicine, you're
implying that there's gonna be atreatment or a prevention of
some sort of disease.
You're putting the onus on thesubstance to produce a result
for you.
When you talk about thesesubstances as diagnostic tools
and non-specific amplifiers,that puts it on you, you are
responsible for taking actionand doing the healing work.
(03:40):
It's a very different dynamic.
It may seem like I'm splittinghairs, but the words we use are
important.
Over the last few years, we'veall gone through this global
health situation, let's say, andI'm gonna have to speak very
delicately around this becausethere are certain words that if
I use them, YouTube will flag myvideo and it'll get shadow
(04:03):
banned and it won't reach asmany people.
I've seen it and experienced itwith other videos.
Now we all know that as a resultof this global health situation,
there was a treatment that wasrolled out and it was called a
vaccine.
Traditionally a vaccine wassomething that you took that
helped prevent you from gettinga disease.
(04:26):
The smallpox vaccine, the MMR,the polio vaccine, we as a
global society understood thatword to mean something that
prevents you from getting adisease.
But the reality is the treatmentthat was rolled out and given to
people didn't actually do that.
(04:46):
And if people had understoodbeforehand that what they were
getting wasn't actuallytechnically a vaccine or it
didn't meet the definition ofvaccine as they knew it, and it
was truly something closer to anexperimental treatment, then if,
if people really understoodthat, we wouldn't have seen as
(05:08):
many people taking it.
And there wouldn't have been thebroad scale adoption of people
just willingly taking the poke.
And now we're in a situationwhere there are a lot of people
who had they known what theyknow now, back then simply
wouldn't have done it.
And using the word vaccine todescribe that treatment played a
(05:32):
big role in how people thoughtabout it and their level of
trust in that treatment.
So we have all experienced andhave witnessed in real time in
our own lives of a situationwhere trying to redefine a word
to fit a specific narrative hascaused some real undeniable
(05:52):
consequences for many people inour society.
The words we use and the way wetalk about these substances is
important.
Now in our current society, it'sbecome almost in vogue to use
psilocybin mushrooms and go toayahuasca ceremonies on the
regular.
If these were actually medicinesthat were effective at treating
(06:13):
and preventing disease, theunderlying root cause issue that
caused the person to seek thesemedicines out in the first place
would be resolved, and peoplewouldn't have to go back over
and over and over again.
I'm making this video in theaftermath of the Aubrey Marcus
Radical Monogamy Situationpodcast that nearly broke the
(06:35):
internet.
I have no desire to rehash or goover any of the contents of that
podcast again, and there wassomething that a few people
pointed out that I thought wasreally important.
When I look at a situation likethat, I always try to think,
what is the root cause of this?
My overall takeaway, if I couldsum it up in two words, after
(07:00):
watching the podcast and lookingat all of the responses to it,
was ego and delusion.
So for somebody who's such anoutspoken proponent of the
regular use of plant medicines,psychedelics, ayahuasca,
psilocybin.
He, he's also into fiveM-E-O-D-M-T and God knows what
(07:24):
else.
If these substances wereactually medicines, he wouldn't
have to continue to use themover and over again.
And the ego and delusion thatmost people who saw or watched
that podcast perceived.
You'd think that he would have amore grounded and reasonable
outlook and approach to life andhow he portrays his personal
(07:47):
affairs.
Most people who responded tothat situation could tell that
something just didn't feelright.
Something seemed off.
And there are a few people,myself included, who believe
that the root cause of theinability to see reality and
perceive things in a groundedand stable kind of a way is
(08:08):
probably a result of the plantmedicine use or plant medicine
use.
I'm not here to cast judgment.
I've been through my own processand have had my own journey with
these substances.
I've personally worked withAyahuasca more than 250 times,
and I've sat with mushrooms justas many times, if not more.
(08:30):
Over the last decade, thesesubstances came into my life
where at a time when I feltreally lost and helped give me
guidance and helped point me inthe right direction and helped
bring me to where I am today.
And for that, I am trulygrateful.
Over the last three years, Ihaven't really touched
psychedelics, so very, verylittle.
(08:51):
And if I'm really honest withmyself and I look back over that
period of my life where I wasworking with those substances
really intensively, it's clearto me that my relationship in
the beginning was a more healthysort of a relationship.
There was a clear reciprocation,a lot of respect, and it felt
(09:12):
like a very balanced sort ofrelationship where I was giving
and getting a lot from it.
But over time, I can just seehow my relationship,
specifically with Ayahuascastarted to change.
And it became one of a,initially a relationship that
was more empowering and broughtme to a place where I was
(09:33):
learning how to heal myself to apoint that was disempowering.
I gave my power away toAyahuasca and expected Ayahuasca
to do the work for me.
And believe it or not, I did nothave great results in that
codependent sort ofrelationship.
And yes, I was having deep andprofound peak experiences.
(09:54):
I got to the point where I wasfacilitating ayahuasca
ceremonies for one of thelargest above ground ayahuasca
churches in the us.
I was traveling all over thecountry doing these ceremonies
once, usually twice a month, andwe were doing three day
ceremonies.
So Friday, Saturday, Sunday,twice a month, didn't gimme much
(10:15):
time to be sober and reallyintegrate the experiences I was
having.
And despite the fact that I washaving these really potent
experiences, and people weretelling me how amazing my music
was and how impactful mypresence at the ceremony was and
all this and that if I stoppedand looked at my life, it would
be what you would considerbasically the textbook
(10:39):
definition of spiritualbypassing.
I was going from experience toexperience, to experience, to
ceremony, to ceremony, toceremony.
And my actual life wasn'tchanging.
I had completely plateaued andstalled out, and this is
something that I personallyexperienced and I've seen it
with many other people who arein that space when they're not
(10:59):
taking the time to do theintegration work and to apply
the lessons that they learn fromworking with these substances to
their actual life.
Anybody who's done any plantmedicine work or inner healing
work has probably heard the termintegration.
From my perspective, integrationis the most important part of
(11:19):
the process.
That's where you actually getthe benefit from.
The plant medicine work, thejourneying, it can help show you
what the root causes of yourissue, but it's up to you during
the integration phase toactually make the changes you
need to make.
Think about it, if you are in aplant medicine ceremony or you
(11:40):
hear somebody talking about theplant medicine ceremony, people
often describe theirbreakthroughs and the epiphanies
they have.
Well, what is an epiphany?
An epiphany isn't learning newinformation.
An epiphany is when you can taketwo distinct pieces of
information or things that youalready know and are able to
(12:02):
relate them to one another in away that gives them new meaning,
basically gives you a newcontext to something you already
know, which gives you newmeaning and a new place to
explore and to approach yourinner healing from.
The truth is that when it comesto the situations in most
(12:22):
people's lives that they findmost challenging, the majority
of us don't know what the rootcause is.
We spend time focusing on tryingto treat the symptoms without
actually understanding what'scausing the symptoms.
If we knew what the root causewas and we were trying to heal
the root cause, then thesymptoms would go away.
(12:44):
But these persistent symptomsthat often show up in our lives
as what we might call depressionor anxiety or any sort of
manifestation or maity ofdisease, if we knew what was
causing it, we'd be able to fixit.
And when you treat not the rootcause of the situation, you get
(13:04):
not the result.
The reason people continue torelive the same patterns over
and over again and maintain, alot of the same behaviors is
'cause they haven't actuallygotten to the root of what
causes them.
Again, they're, they spend timetrying to treat the symptoms,
which in most cases, it's liketrying to put a bandaid on a
stab wound and over a longperiod of time that simply
(13:27):
doesn't work and doesn't producepositive results in a person's
life.
While I was traveling arounddoing all the ayahuasca
ceremonies.
I was also selling psilocybinmicro doses, and I had dozens
and dozens of clients, uh,across the country, and people
came to me for all sorts ofissues.
Symptoms of depression andanxiety, people with traumatic
(13:49):
brain injuries, people withneurological disorders, um,
people on the autism spectrum,people dealing with cancer like
you name it.
I dealt with all sorts ofpeople.
And that was about the timewhere I really started to
question whether or not thesepsychedelic substances were
actually medicines.
Whenever I worked with somebodyproviding micro doses, it was
(14:13):
never my intention to replaceone pill with another pill.
My intention was always for themicrodosing to be a short-term
intervention.
Every time I would take on a newclient, I would do a really in
depth 60 to 90 minute longconsultation where I would talk
about what the psilocybin isdoing in their system, how it's
(14:34):
producing the results that it'sproducing, and how to work with
it and overdoing many, manyconsultations, I began to
realize that people just thinkof medicine differently in our
Western culture.
In our Western society.
The majority of us have beenprogrammed from a very young age
(14:54):
to believe that if your headhurts, you take the blue pill.
If you stomach hurts, you takethe yellow pill.
If you're feeling anxious, wellyou take the green pill.
That's just how we perceivemedicine and healing.
It's a almost entirely reactivesort of a relationship we have
with the concept of healing.
And if you approach medicinefrom an eastern or more
(15:16):
traditional perspective, wellthat approach is completely
different.
It's a more proactive approach.
If you work with a traditionalChinese medicine doctor or even
a, a shaman from the Amazon,they don't wait until you're
sick to treat you.
They work with you on a regularbasis, and when they start to
see that something's out ofbalance.
(15:38):
They try to correct it rightaway before you fall into a
state of disease or into a statewhere you're really sick.
It's a process of continuallytweaking a little bit here and
there, and trying to find abalance, which is completely
foreign to myself and themajority of the people that I
was working with.
(15:58):
When I was providing the microdoses.
Despite my intention for themicrodosing protocols to only
last for a set period of time.
I started to notice, and Irecognized that many people were
hitting me up month after monthafter month, asking for a
refill, and I would haveconversations with these people
and it at one day, it just hitme like a sledgehammer.
(16:21):
I realized, oh my, okay.
People aren't seeing this theway that I'm seeing this.
People are so used to waitingfor the pain and then taking a
pill to counteract the pain thatthat's how they treat the
microdosing.
They're not taking it in aproactive way.
They're taking it in a reactiveway, and they're getting the
(16:42):
same results that they would getwith a Tylenol or ibuprofen or
an antidepressant.
The relationship wasn'tempowering.
It was a disempowering,codependent relationship that
not everybody, but many peoplewould develop with the micro
doses.
The same kind of relationshipsthey were developing with the
pharmaceutical drugs and thenormal Western medical
(17:06):
interventions that they weretrying to get away from.
Not all, but many of the peoplethat I found myself working with
were not trying to fix the rootcause, They weren't doing the
integration work.
They weren't taking time awayfrom microdosing so that they
could really sit with and try todig deep and find out what was
going on.
They were using the micro dosesto fix the symptoms and to
(17:28):
alleviate the symptoms of thedeeper issue that they were
really dealing with or notdealing with.
Bypassing in many cases.
I started to notice that when Iset proper expectations and
described ayahuasca andpsilocybin as diagnostic tools
that people could use todiscover their unconscious
(17:50):
patterns, uh, delve into theirunconscious belief systems, or
maybe uncover some sort ofrepressed, unconscious memories,
and with the understanding thatthese medicines weren't gonna do
the work, they were only goingto highlight the root cause and
help you find that when thatintention was set and when that
(18:10):
understanding was put in placein the very beginning, people
tended to have a much morebalanced and appropriate and
more healing relationship withthese medicines.
People simply got more tangibleresults and had more measurable
outcomes than when they wouldshow up to the ceremony, or call
(18:30):
me for micro doses and say.
Give me some healing like thatsimply did not work, and that
led to situations where I'd seethe same person coming to the
ceremony month after month aftermonth, dealing with the same
issues.
And again, at some point I hadto look in the mirror and
recognize that the people aroundme were simply a reflection of
(18:53):
something that I was doingmyself, not casting judgment on
anybody, I was the poster childfor that.
My life didn't change and Ididn't start to see positive
benefits until I took a seriousbreak from working with these
substances.
I had to really be intentionaland focus on doing the
integration work, starting toput into practice all the things
(19:16):
that I had learned and that Iwas talking about, and that I
was portraying externally, yetnot applying to my own life.
Not until I did that did I startto make leaps and like really
profound changes in my ownpersonal journey and my own
personal healing.
Yes, I did experience healing asa result of working with these
(19:37):
substances, and these substancesdid not heal me.
I had to take that into my ownhands and fix my own problems.
And this is the crux of theissue that I'm talking about.
By naming these substances,medicines, I believe we're doing
the people who don't have thesesorts of insights a disservice
(20:00):
by giving them a falseexpectation that ayahuasca or
psilocybin or whatever you wantto call a plant medicine, is
going to inherently give themsome sort of healing.
When it comes to integration anddoing that healing work, there
are some things that I found tobe incredibly impactful.
One was journaling, like gettingeverything out of up here,
(20:21):
putting it down on paper.
That helps you to noticepatterns and dig deeper into
your unconscious.
When you simply speak somethingout loud or you're simply
thinking about something, you'reonly using a certain part of
your brain.
But when you engage your handand your eyes and your writing
on paper, script and words,you're engaging multiple parts
(20:43):
of your brain in that activity.
So it's a way of using andutilizing more of your mental
capacity to examine thesepatterns and beliefs and your
thoughts.
Intentionally spending time outin nature was another hugely
impactful practice that helpedme with the integration work.
(21:06):
Nature's Natural Vibration isjust health.
It's just alive.
If you can put yourself out in aplace and in a setting where
there's trees and life, youstart to absorb that energy just
through osmosis.
Simply putting yourself there isgood for you and is going to
help you recognize and start towork through some of the
(21:29):
unconscious patterns and some ofthe things that may have come up
during your work with plantmedicines or see right there.
I have been programmed, and inmany ways it's easier to talk
about these substances and callthem plant medicines, but again,
that's not really in alignmentwith how I feel about them.
(21:52):
This is something I'm trying towork through myself.
So being out in nature can helpyou integrate the lessons you
learn when working withpsychedelic substances, for lack
of better word, and and I'm nottrying to be the word police, I
don't wanna be the word police,and I wanna have a open dialogue
and conversation about this.
So please leave a comment below.
(22:13):
Let's talk about it.
What have you found that sitswell with you?
Do you think I'm totally offbase?
Is it an entheogen?
Is it a, a psychedelic, uh,there are potentially many ways
for us to talk about thesesubstances.
And it's not an either or sortof thing.
I can totally see how in somecontext you might call these
substances entheogens, while inother contexts you might think
(22:37):
of them as psychedelics.
That's totally valid too.
But the point is, and my hope isthat this conversation starts to
become more broad and we startto talk about how we talk about
these substances.
Journaling, being outside,getting off of technology and
(22:57):
being away from your phone isanother big way to just be with
yourself and develop ameditation practice.
I think that's huge, just givingyourself time to be alone with
your thoughts is something thata lot of people don't do and can
have major benefits.
There's any number of ways tointegrate and to work on the
(23:18):
integration process.
There are many good facilitatorsand integration coaches and
people who you can talk to andfolks that can help you through
the integration process.
Lots of resources out there.
Uh, I'll link one or two of themin the description below that
you can check out.
so please let me know what youthink.
(23:38):
Let's engage.
Let's have a dialogue.
Let's figure it out.
Again, I love ayahuasca andpsilocybin.
They both are near and dear tomy heart.
I will always respect and begrateful for my experiences with
them.
The beautiful ones, thechallenging ones, the entire
(23:58):
spectrum, and I think we can dobetter and present them in a way
where people will start to workwith them and be introduced to
them in a way that sets areasonable expect expectation of
the kind of results they canget.
I think we owe that to thesesubstances in a form of showing
(24:19):
respect and gratitude andknowing how potent they are.
Thanks for being here.
I love y'all.
Until next time, peace.
Both ayahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms are often
called plant medicines.
But if a medicine is defined asa compound or preparation used
for the treatment or preventionof a disease, then neither of
these substances meet thatcriteria.
And I'm not the first person topoint this out.
So why do we continue to callthese psychedelic substances
(00:21):
medicines?
In this video, I'm gonna talkabout what these substances do,
what they don't do, and I'd liketo open up a dialogue and have a
conversation around how we cantalk about these very important
and impactful substances in away that's accurate and doesn't
give people a false impressionof what they do.
(00:45):
What's up?
I'm Ian with alternatetimelines, and I've been
thinking about this for a coupleof years now.
At a certain point in myjourney, it became abundantly
clear to me that no, thesesubstances are not medicines.
And yes, the words we use todescribe them are important, and
many people are coming to theseplant medicines with the
(01:06):
preconceived notion that just bysimply ingesting them, that they
will have some sort of tangibleresult or they will receive some
sort of healing or medicinalbenefit when in most cases,
that's simply not what happens.
Now I have no intention to tryto downplay just how impactful
these substances can be.
(01:27):
I personally have a deep respectand so much love for both
ayahuasca and psilocybinmushrooms.
They both had immeasurableimpacts on my life, and for that
I simply don't have words todescribe how much gratitude I
feel for each of them.
And throughout my journey I'vecome to realize through my own
experiences and through seeingpeople around me that working
(01:50):
with these substances can bekind of like a double-edged
sword.
So if these substances aren'ttechnically medicines, then what
are they?
Well, I like to think of them ascatalysts for change.
They don't actually do thechange work for you, but they
create a situation either bygiving you knowledge or helping
you see your situation in adifferent context in which you
(02:12):
are able to then do the changeand create the healing for
yourself.
Neither ayahuasca nor psilocybinmushrooms actually do the
healing work.
The healing is theresponsibility of the person
who's taken those substances.
This is something that's beenrecognized by many of the
pioneers and early researchersin this field.
Stanislav Grof who was theinventor of holotropic breathing
(02:33):
and one of the major researchersback in the late sixties, he
describes these substances asnon-specific amplifiers, and
what he means by that is thatthey don't give you anything.
They simply show you what'salready there and amplify the
signal that is already present.
the late and great Allen Watts.
(02:55):
He liked to describepsychedelics as diagnostic
tools, and the metaphor he oftenused was that of a microscope,
meaning the microscope helps yousee what's already there that
you can't typically see withyour normal vision.
Again, not giving you anythingbut helping you to perceive your
situation in a different light.
The distinction in these twodifferent ways of talking about
(03:16):
these substances is that whenyou call it a medicine, you're
implying that there's gonna be atreatment or a prevention of
some sort of disease.
You're putting the onus on thesubstance to produce a result
for you.
When you talk about thesesubstances as diagnostic tools
and non-specific amplifiers,that puts it on you, you are
responsible for taking actionand doing the healing work.
(03:40):
It's a very different dynamic.
It may seem like I'm splittinghairs, but the words we use are
important.
Over the last few years, we'veall gone through this global
health situation, let's say, andI'm gonna have to speak very
delicately around this becausethere are certain words that if
I use them, YouTube will flag myvideo and it'll get shadow
(04:03):
banned and it won't reach asmany people.
I've seen it and experienced itwith other videos.
Now we all know that as a resultof this global health situation,
there was a treatment that wasrolled out and it was called a
vaccine.
Traditionally a vaccine wassomething that you took that
helped prevent you from gettinga disease.
(04:26):
The smallpox vaccine, the MMR,the polio vaccine, we as a
global society understood thatword to mean something that
prevents you from getting adisease.
But the reality is the treatmentthat was rolled out and given to
people didn't actually do that.
(04:46):
And if people had understoodbeforehand that what they were
getting wasn't actuallytechnically a vaccine or it
didn't meet the definition ofvaccine as they knew it, and it
was truly something closer to anexperimental treatment, then if,
if people really understoodthat, we wouldn't have seen as
(05:08):
many people taking it.
And there wouldn't have been thebroad scale adoption of people
just willingly taking the poke.
And now we're in a situationwhere there are a lot of people
who had they known what theyknow now, back then simply
wouldn't have done it.
And using the word vaccine todescribe that treatment played a
(05:32):
big role in how people thoughtabout it and their level of
trust in that treatment.
So we have all experienced andhave witnessed in real time in
our own lives of a situationwhere trying to redefine a word
to fit a specific narrative hascaused some real undeniable
(05:52):
consequences for many people inour society.
The words we use and the way wetalk about these substances is
important.
Now in our current society, it'sbecome almost in vogue to use
psilocybin mushrooms and go toayahuasca ceremonies on the
regular.
If these were actually medicinesthat were effective at treating
(06:13):
and preventing disease, theunderlying root cause issue that
caused the person to seek thesemedicines out in the first place
would be resolved, and peoplewouldn't have to go back over
and over and over again.
I'm making this video in theaftermath of the Aubrey Marcus
Radical Monogamy Situationpodcast that nearly broke the
(06:35):
internet.
I have no desire to rehash or goover any of the contents of that
podcast again, and there wassomething that a few people
pointed out that I thought wasreally important.
When I look at a situation likethat, I always try to think,
what is the root cause of this?
My overall takeaway, if I couldsum it up in two words, after
(07:00):
watching the podcast and lookingat all of the responses to it,
was ego and delusion.
So for somebody who's such anoutspoken proponent of the
regular use of plant medicines,psychedelics, ayahuasca,
psilocybin.
He, he's also into fiveM-E-O-D-M-T and God knows what
(07:24):
else.
If these substances wereactually medicines, he wouldn't
have to continue to use themover and over again.
And the ego and delusion thatmost people who saw or watched
that podcast perceived.
You'd think that he would have amore grounded and reasonable
outlook and approach to life andhow he portrays his personal
(07:47):
affairs.
Most people who responded tothat situation could tell that
something just didn't feelright.
Something seemed off.
And there are a few people,myself included, who believe
that the root cause of theinability to see reality and
perceive things in a groundedand stable kind of a way is
(08:08):
probably a result of the plantmedicine use or plant medicine
use.
I'm not here to cast judgment.
I've been through my own processand have had my own journey with
these substances.
I've personally worked withAyahuasca more than 250 times,
and I've sat with mushrooms justas many times, if not more.
(08:30):
Over the last decade, thesesubstances came into my life
where at a time when I feltreally lost and helped give me
guidance and helped point me inthe right direction and helped
bring me to where I am today.
And for that, I am trulygrateful.
Over the last three years, Ihaven't really touched
psychedelics, so very, verylittle.
(08:51):
And if I'm really honest withmyself and I look back over that
period of my life where I wasworking with those substances
really intensively, it's clearto me that my relationship in
the beginning was a more healthysort of a relationship.
There was a clear reciprocation,a lot of respect, and it felt
(09:12):
like a very balanced sort ofrelationship where I was giving
and getting a lot from it.
But over time, I can just seehow my relationship,
specifically with Ayahuascastarted to change.
And it became one of a,initially a relationship that
was more empowering and broughtme to a place where I was
(09:33):
learning how to heal myself to apoint that was disempowering.
I gave my power away toAyahuasca and expected Ayahuasca
to do the work for me.
And believe it or not, I did nothave great results in that
codependent sort ofrelationship.
And yes, I was having deep andprofound peak experiences.
(09:54):
I got to the point where I wasfacilitating ayahuasca
ceremonies for one of thelargest above ground ayahuasca
churches in the us.
I was traveling all over thecountry doing these ceremonies
once, usually twice a month, andwe were doing three day
ceremonies.
So Friday, Saturday, Sunday,twice a month, didn't gimme much
(10:15):
time to be sober and reallyintegrate the experiences I was
having.
And despite the fact that I washaving these really potent
experiences, and people weretelling me how amazing my music
was and how impactful mypresence at the ceremony was and
all this and that if I stoppedand looked at my life, it would
be what you would considerbasically the textbook
(10:39):
definition of spiritualbypassing.
I was going from experience toexperience, to experience, to
ceremony, to ceremony, toceremony.
And my actual life wasn'tchanging.
I had completely plateaued andstalled out, and this is
something that I personallyexperienced and I've seen it
with many other people who arein that space when they're not
(10:59):
taking the time to do theintegration work and to apply
the lessons that they learn fromworking with these substances to
their actual life.
Anybody who's done any plantmedicine work or inner healing
work has probably heard the termintegration.
From my perspective, integrationis the most important part of
(11:19):
the process.
That's where you actually getthe benefit from.
The plant medicine work, thejourneying, it can help show you
what the root causes of yourissue, but it's up to you during
the integration phase toactually make the changes you
need to make.
Think about it, if you are in aplant medicine ceremony or you
(11:40):
hear somebody talking about theplant medicine ceremony, people
often describe theirbreakthroughs and the epiphanies
they have.
Well, what is an epiphany?
An epiphany isn't learning newinformation.
An epiphany is when you can taketwo distinct pieces of
information or things that youalready know and are able to
(12:02):
relate them to one another in away that gives them new meaning,
basically gives you a newcontext to something you already
know, which gives you newmeaning and a new place to
explore and to approach yourinner healing from.
The truth is that when it comesto the situations in most
(12:22):
people's lives that they findmost challenging, the majority
of us don't know what the rootcause is.
We spend time focusing on tryingto treat the symptoms without
actually understanding what'scausing the symptoms.
If we knew what the root causewas and we were trying to heal
the root cause, then thesymptoms would go away.
(12:44):
But these persistent symptomsthat often show up in our lives
as what we might call depressionor anxiety or any sort of
manifestation or maity ofdisease, if we knew what was
causing it, we'd be able to fixit.
And when you treat not the rootcause of the situation, you get
(13:04):
not the result.
The reason people continue torelive the same patterns over
and over again and maintain, alot of the same behaviors is
'cause they haven't actuallygotten to the root of what
causes them.
Again, they're, they spend timetrying to treat the symptoms,
which in most cases, it's liketrying to put a bandaid on a
stab wound and over a longperiod of time that simply
(13:27):
doesn't work and doesn't producepositive results in a person's
life.
While I was traveling arounddoing all the ayahuasca
ceremonies.
I was also selling psilocybinmicro doses, and I had dozens
and dozens of clients, uh,across the country, and people
came to me for all sorts ofissues.
Symptoms of depression andanxiety, people with traumatic
(13:49):
brain injuries, people withneurological disorders, um,
people on the autism spectrum,people dealing with cancer like
you name it.
I dealt with all sorts ofpeople.
And that was about the timewhere I really started to
question whether or not thesepsychedelic substances were
actually medicines.
Whenever I worked with somebodyproviding micro doses, it was
(14:13):
never my intention to replaceone pill with another pill.
My intention was always for themicrodosing to be a short-term
intervention.
Every time I would take on a newclient, I would do a really in
depth 60 to 90 minute longconsultation where I would talk
about what the psilocybin isdoing in their system, how it's
(14:34):
producing the results that it'sproducing, and how to work with
it and overdoing many, manyconsultations, I began to
realize that people just thinkof medicine differently in our
Western culture.
In our Western society.
The majority of us have beenprogrammed from a very young age
(14:54):
to believe that if your headhurts, you take the blue pill.
If you stomach hurts, you takethe yellow pill.
If you're feeling anxious, wellyou take the green pill.
That's just how we perceivemedicine and healing.
It's a almost entirely reactivesort of a relationship we have
with the concept of healing.
And if you approach medicinefrom an eastern or more
(15:16):
traditional perspective, wellthat approach is completely
different.
It's a more proactive approach.
If you work with a traditionalChinese medicine doctor or even
a, a shaman from the Amazon,they don't wait until you're
sick to treat you.
They work with you on a regularbasis, and when they start to
see that something's out ofbalance.
(15:38):
They try to correct it rightaway before you fall into a
state of disease or into a statewhere you're really sick.
It's a process of continuallytweaking a little bit here and
there, and trying to find abalance, which is completely
foreign to myself and themajority of the people that I
was working with.
(15:58):
When I was providing the microdoses.
Despite my intention for themicrodosing protocols to only
last for a set period of time.
I started to notice, and Irecognized that many people were
hitting me up month after monthafter month, asking for a
refill, and I would haveconversations with these people
and it at one day, it just hitme like a sledgehammer.
(16:21):
I realized, oh my, okay.
People aren't seeing this theway that I'm seeing this.
People are so used to waitingfor the pain and then taking a
pill to counteract the pain thatthat's how they treat the
microdosing.
They're not taking it in aproactive way.
They're taking it in a reactiveway, and they're getting the
(16:42):
same results that they would getwith a Tylenol or ibuprofen or
an antidepressant.
The relationship wasn'tempowering.
It was a disempowering,codependent relationship that
not everybody, but many peoplewould develop with the micro
doses.
The same kind of relationshipsthey were developing with the
pharmaceutical drugs and thenormal Western medical
(17:06):
interventions that they weretrying to get away from.
Not all, but many of the peoplethat I found myself working with
were not trying to fix the rootcause, They weren't doing the
integration work.
They weren't taking time awayfrom microdosing so that they
could really sit with and try todig deep and find out what was
going on.
They were using the micro dosesto fix the symptoms and to
(17:28):
alleviate the symptoms of thedeeper issue that they were
really dealing with or notdealing with.
Bypassing in many cases.
I started to notice that when Iset proper expectations and
described ayahuasca andpsilocybin as diagnostic tools
that people could use todiscover their unconscious
(17:50):
patterns, uh, delve into theirunconscious belief systems, or
maybe uncover some sort ofrepressed, unconscious memories,
and with the understanding thatthese medicines weren't gonna do
the work, they were only goingto highlight the root cause and
help you find that when thatintention was set and when that
(18:10):
understanding was put in placein the very beginning, people
tended to have a much morebalanced and appropriate and
more healing relationship withthese medicines.
People simply got more tangibleresults and had more measurable
outcomes than when they wouldshow up to the ceremony, or call
(18:30):
me for micro doses and say.
Give me some healing like thatsimply did not work, and that
led to situations where I'd seethe same person coming to the
ceremony month after month aftermonth, dealing with the same
issues.
And again, at some point I hadto look in the mirror and
recognize that the people aroundme were simply a reflection of
(18:53):
something that I was doingmyself, not casting judgment on
anybody, I was the poster childfor that.
My life didn't change and Ididn't start to see positive
benefits until I took a seriousbreak from working with these
substances.
I had to really be intentionaland focus on doing the
integration work, starting toput into practice all the things
(19:16):
that I had learned and that Iwas talking about, and that I
was portraying externally, yetnot applying to my own life.
Not until I did that did I startto make leaps and like really
profound changes in my ownpersonal journey and my own
personal healing.
Yes, I did experience healing asa result of working with these
(19:37):
substances, and these substancesdid not heal me.
I had to take that into my ownhands and fix my own problems.
And this is the crux of theissue that I'm talking about.
By naming these substances,medicines, I believe we're doing
the people who don't have thesesorts of insights a disservice
(20:00):
by giving them a falseexpectation that ayahuasca or
psilocybin or whatever you wantto call a plant medicine, is
going to inherently give themsome sort of healing.
When it comes to integration anddoing that healing work, there
are some things that I found tobe incredibly impactful.
One was journaling, like gettingeverything out of up here,
(20:21):
putting it down on paper.
That helps you to noticepatterns and dig deeper into
your unconscious.
When you simply speak somethingout loud or you're simply
thinking about something, you'reonly using a certain part of
your brain.
But when you engage your handand your eyes and your writing
on paper, script and words,you're engaging multiple parts
(20:43):
of your brain in that activity.
So it's a way of using andutilizing more of your mental
capacity to examine thesepatterns and beliefs and your
thoughts.
Intentionally spending time outin nature was another hugely
impactful practice that helpedme with the integration work.
(21:06):
Nature's Natural Vibration isjust health.
It's just alive.
If you can put yourself out in aplace and in a setting where
there's trees and life, youstart to absorb that energy just
through osmosis.
Simply putting yourself there isgood for you and is going to
help you recognize and start towork through some of the
(21:29):
unconscious patterns and some ofthe things that may have come up
during your work with plantmedicines or see right there.
I have been programmed, and inmany ways it's easier to talk
about these substances and callthem plant medicines, but again,
that's not really in alignmentwith how I feel about them.
(21:52):
This is something I'm trying towork through myself.
So being out in nature can helpyou integrate the lessons you
learn when working withpsychedelic substances, for lack
of better word, and and I'm nottrying to be the word police, I
don't wanna be the word police,and I wanna have a open dialogue
and conversation about this.
So please leave a comment below.
(22:13):
Let's talk about it.
What have you found that sitswell with you?
Do you think I'm totally offbase?
Is it an entheogen?
Is it a, a psychedelic, uh,there are potentially many ways
for us to talk about thesesubstances.
And it's not an either or sortof thing.
I can totally see how in somecontext you might call these
substances entheogens, while inother contexts you might think
(22:37):
of them as psychedelics.
That's totally valid too.
But the point is, and my hope isthat this conversation starts to
become more broad and we startto talk about how we talk about
these substances.
Journaling, being outside,getting off of technology and
(22:57):
being away from your phone isanother big way to just be with
yourself and develop ameditation practice.
I think that's huge, just givingyourself time to be alone with
your thoughts is something thata lot of people don't do and can
have major benefits.
There's any number of ways tointegrate and to work on the
(23:18):
integration process.
There are many good facilitatorsand integration coaches and
people who you can talk to andfolks that can help you through
the integration process.
Lots of resources out there.
Uh, I'll link one or two of themin the description below that
you can check out.
so please let me know what youthink.
(23:38):
Let's engage.
Let's have a dialogue.
Let's figure it out.
Again, I love ayahuasca andpsilocybin.
They both are near and dear tomy heart.
I will always respect and begrateful for my experiences with
them.
The beautiful ones, thechallenging ones, the entire
(23:58):
spectrum, and I think we can dobetter and present them in a way
where people will start to workwith them and be introduced to
them in a way that sets areasonable expect expectation of
the kind of results they canget.
I think we owe that to thesesubstances in a form of showing
(24:19):
respect and gratitude andknowing how potent they are.
Thanks for being here.
I love y'all.
Until next time, peace.
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