May 21, 2024 • 39 mins
Have you ever pondered the healing power of unconventional medicine? Join us as Jerry Dean Lund sits down with Josh Hailu, an ex-military officer who now champions psychedelic medicine for treating PTSD. Venture into Josh's personal narrative of confronting PTSD, the shortcomings of traditional treatments, and how his life-altering encounters with psilocybin mushrooms have propelled him to create PsychX. Together, we tackle the stigmas of mental health and the complex legal landscape surrounding psychedelic therapy, illuminating Josh's mission to support veterans, first responders, and others grappling with trauma.
Embark on an exploration of psychedelic experiences and the profound insights they can foster. We unravel the crucial aspects of set, setting, and integration that shape the therapeutic process, delving into the remarkable intelligence of fungi and their potential for catalyzing significant psychological shifts. This episode is not merely a discussion on psychedelics; it's an examination of their intricate relationship with our ecosystem and their revered capacity for instigating change when approached with intention and respect.
In our quest for understanding, we bridge the gap between traditional healing and contemporary mental health practices. Learn about the diverse durations and impacts of substances ranging from ketamine to LSD and MDMA, and the sacred context in which ayahuasca ceremonies unfold. We scrutinize the prerequisites for engaging with psychedelic therapy, emphasizing mental preparedness and the need for caution. Whether you're intrigued by the burgeoning field of psychedelic medicine or seeking alternate paths to mental wellness, this conversation offers a poignant glimpse into the transformative power of these therapies and the ongoing pursuit of emotional resilience.
As a First Responder, you are critical in keeping our communities safe. However, the stress and trauma of the job can take a toll on your mental health and family life.
If you're interested in personal coaching, contact Jerry Lund at 801-376-7124. Let's work together to get you where you want to be and ensure a happy and healthy career.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jerry (00:02):
Welcome to today's episode of Enduring the Badge
podcast.
I'm your host, jerry Dean Lund,and if you haven't already done
so, please take out your phoneand hit that subscribe button.
I don't want you to miss anupcoming episode.
And, hey, while your phone'sout, please give us a rating and
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On whichever platform youlisten to this podcast on, such
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(00:22):
grow and the reason why, whenthis gets positive ratings and
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this to other people that neverlistened to this podcast before,
and that allows our podcast togrow and make more of an impact
in other people's lives.
So if you would do that, Iwould appreciate that from the
bottom of my heart.
My very special guest today isJosh Hailu.
(00:43):
How are you doing, josh?
Josh (00:45):
I'm doing great today.
Thank you, Jerry.
Thanks for having me.
Jerry (00:48):
Yeah, thanks for being on .
I'm going to talk aboutsomething that I think is really
fascinating to me, and I thinkthat the audience, too, will
find it fascinating as well.
Something kind of new.
So, josh, introduce yourself tothe audience.
Josh (01:05):
Yeah, so my name is Josh Halu.
I am the founder and CEO of acompany called the Psychedelic
Exchange or PsychX, and ourcompany creates retreats for
veterans with PTSD, usingpsychedelic medicine to cure
mental illness as opposed totreating symptoms, which is the
(01:30):
current kind of approach ofmental health treatment, with
pharmaceutical medicine and talktherapy.
My journey to psychedelicmedicine, with coming out of the
military after spending sevenyears as an active duty army
officer and West Point gradgraduate and army Ranger and
(01:53):
Blackhawk helicopter pilot andyou know, war veteran and uh and
also child of of suicide,losing my father when I was,
when I was really young, andexperiencing a lot of trauma
from childhood through themilitary and then through
wartime and getting out of themilitary when everything slowed
(02:15):
down and I got out of that highoperational tempo that I think a
lot of your audienceexperiences through first
responder work, militaryfirefighter, you know all of the
police officer.
You really are in this veryhigh intensity occupation that
(02:37):
becomes very normal for us andyou know when you step out of
kind of that line of work, yourealize how abnormal it actually
is to experience a lot of theevents that we experience
(03:07):
Traumatic, you know events,losing friends, seeing very
traumatic experiences happenbefore our eyes and then living
with those things and oftentimesthere's a stigma around asking
for help and you want to showmore of your tough exterior.
And it took me struggling foryears, coming out of the
military about four years,before I finally learned about
psychedelics actually, and I wasenrolled in the VA and started
getting care for mental healthand put on antidepressants and
(03:28):
all of that and wasn't reallyfinding much success maybe some
numbing of my symptoms, butcertainly nothing helping me
address the underlying issuesthat were leading to my
depression, my anxiety, my PTSDin general.
And then I learned aboutpsychedelic medicine for the
(03:48):
treatment of mental illness andbecame fascinated by it, really
jumped deep into the researchand saw just the incredible
results from ongoing clinicaltrials and started to understand
, you know why.
Why psychedelic medicine isn'tmedicine isn't widely available
yet, going back to the war ondrugs and the evolution of the
(04:12):
legality and regulatoryenvironment around these
medicines, which is rapidlychanging.
And once I discovered themedicine myself for me it was
psilocybin mushrooms, or whatyou would refer to as magic
mushrooms my life radicallychanged in that moment.
For me it was psilocybinmushrooms, or what you would
refer to as magic mushrooms, mylife radically changed in that
moment.
(04:32):
I had my first mushroom trip orexperience and it was a
profound shift in my ability toprocess all the traumatic
experiences that I've had tothat point and finally really
recognize in myself how I washolding myself hostage to a lot
of emotional baggage and traumaand carrying so much into the
(04:58):
way that I operated and the lensthat I saw the world through in
terms of self-loathing,self-hatred, survivor's guilt,
holding onto grudges andresentment and anger.
And over the course of my firstpsychedelic experience and I've
had many others since then Ireally learned forgiveness and
(05:20):
gratitude and self-love andkindness and literally from you
know, from hours one through six, you know, coming out the other
side and then doing a lot ofdeep work on the other side and
really integrating thatexperience into my life.
Moving forward, I was able tostart living a lot more fully
(05:40):
and a lot more happily withgratitude and joy and love.
And so then from that pointforward I started continuing to
bring psychedelics to otherfriends who were veterans, who I
knew were struggling and seeingjust profound shifts in
everybody that I introduced tothe medicine medicine.
(06:11):
And about a year ago I kind ofhad a wake-up call telling me to
really pursue psychedelicmedicine more broadly.
And I had to get over a lot ofpersonal stigma around being
like a West Point graduate,former army officer and figuring
out how do I reconcile, youknow, finding so much like
salvation through what we wouldcall drugs and reframing in my
(06:32):
mind.
You know what these medicinesreally are and deciding that it
was, you know it was veryimportant to me, a personal
mission and journey for me to doas much as I can to bring these
very healing modalities to asmany people, you know, as many
people as I possibly can,particularly starting with the
(06:54):
veteran community because that'snear and dear to me, but
certainly, you know, with plansto expand to other first
responders, trauma survivors andthen more more broadly in
general.
So that's, uh, that's a bitabout my background.
Jerry (07:07):
Yeah, that's awesome and I came up with like 20 questions
from that.
But Josh, how did like so?
There's already a stigma tolike right Seeking help for
mental health, but right, youkind of touched on there's also
probably another stigma aboutturning to these psychedelics
for mental health right Tochange that.
(07:29):
I mean, how do you overcomethat?
What do you tell people Otherthan probably what you just told
me, which is very fascinatingand I've like seemed to be like
you went from somebody likemaybe being numb to you know,
just open up yourself.
Josh (07:46):
Yeah, it's a.
It's a challenging transitionto make in isolation, certainly,
which is why I thinkdestigmatizing the medicine and
seeking help and creatingcommunity, which is another part
of what we're doing with thepsychedelic exchange, is so
important to us, because it isvery challenging first to ask
(08:08):
for help I mean, even even priorto asking for help, to even
recognize that you havesomething maybe wrong with you.
Ptsd or trauma shows up in youknow, very different ways for
everybody.
I do believe that everybody, ornearly everybody, has some form
of trauma in their lives andusually happens at a
(08:29):
developmental point, you know,in time, or in a traumatic
experience that becomes kind ofyour residing perspective going
forward, because you know youjust learn to carry these things
.
And for me, or for anybody else, I think that life really
begins when you take yourhealing journey seriously.
(09:06):
And and owning your mentalhealth, just as as important as
owning your physical fitness isis the one of the most important
things you can do.
When you think about you know,I like to think about the
analogy of of an airplane safetybrief, where you you know
you're told to put on youroxygen mask on before helping
others.
Right, you can only be the mostimpactful, you know, loving,
caring, creating force that youcan possibly be as a human once
(09:27):
you've really taken care ofyourself mentally, physically,
emotionally, spiritually.
And those components in lifearen't isolated, they're very
intertwined.
Having a good mentality, havinga good emotional, you know, a
good, good emotional, you know,place in life is to me just as
(09:50):
important as being physicallyfit and exercising and eating a
good diet.
Right, ignore your, your mentalhealth, just like you can't
ignore your physical health andsay, oh, it's up to the doctor
to put me on medicine if I'm,you know, if I'm unhealthy and
(10:12):
eating poorly, right, you haveto take in my, in my opinion,
you have to take ownership.
You have to know, like you are,the steward of your body and
your mind and you have to takeownership of, of understanding
proper exercise and propernutrition and understanding
proper mental fitness.
And I think that's so importantbecause mental fitness really
(10:35):
leads to all like unlocking allof the other potential for
living life to the fullest.
And you can't just offload thatto to the system, you know,
unfortunately, because thesystem has existed for, you know
, for many years, decades, um,with with very specific
(10:57):
modalities like traditionaltherapy or, you know,
pharmaceutical medicine that'skind of designed to keep you
taking a pill a day for the restof your life, and certainly
therapy and traditional medicinehas its place in the toolbox of
mental health, but it'simportant for individuals to
(11:27):
know all of the tools that areavailable to you, as opposed to
you know, certain mental healthprofessionals sometimes aren't
trained in all these differentaspects, or a lot of individuals
don't even understand the legalframework for psychedelic
medicine or how to even go aboutprescribing or adding it into
your, your care model, and likewhen you start to peel back the
(11:49):
layers of understanding whatthese medicines actually do and
why they're so impactful.
It's something like for me atleast, I couldn't, I couldn't
look away from so.
For instance, I mean, there'smany different types of
psychedelic medicine ormedicines that fit underneath
the psychedelic medicineumbrella, several of which are
(12:10):
either legal or in phase threeclinical trials.
So, like currently, ketaminetherapy is available and legal
in all 50 states and incrediblyeffective, although it's being
used in what's called off-labeluse, so it's not actually FDA
approved for the treatment ofmental illness.
It's being used to treat mentalillness but approved for like
(12:31):
surgery or other things likethat.
But, like MDMA and psilocybinare both in late stage phase
three FDA trials, and MDMA isactually slated to be approved
by the FDA later this year,specifically for the treatment
of PTSD, which I think is gonnabe game changing.
(12:53):
But just to give you a littlestatistic which I think when you
hear these kinds of things itreally opens up your mind to
like oh well, maybe that is forme, why shouldn't I explore that
?
So, for instance, mdma in theclinical trials are showing
incredible results and, just topaint a perspective, over 70% of
(13:15):
the individuals whoparticipated in the clinical
trials for MDMA, who had PTSD,lost their PTSD diagnosis
altogether, meaning two out ofthree individuals who who
participated in these clinicaltrials were cured of ptsd.
All right, like you don't reallyhear.
Cured in any other type of likeyou know, like I mean, curing
(13:40):
cancer is like you know, that'slike it's something that we've
been working on forever, butlike curing a mental illness
through, through like a seriesof a few treatments over the
course of a few weeks and livinga completely different life
after the fact, when maybe youknow and in your head you're
like, well, I guess I'm justgoing to go to therapy or for
the rest of my life and you know, take, take medicine or or just
(14:01):
suffer in silence, right, likeit's a complete shift in
perspective of how you can trulylike, own your mental health
and seek out medicines ormodalities that are radically
different than than the norm.
And once you start to experiencethat or learn about it, I, you
(14:23):
know, I, I feel like you.
You should find it's shouldfind, at least for me.
I found courage to want tofigure out what that felt like.
What that felt like to not wakeup feeling dread about every
single day and just wanting to,not caring what happened between
getting out of bed and gettingback in bed, you know, and just
(14:44):
trying to make it through that,that part, instead of being
excited about each and every dayand finding connection with
other people and finding lovefor yourself and with your
family members and, you know,finding joy and going to your
kid's soccer game, like justjust the normal aspects of life
that are really reallychallenging for individuals who
struggle with significant mentalillness.
Jerry (15:08):
Yeah, what would I mean?
What would it look like, orwhat does it feel like to take
psilocybin?
Like for somebody in theaudience, and I'm guessing it's
probably different for everybody.
Is that true?
Josh (15:21):
everybody's experiences is certainly unique.
I think that the general likehow does it feel?
Aspects are are consistent andeach, each medicine will produce
, you know, slightly differenteffects or very different
effects, but the the, theoutcome and and also the process
(15:43):
is very similar.
Right, it's kind of like.
It's kind of like.
It's kind of like a freshsnowfall over well-worn, you
know ski tracks and allowing youto take a fresh perspective and
rewrite your narrative, whatthat feels like.
So, so, oftentimes, you know,you, you lump drugs into this
(16:03):
singular category and andunfortunately, because of our
historical war on drugs likepsilocybin, mushrooms which just
grow naturally out of theground are currently a schedule
one substance in the samecategory as like meth and heroin
.
But a psychedelic medicine andan experience feels like work,
(16:23):
right, it's not an escape.
Certainly there's aspects of ofrecreational use, mind
expansion use.
Right, like it certainlyenhances the way music sounds
and the way colors look and theway food tastes.
Right, like there's, there's,there's all those aspects to
psychedelics, certainly, butwhen?
But when you're really takingthem therapeutically and it
(16:48):
should be taken with properfacilitation, preparation,
facilitation and facilitationshould take into account proper
what's called set and settingwhich is the right mindset you
don't want to be in a healthymindset going into it, or a
prepared mindset and the rightlike physical environment, um,
and then the integration, whichis one of the most important
(17:09):
features, is like how do youcome out of that experience and
integrate that experience intoyour life?
So it's not just like going ona crash diet, losing a bunch of
weight and then just going rightback to your old habits, right,
like, you actually have tointegrate the experience into
your life, like that whole, thatwhole life cycle of a
psychedelic experience.
Um, is, is an intensive processand does feel like work.
(17:34):
So when you, you know, when youtake mushrooms, for instance,
the you typically will like setintentions, you know and think
about what you want to tackleduring, during the experience
but then you'll hear a lot aboutyou have to surrender to the
experience because you knowmushrooms are for as as just to
(17:54):
take them as an example arereally interesting substance.
There's, um, you know there's,there's, there's plants, or
there's, there's like plants,and there's animals and there's
fungi, which which is its ownkingdom, and it's an incredibly
intelligent organism and a lotof people aren't really familiar
(18:19):
with how intelligent fungi are,but it's like yeast they
convert sugars into alcohol orit's like all you know, whenever
anything decays in a forest,right, like that's, that's, like
those are that's, you know,mushrooms or fungi that are
coming up and decaying it, rightthey're, they're very active in
the process of of liketransitioning and evolving
things in our world and go veryunseen, like in the roots of all
(18:42):
the trees, or when you reach upand grab soil from the ground
and you have all those littlestrands like that's.
That's all part of the fungikingdom and it's part of like
how we all the, you knoweverything gets fed and it's
really important to our entireecosystem.
But it's not not that wellunderstood, but maybe I'm
getting off a little tangent.
But mushrooms themselves, like,when you take them, you allow
(19:03):
that like they, really, theyreally um they.
I mean it's kind of like they,they know, they know what
they're doing in a certain way,right, like you're you surrender
to allowing this, this medicine, to um, kind of take like in.
In my experience, it takes youon these kind of emotional,
(19:25):
emotional journeys.
So, yeah, you'll feel maybe aphysical, like body load and a
mental load, but you'll reallyfeel kind of an overwhelming
emotional, um feelings that willpull your mind into interesting
, you know, very importantdirections of your life.
(19:45):
So so very often and and widelyrecommended that you wear like
an eye covering, an eye mask,when you're in a psychedelic
experience, because then it you,you cut off your your optical,
you know field and you go ininside and you know, while
you're going inside, themedicine kind of helps you
(20:06):
direct to like places that arecreating the most, the most pain
or the most emotional overwhelm.
So for me it'd be like visitingmy younger self in childhood,
losing my father, andreconciling that or, you know,
or wartime trauma and andrevisiting what those
experiences were.
(20:26):
And while I'm revisiting thoseexperiences, I'm reframing them
in a new perspective where Icould have come out of an
intense firefight in themilitary and carried a lot of
survivor's guilt and trauma fromthat experience.
(20:48):
But the reframe, you know, youcome out of it and you're like,
oh, that wasn't my fault.
You know like I don't like, infact, and it doesn't honor my,
my, you know my, my friend or my, you know, army buddy or
whatever, to live my life likein this way, like it's actually,
you know it's it, it's not, itactually honors my friend more
(21:09):
to live a full life and you know, carry their memory.
You know open-heartedly, insteadof like making my life worse
because they don't, they nolonger exist.
So these, these, thesenarratives that you play out in
your head, the, the psychedelicmedicine like often helps you
direct your attention into thesevery traumatic experiences that
you've had that really create alot of your subconscious
(21:32):
reactions, emotional reactions,and reframe that narrative.
And then, once you've been ableto reframe that narrative, it no
longer holds power over you andyou're no longer anchored to
these narratives that don'tserve you and you get to reframe
how you really perceive yourlife.
And once you're no longeranchored to these narratives
that don't serve you and you getto reframe how you really
perceive your life, and onceyou're on the other side of that
, you're like like a lot, a lotmore, a lot more in life, like
(21:55):
feels lighter and makes moresense, and you can extrapolate
those instances into other partsof your life and really start
to feel a lot more connected toyourself, connected to your
community and and and less avictim of circumstance and more
more the the driver of your, ofyour life.
(22:16):
So it it they really help youstop being anchored to the past,
arrive in the present, live inthe present and and be hopeful
about the future.
Jerry (22:30):
How long does like this experience last?
Like you know, if I take it anddoes it last like six, eight
hours, or, and, or does thingshappen for like weeks later too?
Josh (22:43):
It's a great question.
So different medicine lasts adifferent length of time.
Like you can go in and get aketamine infusion in a clinic
and you're in and out of therein under two hours.
Um, a mushroom trip usuallylasts in the four to six hour
range, um, lsd a little bitlonger.
Mdma is you know about sixhours, so they're a little bit
longer.
Mdma is you know about sixhours, so they're a little bit
(23:06):
longer.
Right, then they, they followkind of a pattern of you know
come up and then a peak, youknow, for a few hours in the
middle and then and then a comedown on the backend.
But you are processing thingsfor, certainly, for you know,
days, if not weeks, after thefact and even with, like, if you
go in and go to a ketamineclinic, for instance, you might,
(23:30):
you might sign up to do like afour, six, eight session, like
package, and you'll do like twosessions a week for four weeks
or something like that, and andevery time you're kind of like
working through more and moreand and and achieving, you know,
greater levels of, like mentalpeace, um, but but they carry
(23:54):
forward.
So, like, a lot of people willnever need another session again
after one session.
Other people can have reallytransformational experiences on
on several ketamine sessions andthen maybe we'll do like one
ketamine session a year.
You know, kind of like as a abooster, if you will.
Um, but like the once you, onceyou get over that, that, you
(24:18):
know that first big one havelike very significant
transformational experience.
Um, you, you have, you have alot more of your control of your
emotional life and direction.
And in the days and weeks andmonths after the fact, the
statistics I quoted you earlierabout MDMA, for instance, those
(24:41):
effects of curing PTSD, thoseare looked at and sustained for
the six-month and the 12-monthmark and beyond after those
experiences.
So they certainly sustain inthe time after the experience, a
lot of those, like I talkedabout, the integration phase
that becomes part of the newperspective that you're looking
(25:06):
through at that point.
So you are going through, likein my, in my experience, and you
know, with, with, with you know, people that I've worked with
you go through this evolutionand you can recognize the
patterns as they come up overthe next few weeks until until,
slowly but surely, they becomepart of your norm and your
(25:30):
baseline.
Jerry (25:32):
That's pretty awesome.
What does experience look likeat your facility?
Do you have a facility that youdo it at?
Josh (25:41):
So we do what's called ayahuasca retreats, and
ayahuasca you may have heard ofthis before.
It's like a traditional brewfrom South America indigenous
tribes and it's made upessentially just of two plants
(26:10):
that are boiled down and takentogether in a ceremony setting.
Um produces a as like apsychedelic experience over the
course of several hours, andtraditionally it's done in a, in
a ceremony setting, with, youknow, multiple participants and
a facilitator.
And so we'll do these, you knowwe'll.
We'll do these, these retreats,like at different locations,
(26:31):
you know, outdoors on retreat,or you know in, in different,
you know buildings or facilities, but in, historically, you know
, a lot of people will leave thecountry, or a lot of soldiers's
like non-profit organizationsthat'll take soldiers out of the
country to participate inayahuasca retreats and be able
(26:51):
to um, be able to like, gothrough these transformational
experiences, because they'reillegal in in the country unless
are, unless performed under um,under like a church that's's
that's allowed to do it underthe religious freedom act, which
is how we operate.
So um, so yeah, if you signedup for a retreat with us, you
(27:13):
know we would likely host it inLas Vegas.
That's where we're based out ofUm, you know you'd, you'd fly
in.
We'd have a facility, we'd haveprobably two or three days of
the medicine work, which is likein the evening, and then during
the day you would havetypically other other healing
modalities, like you know, like,like we work on meditation and
(27:36):
breath work, yoga, um, likethese types of these types of
other like health and fitnessmodes of of of healing that
integrate very well with themedicine work.
And really we focus heavily ona community setting because,
(28:00):
like, while while I do believethere's a lot of benefit in
going to a clinic and healingwith ketamine or healing with
MDMA, I think there's a lot ofpower in natural medicine, like
natural plant medicine healing,and certainly in conducting
these in a community setting.
(28:21):
So, going through a ayahuascaceremony with a group of a
couple dozen veterans, you know,for instance, um or
firefighters, or you knowwhoever or sometimes we will do,
like you know male onlyretreats, you know women only
retreats.
So going through, you know,with gender specific, where you
(28:41):
are really connected, like the,the medicine really helps you
both connect to yourself andconnect to the community around
you.
So you really get not just theperspective of connecting with
yourself better but seeing, youknow, your brothers and sisters
who have had similar, their ownversion of traumatic experiences
, like go through their healingjourney, and usually you know
(29:02):
you share a lot afterward aboutyour experience and you
recognize that.
You know trauma is veryuniversal and makes you feel a
whole lot less alone.
And then when you depart fromthese retreats and these
experiences, you get to havecommunity, you know, because
it's oftentimes hard to go backhome after these experiences and
like reground yourself in your,in your former life.
(29:25):
Um, because you're you'rechanged, you know you're, you're
you're changed and you want tosustain that change and
community really really helps alot with that.
It's you know, it's like youknow, I mean it's you could, you
could equate it to going torehab.
You know, like going to rehaband coming back and like now you
don't, maybe you went for foralcohol, you no longer drink and
(29:48):
all your friends still hang outat the bar and you're like,
well, now how do I, how do I fitback into this life?
Jerry (29:56):
Is the only thing that you can do in Vegas is the
ayahuasca.
Or can you do the psilocybin inLas Vegas too?
Josh (30:05):
We can do ayahuasca and then we can also do another
medicine called Bufo or5-MeO-DMT, which is it's a toad
venom, which is, you know, it'sdirectly from a toad in the
Sonoran Desert.
It's a much shorter, it's likea 15, 20 minute experience, but
(30:26):
a very transformationalexperience in and of itself.
So we are able to do both ofthese medicines, but we're
adding more.
Each one has its own, you know,has its own benefit, like I
mean, for the way that Idiscovered psychedelics, like I
talked about earlier, was wasmushrooms, and and I had no idea
(30:49):
how to source them or find them.
You could sign up for clinicaltrials and you could, you know,
figure out how to do, how to doit.
That way you could maybe find adrug dealer, I guess.
I I decided to learn how tojust grow the mushrooms myself
and consume them myself, andthis isn't the preferred way to
do them.
You really should havecommunity and facilitation
(31:10):
around and you're really jumpinginto foreign, unfamiliar
territory.
But I was pretty desperate andvery curious about the
experience and didn't likedidn't know how to go about
finding it.
Um, so there's like different,I mean, if it also is very state
dependent too.
So, so, um, oregon and Coloradoand I think Michigan's coming
(31:35):
online and um and California areum legalizing or have legalized
or decriminalized at the statelevel psilocybin and some other
plant medicines, but primarilypsilocybin at this point.
So you are able to go topsilocybin retreats in Colorado,
in Oregon for sure, and haveproper facilitation and receive
(31:59):
the medicine and all of that.
But that's kind of unfolding ina similar way to the way that
the cannabis industry unfolded,which is that tricky balance
between the federal level andthe state level and while the
state decriminalizes it it makesit for a challenging
environment.
I mean it'll be reallyinteresting to see how it
(32:20):
evolves once, like mdma, becomeslegalized, because that will
really be the very first time amedicine, psychedelic medicine,
is legalized specifically forthe treatment of a mental
illness.
And when that happens, you know, I expect that there will be a
rapid, a rapid change in in theregulatory environment to make
(32:44):
some of these other othermedicines more, more permissive.
And psilocybin is in phasethree trials also expected to be
approved in the next year ortwo after after MDMA.
But yeah, for the moment we weuse primarily ayahuasca, which
is truly a beautiful.
I mean each medicine has itsown, you can call it kind of
like spirit.
But ayahuasca is a verybeautiful medicine because it is
(33:08):
like mushrooms, it is just.
It's just, you know, straightplants, essentially Drinking in
a brew.
You know it's been cooked downin a brew, you know it's been
cooked down, um, but but it'sshared in a, like I talked about
, in a ceremonial setting, withsomebody usually playing music,
and it really helps kind of movethe energy and help you process
(33:29):
the trauma and you're you're ina group environment.
So it's it.
It feels safer and maybe moresacred than sitting in a, in a,
in a clinic, you know, with withsomebody with a white lab coat
on Um, but uh, but yeah, that.
So we're, we, we really believe, you know deeply in this
medicine and we source it right.
(33:50):
We resource it from a longlineage of of of ayahuasca vine,
from, you know, from Peru, fromwhere this, this medicine,
originally um comes from I mean,how healthy do you have to be
to do these different types ofmedicine?
Jerry (34:07):
like your general health, like physical health?
Josh (34:11):
physical health is not as important as mental health.
Um, I mean, certainly physicalhealth is important.
The the.
The biggest barrier to uh, topsychedelic medicine is, um,
typically like significantmental disorders like bipolar or
(34:35):
schizophrenia, um,schizophrenia because it, you
know it, because you're alreadykind of detached from reality
and the environment.
The experience is very realwhen you're in it and it could
destabilize you even furtherBipolar and some other like
depression.
Some medicines like ayahuascacan impact the like SSRIs or
(35:00):
things that operate on yourserotonin um on on your on your
serotonin receptors.
So we'll often, you know, do,we'll always get, you know, get
um medical history and ifanybody's on these kinds of
medicine, we'll work with themto work their way down from um,
from their dosage, so that theycan sit with the medicine.
But truly it's a very safemedicine to use.
(35:27):
It's a highly impactfulmedicine that you can sit with.
But everybody, from alcoholicsto individuals with PTSD and
trauma and depression, you know,to individuals who are suicidal
, and we've we've seen them alland we've seen them all
(35:47):
completely transformed afterafter sitting with the medicine.
It's, it's really, I mean it's,it's remarkable to see.
Jerry (35:55):
Yeah, I bet, I bet Be super interesting to, to witness
and also to you also to be apart of something like that.
Josh, where can people find youand learn more about this and
potentially see you in Las Vegas?
Josh (36:11):
Yeah, so we're at psychxcom P-S-Y-C-H-E-Xcom.
We're currently rebrandingright now, so we're going to see
some changes and updates on oursite coming soon.
That's going to really allowpeople to access our retreats a
lot easier and get on waitlistsand find out information,
(36:33):
because we're really trying toramp up our capacity so we can
get as many people healed aspossible as quickly as possible
and start to really build outour community.
You can also follow us at thePsychedelic Exchange on
Instagram, or you can follow meat my personal Instagram, at the
Josh Halu and at any of thoseplaces.
(36:55):
We'll be putting out a wholelot of information in the next
few weeks and over the next fewmonths as we really ramp up our
operations.
Like I said, we really launchedabout six or eight months ago
and are building up as fast aswe can and really just
incredibly passionate aboutdoing this work and bringing
(37:16):
this medicine and these healingmodalities to as many people as
we possibly can, and we're gonnabe evolving very quickly as we
continue to grow.
So yeah, thank you so muchJerry.
Jerry (37:29):
Yeah, thank you so much for being on.
Thank you for sharing all thatinformation.
I find it super fascinating andI'm sure people are curious to
look to other modalities youknow for their mental health and
thank you for bringing those topeople that are in need.
Josh (37:46):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's my pleasure do anassessment of your.
You know your, your mental,emotional fitness and and and
take ownership of it, take itseriously, know that you are in
the driver's seat and and yourlife, your quality of life can,
(38:07):
can, can be vastly improved whenyou really, when you really
take your healing journeyseriously and and don't overlook
your, your mental health.
Jerry (38:17):
Yeah, I 100% agree with you.
Thanks again for being on, josh, I really appreciate it.
Josh (38:23):
Yeah, my pleasure, it was a great conversation.
Thank you, jerry.
Yeah, thank you.
Jerry (38:27):
Thanks again for listening.
Don't forget to rate and reviewthe show wherever you access
your podcast.
If you know someone that wouldbe great on the show, please get
a hold of our host, jerry DeanLund, through the Instagram
handles at Jerry Fire and Fuelor at Enduring the Badge Podcast
(38:49):
, also by visiting the show'swebsite,
enduringthebadgepodcastcom foradditional methods of contact
and up-to-date informationregarding the show.
Remember, the views andopinions expressed during the
show solely represent those ofour host and the current
(39:09):
episode's guest.
Welcome to today's episode of Enduring the Badge
podcast.
I'm your host, jerry Dean Lund,and if you haven't already done
so, please take out your phoneand hit that subscribe button.
I don't want you to miss anupcoming episode.
And, hey, while your phone'sout, please give us a rating and
review.
On whichever platform youlisten to this podcast on, such
as iTunes, apple Podcasts andSpotify, it helps this podcast
(00:22):
grow and the reason why, whenthis gets positive ratings and
reviews, those platforms likeApple Podcasts and Spotify show
this to other people that neverlistened to this podcast before,
and that allows our podcast togrow and make more of an impact
in other people's lives.
So if you would do that, Iwould appreciate that from the
bottom of my heart.
My very special guest today isJosh Hailu.
(00:43):
How are you doing, josh?
Josh (00:45):
I'm doing great today.
Thank you, Jerry.
Thanks for having me.
Jerry (00:48):
Yeah, thanks for being on .
I'm going to talk aboutsomething that I think is really
fascinating to me, and I thinkthat the audience, too, will
find it fascinating as well.
Something kind of new.
So, josh, introduce yourself tothe audience.
Josh (01:05):
Yeah, so my name is Josh Halu.
I am the founder and CEO of acompany called the Psychedelic
Exchange or PsychX, and ourcompany creates retreats for
veterans with PTSD, usingpsychedelic medicine to cure
mental illness as opposed totreating symptoms, which is the
(01:30):
current kind of approach ofmental health treatment, with
pharmaceutical medicine and talktherapy.
My journey to psychedelicmedicine, with coming out of the
military after spending sevenyears as an active duty army
officer and West Point gradgraduate and army Ranger and
(01:53):
Blackhawk helicopter pilot andyou know, war veteran and uh and
also child of of suicide,losing my father when I was,
when I was really young, andexperiencing a lot of trauma
from childhood through themilitary and then through
wartime and getting out of themilitary when everything slowed
(02:15):
down and I got out of that highoperational tempo that I think a
lot of your audienceexperiences through first
responder work, militaryfirefighter, you know all of the
police officer.
You really are in this veryhigh intensity occupation that
(02:37):
becomes very normal for us andyou know when you step out of
kind of that line of work, yourealize how abnormal it actually
is to experience a lot of theevents that we experience
(03:07):
Traumatic, you know events,losing friends, seeing very
traumatic experiences happenbefore our eyes and then living
with those things and oftentimesthere's a stigma around asking
for help and you want to showmore of your tough exterior.
And it took me struggling foryears, coming out of the
military about four years,before I finally learned about
psychedelics actually, and I wasenrolled in the VA and started
getting care for mental healthand put on antidepressants and
(03:28):
all of that and wasn't reallyfinding much success maybe some
numbing of my symptoms, butcertainly nothing helping me
address the underlying issuesthat were leading to my
depression, my anxiety, my PTSDin general.
And then I learned aboutpsychedelic medicine for the
(03:48):
treatment of mental illness andbecame fascinated by it, really
jumped deep into the researchand saw just the incredible
results from ongoing clinicaltrials and started to understand
, you know why.
Why psychedelic medicine isn'tmedicine isn't widely available
yet, going back to the war ondrugs and the evolution of the
(04:12):
legality and regulatoryenvironment around these
medicines, which is rapidlychanging.
And once I discovered themedicine myself for me it was
psilocybin mushrooms, or whatyou would refer to as magic
mushrooms my life radicallychanged in that moment.
For me it was psilocybinmushrooms, or what you would
refer to as magic mushrooms, mylife radically changed in that
moment.
(04:32):
I had my first mushroom trip orexperience and it was a
profound shift in my ability toprocess all the traumatic
experiences that I've had tothat point and finally really
recognize in myself how I washolding myself hostage to a lot
of emotional baggage and traumaand carrying so much into the
(04:58):
way that I operated and the lensthat I saw the world through in
terms of self-loathing,self-hatred, survivor's guilt,
holding onto grudges andresentment and anger.
And over the course of my firstpsychedelic experience and I've
had many others since then Ireally learned forgiveness and
(05:20):
gratitude and self-love andkindness and literally from you
know, from hours one through six, you know, coming out the other
side and then doing a lot ofdeep work on the other side and
really integrating thatexperience into my life.
Moving forward, I was able tostart living a lot more fully
(05:40):
and a lot more happily withgratitude and joy and love.
And so then from that pointforward I started continuing to
bring psychedelics to otherfriends who were veterans, who I
knew were struggling and seeingjust profound shifts in
everybody that I introduced tothe medicine medicine.
(06:11):
And about a year ago I kind ofhad a wake-up call telling me to
really pursue psychedelicmedicine more broadly.
And I had to get over a lot ofpersonal stigma around being
like a West Point graduate,former army officer and figuring
out how do I reconcile, youknow, finding so much like
salvation through what we wouldcall drugs and reframing in my
(06:32):
mind.
You know what these medicinesreally are and deciding that it
was, you know it was veryimportant to me, a personal
mission and journey for me to doas much as I can to bring these
very healing modalities to asmany people, you know, as many
people as I possibly can,particularly starting with the
(06:54):
veteran community because that'snear and dear to me, but
certainly, you know, with plansto expand to other first
responders, trauma survivors andthen more more broadly in
general.
So that's, uh, that's a bitabout my background.
Jerry (07:07):
Yeah, that's awesome and I came up with like 20 questions
from that.
But Josh, how did like so?
There's already a stigma tolike right Seeking help for
mental health, but right, youkind of touched on there's also
probably another stigma aboutturning to these psychedelics
for mental health right Tochange that.
(07:29):
I mean, how do you overcomethat?
What do you tell people Otherthan probably what you just told
me, which is very fascinatingand I've like seemed to be like
you went from somebody likemaybe being numb to you know,
just open up yourself.
Josh (07:46):
Yeah, it's a.
It's a challenging transitionto make in isolation, certainly,
which is why I thinkdestigmatizing the medicine and
seeking help and creatingcommunity, which is another part
of what we're doing with thepsychedelic exchange, is so
important to us, because it isvery challenging first to ask
(08:08):
for help I mean, even even priorto asking for help, to even
recognize that you havesomething maybe wrong with you.
Ptsd or trauma shows up in youknow, very different ways for
everybody.
I do believe that everybody, ornearly everybody, has some form
of trauma in their lives andusually happens at a
(08:29):
developmental point, you know,in time, or in a traumatic
experience that becomes kind ofyour residing perspective going
forward, because you know youjust learn to carry these things
.
And for me, or for anybody else, I think that life really
begins when you take yourhealing journey seriously.
(09:06):
And and owning your mentalhealth, just as as important as
owning your physical fitness isis the one of the most important
things you can do.
When you think about you know,I like to think about the
analogy of of an airplane safetybrief, where you you know
you're told to put on youroxygen mask on before helping
others.
Right, you can only be the mostimpactful, you know, loving,
caring, creating force that youcan possibly be as a human once
(09:27):
you've really taken care ofyourself mentally, physically,
emotionally, spiritually.
And those components in lifearen't isolated, they're very
intertwined.
Having a good mentality, havinga good emotional, you know, a
good, good emotional, you know,place in life is to me just as
(09:50):
important as being physicallyfit and exercising and eating a
good diet.
Right, ignore your, your mentalhealth, just like you can't
ignore your physical health andsay, oh, it's up to the doctor
to put me on medicine if I'm,you know, if I'm unhealthy and
(10:12):
eating poorly, right, you haveto take in my, in my opinion,
you have to take ownership.
You have to know, like you are,the steward of your body and
your mind and you have to takeownership of, of understanding
proper exercise and propernutrition and understanding
proper mental fitness.
And I think that's so importantbecause mental fitness really
(10:35):
leads to all like unlocking allof the other potential for
living life to the fullest.
And you can't just offload thatto to the system, you know,
unfortunately, because thesystem has existed for, you know
, for many years, decades, um,with with very specific
(10:57):
modalities like traditionaltherapy or, you know,
pharmaceutical medicine that'skind of designed to keep you
taking a pill a day for the restof your life, and certainly
therapy and traditional medicinehas its place in the toolbox of
mental health, but it'simportant for individuals to
(11:27):
know all of the tools that areavailable to you, as opposed to
you know, certain mental healthprofessionals sometimes aren't
trained in all these differentaspects, or a lot of individuals
don't even understand the legalframework for psychedelic
medicine or how to even go aboutprescribing or adding it into
your, your care model, and likewhen you start to peel back the
(11:49):
layers of understanding whatthese medicines actually do and
why they're so impactful.
It's something like for me atleast, I couldn't, I couldn't
look away from so.
For instance, I mean, there'smany different types of
psychedelic medicine ormedicines that fit underneath
the psychedelic medicineumbrella, several of which are
(12:10):
either legal or in phase threeclinical trials.
So, like currently, ketaminetherapy is available and legal
in all 50 states and incrediblyeffective, although it's being
used in what's called off-labeluse, so it's not actually FDA
approved for the treatment ofmental illness.
It's being used to treat mentalillness but approved for like
(12:31):
surgery or other things likethat.
But, like MDMA and psilocybinare both in late stage phase
three FDA trials, and MDMA isactually slated to be approved
by the FDA later this year,specifically for the treatment
of PTSD, which I think is gonnabe game changing.
(12:53):
But just to give you a littlestatistic which I think when you
hear these kinds of things itreally opens up your mind to
like oh well, maybe that is forme, why shouldn't I explore that
?
So, for instance, mdma in theclinical trials are showing
incredible results and, just topaint a perspective, over 70% of
(13:15):
the individuals whoparticipated in the clinical
trials for MDMA, who had PTSD,lost their PTSD diagnosis
altogether, meaning two out ofthree individuals who who
participated in these clinicaltrials were cured of ptsd.
All right, like you don't reallyhear.
Cured in any other type of likeyou know, like I mean, curing
(13:40):
cancer is like you know, that'slike it's something that we've
been working on forever, butlike curing a mental illness
through, through like a seriesof a few treatments over the
course of a few weeks and livinga completely different life
after the fact, when maybe youknow and in your head you're
like, well, I guess I'm justgoing to go to therapy or for
the rest of my life and you know, take, take medicine or or just
(14:01):
suffer in silence, right, likeit's a complete shift in
perspective of how you can trulylike, own your mental health
and seek out medicines ormodalities that are radically
different than than the norm.
And once you start to experiencethat or learn about it, I, you
(14:23):
know, I, I feel like you.
You should find it's shouldfind, at least for me.
I found courage to want tofigure out what that felt like.
What that felt like to not wakeup feeling dread about every
single day and just wanting to,not caring what happened between
getting out of bed and gettingback in bed, you know, and just
(14:44):
trying to make it through that,that part, instead of being
excited about each and every dayand finding connection with
other people and finding lovefor yourself and with your
family members and, you know,finding joy and going to your
kid's soccer game, like justjust the normal aspects of life
that are really reallychallenging for individuals who
struggle with significant mentalillness.
Jerry (15:08):
Yeah, what would I mean?
What would it look like, orwhat does it feel like to take
psilocybin?
Like for somebody in theaudience, and I'm guessing it's
probably different for everybody.
Is that true?
Josh (15:21):
everybody's experiences is certainly unique.
I think that the general likehow does it feel?
Aspects are are consistent andeach, each medicine will produce
, you know, slightly differenteffects or very different
effects, but the the, theoutcome and and also the process
(15:43):
is very similar.
Right, it's kind of like.
It's kind of like.
It's kind of like a freshsnowfall over well-worn, you
know ski tracks and allowing youto take a fresh perspective and
rewrite your narrative, whatthat feels like.
So, so, oftentimes, you know,you, you lump drugs into this
(16:03):
singular category and andunfortunately, because of our
historical war on drugs likepsilocybin, mushrooms which just
grow naturally out of theground are currently a schedule
one substance in the samecategory as like meth and heroin
.
But a psychedelic medicine andan experience feels like work,
(16:23):
right, it's not an escape.
Certainly there's aspects of ofrecreational use, mind
expansion use.
Right, like it certainlyenhances the way music sounds
and the way colors look and theway food tastes.
Right, like there's, there's,there's all those aspects to
psychedelics, certainly, butwhen?
But when you're really takingthem therapeutically and it
(16:48):
should be taken with properfacilitation, preparation,
facilitation and facilitationshould take into account proper
what's called set and settingwhich is the right mindset you
don't want to be in a healthymindset going into it, or a
prepared mindset and the rightlike physical environment, um,
and then the integration, whichis one of the most important
(17:09):
features, is like how do youcome out of that experience and
integrate that experience intoyour life?
So it's not just like going ona crash diet, losing a bunch of
weight and then just going rightback to your old habits, right,
like, you actually have tointegrate the experience into
your life, like that whole, thatwhole life cycle of a
psychedelic experience.
Um, is, is an intensive processand does feel like work.
(17:34):
So when you, you know, when youtake mushrooms, for instance,
the you typically will like setintentions, you know and think
about what you want to tackleduring, during the experience
but then you'll hear a lot aboutyou have to surrender to the
experience because you knowmushrooms are for as as just to
(17:54):
take them as an example arereally interesting substance.
There's, um, you know there's,there's, there's plants, or
there's, there's like plants,and there's animals and there's
fungi, which which is its ownkingdom, and it's an incredibly
intelligent organism and a lotof people aren't really familiar
(18:19):
with how intelligent fungi are,but it's like yeast they
convert sugars into alcohol orit's like all you know, whenever
anything decays in a forest,right, like that's, that's, like
those are that's, you know,mushrooms or fungi that are
coming up and decaying it, rightthey're, they're very active in
the process of of liketransitioning and evolving
things in our world and go veryunseen, like in the roots of all
(18:42):
the trees, or when you reach upand grab soil from the ground
and you have all those littlestrands like that's.
That's all part of the fungikingdom and it's part of like
how we all the, you knoweverything gets fed and it's
really important to our entireecosystem.
But it's not not that wellunderstood, but maybe I'm
getting off a little tangent.
But mushrooms themselves, like,when you take them, you allow
(19:03):
that like they, really, theyreally um they.
I mean it's kind of like they,they know, they know what
they're doing in a certain way,right, like you're you surrender
to allowing this, this medicine, to um, kind of take like in.
In my experience, it takes youon these kind of emotional,
(19:25):
emotional journeys.
So, yeah, you'll feel maybe aphysical, like body load and a
mental load, but you'll reallyfeel kind of an overwhelming
emotional, um feelings that willpull your mind into interesting
, you know, very importantdirections of your life.
(19:45):
So so very often and and widelyrecommended that you wear like
an eye covering, an eye mask,when you're in a psychedelic
experience, because then it you,you cut off your your optical,
you know field and you go ininside and you know, while
you're going inside, themedicine kind of helps you
(20:06):
direct to like places that arecreating the most, the most pain
or the most emotional overwhelm.
So for me it'd be like visitingmy younger self in childhood,
losing my father, andreconciling that or, you know,
or wartime trauma and andrevisiting what those
experiences were.
(20:26):
And while I'm revisiting thoseexperiences, I'm reframing them
in a new perspective where Icould have come out of an
intense firefight in themilitary and carried a lot of
survivor's guilt and trauma fromthat experience.
(20:48):
But the reframe, you know, youcome out of it and you're like,
oh, that wasn't my fault.
You know like I don't like, infact, and it doesn't honor my,
my, you know my, my friend or my, you know, army buddy or
whatever, to live my life likein this way, like it's actually,
you know it's it, it's not, itactually honors my friend more
(21:09):
to live a full life and you know, carry their memory.
You know open-heartedly, insteadof like making my life worse
because they don't, they nolonger exist.
So these, these, thesenarratives that you play out in
your head, the, the psychedelicmedicine like often helps you
direct your attention into thesevery traumatic experiences that
you've had that really create alot of your subconscious
(21:32):
reactions, emotional reactions,and reframe that narrative.
And then, once you've been ableto reframe that narrative, it no
longer holds power over you andyou're no longer anchored to
these narratives that don'tserve you and you get to reframe
how you really perceive yourlife.
And once you're no longeranchored to these narratives
that don't serve you and you getto reframe how you really
perceive your life, and onceyou're on the other side of that
, you're like like a lot, a lotmore, a lot more in life, like
(21:55):
feels lighter and makes moresense, and you can extrapolate
those instances into other partsof your life and really start
to feel a lot more connected toyourself, connected to your
community and and and less avictim of circumstance and more
more the the driver of your, ofyour life.
(22:16):
So it it they really help youstop being anchored to the past,
arrive in the present, live inthe present and and be hopeful
about the future.
Jerry (22:30):
How long does like this experience last?
Like you know, if I take it anddoes it last like six, eight
hours, or, and, or does thingshappen for like weeks later too?
Josh (22:43):
It's a great question.
So different medicine lasts adifferent length of time.
Like you can go in and get aketamine infusion in a clinic
and you're in and out of therein under two hours.
Um, a mushroom trip usuallylasts in the four to six hour
range, um, lsd a little bitlonger.
Mdma is you know about sixhours, so they're a little bit
longer.
Mdma is you know about sixhours, so they're a little bit
(23:06):
longer.
Right, then they, they followkind of a pattern of you know
come up and then a peak, youknow, for a few hours in the
middle and then and then a comedown on the backend.
But you are processing thingsfor, certainly, for you know,
days, if not weeks, after thefact and even with, like, if you
go in and go to a ketamineclinic, for instance, you might,
(23:30):
you might sign up to do like afour, six, eight session, like
package, and you'll do like twosessions a week for four weeks
or something like that, and andevery time you're kind of like
working through more and moreand and and achieving, you know,
greater levels of, like mentalpeace, um, but but they carry
(23:54):
forward.
So, like, a lot of people willnever need another session again
after one session.
Other people can have reallytransformational experiences on
on several ketamine sessions andthen maybe we'll do like one
ketamine session a year.
You know, kind of like as a abooster, if you will.
Um, but like the once you, onceyou get over that, that, you
(24:18):
know that first big one havelike very significant
transformational experience.
Um, you, you have, you have alot more of your control of your
emotional life and direction.
And in the days and weeks andmonths after the fact, the
statistics I quoted you earlierabout MDMA, for instance, those
(24:41):
effects of curing PTSD, thoseare looked at and sustained for
the six-month and the 12-monthmark and beyond after those
experiences.
So they certainly sustain inthe time after the experience, a
lot of those, like I talkedabout, the integration phase
that becomes part of the newperspective that you're looking
(25:06):
through at that point.
So you are going through, likein my, in my experience, and you
know, with, with, with you know, people that I've worked with
you go through this evolutionand you can recognize the
patterns as they come up overthe next few weeks until until,
slowly but surely, they becomepart of your norm and your
(25:30):
baseline.
Jerry (25:32):
That's pretty awesome.
What does experience look likeat your facility?
Do you have a facility that youdo it at?
Josh (25:41):
So we do what's called ayahuasca retreats, and
ayahuasca you may have heard ofthis before.
It's like a traditional brewfrom South America indigenous
tribes and it's made upessentially just of two plants
(26:10):
that are boiled down and takentogether in a ceremony setting.
Um produces a as like apsychedelic experience over the
course of several hours, andtraditionally it's done in a, in
a ceremony setting, with, youknow, multiple participants and
a facilitator.
And so we'll do these, you knowwe'll.
We'll do these, these retreats,like at different locations,
(26:31):
you know, outdoors on retreat,or you know in, in different,
you know buildings or facilities, but in, historically, you know
, a lot of people will leave thecountry, or a lot of soldiers's
like non-profit organizationsthat'll take soldiers out of the
country to participate inayahuasca retreats and be able
(26:51):
to um, be able to like, gothrough these transformational
experiences, because they'reillegal in in the country unless
are, unless performed under um,under like a church that's's
that's allowed to do it underthe religious freedom act, which
is how we operate.
So um, so yeah, if you signedup for a retreat with us, you
(27:13):
know we would likely host it inLas Vegas.
That's where we're based out ofUm, you know you'd, you'd fly
in.
We'd have a facility, we'd haveprobably two or three days of
the medicine work, which is likein the evening, and then during
the day you would havetypically other other healing
modalities, like you know, like,like we work on meditation and
(27:36):
breath work, yoga, um, likethese types of these types of
other like health and fitnessmodes of of of healing that
integrate very well with themedicine work.
And really we focus heavily ona community setting because,
(28:00):
like, while while I do believethere's a lot of benefit in
going to a clinic and healingwith ketamine or healing with
MDMA, I think there's a lot ofpower in natural medicine, like
natural plant medicine healing,and certainly in conducting
these in a community setting.
(28:21):
So, going through a ayahuascaceremony with a group of a
couple dozen veterans, you know,for instance, um or
firefighters, or you knowwhoever or sometimes we will do,
like you know male onlyretreats, you know women only
retreats.
So going through, you know,with gender specific, where you
(28:41):
are really connected, like the,the medicine really helps you
both connect to yourself andconnect to the community around
you.
So you really get not just theperspective of connecting with
yourself better but seeing, youknow, your brothers and sisters
who have had similar, their ownversion of traumatic experiences
, like go through their healingjourney, and usually you know
(29:02):
you share a lot afterward aboutyour experience and you
recognize that.
You know trauma is veryuniversal and makes you feel a
whole lot less alone.
And then when you depart fromthese retreats and these
experiences, you get to havecommunity, you know, because
it's oftentimes hard to go backhome after these experiences and
like reground yourself in your,in your former life.
(29:25):
Um, because you're you'rechanged, you know you're, you're
you're changed and you want tosustain that change and
community really really helps alot with that.
It's you know, it's like youknow, I mean it's you could, you
could equate it to going torehab.
You know, like going to rehaband coming back and like now you
don't, maybe you went for foralcohol, you no longer drink and
(29:48):
all your friends still hang outat the bar and you're like,
well, now how do I, how do I fitback into this life?
Jerry (29:56):
Is the only thing that you can do in Vegas is the
ayahuasca.
Or can you do the psilocybin inLas Vegas too?
Josh (30:05):
We can do ayahuasca and then we can also do another
medicine called Bufo or5-MeO-DMT, which is it's a toad
venom, which is, you know, it'sdirectly from a toad in the
Sonoran Desert.
It's a much shorter, it's likea 15, 20 minute experience, but
(30:26):
a very transformationalexperience in and of itself.
So we are able to do both ofthese medicines, but we're
adding more.
Each one has its own, you know,has its own benefit, like I
mean, for the way that Idiscovered psychedelics, like I
talked about earlier, was wasmushrooms, and and I had no idea
(30:49):
how to source them or find them.
You could sign up for clinicaltrials and you could, you know,
figure out how to do, how to doit.
That way you could maybe find adrug dealer, I guess.
I I decided to learn how tojust grow the mushrooms myself
and consume them myself, andthis isn't the preferred way to
do them.
You really should havecommunity and facilitation
(31:10):
around and you're really jumpinginto foreign, unfamiliar
territory.
But I was pretty desperate andvery curious about the
experience and didn't likedidn't know how to go about
finding it.
Um, so there's like different,I mean, if it also is very state
dependent too.
So, so, um, oregon and Coloradoand I think Michigan's coming
(31:35):
online and um and California areum legalizing or have legalized
or decriminalized at the statelevel psilocybin and some other
plant medicines, but primarilypsilocybin at this point.
So you are able to go topsilocybin retreats in Colorado,
in Oregon for sure, and haveproper facilitation and receive
(31:59):
the medicine and all of that.
But that's kind of unfolding ina similar way to the way that
the cannabis industry unfolded,which is that tricky balance
between the federal level andthe state level and while the
state decriminalizes it it makesit for a challenging
environment.
I mean it'll be reallyinteresting to see how it
(32:20):
evolves once, like mdma, becomeslegalized, because that will
really be the very first time amedicine, psychedelic medicine,
is legalized specifically forthe treatment of a mental
illness.
And when that happens, you know, I expect that there will be a
rapid, a rapid change in in theregulatory environment to make
(32:44):
some of these other othermedicines more, more permissive.
And psilocybin is in phasethree trials also expected to be
approved in the next year ortwo after after MDMA.
But yeah, for the moment we weuse primarily ayahuasca, which
is truly a beautiful.
I mean each medicine has itsown, you can call it kind of
like spirit.
But ayahuasca is a verybeautiful medicine because it is
(33:08):
like mushrooms, it is just.
It's just, you know, straightplants, essentially Drinking in
a brew.
You know it's been cooked downin a brew, you know it's been
cooked down, um, but but it'sshared in a, like I talked about
, in a ceremonial setting, withsomebody usually playing music,
and it really helps kind of movethe energy and help you process
(33:29):
the trauma and you're you're ina group environment.
So it's it.
It feels safer and maybe moresacred than sitting in a, in a,
in a clinic, you know, with withsomebody with a white lab coat
on Um, but uh, but yeah, that.
So we're, we, we really believe, you know deeply in this
medicine and we source it right.
(33:50):
We resource it from a longlineage of of of ayahuasca vine,
from, you know, from Peru, fromwhere this, this medicine,
originally um comes from I mean,how healthy do you have to be
to do these different types ofmedicine?
Jerry (34:07):
like your general health, like physical health?
Josh (34:11):
physical health is not as important as mental health.
Um, I mean, certainly physicalhealth is important.
The the.
The biggest barrier to uh, topsychedelic medicine is, um,
typically like significantmental disorders like bipolar or
(34:35):
schizophrenia, um,schizophrenia because it, you
know it, because you're alreadykind of detached from reality
and the environment.
The experience is very realwhen you're in it and it could
destabilize you even furtherBipolar and some other like
depression.
Some medicines like ayahuascacan impact the like SSRIs or
(35:00):
things that operate on yourserotonin um on on your on your
serotonin receptors.
So we'll often, you know, do,we'll always get, you know, get
um medical history and ifanybody's on these kinds of
medicine, we'll work with themto work their way down from um,
from their dosage, so that theycan sit with the medicine.
But truly it's a very safemedicine to use.
(35:27):
It's a highly impactfulmedicine that you can sit with.
But everybody, from alcoholicsto individuals with PTSD and
trauma and depression, you know,to individuals who are suicidal
, and we've we've seen them alland we've seen them all
(35:47):
completely transformed afterafter sitting with the medicine.
It's, it's really, I mean it's,it's remarkable to see.
Jerry (35:55):
Yeah, I bet, I bet Be super interesting to, to witness
and also to you also to be apart of something like that.
Josh, where can people find youand learn more about this and
potentially see you in Las Vegas?
Josh (36:11):
Yeah, so we're at psychxcom P-S-Y-C-H-E-Xcom.
We're currently rebrandingright now, so we're going to see
some changes and updates on oursite coming soon.
That's going to really allowpeople to access our retreats a
lot easier and get on waitlistsand find out information,
(36:33):
because we're really trying toramp up our capacity so we can
get as many people healed aspossible as quickly as possible
and start to really build outour community.
You can also follow us at thePsychedelic Exchange on
Instagram, or you can follow meat my personal Instagram, at the
Josh Halu and at any of thoseplaces.
(36:55):
We'll be putting out a wholelot of information in the next
few weeks and over the next fewmonths as we really ramp up our
operations.
Like I said, we really launchedabout six or eight months ago
and are building up as fast aswe can and really just
incredibly passionate aboutdoing this work and bringing
(37:16):
this medicine and these healingmodalities to as many people as
we possibly can, and we're gonnabe evolving very quickly as we
continue to grow.
So yeah, thank you so muchJerry.
Jerry (37:29):
Yeah, thank you so much for being on.
Thank you for sharing all thatinformation.
I find it super fascinating andI'm sure people are curious to
look to other modalities youknow for their mental health and
thank you for bringing those topeople that are in need.
Josh (37:46):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's my pleasure do anassessment of your.
You know your, your mental,emotional fitness and and and
take ownership of it, take itseriously, know that you are in
the driver's seat and and yourlife, your quality of life can,
(38:07):
can, can be vastly improved whenyou really, when you really
take your healing journeyseriously and and don't overlook
your, your mental health.
Jerry (38:17):
Yeah, I 100% agree with you.
Thanks again for being on, josh, I really appreciate it.
Josh (38:23):
Yeah, my pleasure, it was a great conversation.
Thank you, jerry.
Yeah, thank you.
Jerry (38:27):
Thanks again for listening.
Don't forget to rate and reviewthe show wherever you access
your podcast.
If you know someone that wouldbe great on the show, please get
a hold of our host, jerry DeanLund, through the Instagram
handles at Jerry Fire and Fuelor at Enduring the Badge Podcast
(38:49):
, also by visiting the show'swebsite,
enduringthebadgepodcastcom foradditional methods of contact
and up-to-date informationregarding the show.
Remember, the views andopinions expressed during the
show solely represent those ofour host and the current
(39:09):
episode's guest.
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