foreign spirituality with they twist uh as you have already have heard in the introduction we have for turning on the wonderful insightfully insightful Ashley tomasino did I say that right all right uh and uh really talk about this kind of subject that came up between Daniel and I uh a few weeks ago is kind of an idea I get these kind of goofy newsletters from Harvard medicine they really serve no function in my life whatsoever and I almost immediately delete them but they come through and it kind of gives me a feeling of like what they're up to sort of what they are up to and uh there's always something on like try Chi Gung and like uh you know uh meditation for your depression and you know they just pop these things up and one of them was on like psychedelics and I thought okay that's interesting definitely in year two uh folks wheelhouse so the idea came of an episode to start talking about that what that means in terms of like I guess you might say the more mainstreaming of this and research around it so that was something that struck my interests for sure struck by interest uh parts of my brain but um uh you know when we talked about Daniel also wanted to talk about research in the in this field of psychedelics and kind of make it like an inclusive episode where we talk about all this stuff so anyways that seems to be what we're going to be doing thanks so much for coming on Ashley yeah my pleasure as an expert in this subject matter and I guess I'll like like hand the Baton off a little bit to Daniel because you know just how do you think about it I guess in terms of what parts of the research were interesting and you know why you thought that was important thing for us to do and you can guys get the ball rolling that way right yeah so I you know there's probably a number of positions that you know we'll we'll discuss here um which is kind of like around a round table discussion and you know I wanted to kind of highlight this because I do feel like the the trend is moving in this direction and so you know for people who listen to us you know the the few the proud the Gin And tantras if we can call them that you know um you know to kind of provide some you know some insight as to not just like what we think but you know things that you know we're seeing as people who pay attention to this kind of stuff and are engaged in the in the material in in a tangible sense for us you know I use these you know things legally of course um you know so right um and so I wanted to kind of have the you know I guess like a conscious discussion uh on these topics which is why I wanted to you know to bring on Ashley who has you know good experience with this as well so um yeah Ashley thanks for thanks for coming on and Eric as always thanks for uh for joining us so actually I'll I'll get give you a chance to kind of breathe here in a second but I think the one of the larger Parts is that like this integration between uh mental health and the increasing amount of attention that it's getting especially post covid right I think the amount I don't have to think but like the amount of depression anxiety sort of mental stressors that have you know been here since you know 2020 since the implementation of lock-ons and everything else not just in the US but worldwide is probably uh easily understood you know phenomenon right simultaneously we have the use of the traditional means for treatment which are generally pharmaceutical drugs and some combination of counseling you know but the drugs are kind of the the implemented way of using you know treatment you know that Western medicine Western medicine will use for treatment and that's a way of treating things you know for sure however there's also a couple things that are happening at the same time right that are that where is this conversation is being born out of so number one ineffectiveness of these drugs that's that's first of all the second of all is the side effects that come along with these Pharmaceuticals and the third part is the movement towards a more sort of natural I don't know State you know in terms of like people wanting to use natural supplements natural ways of being in order to try to alleviate whatever it is that they're dealing with so I think these you know the background of the depression anxiety increasing and then those sort of three things right ineffectiveness side effects and a movement towards naturalistic States is kind of pushing us towards this you know I guess kind of merger between psychedelics and the pharmaceutical industry or the use of you know psychedelics in in the pharmaceutical industry and so this is kind of like the place that that I think I would like for the discussion to kind of be born from and obviously we will all have our own you know takes on certain aspects of it but this is kind of like the foundation if I could you know give the background as Eric normally does but this is the you know this is kind of our this is our structure for today so Ashley and we'll break all these things down right but um Ashley from from your perspective you know what do you you know well I want to give you a chance to kind of speak here well um the first thing that comes to mind that I when I think about pharmaceuticals and psychedelics that come together is ketamine um and you know that is widely um I wouldn't say like distributed but people are talking about it you know you see it on Instagram you see people posting about it now you can take ketamine at home you can have like at-home kits um it's just for me when I see it I kind of tune it out and that's because of um some personal experiences with friends that have actually passed away from overdosing on ketamine and I think that there is a real there's a real need for grounding essentially with any practice but with especially psychedelics because the nature of psychedelics is to take you out of reality out of your current state of reality and so um you know there's really a need for uh spiritual practice around any kind of psychedelic that people are taking and that's something that I don't really see being emphasized so much people are talking about all the benefits of these medicines but they're not necessarily talking about the importance of the day-to-day the integration the things that are not so you know seductive um but that's the first thing that comes to mind when I think about this topic is that kind of like it's like this taste in my mouth that's sort of um chemical and it doesn't really feel very natural and um I think that there's a potential for problems like if people cannot process properly the things that they're experiencing on psychedelics um that would potentially exacerbate you know schizophrenia bipolar disorder PTSD these things that people are claiming that psychedelics actually treat the Psychedelic can actually make worse or perpetuate uh you know pushing someone deeper into a psychotic episode without proper care so like there's a lot of interest in psychedelics for the treatment of mental health and spiritual challenges that people are experiencing unrelated even to covid just you know we're looking at like economics and things like that I mean that is part of what we're dealing with with covet but like people are really being tested and um they're searching and like I feel like people are reaching outwards for these resources but too much of the reaching outwards can be problematic um you know as we see like with Chinese medicine like you have to regulate the doors from our reality to the outside reality through these like um with the Gates you know and psychedelics blow gates open and [Music] so that's the first couple things that I have to say about that it's at is that on point I mean does that make sense for sure yeah if it makes sense before Eric before you I see you have a thought or it looks like you have a thought anyways yeah usually like think of what to say about this stuff yeah yeah so so before you know just so I wanted to bring this back into the pharmaceutical portion so uh Johnson and Johnson makes a at home or you know personal use ketamine nasal spray bravado it costs 729 dollars and it's a two it's a two shot so that so it's 370 bucks basically roughly for a one one use so I didn't look into this so maybe I'll just ask you two about this when I was like doing my little prep on this because this is not my this is not my home base the way it is more for YouTube I was like okay so I saw like MDMA psilocybin uh uh DMT being talked about research-wise I don't know what the claims are of like the effects of ketamine in terms of what it's supposed to be treated any research around that what's the claim around that because maybe like a lot of other people in the audience like I'm not as familiar with this PTSD depression anxiety things like The Usual Suspects kind of thing yeah and just so I'm clear just so I'm clear so people don't you know check me uh bravado is not intended for home use but that's you know this is what the call you know so whether you come to an office and you get this right yeah yeah it's an it's an administered uh nasal spray but yeah I mean ketamine was started you know started off where I think for pain game if I remember if I no correctly because I've had some patients who had to have ketamine therapy for chronic pain and then they're like oh well you should stick you should stay using it for these other you know things end of life they say cancer related depressed which is all like the kind of like psychedelic use case is what Ashley was saying so it's PTSD anxiety depression um addiction breaking you know habit habit re-breaking uh cancer related depression they highlight that in terms of the research they specify that why I don't know yeah I think those are kind of the main what's the traditional contents behind what context behind that like where where is that used more traditionally whereas what use more tradition I mean where's that coming from like in a traditional context is there any traditional background for that you mean in the academy is a synthetic you know because that's pretty synthetic and there's no other traditional context that I'm aware of so there's so there's a lot of you know a lot of people want to do ketamine and and it's and it's available like a different you know ketamine clinics and stuff like that but what what I learned more recently that I think is really important for people that are in the Ayahuasca world and particularly in the plant medicine world and this is a you know another type of psychedelic is that the ketamine because it's synthetic in the in the nature of it and how strong it is I've been told and I and I feel that this is true that by taking ketamine if you've done a plant medicine dieta particularly one that's called neuerau the ketamine connection hold on you like to do that where you say things and you don't we have to give a little bit of background so what's it yet and what's neural because no one knows so so if you're if you're involved in Ayahuasca work so Ayahuasca is the plant medicine The Brew that's mixed uh the banisteriopsis cat by Vine and the chicuna leaf and people drink it in a ceremony so when you're in a what's called a dieta you're engaging in a sacred process of eliminating certain foods and substances in order to connect connect with the Ayahuasca or with the master plan a master plan is a plant that you meditate with for a certain amount of time you take in the um the plant Consciousness you you work with that plant there's a lot that I could talk about with that but yeah um if people are really involved in that particular sect of practice um by taking ketamine the ketamine is said to not only block but cross the uh a person's ability to connect with their plants and what that means is that it's just kind of like if you you know on the phone with somebody and the connection is is cut then that connection to your medicine your healing from that plant as it evolves and integrates over time would then not be able to come through and it can be very detrimental to people who particularly take tree plants as part of their spiritual practice of meditation and so for example and uh you know when I think about ketamine it doesn't really bring up good feelings for me because one of my uh friends one of my dear friends uh died last year from a ketamine overdose he was found in Mexico and he had an ibogaine clinic in um near Ensenada and he was doing ketamine like you know like candy like every day and taking M uh five Meo hits and he was um you know doing ibogaine like this was all just recreational so again Gotta Give context for things because the audience isn't no five I mean what what is Phi you know let's just go through one of them right 5meo is what 5meo is DMT a strain of like DMT right and and what strain of DMT is is 5meo DMT again because I don't know okay so five Meo DMT would be what would you it's a psychedelic so it's a it's a DMT is is one psychedelic that um people are offering actually that's not technically legal but it is I think decriminalized but I'm not a specialist in 5 MBO or anything so so 5ml DMT is usually found in what they call Toad Venom and people will smoke the toad Venom and it has a a similar effect to like drinking Ayahuasca in a sense except for the fact that it is like well it's different but it's similar it's also far more short-lived right maybe like 15 to 30 minutes um and therefore people feel a little bit more maybe like it had some different benefits I guess in it for you know for them we can talk about the benefits and you know what not of DMT in a in a moment so I think the only thing that I wanted to to highlight though is the maybe the heart of what you're saying Ashley is that like again putting this into context with our just with our discussion the plants in their natural setting have a kind of essence with them that stays with the person who uses them right this is kind of what you were alluding to earlier right about trees and and whatnot and that the use and from your experience again and you have you know connection to people who you know do this work on a daily basis and you know outside of this country where these things are are stop taught studied and administered in a legal fashion you know very old kind of traditional sense that the use of these synthetic drugs you know sort of interact and provide this kind of like blocking sensation blocking experience to someone's connection with the plant which I think is sort of antithetical to how we view psychedelics right and Eric you could speak on this because you know you know you're in it but kind of not so you're really like kind of a good case scenario to talk about this when you think at least when I would think of a a psychedelic I think of it as like an experience you know like maybe it's beautiful maybe it's difficult maybe it's whatever but it's something that you do it changes the chemistry of your brain somehow opens you up makes you laugh whatever it is and then you learn something and move forward and that's the end of it is that is that how do you think of it Eric from from your own experience and your own you know what I'm saying yeah well okay first of all I probably should say sorry for the loss of your friend right you know and that's an experienced person I mean it sounds familiar you're talking about as a person with a lot of experience within this you know range it just kind of got something how do you I don't I'm gonna answer the question Daniel asked but I'm just kind of curious what do you think happened there because it sounds like someone who did have experience were they just having problems handling uh how they were interacting with these substances something happening in their life it's a kind of interesting story to me because it it doesn't sound like it was a novice person it sounds like someone who kind of knew what they were doing and something got out of hand for them so I guess I'm just curious about that and I guess I'll double back to what Daniel was asking me too but yeah yeah just popped in my head when you were telling the story I was like huh I wonder what happened there right well I mean I do have a point with sharing that and um it felt incomplete so thank you but he um and I don't want to say his name you know because it's just yeah so he um I it's it's hard to say but he called me he contacted me before this happened and told me that he was feeling really suicidal and that he was really overwhelmed by how much work he was doing and I think that because he was mixing things he in terms of like my practice I think that he was picking up a lot of what's called ucha and ucha is kind of like the um energies of Shame guilt fear it's just like not clean energies he wasn't practicing the Psychedelic work in a clean way he was doing things that were outside of like the rules I guess you could say of the different Traditions that he was working with so he was kind of like abusing his practice and then that was attracting and I don't like to say attracting but I mean I think he was bringing in a lot of really negative energies and when you so he had dieted that that tree Neu around many years ago and that's how I know him because he was helping me and we have some history but so he was dieting this plant and then he started doing the ketamine and it said what I've learned from my mentor is that by doing those two things you can have a mental and psychotic breakdown and I think that he had a really hard time processing all of these different medicines and not integrating them and not getting the support and then he that there were some other things that happened at his Center and he was just very ungrounded and when he called me telling me that he was feeling really suicidal you know I had to take the appropriate action and respond in the best way that I could you know alerting the people that needed to be alerted so then he could be taken care of and stuff um and also protecting myself because it was kind of overwhelming to hear another colleague of mine to be in such a bad place and I and I understand how those things can be in this kind of Realm of practice at least with plants that and this isn't just like woo-woo stuff this is part of the traditional cultural context of how to work with psychedelics is that there are specific guidelines and rules in order to respect the spirits so he was not really respecting the the spirits and um but you know there's the the a lot of different reasons he had a pre-existing heart problem so you know he was found um in his in his hotel um and had a heart failure so um you know but doing ketamine but recreationally without proper care and support and you know and that I'm sure could put a lot of pressure and tension on the heart and then also you know I think that sometimes people take psychedelics because they're escaping that sounds like kind of like more like the self-medicating part of this right that something happened for him and he started as opposed to using it for Consciousness expansion it sounded like he started using it almost like as a kind of self-medicating kind of thing is life overwhelmed him yeah yeah I guess I'll I'll double back to what you were talking about Daniel because I you know listening to this is kind of like the lay person in the room or something like that right or more layperson so it's a little weird for me because we did this episode on this back in the day where I've had experience like taking psychedelics and it was pretty awesome but it was very like experiential like what you were saying for me it was in this context of uh a short-term thing for me and probably what we talked about before I've never really had any trouble with substances I know people who do you know we all do for whatever reason my own personal wiring and Karma just isn't like that I've never had any trouble with any kind of substance I can kind of like pick it up and put it down and kind of be okay with that um but the so yeah my probably gut reaction would be what you were talking about it's an experiential thing so and then our prep work like my part of the prep work for this I went back and I thought well what kind of research is really being done and per what you were both of you were kind of alluding to it looks like it's kind of done in this very um highly controlled mentored way in these studies which would make sense right generally yeah yeah so I looked at the stuff from Johns Hopkins that was when I looked at right and it'll just you know flesh out maybe some of this research stuff of this and so yeah part of it's really interesting because they had the thing they call the center for psychedelics and Consciousness research and I thought okay they're going for it and they put that in the name of the thing yeah you know like okay you know and they have like multiple studies going on some of them are kind of what you were talking about Daniel where they looked at um I think the initial research was around depression related to like cancer diagnoses yeah and that was the thing that clicked you know uh but as they went farther they started talking about this in other contexts and they went into something that be a little bit more but these are both in our all of our wheel houses because we treat cancer patients yeah but you know I got like a little psych background Hubbard in the background for me and so they started looking at major depressive disorder right and it was it was it was trippy the results because they're like shockingly positive you know um you're talking about something if you look at major depressive disorder I I listened to the guy from Johns Hopkins because I wasn't sure what number he was going to throw out because you hear so many different numbers but he said like 10 of the US population so you're talking about a huge group of people and I'll bet you those numbers are like pre-pandemic right but you were talking about Daniel yeah yeah yeah so they were just going through and they're kind of using this now for depression uh but they're using exactly the way you were alluding to it's like a short-term experiential thing I suppose maybe the problem that happened with like uh you know your friend Ashley where it got to be something where it was like he was doing this all the time somehow it's like some kind of self-medicating or yeah whatever it was happening in his life but so it was kind of a Trippy thing because they're talking about potentially like two doses you know and they first looked at it like if you do to do if you do to do if you do two doses of psilocybin within like yeah I know this thing I don't know why that was hard I think it's sleep deprivation it's got to the end of the semester for me but uh if you do these two doses uh dosages you get this thing where you can sell like uh people will improve for a month so that was the first study and if you look it up they even have like a little video where they saw that one of the researchers involved kind of talking through this yeah I got a little did a little YouTube search on it uh but you could just probably look under John Hopkins uh psilocybin research or whatever but then the other part was they trust they stretch it out for a year yeah and the trippy thing was like even with just the two dosage dosages doses over the course of the year you know you'd still see improvements on depression scales like a year later on but it was short-term and experiential the first point and then I guess to what you were really talking about in a very deep way Ashley it was kind of like guided you know it was definitely in the context where there was uh some kind of Preparatory counseling going on to get the person set up to do this more right so it's short-term experiential and in that sense maybe mimicking the traditional cultural setting is making it more Preparatory probably not getting to the richness of what you would be dealing with Ashley or you Daniel right not with all of that rich context that you would get if you were doing it in a traditional setting but obviously it's like something where they're trying to set something up the prep for the experience so that was sort of like the first thing I looked at there and it does hit on the two things that YouTube were talking about but um but with like kind of like shockingly positive results as far as it goes yeah are you that familiar with that I mean I know you're familiar with these studies but yeah and that's that's the kind of like that's the pro right the pro is that like again like we talked about there's the ineffectiveness of the modern Pharma you know neural pharmaceutical right I got something on that too Daniel whenever you want to like kick that around because we should discuss that too yeah yeah for sure and then the the High number of side effects that it has on people right sexuality appetite mood all these different kinds of things it's like you're taking weight gain being a big deal like yeah I mean it's it's awesome you're gonna feel good about yourself if all of a sudden you're putting on all this weight right into the image issues for people like you have to take a drug in order to help you then you have to take another drug to mitigate the side effects of the drug that you're taking to help you it's sort of like and I don't know it's opposite really in a sense you know but I think to your point Eric even though people have used essentially you know say let's just use the Johns Hopkins example they had two sittings you know or two experiences with uh with mushrooms with psilocybin the effects lasted a year or more and there's other there's other ones that are were done in the 60s you know before they made it a schedule one in 1967. that it lasted multiple years people even if they never did it ever again and so sure we can look at it and say like oh well that's because of the deep chemical change that the you know whatever psilocybin had on the you know chemical neuroplasticity and they you know okay fine but I would prefer it to be taken in the way that it probably was more in the traditional sense in that like you're working with the spirit of that particular plant right and that is like sort of merging with your mind merging with your heart merging with your body however you want to just you know say that it's working with but this is the level that will last right because you can watch a movie and be affected by you know infinity and and you know whatever end game you know like Avengers everything everywhere all at once Daniel it's always everything that's my favorite one it can affect you but like is it going to have the Deep level of effects years later that because you enjoyed a movie probably not you know even if it did cause some some kind of like neuroplastic event in your mind but if there's some kind of like little whisper an echo that that follows you that helps you in in moments of you know difficulty or great ecstasy that you have sort of made a relationship with while ingesting this plant then that gives it a different thing now it's not just a thing that I can take to have a good time but it's sort of like a a being that I'm working with Ashley mentioned it before in passing but a mentor you know it becomes kind of a mentor for you that helps you you know in that sense and this is the part this is the negative is that we're kind of like extracting the the aspects of the Pharmaceuticals that we can isolate with you know physiochemical complexes or compounds and then trying to reproduce them and remove them from the places in which they were found used regularly and had success with and so this term uh psychedelic neuropharmaceutical is one that I have you know recently ran across like as in the last week which to me if there's a term it means that somebody has put some thought behind it and is trying to you know have some energy and some wording you know what I'm saying like it just seems like that it seems like the water is a little bubbly you know what I mean but you always put something under a fancy term when you're trying to sell it then it'll come up with some like sci-fi sounding name afterwards with a bunch of Z's and x's in it they finally Market it these like okay yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so what do you think actually about the whole um I mean maybe this is something that you can describe for people aren't as familiar with doing this the whole relationship to the to the medicine and the plant that like continues on afterwards I mean that's an interesting subject matter for people who maybe haven't had this right yeah well while Daniel was talking I was thinking about something that he brought to light which is that you know people are connecting with the Psychedelic but you know what are they really connecting to what we need in terms of any kind of healing at the deepest level is uh reconnection to our spirit our spiritual you know force or our own soul um all a lot of these maladies like depression and psycho emotional things are spiritually related so it makes sense that in order to heal those spiritual issues that we would get in touch with a spiritual medicine to help us to have a better relationship with ourselves so I I'm all for the psychedelics that have more of a connection to their natural state that are not synthesized um because you know the the whole point of doing psychedelics and essentially is to become healthier and how do we become healthier we we get more in touch with nature and nature is a spiritual you know it's um it's the essence of of our core um how how we harmonize with the world and the universe and that brings us into balance when we're in Balance then you know we can handle these different spiritual issues so like the psilocybin I'm not really too familiar with but you know Ayahuasca for sure I mean it took me many many many years until I actually really met the spirit of mother Ayahuasca and it met me and I could feel it in my soul and that connection just the connection was deeply deeply healing and what what people really need I mean gabromate talks about this Dr gabrimate um and he's written many books and I'm I'm sure you guys have probably talked about him a little bit on this on this podcast but gabromate talks about like the deepest root of of addiction is the lack of connection as kids like they need to have connection and what people need is connection and I think that that's one reason that maybe subconsciously people are reaching out to psychedelics is because they're yearning for their soul to be touched and it's really hard to do that when you're taking something yearning for something that then continues to not give it to you it's like are we taking a psychedelic to perpetuate an addictive process or are we consciously choosing a psychedelic that can act help us access the doorway into our own Divinity and um you know these medicines can help us to get in touch with our True Light our true self our true you know Essence and I think that that's really the important um thing to keep in mind is like does the Psychedelic that I'm about to take help me get more in touch with Ashley you know does it help me to really feel who she really is outside of trauma outside of addiction does it strengthen her does it strengthen me and if not then I'm not going to do it and that's you know a part of learning how to love myself love oneself um with synthetic psychedelics although it may be helpful for some neurological processing or neuroplasticity or whatever that's great but um if you don't have the spiritual piece of it it's not going to hold yeah it's kind of like a question I was thinking about that when I was I knew we're gonna have this discussion I was kind of prepping it today for myself you know and I was thinking and then you have a question of like what you might call like mechanism of action right if we're gonna be all medical about it what's the mechanism of action happening here and and it's interesting because we're all going to have probably different ways of trying to describe this somehow what what strikes you is if you're doing research at Johns Hopkins you have to frame that in some kind of Neuroscience way right you have to say that it did something because that's just what you got that's all you really have on the table to describe this somehow right right yeah you're working within like a physicalistic natural materialistic model so that's what you got going on uh but of course you know for like me as I was thinking about it and you're saying this in your own words Ashley and with permutations I guess well I'll think about it probably in our own unique ways but yeah obviously to me it was like well something's happening on the level of what we like to call in Chinese medicine the shin right something's happening within the spirit of the person right and either you're accessing something that's deeper within that person right and it's responding and yeah I come from kind of like a Buddhist Tantra kind of a Vibe so for me it would be like yeah probably something happens on the level of like Buddha nature and Tark starts to take apart things that are more obstructive parts of the personality right that are kind of negative so it starts to undo that and allows you a clearer Vantage on things right but then you're also kind of adding like a deeper think of mechanism of action which I don't know if I have as much experience with but the idea that you continue to connect to Something in nature you know that word nature and that relationship continues to grow and build and that's a way of like connecting yourself to something different which I can't say I've totally done that but that's like a mechanism of action question too right it's not just like I'm changing something within my shed I'm also building a different relationship with nature around me that would become supportive in a way that maybe was sort of missing for my life or something is that a fair way of describing that yeah and you know having a practice of focusing on right relationship um I think is not only really empowering but can help to it can help you make better decisions so if you're like you know I want to have a better relationship with my my brothers um I'm gonna show up differently for them if I want to have a better relationship with animals and plants I'm going to show up differently for them but you have to be able to look at yourself so going back to the research piece so I I started my PhD at California Institute of integral studies and I was doing I started doing research on the etymological approach to understanding time travel and and what what it does it mean to have premonitions based on different cultural perspectives and you know the phenomological approach means that basically you're looking at the world uh and making a conscious um observation based on your own perspective and that that's enough quantitative and qualitative like evidence to say that something has a definitive quality to it that's like kind of relating back to like personal experience right yeah it's personal experience experience right yeah it's a phenomenology or if you want to like say it right that's the idea of like experience right yeah yeah yeah so personal experience um is still good enough to validate some of these spiritual things that can happen on psychedelics doesn't always have to be neurological but a lot of people really need and want the neurological stuff in their you know framework of their their research and I get that but it's more than that and and people need more than that I mean if you're really suffering and you are suicidal you're not going to really be sitting there going online researching about like neurological reprogramming you know if in those moments where you're just super desperate and that's where I feel like psychedelics can really help to connect people you know people need connection and that's that's a big benefit to it well that would be the the pro in having these more readily available right because there's there's two parts of that one people who need it okay so if someone's in a bad you know in a tough spot are they going to have the the bandwidth to be able to research uh Retreat centers in Peru or Brazil or Costa Rica and then yeah or have the funds for it or they have the funds for it right and then to be able to make all the various things have you know what I'm saying like that takes a lot of Insight planning resources right all this kind of stuff um and so then but then having it available to them more readily is a pro because then they are still being able to touch the medicine in a moment that they may need it you know what I'm saying so this is the part that that really kind of like lends me to be like well you know how can we do this in a way that is not just completely monetized you know like and is that even possible at scale because companies don't do anything except for profit that's the only reason why they do them you know what I'm saying I mean yeah maybe there's some you know altruistic motivation but like realistically if Johnson and Johnson is making whatever it's called spermatimax or whatever it is for you know their Academy their Academy nasal spray they're doing it to make money because they've found a need you know what I'm saying that's the reason why they're doing it and yeah maybe it's done in person and they may talk about having somebody you know cut off their MAO inhibitors or cut off some other medications that they're taking before they use it but that's where it stops and then they check in back they check back in with them in a month or six months or a year and that kind of like integration period which is really the most important part about the whole thing is to take your experience and put it into your life isn't there and that and this is the Western system of of pharmaceutical you know nutraceutical medication or psychopharmaceutical medications is not designed for that because not everybody gets therapy there's not really enough therapists for any everybody anyways and not everybody has Insurance not all the insurance covers it do you know what I'm saying so like this is the part that that's you know to for me worth discussion so that we can kind of try to highlight the sort of pros and cons on like you know when would someone look for a more traditional setting versus what are some of the kind of benefits that people have experienced using them recreationally and and how do we as like you know as healers and people who kind of like walk the middle ground you know carrying forth a tradition and some ideology uh provide ourselves to be resources for those who are you know probably more leaning in that direction well one thing that comes to mind is that regardless of what psychedelic you're taking or if you know you're going to take psychedelics at all it's good to know the landscape of of what you're going to be entering into um and so without going into too much detail about it but it's like that's one of my biggest passions is teaching people about how to navigate that inner landscape just like in Celtic style Shamanism the Michael Harner Foundation teaches these basics of you know intro to shamanic journeying how to listen to the drum and go into a trance and how to access you know different parts of your brain just like when you're sleeping and you're dreaming um because the Psychedelic basically takes you into that same type of landscape to open you up to that alternate internal universe so teaching people how to navigate that space is going to help them not only to go into it and not be traumatized while they're in it and then also integrate when they come out of it and then that can be a really positive experience the people that I've seen and worked with that did not have those kinds of tools of navigation or understanding how to you know properly work in that space while they're high essentially um they they weren't as grounded or centered meaning like you know they were just maybe really scattered in their mind um kind of didn't seem to be really in reality to me and um you know it's just like they needed more care afterwards yes it gets to kind of like the uh the same point where kind of was coming up before like if you're gonna do this it has to be under some uh condition of preparation and mentorship otherwise it's just not going to work right yeah yeah so I mean like from the business side though kind of what you were getting with Daniel this is kind of an interesting time so you know I did a little prep work I'll throw it out let's see what y'all think of this um I did talk to someone I know in the drug industry personally I made a call earlier today because I knew we were doing this and he was like well you know there's no plans that he's seen on the horizon for immediate you know uh within where he works to invest in these things but then again you know he doesn't know every single thing and he was honest about that but you get to the kind of this part of this and it's a weird time I'll again I'll throw it out to you too but there's kind of like a bizarre thing I want to just mention this thing about the SSRI crisis right because Daniel's alluded to that a couple of times and I don't know if this is something you saw too Ashley or even you Daniel I can't remember if we talked about it but there was this kind of explosive thing that happened a few months ago that probably got dampened down pretty quick afterwards there was a kind of a big review article uh that was done by I can't remember one of the one of the some associated with one of the universities in Great Britain my camera which one yeah I'll find it because I'm looking at it right now it like popped out and it was like and they came on pretty hardcore and they were basically saying listen we've done this huge review study of all these little individual studies there might have been 17 of them or something I can't remember the exactly it was like it wasn't a full meta-analysis but it was something like that it was sweeping and they kind of said we can't find any correlation between lower surgeon levels in the brain and depression at all just was like boom and they didn't go soft on the conclusion like I looked at it afterwards and I was like some a friend of mine friend of the show and my good friend Justin key sent it on to me I think and I was like holy [...] you know and they said like listen this whole idea of the chemical imbalance Concept in the brain is the reason why you're depressed no we looked at it and there's no there's no correlation here we can't find it so if the ssris are working it raises this question of like well how exactly is this doing this because this whole model the critique of these authors were of like the chemically imbalanced brain or something is what's causing your problem like isn't the thing so you know and I I guess from like a farmer perspective you know again prepping for this particular thing I was talking with different friends about this you sort of wonder where that's going to go if that's going to make any difference in how these things are being used if that model starts to crumble right yeah that model was they caught I found it here it's called the serotonin hypothesis uh syndrome and that came in the 60s after uh a number you know like don't talk about something like came out like two months ago right but I'm saying but that's so what I'm saying is that it took that built on this model from the 60s yeah it's taken about 55 60 years right in order to kind of debunk this thing that was basically an industry standard and unquestioned for a very long time and the reason why they were able to do that is because they had like an emergency use the uh the one of the universities oh yeah yeah because that's actually going I can't remember what they call it they call it like something where it's going to be fast track through the FDA I'm fine I I mean this article is like really really long and I had some things highlighted but not everything highlighted so I'm just kind of looking for now but it's basically like an emergency use case scenario in the UK and that and I think that started in like 2019 so oh yeah yeah that's why you're able to see this now so in in Le in two years basically they were able to debunk a theory that was around for 55. yeah yeah yeah yeah you know what I'm saying so like how many more how many and and you know let's let's be honest do you I personally believe that that research was not done I mean that was done under emergency use authorization it wasn't like there was everybody who was like oh let's try to prove ourselves wrong isn't it because that's the whole point of research right to see if what you is it a truthism or is it just you know convenient for us right now so um that's why like on the other hand right you want to make far uh um psychedelics you know available for people but on the other hand we have to also take into consideration the people who are going to be making them which are pharmaceutical companies who are absolutely positively very comfortable relying on the status quo bringing in that cash cow I mean over and over again I mean there's I forgot what medication it was that they got they had to pay a uh I don't know which one it was but they had to pay like four billion dollars in fines and for lawsuits they made 8 billion from it yeah yeah yeah no problem that's I mean that's still you know what I'm saying and people died and and it was what it was it's just you know that's that I think that's the negative part about it like it's just yeah trying to kick this around because I started thinking okay what's the business model behind this sure um and you know uh I definitely am willing to go to the most dark and cynical places about American culture and every single episode yeah so for me it's like yeah and it's also going to be like kind of like old school like like uh deep throat from the Watergate scandal you gotta follow the money yeah you gotta follow the money so I was like okay I was talking with like uh friend of the show and my dear friend Justin about this and we were kind of going so what's the like what's the gimmick what's the stick what's the what's the scam and so we're kind of kicking this around and it was interesting even when I was looking at the Johns Hopkins if you scroll down to the bottom of the page what you're going to see is uh these little small startup companies yeah that you know or associate with people involved in the study and I've been around this world you know and they have these funny names like field trips psychedelics incorporated or awaken but spelled like capital A w-a-k-n awaken Life Sciences Incorporated so you're like okay so it's listening to the conflicts of interest yeah the bottom of the study because you know people are involved in these things and so how does that usually work well some small company will go through they'll do the research big Pharma and this is I was talking with you know again people I know who are in the farm industry we all know this they come in they snap up the small company or they snap up the research and they buy it and next thing you know they're going to Market it out but that still was a weird question for me because I was like well you're really talking about if you're gonna if the research is going to show you need two dosages for like a year like where's the money where's the money the ssris are forever right you're on those things presumably forever you never get off and now you have this other research coming in that says oh yeah we don't need those things we need two doses of this thing that actually in talking like with people again I know in the pharmaceutical industry you can't like patent psilocybin no like you can't do it like there's no way to do it so all you can really do is like patent your process for how you extract it yeah present it right so that you can patent this is our thing but still if you're going to do it like twice a year like where's the money and I was just saying like what do you do do you charge like because you're going to do it obviously in a setting so hopefully avoiding some of the problems that Ashley was pointing out it's not some person who's completely unsupported or something right it still doesn't make the Deep connection to the Hulk shamanic context where you're going to connect to it in the way that YouTube would you know uh be doing and advocating for but okay you're gonna get some prep for this so I was thinking well what do you do do you just like charge you go through Insurance you charge five thousand dollars for the session and the thing you build through is that how you make your money because it's not obvious how you do it to me so I don't know I I think I I don't really agree with the the pharmaceutical company getting involved in psychedelics frankly um they're going there though they're going there yeah yeah I get that yeah yeah I just you know I just feel like for me what I can offer is just educating people on um you know what they can do to really work on the actual core issues because just because you take a psychedelic doesn't mean that your problem is going to go away especially considering that a lot of you know these psycho emotional issues are not neurologically related so the Pharmaceuticals you know may not actually even touch the long-term effects that are you know gonna happen if they if they even take it and yeah so there's still okay sir sorry Daniel no no so there okay so answer to a couple put put it together with your guys put your guys thoughts together so Eric you mentioned before um preparation and mentorship right and which I like I like those two things together which is you know Ash is things that Ashley does you know with people you know taking them on you know Retreats you know what doing yoga and breath work and whatnot outside you know outside of the country but that the way the pharmaceutical way to do this right the Psychedelic uh neurosutical or as we called it earlier as I read it to be called they probably wouldn't have it as an expensive dose right because that's not the way to make money the way to make money is through you know ubiquitous distribution and how would you do that now is with micro dosing so my get my guess is that they would patent a process or patent some combination of things together but probably a process and mix psilocybin with I don't know CoQ10 and b12 and patented buffer you know that helps slows down absorption or something like this right you know like I should probably okay whoever if you use that idea it's 10 all right let's still get that clear and then but then this way people can microdose their psilocybin on a daily basis and and it would it would basically replace the S the failed SSRI experiment right just I don't interrupt you but what does it mean if the research actually comes back that says hey you have to do this twice a year you have to like get like Jerry rig the [...] out of that research to make that would be something else but that's only one that's only one research study I know I know I know but that's kind of like the general thing that you're hearing about right assuming well yes it is but if there is if there is you know some you know they had some diff other other different uses and they put down another 10 studies to show micro dosing is just as effective as two large-scale doses then they'll they'll they'll use that you know in their yeah yeah you know what I'm saying so this would be how they would do it but to Ashley's point just because and and you know we can certainly kick this around just because someone uses something it may be effective for some but not effective for another another it doesn't mean that that thing itself is ineffective to me what it more means is that the the process the mentorship is not present in people's lives right so to me the larger scale problem with mass-produced psychedelic neuroseuticals is is the fact that they're removing it from nature number one but number two people's reliance on an external source for internal change has not changed that really bothered me as I was thinking about this too do you know what I'm saying like yeah that bothers me a lot that's the Crux of like this whole thing so that's the Crux of like actually talking about people preparing doing a detox or a dieta however you want to call it right that's the Crux of like having not having mentorship or not having this integrative integration process after the experience is over not and not just a week and not just having like a quote unquote Mentor like a physical person to be there for you but having mentorship style processes that can help you integrate your experiences not just from a psychedelic perspective but from a daily life perspective that can give you the ability to be introspective reflective gives you the opportunity to learn that as a pill taking Society we would just change the kind of pill right and that brings me back to my original third Point moving towards a more naturalistic kind of mindset right oh well this is more natural it's not synthetic of course to have to use manufacturing means to make something but yet here's this pill it's a mushroom it grows outside I'm taking it and now it's helping me with my anxiety depression and so on and so forth without ever having to put any effort forth other than going to your doctor to get a prescription and he's going to make your decision for you give it to you take your pill and now you go about your business the Paradigm on self-reliance self-responsibility is still not there I just got a couple of reactions to that stuff and then I'll like throw it back to YouTube so for me when I was thinking about how you Market this I hadn't thought about the micro dosing thing but that makes sense that's how you make your money I was also thinking like you could probably just franchise like if you show that like psilocybin helps with alcoholism or something you just franchise out these little places that does this stuff you know so you do your little franchise thing will you know take you into our chemical dependency program using whatever and then you just have your little franchise and it's doing a bunch of different things and then probably when you trace it all back it's on by Jeff Bezos or something like that you know it's all these franchises so I don't know I mean I thought that was the other thing that popped into my head and uh as Justin and I were talking about I was like yeah that could be uh but then the other part that you brought up was like one of the things that was of concern to me and I wasn't sure how you two were going to react to this because you know um you know we all got our own takes on these things but it does bother me the idea that you know we're a very drug-taking Society people like drugs they really like them and I couldn't help but like think about like once you start seeing this kind of research and yeah we've we've had comments and when we did our psychedelics episodes you get these long comments of people talking about drugs and you're like these people really like drugs I like them a lot you know they want to talk about it and they're just like you know typing away into these comments about this stuff you're like okay but like the concern that I would have would be like what you're talking about that like if you you know Buddhist Tantra Taoist zeny point of view if you're not really like incorporating a deeper change in the consciousness of the person somehow if they're not really changing then that's kind of the modus operandi of the culture right to like not really change the person let's just medicate them out of whatever the issue is and we'll like stabilize them in some way and then they'll go on and you know continue to like do whatever the hell they're supposed to do yeah expectations yeah then the Psychedelic is no different than just taking an SSRI because it's not fixing the core issue which is that the behavior needs to change the mindset needs to change probably the situation needs to change and people need to you know do that inner work um you know in my experience of sitting in over 600 Ayahuasca ceremonies in the last decade like yes I was taking a medicine that has you know MAOI Inhibitors in the in the medicine but it wasn't just the medicine I mean most of the time when I was sitting in my process I was sitting and meditating and I was doing the journaling and I was praying and I was doing the work and I was you know really digging deep and digging out with my mind and with my will the things that I wanted to clear out and that I wasn't taking anything else but you know most of the time sitting in meditation and you know a lot of spiritual practices emphasize this this internal work and so what I'm worried about with psychedelics is that that's going to be lost and you know it's I think it's a real concern but um there's a lot of research coming out and it's exciting it's also a really exciting time and I'm curious to see how things are going to move forward with the Psychedelic movement um but I am seeing that there's this hyper vigilance and focus on the synthetics like MDMA 2cb you know ketamine things like that and like for example I was just last week for Thanksgiving weekend I was hanging out with a bunch of clients and they were um they were doing MDMA they were mixing that with psilocybin and ketamine and I didn't do any of that honestly I was just kind of there as like the DD and for three nights that they were there all three nights they were doing all three of those or all three of those drugs together with no like you know preparation there was no guided you know meditate there was no space holding so yeah they were taking the drugs but that doesn't mean anything because to me even though I wasn't on any medication the music that they were playing the the things that they were doing was actually a little bit disturbing to my nervous system and somewhat triggering like listening to Speedy techno music for like five hours regardless of whether you're on drugs or not is like kind of disturbing to the nervous system yeah dysregulate deregulating dysregulating my nervous system and so I can't imagine what they were going through and then you know you're also like looking at the spiritual context like when you're taking psychedelics you're also opening up your mind to all kinds of spiritual quote entities energies you know and possibility of traumatizing yourself within the Psychedelic space and that's something that the pharmaceutical industry doesn't really consider because again there's this lack of appreciation for spirituality for the spiritual context of where psychedelic takes us I mean the reason that psychedelics are effective is because the natural psychedelics get us in touch with nature and again it just keeps blocking that off so I don't think that in the future if these psychedelic comp you know the people that are um selling psychedelics and it's all synthesized really want to make a difference in people's lives it's not going to match the natural psychedelics it's it's not going to really um make the changes that they're promising attacking a different goal even right like you know we're talking about conscious transformation of Consciousness and you're even talking about changing of relation between the individual natural world around them right the change in the relationship with the individual and the con and the cosmos kind of and they're trying to like statistically show an improvement in some diagnosable disease or something it's not even like the same same kind of deal right well I guess a uh a blow up dial isn't the same as a real thing but they sure do sell a lot of them you know what I mean yeah yeah I mean Different Strokes for different folks but that's on the word Strokes that's okay right but I mean but that's the and that you know that's the point of of you know me wanting to bring this up is that like this is going to happen yeah it's a matter of time right and not 40 years you know it'll become decriminalize more States more reg sooner than later the ability for for universities not necessarily on a grand scale to do research is going to come about some company is going to be able to patent some process and then this is going to be manufactured and given out to the people as the Panacea you know as ssris were in the 90s the question that comes to my mind for you too is for people who are more I'm not as invested in this as part of my uh spiritual practice in teaching is you two are you know it's a deeper thing for you than it is for me you know for me it's like oh interesting but for you it's much more meaningful right so does this look like this is going to be kind of thing that's going to be if these things kind of go this route does that lead to more acceptance and is that for the good or does it lead to artificiality and kind of like I don't know like uh yeah artificiality right and is that kind of more damaging to the more authentic practice it's like how does that play out you and I have similar conversations about mindfulness and stuff like that so I guess we'll double around to that too does that help because more people get exposed and maybe more people will go deeper and next thing you know they're talking to Ashley and they want to do something more meaningful or does it end up being something where it's like it doesn't necessarily necessarily help the people who are trying to do deeper things using these modalities as you know part of their uh you know part of their practice and trying to help others what do you think Ash I think it depends like let's let's say for example you have somebody who uh is a war vet and they're on antidepressants and maybe they're just really traumatized and they're having a difficult time managing their life they can't you know Focus or get a job or they're just having trouble getting out of bed you know they have a lot of signs and symptoms of um really serious depression then maybe you know things like ketamine or something that is synthetic that can just kind of hit the nail on the head and just go right to it and that could be you know really helpful for that person just to really forcefully almost get them out of the rut um and they can do that more spiritual practice later once they get their life more together that could be a possibility I actually have a friend who um she was a couple years ago in a really bad place and I was calling her a lot because I was really concerned about her and she had taken a couple I don't know doses of ketamine or something out in Missouri and she swears by it and she kept telling me she's like Ashley you got to do it you got to do you got to do it it's helped me so much and she went from just be really being in a very bad place like I was concerned that she was going to take her own life kind of thing and now she's doing really well she's you know making 300 an hour she's got her life together she's got her business together she's you know really successful and she swears by the ketamine and she spurs by that process and she did several sessions with it so I think that it's going to be a case-by-case thing but I think that as long as people ignore and uh deny their own Essence their own needs deep deep needs for connection they're not going to get to the root of what's actually causing the problem so with you know I think you were asking like where where do we see this going is this going to be a good thing and I think you know I keep coming back to like people need to do their own work regardless of whatever they're taking um yeah so I think that's that's right on as part of it I think Eric to your question what you know what's this going to do I think obviously Case by case people are going to find themselves looking for searching for more right so Ashley gave an example of a war veteran dealing with PTSD let let's go a little bit more broad um and let's say like a 34 year old female from the United States with anxiety or depression because you know they interchange sometimes and how does this person who has you know been unable to kick their you know negative thoughts and and you know physical discomfort um with traditional Pharmaceuticals and therapy and then now they have this new drug that comes out right psilocybin Ox okay or whatever it's called you know and so the their caretaker or whatever general practitioner or whoever psychologist admit it says okay we're gonna try you know try this thing for you well there's two parts one the the medicine itself if we're gonna address psychedelics as a medicine which which we are the medicine itself as it is still connected to Nature even in its you know uh we could say uh transmuted form still has its own Consciousness to it that we cannot that I cannot say that I know what it wants right because it made its way to this culture even when it probably wasn't quote unquote supposed to you know so who am I to stand in the way of its own progress even in a transmuted state to connect to people and help to touch people to help them because they're these are these are beings of infinite compassion right is that how you see that Daniel do you see it that way that the that's trying to find its way into the culture in some way that part of it yeah yeah it's not that way too Ashley does that make sense does that make sense to how you see it too I didn't even interrupt you I'm sorry about that it just no occurred to me that's interesting thing to say you know well this then this this comes from our teacher Mary who's been in the show before Mary Kay you know that like who are we to say because this this argument was made for people who would go down to uh the jungles of you know in the Amazon and use the medicine down there I would say oh well this is not you're not supposed to use this well it called it found me in whatever way that it made its way it found me you know so that's so that's one then the other part I think again this idea of mentorship if if that psychedelic pharmaceutical helps this 34 year old female will say mother of 2.5 um and she feels more called now because she's in a calmer space to do more personal development then she might find someone like Ashley or she might go explore because that that stigma which is still present in our culture now right will be broken through that's basically the gist of my question will the stigma fall it will make what you two are trying to do easier or it will be co-opted and you'll kind of like lose this is always the concern right you know people get co-opted out and then you the people who want to do the more you know more reals more authentic versions of things will get crowded out of the space I'll give you I'll give you an example that maybe we'll answer your question in the town where I live in there is not a cannabis dispensary even though in Illinois it's legal for recreation and medical and whatever you could literally Smoke on the street in front of a cop and he won't say a word other than that smells pretty good you know I mean like what else that's it they don't want to have a dispensary here even though it generates from their projections between a half a million to a million dollars in tax revenue annually and there's one just down the street from where the village is you know where the village ends why because the bulk of the people who make decisions are I don't know their exact age but they look like they're probably 50 and above and that mentality that stigma against even even marijuana which is completely legal is absolutely present and they don't want it in their in their community even though the voters here have approved it so part of it is going to be the the Consciousness shift in the people who and I guess in the purchasing population right the people who are willing to frequent and purchase these things and spend their money on them right the economics are eventually going to speak for themselves uh so that's that's the other part you know and so I think then for people who want to do these things the authentic folks will be here the commercial [...] will also be here and the people who are looking to find their way hopefully will have an easier time finding something that is going to call to them now will they be distracted by the flashy lights of Johnson and Johnson and pfizers you know whatever syllabinox versus the you know people who spend their lives you know essentially carrying the medicine and the practice forward of helping people prepare experience and integrate that's the hope But ultimately if it's easier for people to access I I end up thinking it's a good thing in the long run even if the the beings who are the mediums to the plant Spirits which I.E humans in this case are ultimately flawed I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water so you know I think I'm gonna lean on the side of compassion I was trying to figure out what you were going to say about this before this episode and I thought it was going to be that because we've been talking about this up for a while it's gonna be a mixed bag but I think ultimately your attitude is well at least think there's like two levels and I think Ashley was alluding to the same kind of thing too the way I think about which is something like well if there's like a war vet with PTSD or if there's some soccer mom not The Stereotype her we just did you know in the whole description she could completely stereotyped that's not right but you know like the whole thing if there's people who need this then they'll get clinical help and that's it's hard to argue that there isn't some good in that you know we actually we've had these similar conversations about like mindfulness you know uh you know your work provides mindfulness and you get your mindfulness at your work and they do like a 15-minute meditation thing where like someone comes in and trains somebody for a little session and it's their small business and then maybe you feel a little bit better the train your manager to be a life on this coach 12 more Mindful and you know you feel happier is that good or bad for people who want to see like the real thing happen and that's kind of like an ongoing debate we'll get like more like just you know as it get filtered through the culture and it just trashes it you know like the way this culture tends to do for things you know people that come through so there's like individual clinical benefit but then there's also like does it help people who are trying to do the more authentic thing and Daniel's attitude is like yeah it will because it'll destigmatize it people get exposure and then more people have the opportunity to do things that are deeper I'm not I'm not sure at the same time at the same time are we watering down something that is very potent you know because the the container the spiritual practice and the discipline of working with the spirit that comes through for healing you know by by taking these Pharmaceuticals and uh pharmaceutical psychedelics it really does water down any kind of um spiritual potency you know it it extracts it it's kind of like uh what's that what's that drink clear um that vodka drink Everclear that's ever clear whatever I don't know it's like it's like alcohol you know it just like extracts the spirit of of the of the medicine the actual medicine I mean what people are what people need is medicine they need things that help them heal and what helps them heal you know so yeah I mean it no I mean these are it's all it's all valid points right the the the movement away from its original Source the influence of the culture and you know monetary desires you know I'm saying all are going to have their their hands are all going to be in the all these hands are in the cookie jar trying to get all the cookies you know um but I think I'm just I think I'm I'm still gonna be on the side of like the process is half the wave is coming the wave is definitely coming how how it eventually hits and what the final products look like that I I can't say I'm not I don't have you know a pchem microbiology I I just hope that they don't touch Ayahuasca I hope that they don't get all their hands into that because I mean a lot of what makes the medicine potent is the container of course you know but that's all these the hope is though is that even if they do even if they do guess what that means it's legal that means it's legal and that means that somebody can go to you know some church or some place that is holding space properly and the stigma is because I I'll tell you I you know I talk with a lot of my clients you know who are around baby boomer age and there's a very clear delinea they're either interested or they don't want to hear about it at all there's no middle no middle ground and even the ones that are interested the ones of them who would think about it are few and far in between do you know what I'm saying but if it's sold by again I'll just use Johnson and Johnson then that that gives it another level of validity so now my conversation with them is a much different one it's not some dude who goes to the Jungle you know what I'm saying and you know what right but of somebody who has been ahead of the curve by 20 years right and I could look back at my own experience and and people who have worked with me and they could say oh yeah I know I've been doing that they're just they're slow and the difference is you know would you go talk to your GP about your emotional state no you wouldn't you know would you go to the ER would you go to your psychologist if you have a broken foot no so the appropriate medicine with the appropriate practitioner in the appropriate setting so my hope is that like this will come this will be one of the like you know sort of uh unintended consequences of a night out between Pharmaceuticals and psychedelics yeah yeah I mean and to your point Daniel too like on the other side is that maybe in the future the future is that people get what they need faster and more efficiently because at the same time here I am we could have a whole other podcast about all the crazy effed up ways that I've been completely traumatized by psychedelics we don't want to we want to keep we want to stay in the positive as we know we would have made it positive but you know if you could take a psychedelic where you're just boom right there okay I feel better you know then well that's why those results look so trippy to me how is it that like you take two dosages and then the next year you're still like testing that doesn't match any of my experience of what the world is like you can get Consciousness changing things but the idea that you do something twice and the next year you're like yeah totally fine well it was 20 on the depression scale now I'm seven you're like what the hell is that I don't even know what that means well then and then what causes these imbalances that this psychedelic can fix so easily well that's that's a question what are those imbalances then right yeah the people of Johns Hopkins are like they don't even want to go there I mean well they're thinking about it you know they want to know and the guy did in the in the video he was saying like well there seems to be some kind of way in which there's an experience where people are opened up to like re-look at their lives yeah look at things differently it seems to create some space of you know the ability to yeah rethink your world rethink yourself from your world like he was acknowledging that as being like that's the Curative effect yeah subjectively right whatever you're going to see in an MRI or whatever I don't know creating space right yeah yeah like in Buddhism or any kind of meditation practice creating a space although any subconsciousness yeah yeah but like you know for me as like a cynical person I'm sorry do you want to close this up on a positive note no no I just I I do want I do want to close I do want to close it up but I want it but I want to give everybody their their opportunities to say you know to to make their closing arguments in whatever way so as I was talking about this earlier why was this stuff made so Taboo in the beginning it's because you really don't want people to change their minds I really don't want people to do that if you can dose them to a better place where they don't feel as despondent and uh less productive let's be honest you know they could be better functioning within the home and better functioning within the workplace yeah do you really want people to change their Consciousness no not really that's the like I mean that's part of the explanation of wow this [...] was so taboo to begin with you know so I mean I I don't know like what that's going to mean in terms of going forward because obviously anything that's going to make people really question their lives and what they're doing that's not gonna that's not a product right so I don't know I had to say it though you know oh yeah that's fair I had to say it that's fair but maybe it is like the law of unintended consequences or maybe the medicine is a trickster and finds its way in in a sneaky way you know and the next thing you know it's like people are like wait a minute this job is [...] this plant's telling me this job sucks I'm not going to do it anymore you know I'm gonna do something different with my life well then the plants are very wise plant but if the plant's doing that what are we gonna do yeah well okay you'll be administrating the plan okay good all right cool all right as long as I got a job here in this news yeah yeah yeah you can cut out of the loop right yeah yeah ask Ed well if people are going to be taking and the world wants this and this is where things are going uh I just really pray that it's done safely that's a good yeah that's a good that's a good place to end that yeah that's a good place yeah and I think you know for me it like I said it's it's coming and the movement away of the pharmaceutical moving away from Pharmaceuticals to psychedelics I think is a good move as because people have they've realized the limitations of what these medicines can and cannot do right so that's that's the point that we're at now maybe people as individuals have already been realizing this as the years have gone by which so they've sought various forms and you know we see these in our in our people who come in to our clinics who want to get off medications who don't want to take medications they don't feel so good you know what I'm saying um but I think as a as a whole this is probably a Consciousness shift um for society as a whole this is one of these like Watermark moments or earmark moments I don't know whatever right something like this some moment right where there's a shift where you could say okay before this was just strict Reliance on what physician told you to do in order to change your mind how you get now you have the opportunity to like have a little bit more like influence on that for yourself which to me is empowering you know in a sense now is every single person going to use it that way probably not you know are there going to be some Souls who want to do the transformational process and go seek someone like Ashley or go seek you know some centers in Peru or whatever those people are not going anywhere they're not going anywhere so the rest of it is all this kind of middle ground and there's going to be some negatives in terms of like you know pharmaceutical bastardization of the uh the medicines process and at the same time they're going to give a watered-down Kool-Aid to people who are thirsty but if they want to drink then you know let them drink the sugar water it's better than star and better than dehydration yeah I mean if if this helps people to put the gun down to step away from the alcohol to treat their wives better to just improve their lives you know and their husbands yeah and their husbands and not you know not hurt themselves um that little bit more light is uh uh it's good it's good that's yeah that's it that's what I that's how I feel about it yeah all right sweet um we're gonna wrap it up any last party shots or we feel good okay good good okay all right thank you well Ashley thanks for coming on and uh bringing a different perspective you know it's always nice to to have a you know another voice and another different experience with this you know thanks for sharing the very personal parts of it too Ashley you know you're really talking from experience of like looking at people going through different things so thanks for that yeah thanks for letting me share of course and uh yeah we wanted to thank our audience you know people who are you know listening to this on Apple podcast or Spotify or whatever pod box I don't know is that even a thing pod box I'm not sure it sounds good though uh or if you're watching us on YouTube you know like comment subscribe you know share our work with other people uh if you found it entertaining or annoying share it anyways spam them you know and if you're listening to us on Apple podcast you can go ahead and leave us a review it definitely helps to show uh grow uh you can email us uh at gin and Tantra gmail.com if you want to get a hold of Ashley uh for you know whatever reasons for questions for her work or whatnot uh just send me an email and we will definitely you know link you guys up or you can hit us up on Instagram at gin and Tantra or on YouTube in the comments section we're definitely there so for Eric and Ashley this is Daniel we'll go to the next one peace