Inside My 72-Hour Psychedelic Iboga Therapy With Julie Piatt

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“It just transports you to an entirely different reality.”

There were moments where I really felt like I was flirting with Madness. It's so powerful. Like, there's a reason why it's called the Mount Everest of Psychedelics. I felt so vulnerable and open and loving, and it was just it was really profound for me.

Some of these moments have been the most beautiful moments that I've seen with you. You feel like not the old you, you feel evolved. It's been the greatest gift that I could give myself. Am I changed? Maybe.

So, you ready to talk about this? Am I ready? Are you ready to talk about it? I'm just here as your compassionate witness to hear all about your journey. I don't know if I'm ready to talk about it, but I'm going to talk about it.

Well, that's good. Yeah. It's good news. About a month ago, I traveled out of the country and went through an Iboga experience, and there's many reasons for this.

“So why don't we start by talking about what led up to this and why I did it?”

As anybody who's been listening to the show for a while knows about a year and some months ago, I did my first psychedelic experience, which was a combination of psilocybin and MDMA, and that was a profound experience that bent reality and gave me a glimpse of maybe a true or version of reality that has been incredibly meaningful to me personally. And not something that I took lightly as somebody who's been in recovery for a long time.

I spent years very resistant to the idea that psychedelics could be of any benefit to me. As I've said many times on the show before, if you tell an addict that the answer to all

of their questions and the solution to all of their problems lies in a very powerful mind-altering

substance, that in and of itself is a very intoxicating idea, and it scared me. So despite the fact that there was quite a bit of science emerging about the beneficial impact of psychedelic compounds on things like depression and PTSD, I just basically decided it wasn't for me. And then over the course of a number of years, it kept coming up on the podcast, not because

the guests that I had invited on the show was there to talk about it, but it would just come up naturally. And it just over a very long period of time became more and more evident that there was something there worthy of exploration, and I started to open up to the possibility that perhaps this might be helpful to me, which is all a long way of leading up to my decision

to do this psilocybin experience with MDMA, which you were present for. Without that, I wouldn't have done the Iboca experience, but it cracks something open and in me. I've been in talk therapy for 30 years, I'm in a men's group. There's lots of things that I do, there's lots of modalities that I've availed myself of.

And I still run into blocks, despite all of that, like I still am stuck in recursive patterns

in early childhood, and I'm still victim to a negative inner monologue.

In my own process of spiritual seeking and transformation, I have not used psychedelics. However, in your case, for a being that is wired the way you are, I did see the potential benefit in it. And so I was supportive of you exploring this journey.

“Your support is the most important piece in this, like I'm not going to run off and do this”

unless you're going to, in my corner as an advocate of this. So that's a really important aspect of this. And yes, I'm not sharing this because I'm advocating it for anybody else. I'm not a mental health professional. I'm not somebody who has all that much experience in the world of psychedelics.

I'm here to just share my experience in the hope that perhaps it's helpful to another person, but please do not be under the impression that I'm, that I'm advising anybody to do this.

These are very powerful compounds.

And when they're in the wrong hands or administered to the wrong person at the wrong time, it's going to be across purposes with the intention of them being helpful. So caution as advised, please consult mental health professionals before even beginning

“to entertain this as being something that that you should or shouldn't do.”

Without being said, it was very difficult at times. There were moments where I really felt like I was flirting with madness that I was locked in a padded room and that my entire life was a projection in the mind of an insane person. There were those moments of simultaneous death and birth. And that was scary.

It was scary. It was like am I ever going to return to my body? Why even exist outside of a mental projection, perhaps my entire life is something I've purely imagined and I did have that experience in the aftermath of looking at the books in this woman's library, realizing so many of them had been written by people who have

bent on the podcast and thinking like that scene at the end of the usual suspects. When you look up at the board and like all of that stuff is the whole mystery is revealed

that my life was a complete fabrication and that I had never not been in that library

looking at those books. And I'd only imagined this existence where I hosted a podcast and actually had relationships with these people. And that's a scary thought and yes, in those terrifying moments I would repeatedly return to you and you would tell me like it's going to be okay.

And what I took from that in those moments was that you were showing up as the face of God in this divine feminine to say, like don't worry about it.

“And I think that's relevant in the context of sharing this Iboga experience because it was”

administered by women. And it was a very palpable feminine energy that ended up being very healing and important to me. And it made me appreciate the power of the feminine as this portal to the unseen. You know, these women who are like we're here and we're going to show you this stuff but

the male energy struggles with. So mightily and we're going to do it from this place of grace and compassion and unconditional love. That was really kind of overwhelming for me at times. That very meaningful in any event that was then right.

And so in the wake of that, it was like that was good. I got a lot out of that. Am I changed? Maybe only other people can reflect that back to me through their experience of me. But I know that it didn't like solve these recursive patterns that continue to trip me

up and interfere with this process of change and self actualization.

Right.

“I think the first time I heard of it was in the context of addiction recovery because”

there was some promising results with really hard case addicts who had undergone Ibogaing

treatment and had had some pretty legitimate recovery benefits as a result of that. Like able to like, you know, really get off like the hard drugs and things like that. So that was like lodging the back of my mind. But then for whatever reason, perhaps just it was in the culture like it just kept coming up and it kept coming up and then suddenly it would show up in my Instagram feed.

And we had had a few discussions about it. And I think at one point you even mentioned like if you looked into this, like maybe you should explore this and you know, I kind of filed that in my memory bank. And then I was in Florida this past year at the Udomonia summit.

And I met a woman who runs a facility in Mexico where they take people through Ibogaing

treatments and she was telling me all about what they do and I said, that's really interesting to me. This does keep coming up like I would like to know more, you know, I'm learning more about this.

“And I called you and I said, I just met this woman and this is what she does and I think”

this is really interesting. Maybe we should talk to her and you said, well, I said, I mean, I just do the sort of book and so the other the other experience your journey, absorption flow. So you had moments of complete transcendence and then the darkness would slap back like worse than ever.

So you it was very in and out, very bumpy, but moments of completely like who are you, like in a beautiful way, amazing way, magical, playful connected to your heart, all those things. So it been over a year and I had heard you talking about Ibogaing and I knew that this was sort of the substance that had the addiction recovery, the transcendence related to it and I was invited to actually a dinner party and I walked in to see a very dear friend

of mine that I know quite well and she was with a woman and there was something in my body

“that I just was pulled to this woman immediately before greeting anyone else.”

I slid my arms around her and embraced her and I said it's so beautiful to see you again.

And she said, I'm completely touched by you and I've never met you before.

So it was a very you thought that you were, I thought that you were, yeah, that I knew her. I didn't have a mental idea where I had met her, but I had this just overwhelming, I was drawn to her without, it was the most beautiful drawing, like magnetism to this woman. And she really embodied a beautiful feminine, mother, gorgeous frequency that's, as most

I can say. And I was sitting at dinner and there was a man who was sharing his success with plant journeys and he's sober individual and I, you know, as I said, I'm not an advocate for plant journeys. It's not my, it's not my standard.

But out of curiosity, I said, so you found it very transcendent and I said, would you tell me about that? And he said, well, I've taken all of many, many, many plant medicines, I awasked all these other things. And he said, but this experience that I had literally changed my life forever in the best

way. And he said, I, I bog, I bog and I said, so with I bog and he said, specifically, I bog with her and he pointed to the woman that I had been drawn to. So I came home. We exchanged numbers and we, you know, we became close and we had, you know, chatted on

the phone for an hour and share all our spiritual experiences. And I knew she was quite versed with the route. She had gone to the country of origin and met the indigenous and worked with them. And she specifically talked about that she worked with the feminine aspect of the plant, where in sort of, I'd say clinical formats, it was her opinion or what I understood is that

they're actually only working with part of it and it's the masculine part of it. So I came home and I said, I'm not interested in plant medicine ceremonies, but if she was having one tomorrow, I would go like that, that is what I felt. So I wanted you to connect with her because I said, I may have found the woman for you, the one that could hold you in this space.

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or something like that." I said, "Well, I'm interested, pencil me in, based almost entirely upon your experience

“with her, because again, that was really important, the fact that you were really taken”

by her, and that gave me a comfort level, and a sense of feeling supported in this. Short of that, I don't know if I would have explored it." That was followed by a couple of WhatsApp messages, and that was kind of it, and I was crazy busy leading up to traveling out of town, out of the country to do this. So I didn't really look into it that much, or think about it that much.

I spent some time on my intentions, and that was always kind of running in the back of

my mind, like, "What are my, because I know that's super important." But I didn't do a bunch of research on what this was going to be like, or what this compound is, partly because I wanted to just have an experience and not go in and over intellectualize it, but had I known what I was going to get involved with, I can guarantee you, I would not have done it.

Oh my god, I mean.

“So I mean, I think it's also important, just to mention, that I was away in my own journey”

in India. I had signed up for a 28-day Potcha Karma, which is an Eastern Indian cleanse detox rejuvenation and an entire process of taking the body down to the base level and building it back up. So I had left, and I was in India under doctor's treatment during this month, and then

sometime during the month, you let me know that you had booked, you had then booked the experience. Yeah, and you would be coming home from that experience, and then we'd only have a couple

each other a little bit, but essentially, yeah, I fly out of the country, and I arrive

“at this place, and I go into this building, and I have no idea what's about to happen.”

I meet with this woman, and we go through my intentions. I spent about an hour with her, and she explained what was going to happen, what to expect, how to adopt the appropriate mindset, to be open to the experience, and then you want me to read the intentions that she helped me, so I had this is my journal full of like notes from the experience, but so I had written out, like, in advance, like, all my ideas

about the intentions, and then she had me narrow it down to three very kind of concise, concrete intentions.

The first was healing Richard to the core, that's it.

“The second was to trust and free myself and dive deeply into my intimate heart and safety,”

and know and cherish myself unconditionally. The idea behind this is to bring the softness and the safety into it, and then the third one was open fully to my magic on my balanced, joyful, peaceful path in gratitude and presence. Mm-hmm, beautiful, love those.

So, did that, and then there were two other people who were going to be going through this with me at the same time, and they were about four women who were overseeing this, and in the hour before we started, I kind of wrote this letter to myself and also to you, because I was scared, you know, I was like, I don't know what's going to happen, and people should know also that there are heart concerns with this, it's so powerful, that you know,

“you have to undergo EKGs and make sure that your heart is safe, and that's a little scary,”

right? I was like, what happens if something happens to me, and, you know, I don't come out of this, so I basically wrote a letter to you saying to you and my kids, like, if something should happen to me, know that I love all of you desperately and unconditionally, to

Julie, you were always the one, love always see you on the other side, so I didn't have

to share that letter with you because I did come out the other side, and that was followed by another epiphany, which is, I thought I was going to do eye-booking, and then I'm sitting with one of the people who's going to be going through this, and she's telling me that she suffered a traumatic brain injury, and that these experiences have been helpful to her, and that she has done eye-booking, but she's never done eye-booka, and she can't

wait to find out what that's going to be about, and I didn't know that we were doing eye-booka instead of eye-booking, not only that, I didn't know the difference, I was like, "What is the difference?" The difference is that eye-booking is the active ingredient in alcholoid in the eye-boga root.

The eye-boga root contains 22 alcholoids, and the eye-boga experience entails basically

eating the root, like a powdered version of the root that tastes like dirt or bark, and doing it in the tradition of the buwiti people, which is a tribe in Gambon, where the eye-boga root grows, and for thousands of years this tribe has been using it as a medicine and a right of passage for its people, and over those many, many years has sort of perfected this journeying process to kind of maximize the positive impact of what's possible with

this, whereas depending upon where you go, an eyeball gain experience is going to be a kind of Western derivative of that, like, "Oh, the Western mind says, "Oh, that's interesting that these people have done this, let's just take the active ingredient out of it, and

In this experience, we were doing it in the tradition in which it was intended to be done by the buwiti

“people, and I think, you know, I don't have anything to compare it against, but I can't imagine”

doing it any other way, because it was so specific, and also, like, so confrontational. So I don't think it makes sense, or is helpful to do a blow-by-blow of, like, every minute of this entire experience, but no, and I think it would bore people, and no one wants to hear about, like, people's, you know, like, stories of their journey or whatever, and, you know, I want to kind of focus on what's meaningful about it, but I will say this thing kicked off on Friday night,

it starts with quite a bit of ceremony and offering, and ultimately, you know, you

the taking of this, like, medicine, right, and you get a spoonful of this, like dirt-like

“Iboga root that you have to wash down with water, and you lay on a cot, and over the course of many”

hours, you take a spoonful after spoonful, I took four spoonfuls, I think, and like, psilocybin, it takes a little while before it gets going, and then it just transports you to an entirely different reality, and when it comes on, it comes on, like, a ton of bricks, and this experience, which is highly auditory and visually stimulating, I mean, you're just, your senses are on overload, is accompanied by a soundtrack of buete music

that is the most aggressive, confrontational, cacophony of sounds that are, I imagine, intended to be difficult, you know, to, like, sit through it, this relentless beat and refrain that, like,

“nause on your soul with this, like, kind of, extra sensitivity to stimuli that made it feel at times”

throughout that Friday evening, like I was in a selling Guantanamo bay being, like, torture, like it was extremely, extremely difficult, and the hallucinations, once they began,

we're just coming at me, like a million miles an hour, and it was extremely disorienting,

and I should say, leading up to this, on the plane ride over, I watched the Netflix documentary in Waves and War, which is the story of these veterans who suffer from PTSD, from depression, from addiction issues, from traumatic brain injuries, they undergo, I have again therapy, and you see lives completely transformed, it's a very moving documentary, it's just everybody watching it, and that's set against the backdrop of science that's being conducted at Stanford

University with brain scans, et cetera, to really understand why this treatment seems to be so effective in what is doing to the brain, and I was very moved by that, but in that documentary, there are plenty of stories from these veterans, where they recall the experience, and they talk very specifically about the hallucinations that they're having, one tells the story of seeing a whole wall of polar rides from their entire life, and another

tells the story of being transported to mowing the lawn with their dad and they could smell the grass, like very specific childhood images, and I went into it expecting that or attached to the idea that I would have that experience, and I didn't have that experience at all, I had a lot of hallucinations, but none of them were anything recognizable, and as soon as I would focus on one, it would change, and something else was coming at me, and I was just being pounded like this waterfall of like

cinematic clips and this soundtrack, and I couldn't get my footing, and I'm being pushed, and I'm being pushed, and I'm thinking to myself, where is my mom, where's my dad, where is that repressed memory that I so desperately want to relive and understand, I'm not doing it right, this isn't working, I shouldn't have come here, when is this going to end, like your relationship

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how you were doing, and she was like, you know, he's in it deep. He would run away if he could, but it's doing exactly what he needs, exactly what is meant for him. And then the first thing that you said to me when we talked when you came out was you just kept talking about the relentless stimulation and just how it just went on and how time was stretched. And I'd heard this from the other people that had experienced it, where they thought it was like a 72 hour experience,

and it's not. I felt like I'd been there two weeks. I mean, the first night, it just went on forever. And then it must have been, I don't know, seven a.m. or something like that when it starts to like calm down. And not for nothing. Like all of your motor skills are impaired. And of course,

“at time, you have to get up and go to the bathroom. You can't even really stand up. My hands”

were shaking. My teeth were clattering. There's buzzing in my ears. And somebody would have to walk me to the restroom, and then I would have to like lean on the wall like you can't, you can't really study yourself at all. It is complete derangement for 72 hours, essentially. And that first night was just extremely, extremely difficult. In the early hours of the morning, I remember being

purge. People are throwing up. I hadn't thrown up. You need to purge and you'll really get it out of

“you. I just couldn't imagine taking another spoonful of this stuff. Like I was so overwhelmed.”

It's so powerful. Like there's a reason I now appreciate why it's called the Mount Everest of

psychedelics. Like it was just like a building had fallen on top of me. And it didn't have, you know, maybe part of the benefit in sharing the psilocybin experiences is that this was entirely different. There was no sense of oneness with the universe. There was no heart bursting sense of universal love where, you know, death and birth and all of these things are happening. At least not on that first night. It was confrontation. You know, it was hard. It was just pushing and pushing.

And in the music, there's like this tick tick tick tick tick kind of sound that just felt like

it was nying on my brain and it wouldn't stop. So it was very torturous. There's one piece that

I forgot that I left out after I had locked in on my intentions when I was writing this letter that I shared with you to you and the kids. I went outside. There was like a outdoor deck at this place. And it's dark out and I'm looking up it. I'm just kind of laying down and I'm looking up at the stars. And I see the constellation with the three little stars that are in alignment Orion. And I'm like, oh, that's Orion's belt. And I'm just staring at Orion's belt.

“And I think, what is the significance of Orion's belt? Like I didn't know. So I pulled out my phone”

and I looked it up. Can I read you what I wrote down? What I discovered? Please.

So Orion's belt represents divine alignment between the physical and the spiritual realms. It represents transformation, a cosmic pathway to higher consciousness. And the divine feminine power. I love it. How wild is that? It's wild. And one of my youngest memories with my father was of making a constellation box out of a Captain Crunch cereal box and blacken it out.

And my dad used to take me as a little little girl on our balcony every night. And we would look at Orion's belt. In addition, Orion's belt is connected to the pyramids, the great pyramids, and the Giza Plateau directly. So that's a beautiful connection and verification of you and me and our alliance and being together. And that's profound. That's beautiful. I was going to ask while we're on this. I would really love for you to give voice to the offerings that we're offered

to this feminine spirit to the spirit of the plant because I feel that we are all spiritual beings in this human experience and especially with men to recognize what that is. What is the don't gloss over the offering? Like, what is the offering? What did you offer? How was that prepared? Well, that could have gone better because I wasn't told that I needed to bring some kind of talent's men to make an offering until I was already on the plane to the place.

So I didn't consciously choose something in advance. I just had to go with whatever I already had on me, but I realized I had a few totems in my backpack, so I called you and I was like, I have this and I have this and I have this, like, what should I do? And I had this walnut that I remembered you gave me and you were giving out, I think we were having a party and you

“gave them out to people, but I couldn't remember the context of it. Do you remember now?”

I forgot, I forgot, I forgot. And then you told me on the phone and then I forgot again. I facilitated the fire ceremony during which a feminine being came out of the fire, so being in the fire and those were the walnuts that were the percent of that fire ceremony. So I would say the point of the walnut is the point of the walnut is that this walnut is activated with your truest intention, your truest heart intention, that is the fire witnesses it and it's the

opening to the stars, to the celestial realms. And so the walnut holds the totality of the fire that

“was lit that night and you're supposed to keep it very, very preciously and only eat it or offer it”

at a very potent time. So I would say that you were completely prepared and that there was great intention behind that and just because of your your personality didn't prepare your death right. All that's good to know because the walnut was what I had and the walnut is what I offered.

It's kind of amazing. So that was Friday and then Saturday,

time, bent all day and I couldn't move. I just laid on that caught the entire day. I wasn't sleeping but I wasn't awake either. I don't really know what happened. And I still don't really know what happened on Friday night. Like people are like, what did you see and what happened? I'm

“like it's it was just this experience that I can't put words to but also I don't have”

crystal clear memory of which also fox with me and my desired intellectual eyes it because I want to say this happened and then this happened and that led to this and then I had this epiphany and it just didn't operate like that for me. And it's been a process of understanding that I got out of it exactly what I was supposed to get out of it. Even though it didn't deliver what I was attached to it delivering. Like I wanted those you know very specific visuals and those sorts of things.

But the TLDR is that I did get everything I needed to get out of it and it's been

the greatest gift that I could give myself but back to the timeline. Like Saturday I just basically

was flat out on my back the entire day and hallucinating and unable to move and unable to stand up and walk around and you're not really eating either like other than little bites of fruit now and again and some water your nauseous and the whole thing kicks up again Saturday afternoon and it's like round two you start dosing with this stuff and the crazy music starts up again and I'm just like I don't know if I can do it again you know and

the difference being that it then softens and this next phase of the hero's journey in our in our kind of travels up river in apocalypse now to discover Colonel Kurtz is this reber thing process where you kind of go through the birth canal again and you reparent yourself into the perfectly parented child who is unconditionally loved and supported throughout their life and that was an incredibly emotional experience for me and and very meaningful where all of this

started to like kick in and so it goes all night and culminates in the morning with kind of some

“verbal cues through that process and I just remember like my heart bursting open and just”

feeling so grateful to be there and to be having that experience and also being completely deranged and like not knowing what's going on and like you know kind of being you know just out of my body completely and Sunday morning turns into Sunday afternoon and again like it's so difficult because the relationship with time is so fluid but the final piece and there's lots of ceremony going on and there's sound bowls and like you know all kinds of other stuff but

this whole experience crescendos with this connect with your inner child experience once you reberth them where you're guided through this process of like drawing that young person towards

yourself and reassuring them and telling them how amazing it's going to be and like how you're there

for them and you're basically becoming the parent to yourself as a child and it seems so like to talk about it like seems like it seems so dumb you know what I mean but like in the process of doing that like I felt so vulnerable and open and loving and it was just it was really profound for me really profound and the kind of crescendos final piece that ties it all up in a bow

baggage comes up unlike you know as people who've been in this wellness world for a while right like I've heard a lot of like oh cacao it's so sacred and the cacao plant and like we have to

review the cacao plant and it's so powerful and my cynical skeptical mind is like come on you know it's

“like it's like it's hot chocolate that's what we're dealing with here right like like let's not get to”

crazy about it and so there's this there's a lot of talk about like cacao's really powerful and you know this is how we're kind of sealing this vessel and a lot of people get really emotional when they drink cacao and I'm like no I'm just gonna like yeah we'll say right and I say that only to say that I sip this cacao and I just immediately burst into tears yeah that's so good so was this film you know no thank god it wasn't thank god it wasn't filmed and I left you

know I left on Sunday evening to go stay in an Airbnb for a couple days and uh to kind of get back into my body and you know I was having hallucinations for like three days after that and I wasn't able to sleep that Sunday night really but I woke up rested none the last and one of the most amazing things happened on Monday morning because of the heart implications of this powerful compound

“you can't take any stimulants leading up to it so I hadn't had coffee since I think Wednesday”

prior to the experience and I'm somebody like I'm such an addict I'll just reach for anything to like take me out of the moment but coffee is something I can't go a day without like I couldn't tell you the last time I didn't start my day with a cup of coffee in the morning I don't drink it throughout the day and I'm I'm I'm pretty strict about just having one in the morning but I need that one in the morning so with Monday morning yeah it's very fun but I was very much looking

forward to that Monday morning of reconnecting with my favorite thing to do first thing I brew it up I take a couple sips of it I'm waiting for the kick and I'm not really feeling the kick and then I'm realizing like I'm not even really craving it and I just dumped it out and I was like

wow that has never happened and that's something I didn't expect out of this experience I had heard like

oh this is helpful for people with addictions but that was a very like palpable specific and immediate like like benefit of this experience and like I said like an unexpected one shocking actually to me now that doesn't mean that I've quit coffee like but I but I have reduced my intake like I significantly and so that has been one interesting experience in the aftermath of this and I would say that in the days and in the weeks so now it's we're coming up on like five weeks

since I've done this but I do feel different and I do feel better and that's not to say that I've been cured of all my demons and negative thought patterns and behaviors but I would say that I'm better and it's been revelatory in many ways I feel more grounded I feel more patient I feel more able to be present when I'm consciously trying to be I feel less hyper vigilant

I'm not always like looking for the exit or the way out of an experience my foot isn't always like

tapping I don't have the same sense of urgency there's just a general feeling of greater calm

“and an appreciation I think of what's really important things like joy and gratitude”

well you know not my constant companions I feel like are more accessible to me and a little bit less fleeting but I think the best sort of metaphor

I've set the backpack down and I pick it back up and I'll walk around with it but then I'll

“realize like I don't need to walk around with this and I'll put it back down again I think that's a”

best way of describing it but again that's my interior experience and more important to me is how I'm showing up for you and for other people so you're the arbiter of like whether or not this has had any impact on me in a positive or my behavior in a positive way it's been profound in many ways

incredible like in in one aspect one perspective you you you feel reborn you feel like not you

like not the old you you feel evolved and I've had a few experiences with you that are literally the first I've ever experienced being your partner over 25 years we were talking about it and it's what it is is it's it's in your presence so what I identified it as is that the old you even in a condition of helping me you came with that backpack of resentment of being put upon of I don't really have the time to do this I don't really want to do this I wish she was smarter about

this why isn't she smarter why isn't she know all these kind of things and even though you were

“you wouldn't say that ever and I think like many women we can feel about you know you know many”

levers of of energy that's very readily available to us so I always felt that separation

and we did a couple mundane things together and it was shocking to me because we don't do any mundane things together and I said I'm going to the car wash and you said I'll come with you just that statement I'll come with you to the car wash that was already I was like whoa come with me so we went and then you chose the wrong car wash you you missed you directed me out of where I was going and had me go to the specific car wash that was completely swamped and then

after we got trapped in the line we discovered they don't clean the inside of the car they only clean the outside and the old you would have been completely in sense especially if I had chosen the car wash to go to but you had chosen it so that helped but we just went through it and you were just present and then we got out and we just vacuumed the car out like we each had a hose and we were vacuuming this car out and then we went to get some food and you

looked at my post and you you said can I look at your phone and I said yes and you took it and you said you know I wouldn't do this like this I would change it could I change it is that okay with you and you changed it and you reposted it and and then we went to the movies and we were lying in the reclining seats and your face was so close to mine and you were you were telling me anything it wasn't anything amazing it was not an amazing it was not an amazing fancy date it wasn't a

big gift it wasn't a big letter you didn't write me a book you didn't do something amazing you were just there with me and I felt like you were telling me your secrets and like I was the only person in the world and I was overcome with emotion and the movie was really sweet this had nothing to do with the movie and I felt like oh my goodness what if we don't have enough

time together and I had never felt like that about you and so it is simply in the presence it's

not what you do what you achieve what you get what you grab what you present as it is the resonant tone of the presence that the feminine is desiring in the deepest part of her heart

“and that is a shift that I think gives us hope as a couple that have been together for 25 years”

of what is the evolution that is possible like it's it's profound and we both feel this it's

together we were creating we were raising our children and making art and music and movies

and you and I were writing together and we were doing many things together and then the life got big and it separated us by the things you know you were achieving that that over arching drive right just took over and now I feel like the spiral has come around and we've been given the blessing of this awareness and this opportunity of a next evolution of creation it almost feels as if the timeline has has folded on top of each other and now we get to begin again with all this history

and so thank you for being open for having the courage it's a herkilling thing that you did twice

already it's not easy so thank you for for doing that and for being open and to being available on the journey to continue to explore and I don't think it's meant to be transformed all in one go I think it's a journey it's a journey of discovery and it doesn't have to be all or nothing all the time it just has to be cherished

“revered honored as really the most important thing yeah I think one of the”

things that has weighed on me in the aftermath is the the weight of expectations it's sort of like okay I'm gonna go do this but if I come out of this and I'm not like like quote unquote like fixed and I'm still me and and I'm not like living up to whatever like expectations I've placed on myself or you have placed on me like well he's gonna go do this and this is gonna like solve this problem and we're gonna it's gonna improve our marriage and if I don't show up for that

or I can't live up to that like then like either the experience failed me or I'm failing the experience and by extension failing you and everybody else I get it but I guess maybe that's a lens that you're looking at it still as an achievement but that's the whole paradigm and so like shedding that is part of this integration process it it's essentially like I mean the most kind of basic analogy that I can make is it's like rebooting your iPhone you know when

your technology gets buggy and you just unplug it and plug it back in or you turn it off and turn it back on and suddenly everything's working again this feels a little bit like that like there's clearly new neural pathways that are that are being like grooved and they're overwriting some old patterns but it's not like an immediate fix like I'll find myself just you know doing things

away I always did but I have you know like an awareness like oh I'm doing that thing again like I

can stop and I can like take a beat and like reassess and I would say in addition to like the coffee thing one of the bigger realizations has just been in awareness of my inner monologue like this

“idea that you know there's just a fight club going on on my mind all the time and I think this is true”

for if not a lot of people like most people like my negative self-talk is incessant it never turns off more often than not I'm self-identifying with it I can fuse it for being me and I take action based upon what it's telling me and that is creating my reality and it's spilling into all the people I interact with and the consequences and results of the actions that I take but the simple awareness of when it's happening and the ability to redirect or to just put distance between you and it to mute

it a little bit here and there has already been like massive and cool just to be able to be like huh that's curious that that guy in my head is saying that thing again and like I don't have to it's

“like all these these are all things I know you know I think part of the hardness that I placed on my”

self has to do with just this heightened self awareness of all of this because I've been in so many therapeutic programs for so long and I host this podcast where I have all these people come on

he's basically saying here's your dilemma here's how you solve it he's only one of many Gabore Matay in fall of 2015 I flew to Vancouver to spend an afternoon with Gabore Matay

over a decade ago long before like he was as well known as he is now and he did what he always

does where he flipped the tables on me and it turned into like a you know basically a personal session where he was just dissecting my soul and immediately identified then here's your malfunction

“here's your dilemma here's what you need to solve it you know all goes back to early childhood”

blah blah blah you can listen to that episode I think it's from October of 2015 and any of that when that was over and we were done recording and we were saying our goodbyes he said to me you know I take people through these psychedelic experiences and I think he would really benefit

from this like you should really think about coming with me and at that time I was like no

fucking way like I can't that's too much that's too scary I'm in recovery you're supposed to be this addiction medicine specialist guy and you're telling me I should go take drugs with you like it didn't compute then I was not ready to hear that and I still don't know that like ayahuasca's the right thing for me but the point is that you know this has been pointed out in my path for a long time and it took me this long and maybe I needed to do everything that I did to

matured at the point where I was ready to have these experiences but you know it's been very meaningful and it's been kind of littered with these magical synchronicities as I mentioned when I was on the plane to go do this I watched this Netflix documentary in Waves and War very moved by these veterans and their personal testimony and how significantly it had positively impacted their lives repaired marriages put them back with their kids made them productive members of society I mean

these were people who really struggled to just function in daily life like right out of a scene from the hurt locker where Jeremy Renner is walking in the grocery store and he just can't even

“figure out what to put in the cart you know and I remember I was still in that Airbnb in the after”

math of this experience and I called Tyler our boy and my producer and I said I watched this you know I had this experience I told him about it and I said you know I watched his documentary and there's this guy in his wife Marcus Capone and Amber who are essentially the protagonists in this movie and we need to get them on the podcast and Tyler was like I've already been in an email chain with like in before even I had done this thing there was already a dialogue that was happening

about having them come on and I was like that's unbelievable like the timing of that and sure enough they came they did the show recently that will come out after this episode and you were here for that and it was just beautiful to meet them and hear their experience and how they have turned it into an act of service to help other veterans and to feel like the support from that but I said to Marcus you know he's like how is the integration going and in these experiences

you will hear time and time again like it's all about the integration it's all about doing the work and the aftermath it's all about like those months after and you know making sure that you're very intentional about that phase of life and I'm all about that but I'm like what is it you know like what am I supposed to be doing like I feel like I could benefit from a little bit more guidance in that regard and so Marcus offered to put me in touch with an integration coach which

still need to follow up with him on that so I'm excited about that but that's also part of the achievement brain like I want to ultraman the integration and I talked to the woman who over saw this experience for me and and she's like it's just a subtle thing like I told her what I was doing

“and she's like basically you are doing it and remember the spirit animal of Iboga is the turtle”

it's all about going slow and slowing down and as much as I am prone to urgency and I'm rushing around

it's been a reminder that that that is a facade because ultimately I am like the ultimate tortoise

ultraman or taking 10 year blocks to achieve anything like I know how to be the tortoise and the tortoise

“in the long game always beats the hair like the hair can't beat the tortoise and so it's about like”

really channeling or embodying like my tortoise and my tortoise energy I'm still myself so we watch it together and and my awareness when I saw that documentary was that the demons that you are battling are no different than the demons that that those men have and I know that that's like a weighty thing to say but Marcus actually and Amber actually address it the brain the human

brain organizes trauma in the same way like you can't say somebody's trauma is more severe than

another person's trauma and one of the things that was really beautiful to witness was

“their transformation in their marriage and how it's completely given them a new life, a new”

relationship together and also to learn that he had done it six times in eight years and so it's a process of evolution it's not about getting it right it's not like if you get it a switch flicks and then you have it it's a process of becoming and also as with all things in life we don't get to say with the outcome is it's having the courage to be open to see yourself intimately at such a level that it risks everything else and I'm not asking you to stay in this

marriage with me so that we can have a specific outcome I'm asking you to be courageous enough to be so intimate with me that we see the truth of who we are and then we can decide moment to moment to moment if we wish to continue creating life together in this manner it's the intimacy that there is no outcome whatever is revealed will be shown and it's beyond the human being of the personality it is from the great one that is animating us

why is that so provocative I don't know it's not provocative to me because I know it's not to you to me it's like whoa you know it still is like like intimacy is scary but I say it is a divine privilege it's a privilege to know oneself at that level and it's a privilege to know the partner that is my beloved in this lifetime what else is there you know I'm not with you because of a paper because we said it was so or because there's

some project or or there's a structure in society I want you to be with me because you love me because you want to be with me and you sent me a text shortly after the journey and you said I love you I really really love you and I replied what a beautiful message please tell me exactly what it is you love about me and you're like and then I see you later and you're like okay

“that wasn't a quick answer but that's what I'm saying yeah that's the opportunity”

I mean what why what else are we doing you know it's and so that it you can't get Iboga right obviously you know more than me but it met you at the appropriate level and manner and variety with which you ordered for yourself at your highest level and again some of these moments have been the most beautiful moments that I've seen with you and so I'm very grateful and extremely grateful to this group of women that I don't know and when you speak to me about them

I feel as if these sisters these priestesses these guardians they held you in community for me

in a way that I couldn't and and that's a very powerful force and you know I have thanked

you know our mutual friend and we've had long talks and exchange and I recognized her and honored her

as the feminine we we have powers and forces that have been hidden and suppressed for thousands

“of years and we it is coming back you know the gifts that we have to offer”

yeah it made me think like just those women were so powerful and held such a

such an extraordinary energy for this that I just thought like the world be so much better if like women were running things like it just it's just you know the way that men operate is you know when you just look at history you know and everything that's happened it all tracks back to men acting out on their childhood wounds for the for the cause of property and prestige and status and power and the energy that I experienced with these women was

the opposite of that like the antidote to that I really struggle with this word journey such an annoying word like it's so loaded with baggage but it was a journey and within that journey contained like all of the journey of life like it is this hero's journey you know as it's like this three act thing where you go through these various stages that mimic the arc of an entire life so that you come out of it on the other side back to where you started

anchored in like what's really important and although it didn't have that experience of

ego dissolution and oneness that psilocybin had it did deliver on that idea that ultimately at

the end of the day after you've gone on this entire journey of life it really just boils down to

“your capacity to love how much love can you give and receive and that's the only thing”

that matters but your capacity to give and receive love is a function of your capacity to love yourself and I would say that my life is one of not being able to do that of being very violent to myself and and living a life in which I'm constantly punishing myself and judging myself and unkind to myself and if I want to be able to love you and love my kids and love my life and receive love from other people it begins in ends with my relationship with myself and my ability

to demonstrate that for me which sounds selfish and indulgent but ultimately isn't it is an act of service on behalf of other people as much as it is an act of honoring yourself

“it's the highest act that's it you know and I think I could talk more about this but I don't know”

that there's anything more that needs to be said I'm grateful for having undergone that experience

I'm grateful for you supporting me doing it it was an incredible gift that I gave myself and you helped

me to give myself and that the people who ever saw it gave to me and I want to be able to give it back to you through how I show up for you and through my behavior and again I say that as somebody who is not advocating for other people to do this like this not only was it the Mount Everest of Psychedelics it was like climbing Mount Everest without an oxygen mask or a winter coat like it was extremely extremely difficult and not for the faint of heart figuratively and literally actually so

if this interests you and I'm talking to you the audience please research it extensively and consider it you know with great deliberation before you decide to do it what I share it is simply my experience no matter what if you end up doing this your experience will be different

aftermath and time will tell how it will impact me in the long term but more will be revealed and

“I'm happy to share more at a later date it's beautiful so thank you and I love you I love you so much”

and how many some day I'm going to tell you the ways what I'm not going to do that right now

I'll do that later alright podcast done no mistakes