43. Peter Hawrish - 13 Months That Changed Everything

In 2017, Peter looked his therapist in the eye and told her joy doesn't exist.

"You can be happy," he said, "but joy isn't a thing."

Two days into his first retreat with us in Mexico, our 18-month-old daughter laughed at a breakfast table, and he nearly lost it. He came back from journaling a couple of hours later and said: "That was joy. I almost didn't know that was an emotion."

Peter is a retired Canadian veteran: 23-plus years in the military, including signals intelligence and time embedded with the Canadian Special Operations Regiment. 

He came to the retreat not looking for transformation. He just wanted to learn to microdose so he could manage his anger and depression without going back on SSRIs. 

What happened instead was the beginning of one of the most complete recoveries we've witnessed: from sleeping three to five hours a night and holes punched in walls, to seven to eight hours of sleep, a gratitude practice, pastel pencils, and plans for Japan and Turkey.

In this episode, we talk about what it actually means to develop a relationship with plant medicine over time, how Peter's anger, rooted in a childhood of constant moves and new schools,  finally stopped being the thing he had to white-knuckle around. 

We talk about the ayahuasca ceremony in Costa Rica where he finally accepted his hip replacement after ten years of fighting it. We also talk about rebuilding motivation from self-love instead of shame or anger. 

This one's for anyone who needs a reminder that 13 months is long enough to change your whole life.

Thanks again for listening!

Enrollment is open right now for our Mindful Microdosing Program, which has helped 250+ veterans, first responders, and trauma survivors overcome anxiety, depression, and PTSD.

Visit https://www.becomingom.org/coaching for all the info and to get in touch with us.

Or DM us the word INTERESTED on Instagram.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey folks, welcome back to the Plant Medicine for PTSD podcast. This episode's pretty awesome to me. I'm joined by my friend Peter. Peter's a Canadian veteran who got in contact with us way back in the day because, I believe because of Toby Miller, so someone else that we worked with who uh Pete knew from the Canadian military. Pete originally signed up just to come to our flow state retreat back in the day, one of our past ones. And as you'll hear him describe, he had an experience at that retreat, not because of the jujitsu, not because of the holotropic breathwork or the tamascal or even the plant medicine stuff. He had an experience of just watching me play with my daughter Sita and hearing her just like joyfully laughing, and just, you know, being an awesome little kid having a fun time being thrown in the air or something. And that, I don't want to say it broke something in Peter. I think it healed something in Peter, but it set him down this path that he's been on now for the last couple of years because he realized that joy was actually possible. I've told this story before, so I'm really excited to hear it straight from him in this episode, where he used to like literally argue with his therapist that joy wasn't real, that people didn't actually feel joy. And after seeing my daughter being so joyful, he was like, okay, I guess that's real. Now let's figure out how to feel some of that, actually. Which led him into our microdosing program, led him to go to an ayahuasca retreat, and a few other things that we will describe in this episode. So seeing Peter's journey, being part of Peter's journey over the last couple years has been awesome for us and extremely inspiring and extremely rewarding. I really love Peter, he's an awesome guy. So I hope that you enjoy this episode. I hope that his story can be a little bit inspirational for you as well. If you feel like you are at that point that Peter was at, this is great proof that healing is possible because Peter's come such a long way in the last couple of years. And I, you know, I'm recording this intro a little bit after the fact of recording the episode, so I can't remember if Pete talks about this. But this journey came also after decades. Alright, I don't want to exaggerate, a decade, maybe plus or minus, a few more years, of trying all of the normal stuff that VAC, that's Veterans Affairs Canada, trying all the normal stuff that they had to offer him. And it wasn't until he stepped outside of that system and invested thousands of his own dollars into healing with us, with our program, our retreats, other retreats, other travel that he's been a part of. It wasn't until he stepped out of the system and started actually spending his own money that he started seeing anything that actually drove results. It's very unfortunate that the government does not actually pay for veterans to get the care that they really need, at least not yet. But Pete's an awesome example of how this stuff can work when you start to take your healing into your own hands. So thank you again to Peter for coming on here to share this story, and thank you to you for listening to it. Catch you on the other side. Peter, remind me, how did we get in touch in the first place? Was it through Toby because you knew him from work back in the day?

SPEAKER_02 3:17

Uh no, I registered for the I just forgot the name of the retreat. The uh the flow state retreat? The flow state retreat. Um we you and I talked in January of last year. Um, and the reason why I reached out, or the reason why yeah, one of the big reasons I reached out was because um Toby had posted some stuff on his Instagram and I worked with Toby back in 2011 uh 2010, 2011. And then uh I had been sort of internet chat chatting with Seb on and off. Um, and when he had announced when he was going to, I think it might have been the first one. Uh don't it was definitely pre-surgery for Seb. Um but yeah, he posted it and it just timeline-wise, like I really wanted to go, but I was in the middle of uh doing the IT stuff at school, so I I just I I couldn't go. It was just a timeline thing, I couldn't go at that time.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Okay, got it. And yeah, Seb definitely had two legs for the first retreat, one leg for the next retreat. Fortunately, he stopped being the instructor because otherwise he would have no legs if that pattern continued. That was a stupid joke. But all right, so that's my question, though, of like how we got connected or put together in the first place. Um, and just real quick, just to establish for for the listeners out there, uh Toby, other episodes with him, but what were you doing for work? What's your what's your background, Peter?

SPEAKER_02 4:43

Uh my background, uh 23 plus years in the Canadian military. I started as a telephone lineman. Um and then in 2011, I changed trades uh officially to Signals Intelligence. There was periods of time where I got to hang out with the infantry, so I did a lot of infantry stuff. Um I won't say that's where primarily where a lot of my issues come from, but like that period of time when I was around the infantry battalions and then I was at the Canadian Special Operations Regiment, um, that was a very high tempo scenario and things just sort of uh accelerated. They just never slowed down. Once the war started in 06, the Canadian military never really, I felt like it never slowed down even after we pulled out of the mission and everything else.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Interestingly, we have had more Canadian signalers than any other MOS. I don't know if you guys say MOS in Canadian military. Uh something deeply traumatic, I guess, about being a radio operator or working in signals intelligence for the Canadian military. I don't know what that's about.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

I think it's because we get attached, we're more likely to get attached to uh frontline units. Um not to say that the other support trades don't, but like um, especially with the radio operators, like they get embedded directly within like an infantry company, so it's a lot different. Being aligned man, I was in the company, but I wasn't going out um, I wasn't doing frontline duty the way like Toby would have, um, where you're you're embedded in the platoon. You may not be directly in the attack, you're with the headquarters, but like you're still a hell of a lot closer than me being in the battalion headquarters way back.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

All right, so what was what was going on that made you interested in that retreat in the first place? Like why uh why sign up for something like that?

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Um to be blunt, the Canadian government is not doing well with its veterans, and a lot of things they were offering, they they do very well with offering uh money and programs, um, but there's not a lot of structure, and ultimately I was just seeing the same thing either with my own friends or with peers, and that was you're you're getting help, but the help's not really doing anything. And at the end of the day, um, the way I explained it to somebody was they were just offering chemicals and eventual death because you could get antidepressants, no, no problems, you could get painkillers, no problems, you get cannabis, no problems, but there was no structure to actually help you heal. And the therapy model, although it does provide me assistance, it wasn't it wasn't pushing me to a point where I I felt like I could I could carry on day-to-day. It was more like a vent every once every three to four weeks, so that like, you know, I didn't punch somebody in the grocery store because they bumped into me or something and I'm just having an angry day.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

That's better than not having that and punching people. Uh but what uh what do you feel like was falling short? You know, because I think it's easy for us to like sit here and for me to like kind of talk shit about therapy and like doesn't work and stuff, but from your point of view, like what uh what were you not getting? Or like why was it not actually making a difference for you?

SPEAKER_02 7:56

You're left on your own devices to figure everything out. There's no group, there's no community, there's no one to reach out to for ideas. Um, I mean, Veterans Affairs, that like they've attached a case manager to me for the last four years because I've been in the rehab. I'm currently my file's now leave now exiting rehab. Um, so it's great that I have a case manager. I can get I can call her up and ask her things, but I'm limited by what she knows. And ultimately I'm limited by the bureaucracy because there's certain things that she just couldn't offer. And I mean, one of the ones for me, a big reason I I reached out to the retreat initially was um I continually been hearing about psilocybin and the benefits it provides, but with it not being entirely legal in Canada, there's nowhere, there's there's no programs, there's nowhere to reach out to to be like, hey, how do I do this unless you happen to bump into a friend that that that does it or you know it it and and at that point to me you're getting into a realm of like, okay, I'm asking a buddy of a buddy. It's like, how do I know I'm not gonna end up with fentanyl? Like, not saying that that would happen, but it's that's the very real, that's that's the very real scenario of like you're you're dealing with something that has a has an element of concern or danger. And then the further down you go down the road of like you're not dealing with anybody that's drained, it just becomes more and more dangerous. So I was looking at this retreat as like, okay, these are people that know what they're doing, they've got experience with this, this is what they do. So the retreat for me made sense. It's like, hey, I'm gonna go down to Mexico and I'm gonna learn how to microdose, um, not screw myself up. Because I mean, for me, a microdose, I had no idea even what that even meant. Um, I have a better idea now, but initially it's like, do I take five grams? Do I take 10 grams? I didn't realize it's micro, but it's milligrams, you know. So I probably would have gone on, I probably would have got on a Paul Stamens trip of taking 20 million 20 grams and just like, you know, getting rid of my stutter.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it worked out pretty well for him. But this is we hear shit like this, dude, where it's like, yeah, I didn't really know what to do. My friend gave me this chocolate bar that he bought at a gas station, and it it it said on the package to, you know, don't eat more than four squares. So I ate three squares, and turns out that was like five grams of fucking mushrooms. And yeah. It's uh it's also it's just crazy to me to hear that because I forget, dude, like how far you've come with all of this. I was this is a uh spoiler alert. I was talking to Cordy the other day about how like, man, we gotta talk to Peter about being a fucking mentor for our program one of these days in one of these future rounds, because like you are at that point, dude. Like you are one of those people who's done all of this work and put in like all of the effort and seeing and living the effects of it. And then to hear you just say that of like, yeah, I didn't even know what a microdose is. Like, I forgot that that was your starting point.

SPEAKER_02 10:57

And now I've done two macrodoses, one of three, one of uh one of five, and I've done an ayahuasca trip. So I mean, yeah, I've I've done quite the journey in the last year and a half, yeah, yeah, about a year and a month.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Yeah, man. That's awesome. All right, so we don't have to uh we don't have to go like super into all the specifics of the retreat if you unless you want to, but I don't want to make this like just a podcast about the retreat. But it's safe to say like that first experience kind of opened your eyes to some things, and that that's why you came into the program afterwards. Can you can you speak about that? Because I know you had a somewhat powerful experience, if you will, that that my little daughter Cita was a part of. Can you talk to us about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 11:39

Yeah, so like I said, I went down to I I went down to my uh to Mexico just to learn how to microdose and somewhat use it to manage my depression outside of just going back on SSRIs, which I really I didn't enjoy being on them. Um and so I went down there with like, oh, maybe I can learn how to microdose and I can at least manage my anger, manage the rest of my emotions, and not feel so depressed all the time. And instead we're two days in, and I was sitting at the breakfast table after we'd have breakfast. You're over playing with Sita. She's about 18 months old at this point, and she does one of those little belly laughs like little babies do. And suddenly I'm sitting at the table and I'm about to lose my shit. And I mean like ugly cry. And I'm like, what is going on in my head right now? Because this doesn't make any sense. I'm watching a child laugh. I shouldn't be breaking down crying. We talked about it, we kind of I I I mulled it over and did some journaling, and then I came back to you a couple hours later. I was like, oh, that was joy. And I was like, I I I almost didn't know that was an emotion. I argued with the therapist in 2017 that like joy doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

As I told so many people about that, that like this dude had an argument with the therapist.

SPEAKER_02 13:07

Yeah, she had given me a book. She had given me a book and it talked about all these emotions, and the last emo, the fifth emotion was supposed to be joy. And I was like, Joy doesn't exist. I looked her straight in the eye. I was like, I have never experienced joy, joy does not exist. It's emotional. Happy joy is not a state of being, happiness exists. You can be happy, but you can't, joy doesn't isn't a thing. And here I am, uh, you know, almost 10 years later, feeling joy for the first time in probably two decades. And and the end result of that trip was oh, not only can I feel better, I walked out of the retreat, feeling better than I probably have, I maybe not my entire life, but well into two or three decades. And it was like, oh, this is a totally different way to live. Like, I'm not just trying to not be sad. I'm legitimately so happy that sadness is like 20 feet behind me, the cloud of depression is is 50 feet behind me. Um, I'm like, oh, this is this is a this is a totally different way of getting on. Yeah.

unknown 14:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:09

And I mean, and even when I got home from the retreat, um another week and a half, two weeks of that, and my depression didn't even come anywhere close in for at least three weeks post-retreat. And then it sort of slowly started to creep back in. Um, and that was partly, and then I that's why I reached out to doing the microdosing course because I was like, okay, I had seen people before um go to different events. I had a friend of mine, he was dealing with some things post-service. Um, he went off for a month to uh one of the retreat places they have in BC. I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head. And the biggest thing he struggled was, struggle with was two months after leaving that place, everything crept back in because yeah, you can fix your life when you're you're locked in a room. But when you go back to your your everyday day-to-day, how do you maintain that in order to move forward in life without just falling back into the trap?

SPEAKER_01 15:14

That that is the question, man. And that it's like insidious, especially you go to a retreat, you have some peak amazing experience, you come home and you think everything's all good, and then life just fucking hits you again. And like we've got someone in our program kind of going through that right now, having come back from this most recent retreat and like fucking feeling better than he has in decades, and then feeling worse than he had in decades when he went back to work and back to traffic and back to all the bullshit back home. So, all right, you kind of answered my question already then of like, well, why did you feel like you you needed the microdosing program after that? How would you categorize or characterize like the work that you did there? Because like I've got all my fucking analogies that I always use and all the ways that I explain it. But to you, like subjective experience, what do you feel like happened? Especially like the first round of the microdosing program that you went through.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

I learned to develop a relationship with the plant medicine. That was probably the big that was the big piece in in the initial stages of learning how to work with it. It was sort of on its own on its own way, sort of it sort of figuring out how to work with me in my day-to-day. Um, and then the deeper piece was um with the modules and and the plant medicine, it the two of them coincided as we went through the different modules. And then on top of it, we've got the the daily things that we're working on. So it starts shaping things over days, weeks, and months, as opposed to, oh, I'm gonna try and radically change everything this week, and then that's the what I'm gonna do for the next year, and that'll just become who I am. Um that doesn't work for a lot, that doesn't work for a lot of people. You can and and there was a lot of things I was white knuckling before the microdosing program that I no longer have to white knuckle. Like it's it's not sheer force of will that I get things done. It's just like, oh, this is good for me, or this is what I need to do today. This is what I need to do. Um uh this is what I need to do sort of for my future self, because where I'm at today directly affects who I am in two weeks or what I'm doing in two weeks. Um it'd be the it I think of it as if you use like a fight analogy. It's like if you don't do every day of trading camp, when you step in the ring on fight day, you're gonna get fucked up. But you're gonna struggle to do those things from time to time because you're gonna be tired, you're gonna be injured, you're gonna be sore. So in that sort of metaphor, the microdosing takes away sort of at least the mental blockages. So now you're just dealing with the day-to-day stuff as opposed to mentally, I don't want to do this, I'm tired, I'm feeling depressed today. The plant medicine sort of pulls some of that stuff back, strips the ego back, and it's like, oh no, this needs to get done today, so I'll get it done. It may not be the initial time time frame that you think of, but it still gets done.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

What uh what kind of stuff were you white knuckling before? And when you say that, you mean like sheer force of of will, discipline, just like forcing shit to happen, right? That that's what you're saying. What what kind of stuff did that apply to before that you feel like doesn't require the same level of like force now?

SPEAKER_02 18:33

Um I've got a I've got a fair number of physical injuries, and doing rehab daily is very much like a daily workout. That's one of the things that's fallen off since I had surgery 10 years ago, is doing daily workouts just isn't a thing. Um, because I don't physically wake up every morning um even able to move. Like sometimes it takes me five minutes to get to the bathroom just because like my hip would be so fucked up or my feet would be so sore. Um so I'm I'm one of those people that used to get out of bed and 30 minutes later I'm working out and then I'm good for the rest of the day. Well, now I'm in a position where it's like, oh, I gotta take two hours to get my body moving before I can even consider doing rehab. So how do I work this out? So I would sort of try and jam stuff in and it just stops happening because you're it some days you're tired, some days you know, other things come up. Whereas when you're on the plant medicine, and again, this is one of the things with the tracker that we use, um, you see, okay, on the days I'm on the medicine, I'm doing these these behaviors, and the days that I'm not, oh, I'm one at a three, or I'm two out of three. Okay, so what can I do on that third day to make sure that I'm getting seven out of seven for my rehab? Um, and and eating, yeah, eating is another big issue for me too, because of the the the chronic depression. Um, I don't have an appetite. So making a point of the days that I'm on the microdose, okay, we're gonna do some extra cooking so that I have some food. Um and and things of that nature. It just sort of it removes sort of the mental restriction of like, I just want to sit on the couch for another 10 minutes, which ends up becoming an hour because you you get on social media or something else where it's like, oh, I need to go do this, and it's like, eh, okay, I'll put my phone down and I'll go get it done. And then that leads to getting five other tasks done because now I'm now I'm in a focus movement phase.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

What makes the difference there? Is that just purely a uh uh by virtue of psilocybin interacting with your neurochemistry, or is there something else like on an identity or emotional level? Like why does it just flow differently?

SPEAKER_02 20:51

Um I definitely think it's the way the the the psilocybin works with me. Um but I generally just am internally I don't want to say I'm it's not motivation, but like I just get up and do the thing as opposed to sitting on a couch and ruminating about it for 20 minutes and then not doing it.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Do you still do that though, even now on days where you don't microdose?

SPEAKER_02 21:23

Much less if it does happen and I'm at a point now where I may not get everything done I have planned in a day, but stuff gets done. So at least I'm productive every day, and that's the biggest thing with the depression. And that's where that's where that it's been stacking the bricks is that because I built some wins, now I can continue to move forward. And if I have a down day, I've got some days to look at to to build off of.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

All right. So I'm gonna have I'm I'm careful with how I was phrasing those questions. I was trying not to like lead you to the answers I was kind of hoping that you would say, but this is a like a very Good illustration of how I think this shit works. Because you've been doing this, you've been on this path now for over a year, right? Like, how how long did we meet each other? When did when did you start this stuff? So I did the retreat in March. My first talk with you was April 7th, 2025. I have my notes on you pulled up on my second monitor over here. Um so my point being, all this time later, objectively, do you still feel better or do better on the days where you take the medicine? Yeah, sure. Like it is absolutely objectively when it's in your system. But are you reliant on that now to overcome like the inertia of the depression? Like, no. Because as you said, maybe the day's not perfect, but you're still getting up and doing stuff. And I was harping on like the discipline and the willpower and white knuckling it, because you've heard me say this before. Like, no amount of discipline and willpower is going to fix things if you feel like you're a worthless piece of shit at the end of the day. Like, I don't care if you checked off go to the gym seven out of seven days on your habit tracker, if you kind of fucking hate who you are, like now you just hate who you are and you're in a little bit better shape, which is better, I guess. But not a real solution. And so that's why I'm asking like, what do you think was driving that on a sort of like underlying level about the motivation or the identity or how you talk to yourself or things like that?

SPEAKER_02 23:18

So the talking to myself is actually a big one. I'm I'm gonna interrupt you on that. Because I didn't I didn't do a lot of self-talk. Um, at least not directly. Like now, now I will have conversations in my head. Um, and that's that's only happened in the last that's only happened in the last year.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

So since doing plant medicine, you now hear voices in your head. Is that what you're telling me, Peter? Or you didn't before I'm kidding.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

When I'm yeah, no, I'm not I'm not hearing voices, I'm not seeing things. Um the it's it's more of a I will sit down and have an inner dialogue in order to journal. And and it doesn't necessarily, I don't necessarily always have to put pen to paper, but I can have those conversations now. Um and maybe it's just the plant medicine sort of stripping the ego down where I'm just not thinking, hey, this is stupid. I'm just talking to myself in my own head. I'm actually working things out in my head as opposed to, like you said, I'm just just I'm on autopilot and I'm going through life. And that's that's very much what I feel like a lot of people are now is when I look at people, it's like, oh, you're just on autopilot and you don't realize that like some of this stuff can be shifted almost instantly if you just think about it.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Yep. Dude, on that topic, real quick, I just I spoke to Forrest earlier today, like had a one-on-one call with him, and I asked if he's been journaling, and he's like, I've been journaling a lot, like just in my head, though. And I'm like, I think that's called thinking. You've been thinking. I was like, that doesn't count, that's just thinking. That fucking cracked me up so much. All right, so the self-talk is something that's shifted or kind of have in that that dialogue with yourself. Um, I'm sure things have shifted, as you said, like the motivation, taking care of your meat suit with the working out. What else would you would you say, just kind of as you look back over the last year? Like, what what things have changed? What do you feel like has shifted? Um, because you know, we we can talk about I have a relationship with the medicine now. Like, what the fuck does that mean? And then like, what does that actually do? Like, what what's different now?

SPEAKER_02 25:23

I would say the biggest change I have seen in the last year is my anger response has dropped off a cliff. Um I I won't say I don't respond with anger as much as I used to. Um recognizing that the anger was one of those things that sort of came out of my childhood as a protective measure um has allowed me to redirect the energy to make it more useful and productive as opposed to destructive. Um case in point, I fixed three holes in my wall last week um that happened probably about oh whoa, I guess we're going about four years now.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Um just and that was said holes in walls?

SPEAKER_02 26:15

Yeah, I put I had I had bad reactions because I I was there was a period of time, well, yeah, that's another big one too, is my sleep is um my sleep has come around. I've been struggling with my bedtime lately, but um I'm sleeping on average now at least seven hours a night. Whereas when I started Well, I mean, even when I went to the retreat last year, I wasn't sleeping any more than five to six hours at a time. Yeah. Um, and because my pain has dropped down, and I I think the neuroplasticity has helped a lot with that since I I did that pain management course in October. Um, my pain is my pain has reduced greatly. So now I can sleep seven, eight hours in in a night. Um so between those two things, my anger has come down. Uh, the dogs are happier, they're less, they've been less reactive. Um, there was periods of time where I could tell they, I wouldn't say they were afraid of me, but they would kind of keep their distance. Or um, and especially Athena, she would be extra, she's very empathetic. So she'll come to me when she senses my my mood shift. Um, she doesn't have to do that as often now. Or if she does, it's because I'm happy and she wants to come over and be happy with me, as opposed to like, uh, what why is your voice going up? Why are you getting angry? Um, so yeah, so that's I I definitely I've noticed it in the dogs. Um my parents definitely noticed it when they uh when they saw me in October in the end of October, and then again in December, like um there was a definite mood shift um overall, uh, as to sort of like at a core level.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

Said something a moment ago that I want to highlight, and by the way, just real quick, it is always so awesome to me when I hear people say that that like my dogs recognize that I'm different and like they're not timid around me anymore, like they're not just waiting for me to start fucking yelling. That's awesome. Uh the anger. You said anger came out of your childhood as a protective mechanism. Break that down for me. How is anger protective? Where did you learn that? Like, what role did the anger play?

SPEAKER_02 28:15

Um, I don't know exactly when the anger started. I've kind of narrowed it down. Um, so I grew up uh I was an army kid. So my dad was my dad was military, and back in the 70s and 80s, and even into the early 90s, the Canadian military, you moved every two to three years. Didn't matter what rank you were, everybody moved every two to three years. So yeah, I mean, I've I've lived from one end of the country to the other. And part of that, I also had to deal with shifting schools. Sometimes I was living on base, going to school with army kids. Sometimes I was going to school downtown, and I was going to school with civilian, like quote unquote civilian children. So there was, and for me, that was a massive difference because the army kids, we were all weirdos. We all knew we were weirdos, and we just accepted each other. And I think it was just because we were like we were all living the same situation of like, yeah, we got we all got to move every two, three years. So we just accepted each other because we know that person's gonna leave at some point. Maybe not when I was five, but as as you get closer to high school, you start realizing those things. And look when I was when I took the time to look back over the last year, I definitely struggled when I went to the civilian schools. And that was just because a lot of those, I mean, my grade nine in high school, the biggest school I'd been in before that was 350 kids. My grade nine was uh 900 kids. And of that 900, I knew nobody in grade nine. And everyone else I was going to school with had gone to school somewhere else in the city, and there was at least 50 to 60 kids that they knew that they had grown up with since grade one because they just gone to the same school. Um, so that was that that was that was sort of where and the the anger thing just became became a defense mechanism because people would pick on me because I was smaller, and that's just I just sort of figured out it was like, hey, if I'm angry, people just leave me alone, and then I just don't get picked on. Some people, some people become a comedian, I went the angry route.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Why do you I don't know why do you think that is? Do you have any idea of like how that became the choice? Like, why was that almost like the easiest route for you to take? Have you ever thought about that?

SPEAKER_02 30:35

Um I think partly it might have been the the British influence because on my mother's side, um, my nana and my my grandfather were both British. Um, and then my mom, my mom, well, my mom was born in London and I in uh during the war. Um, so I think that might have been part of it too, of just sort of keeping to myself. And I just wanted to keep to myself. Um, and when people picked, poked and prodded at me, I didn't have an extra an extrovert sort of background with my parents. They do a lot of things in the church, um, and they're very active and they're leaders within the church, like within the Catholic Church. Um, but that wasn't sort of where I was at. I was I've always been more comfortable in small, small groups of like five people or you know, five people or less. But you put me in a group of of 10 or 15 people and I I don't want to be there.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Yeah, okay. So the anger is just like the shortest route to being left alone for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can you uh see how that well, I mean, obviously, dude, but how talk talk to me about how that continued into like adulthood and basically like why was that not acceptable to carry on that way? Like, how come that needed to change?

SPEAKER_02 31:48

It was fine when I joined the army because everything was hyper aggressive.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:54

Um, you know, and then uh being a telephone lineman, it's a blue-collar job. So you're as much as we were wearing a uniform, it was very much just like we're we were no different than what like Bell Canada or any of the telecommunications companies are. That's that's what we did. We just happened to have a uniform on. Um, and so that's more of a rough and tumble atmosphere. So you can get away with sort of being aggressive and and whatnot. Um and it's also one of those things, too, that when you're on a line crew, it's it's like a pack of dogs. So you're not going to be angry with everybody because there's bigger dogs and you get too angry with the wrong guy. So you you figure out um you figure out how to manage it that way. And like I said, in the system, in the early days in the military, being intense, being aggressive was accepted, and I was able to maneuver it that way. And I was I typically have been lifting weights um at least once a day most of my life. Um, so that was where I was able to vent the excess energy at the end of the day. Um, so that's that's how I dealt with it. It wasn't until it wasn't until 2011, 2012 when I switched trades in the signals intelligence, which is more of a for the most part, it's more of a white collar, we'll call it like a white-collar trade. Um, so being hyper aggressive wasn't acceptable. Um and there was a lot of questions as to like, did I have PTSD? What's going on with me? Why am I so angry? Um and and that's that's more why, and then when I retired, I was like, I can't, I don't want to be another angry veteran. I've seen too many of those growing up, and then I've seen too many of those since uh throughout my career when guys would retire. Um, I was just like, yeah, no, I don't want to be the angry veteran complaining about the government. I want to be a motivated human being.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

That is exactly what you said to me. That that was like the first note that I have written down from our first conversation. You told me, You don't want to be the angry veteran. I just want to be a motivated human. Uh do you feel motivated, Peter? What are you motivated to do these days? Like how how how how do we do on the identity shift?

SPEAKER_02 34:07

I'm still working on that. Uh it feels like a lot of things have shifted since December for the positive. And especially I would say in the last couple weeks internally, I've I've it feels like things have settled down into sort of a bedrock, and now I feel like I'm not, I don't want to say I'm building a new identity. Um I'm building a new life. That's what it feels like. So I'm I'm trying to get the house sorted out because the house is 70 years old and needs some work done. So I'm I'm focusing on getting some of that done. I've uh started doing coloring with colored pencils with the intention of getting back into sketching. Um that that that's been a massive shift, massive shift since December, because I didn't have any artistic outlets um since I've left high school. So that's giving me an artistic outlet. Um and in general, I'm trying to sort of plan my days and move forward as opposed to just sort of sitting in a house all day and and watching too much social media and watching too much YouTube.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

And and uh, you know, well, you said it's shifted so much since December. That's you're referring to the ayahuasca retreat, right?

SPEAKER_02 35:24

Yeah, well, it well, that whole last year was a massive shift for me. Um the the retreat the the retreat definitely started it, and then uh the program the program furthered it even more. The program, by the time I finished the ayahuasca, it I definitely felt like I was like, oh yeah, this entire year has been building me for the ayahuasca retreat in order to prepare me for what the ayahuasca was going to show me. Because I didn't have to circle back to that. Yeah, we'll circle back to that. But yeah, yeah, there was a lot of things that I didn't have to do with the ayahuasca that I found some of the other participants had to sort of work through on the day on the first day. Um whereas for me, I spent the year digging through those different pieces of myself.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

100%. And yeah, we're gonna put a little pin in that for a second. So we're gonna talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 36:16

I didn't want to jump too far there.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

No, that's okay, but I I invoke that because you know, you were like, I don't want to say I'm rebuilding everything from scratch, but like kinda in some ways. And, you know, I asked, like, how have we done with like becoming a motivated human? Uh when I did ayahuasca, I felt like it took away a lot of the motivation that I once had. And I think a lot of people can actually find that because a lot of the motivation was not coming from a healthy place. It was anger turned into like and focused into something else, or self-hatred that got channeled into something else. And so then when you take that away, sometimes like there's not much left over that actually does motivate someone. And now we have to figure out what are the positive places that I do operate from now.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

I would say that's that's that's accurate. That's that's very much sort of where I'm at. But I I did feel emotionally, internally, things were very discombobulated, probably I would say, from last August up until um, well, I mean, I also had that I had that that minor issue with uh with my hip in in March that set me set me back physically. Um but yeah, emotionally I've been a I've been much more stable. Like I've been a lot more stable since this time last year, but like who I am as a core identity emotionally feels like it's it's really it's really solidified in the last couple weeks.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

I didn't even know that. Like what's happened just in the last couple weeks?

SPEAKER_02 37:44

Um, I I jokingly, I I think it's the planetary alignments, but um I I think it's just it's just a part of the path. Well, uh I'll do the horoscope thing just for 10 seconds. I don't really believe the horoscopes. Fucking everything with the everything with the Taurus horoscope has been telling me for the last three months. You have just lived through seven years of seven or eight years of chaos, and everything has been constantly disrupted. You haven't had any stability, you haven't any emotional security, you know, you haven't had any security, you haven't had anything emotionally to rely on. And all of those things have been sort of falling into place. And I think it's just I've been recognizing them in the last two, three weeks as to how solid some of those things are. Um having the community, even just um, even just with the microdosing program once a week, I know I can sit with a bunch of people that are friends. Um, and I don't have to get up and it's not that I don't want to get up and leave the house, but like I live on an island. It's it's a little bit of a trek to go and see my some of my friends. Like, you know, like one of my friends is both 45 minutes away. So that's that's a day trip for me because it's it's an you it's 45 minutes just from the ferry, and it sometimes it takes me 30 minutes to get off the island. So that's that that becomes a day trip.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

And then a lot of people don't they feel like they don't have anyone in their life that like actually understands them. Um lit no joke, Peter. Right before this podcast, I spoke to a dude who listens to this podcast and he told me that. So shout out to that guy. You know who you are listening to this on your way to work right now. That like feeling like nobody in their life actually can relate to them on a lot of these levels. So, okay, awesome, you got two friends, but yeah, it takes fucking hours to actually drive there and and and get there. I wanted to ask you though about the community thing, because at one point I was a little bit worried about you at one point because you kind of removed yourself from the community. I can't remember now if this was in preparation or after the ayahuasca, but I think you almost just wanted some solitude to kind of sort things out and like see how you did without that, and then came back into it. Talk to me about that.

SPEAKER_02 39:55

Yeah, so that was January. Um, so that was post-yayahuasca, and that was just as much I had spent months and months healing, and I didn't part of my concern always is getting just sort of getting trapped without realizing it, and I didn't want to get trapped in that like I need to heal constantly.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I'm just doing this for the rest of my life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

Yeah. And I'm like, I'm like, okay, great, but I'm not Carl Young, I'm not a renowned psychologist where I can do these things um and still make, and it's not that I'm I'm worried about making money, but it's like at some point I have to figure out where my baseline is so that I can figure out where the gaps are. And that was the biggest thing is that like if I step away from this community, I step away from the daily tracking, and and not to say I dropped all the habits, but it's like, okay, if I step away, what habits are gonna fall off immediately? And what habits are gonna stick? And how do I feel and what does my life look like when I remove this? Yep. And then on top of it, the universe being the universe threw me some extra challenges. I had an hamstring thing going on. And then because it's wintertime here in Canada, I couldn't get off the island as much as I wanted to. So now I was, I went from being like semi-isolated where I go to yoga twice a week and I see people and I go to jujitsu, I go to jujitsu jujitsu lessons twice a week. Now I'm like the only two I I I figured it out in February. The only two people I saw was my physiotherapist and my massage therapist in person. Everyone else I saw on Zoom or I didn't see. Um, so that and that, and out of that, it was like, oh, I need some sort of daily journaling and I need some sort of daily tracker. That's what I pulled out when I came out of the uh when I came back from the retreat this year was like, okay, I need to get back to some sort of daily tracking or at least a daily affirmation and definitely the gratitude practice. That was the biggest thing I realized. I was like, oh, I'm struggling just because I'm not doing a gratitude practice.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Dude, that's so funny that you're like, hey, I want to take a little break, kind of pressure test some things, and the universe is like, oh, do you? Do you really want that, Peter? Here you go. But it's it's interesting too. Uh I think that we made this change after you had gone through the program. But now the way that we structure things, um, we have a break from the medicine right in the middle of the program for that purpose of pressure testing the changes. I don't really recommend that people remove themselves from the community while they do that. I feel like that's actually a time where you need even more community, but you know, wouldn't precisely recommend what you did, but it did show you like what you do and do not need to stay on track. And it showed you.

SPEAKER_02 42:39

I mean, I knew if I if I needed to, I could reach back out to you and and say, hey, I like um it it was just one of those things that like I was doing okay through January because I was able to go to class, and then near the end of January the hamstring got really bad. So I was like, okay, I gotta step away from class. And I wasn't expecting, you know, uh I wasn't expecting the snowfall in the and the winter we had. I mean, it's Canada, so we're gonna have winter, but um normally the ferry's not that disrupted. And but they're also doing they've also started doing cons they also started doing construction in February as well. So there was a bunch of additional things that normally don't happen that just yeah, I through the month of February I only got off the I only got off the island for groceries, physio, and massage.

SPEAKER_01 43:18

That's so crazy. Uh all right, man. So why did you go to this ayahuasca retreat, Peter? What were you hoping would happen? What do you feel like was unfinished from our retreat and the the the mushrooms? Like, why did you feel like you needed the big guns, so to speak?

SPEAKER_02 43:36

Uh the ayahuasca thing had been sort of circling in my peripheral for several years. Like I I can I I can recall like even podcasts back in like 2019, 2018 of people talking about going to do an ayahuasca and and sorting some things out. Um I do think I I have a TBI, I might find out next week. I got my cop my cog I talked to the doctor next week for the cognitive testing. Um, so I think that's part of it. I think part of my depression is because of the and my sleep issues or because of the the TBI. Just too many punches to the head, too many explosions going off around me. Um, you know, uh, so I think that's part of it. And then the secondary piece was my chronic pain. And ultimately what it came to once I got through the three ceremonies with the ayahuasca, I realized in the second ceremony, I had never accepted the hip. So I hadn't even accepted the injury, and it had been, I mean, well, it's it's 10 years, it's 10 years, it's literally 10 years on Tuesday next week uh since I had the hip replaced. And that combined with the back issues, um left me with a fair bit of chronic pain. And it was just like, how do I how do I fix this? How do I end this?

SPEAKER_01 44:58

Because what do you mean you never accepted it?

SPEAKER_02 45:03

There was a moment in the second ceremony where um I rolled over onto my side and I put my hand on my hip, and the thought was I accept the medal as the medal accepts me. And it was, I think there was just a an we'll we'll call it ego. Um, but there was a deep part of me that didn't want to accept the limitations and I now have to live with. And because when I had the hip surgery, it's like they're like, Yeah, you're gonna have hip surgery in you know, six to eight months, you'll be back to 100%. Um, it didn't work out that way for me. Uh 18 months post-surgery is I had the I had the bulge discs going into surgery and no one acknowledged them and incoming out of surgery. That's when they surfaced, and they surfaced in a big way, shut down my rehab. So moving forward to where we were last year, um my brain was so used to so used to the pain, it didn't know any other condition. So going into the ayahuasca, the first ayahuasca ceremony, I had this nervous trepidation of I I don't want to, I don't want to go in this thinking there's nothing else past this, but I don't know what else to do other than just go on straight painkillers to to stop this pain. Um that was I I would say that was probably the biggest thing was just sort of like, how do I end the back pain and how do I lock in some of these these changes and things that I've done over the last year? Um, letting going letting go of some of the emotional baggage of of you know my childhood and in my service, um, just letting that stuff go. And that may that may have been a contributor to my pain as well, because um first ceremony my back was was fully healed. I my back was was primarily healed the last two, three years from the bulges. Um but I always felt like it wasn't moving correctly. And my physio would say the same thing. It was just like it wasn't moving correctly, and it almost like it didn't know how to move correctly. So with the ayahuasca, it was almost like hitting the reset switch and the circuitry figured itself out and the pain signals were reduced because uh one of the things I've learned when I went to the pain management course is when you're in chronic pain, so anything longer than three months, your brain, like your body, like everything, makes things more efficient. So pain becomes more efficient. So something that would be, oh, I bumped my knee, is now like, oh my god, did I did I fracture my kneecap? Because your your the knee's already in pain, and when you hit it, your the signal gets to your brain even faster. And then the other piece of this too is that if your brain is expecting pain from certain movements, it will your brain will literally trigger the pain. So it was a matter of, and and I didn't, I I again serendipity um with the ayahuasca, it was like I needed to, this was the last I needed to learn the pain management stuff before I went to the ayahuasca retreat so that my brain knew what to do. And since the ayahuasca retreat, it's been more me just sort of focusing with uh the psilocybin is to like to continue building those neuropathways to shut down the pain and reconnect with what I would call a more natural movement.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

Do you think that you needed the ayahuasca to get there? And I'm not saying that you didn't, but a lot of times we kind of say that like, well, the plant medicine can kind of show you what's there, and then it's your job to kind of figure out how to achieve that without it. Do you feel like you ever would have like discovered this stuff minus the ayahuasca? I know it's impossible to tell, but what's your what's your sense on that?

SPEAKER_02 48:51

There was too many synchronicities for me not to go do it to go and do ayahuasca at some point. Um could I have figured it out on my own? Most definitely. And I was so excited when I took that pain management course because the first day they they're talking about neuroplasticity. And partly because I was I was heavily biased with all the stuff that I all the breakthroughs I had had with the uh with the psilocybin over the summer and into the fall. I'm like, I'm looking at this program and I'm like, oh, you need to couple this program with psilocybin. Like this will like because you guys are talking about like neuroplastic like neuroplasticity came up every day. And I'm like, this is literally the this is this plant medicine is literally designed to increase it and create it in your brain. You're talking about something that's gonna take months, if not years, to correct in some people, whereas you add in the psilocybin, you might shorten that to weeks or months for some of this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 49:54

You talked about uh how you learned from this pain management course, how like when your brain is expecting the pain, it's like you create it. And I know that was kind of like a shift or a thing that was highlighted for you is like how much am I perpetuating this? Isn't that I mean, for one thing, it's just fucking crazy and interesting that that happens, but like on a I don't know, plant medicine level, we can see how we're doing that all the time with like self-sabotage and just creating our own issues and things like that. So how talk to me more about like what what did the medicine show you on that front?

SPEAKER_02 50:28

Um, well, it's it's like I said about the autopilot. If you're on autopilot and you're in chronic pain, you might be doing things that are triggering that pain without even realizing you're doing it, or just the background signal is uh, you know, pain is gonna show up, pain is gonna show up. So it just becomes a self-perpetuated, it becomes a self-licking ice cream cone. It's self-perpetuating at that point where like you're expecting pain, so pain shows up. Um whereas with the psilocybin, you become the observer. So now you start noticing the thought patterns, and that's that's very much where I've been the last couple of months. And sometimes just literally moving my leg and just continually telling myself, like, this doesn't hurt. There's no reason for this to hurt, and I just keep moving my leg. I'll move it slower and slower until it till it stops hurting, and then I'll keep moving my leg, and and the pain drops off, and then I just move my leg a little bit quicker, and then I'm able to get on with the rest of my day.

SPEAKER_01 51:31

That's so crazy. It's like an affirmation for pain. And bro, I've been really thinking about this lately. I really wonder how much of this whole healing thing is literally just gaslighting ourselves into feeling better. But I don't think that's bad. Because like, humans are storytelling machines, right? Like, our brains just make up stories to make sense of things and to make meaning of things. So, like, there is a story that is currently unfolding in your brain. It's not objective reality, that that doesn't really exist, or we don't have access to it without smoking DMT, perhaps. So, why not just substitute that with a better story where our back doesn't hurt and we're capable of squatting? And oh yeah, I guess I'm worthy of being loved. Like, it's obviously like not easy to do, but I I really kind of think about it like that, man. Do you think that that's true? Like, are we gaslighting ourselves with this stuff? What do you think about that?

SPEAKER_02 52:29

You said that last week in the call.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

I've been thinking about it a lot.

SPEAKER_02 52:33

And I want to change the word from from gaslighting to self-hypnosis.

SPEAKER_01 52:38

Okay, yeah, 100%. That's yeah, gaslighting is negative connotation.

SPEAKER_02 52:42

Yeah, but it's it's it's very much a self-hypnosis. Um, I I I read through one of Joe Dispens's books. Um, I I'm not totally into the quantum stuff um and and how his manifestation stuff works, um, but I do definitely see some validity to it because you're he's he's using manifestation on an emotional level. So like you're meditating and you're emotionally feeling like, hey, I want to have that car. So I'm gonna sit right now. And how am I going to feel when I get that car? And then hold that emotion so that A, your brain doesn't know any different, and the universe doesn't know any different. So then you get that car. You still have to do the work, but it's the idea being is that you're now you're now pushing yourself into a different emotional state. And um, some of the stuff I can't, I can't remember all the details, but you were talking about the the like the self-hypnosis piece, and that's very much a lot of what Chase Hughes talks about too with changing behavior, is like yeah, like you push yourself on an emotional level into the person you want to be. Now he talks about using shame for that. Um I would I need to study up on the intricacies of that because using shame is is like it can be very detrimental.

SPEAKER_03 54:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:01

Um, but the idea being is that like, yeah, it's a it's a self-hypnosis piece, and when you add in the psilocybin, well, the brain's gonna rewire because of the neuroplasticity, and then at the same time, it's gonna strip away your ego. So the parts of you that are gonna resist are either gonna resist less or they're just not gonna resist at all. So you're able to make that change.

SPEAKER_01 54:23

It's interesting. I haven't read this stuff from Chase Hughes, and uh I do feel like there is a time and place for shame. Like I think that can be constructive, but I almost feel like in our uh uh purposes, so many people have had so much shame for so long, like we don't really need to play with that anymore. Like we've been burned by that fire, we don't need to use that. There's other things we could use. So kind of going back to like rebuilding motivations and like rebuilding that sounds dramatic, but like rebuilding your life after the ayahuasca. Where is that stuff coming from now if it's not driven by shame or anger or self-loathing, etc.? Like, what is where where does the motivation come from now? Or where do you want it to?

SPEAKER_02 55:11

I want it to come from self-love. I can't remember where I heard it, might have actually might have been on one of your podcasts, but like they they do the surveys with veterans, and it's like name the top 10, you know, the top 10 people you love in your life, or the top 25 people you love in your life, or the top 50, and it's like it doesn't matter what the end range is, the veteran always puts themselves last. And so pushing it to where I'm first, now I can help everybody else. So that's that I would say, yeah, I want it to come from a place of self-love of like, yeah, I want to cook every day for myself because I love myself to feed myself. Um, so when I approach it from that way, then the depression has sort of less of a grip because I I like I said I still don't have an appetite. I've I've gone like three days without eating and not had a single appetite. I'll drink stuff all day. Um, yeah, I I will just sort of force feed myself calories some nights.

SPEAKER_01 56:09

That's uh it's crazy for me to hear like my ADHD episode of people listen to that. My friend Clayton is like, he puts it on his habit tracker to eat lunch because he'll forget. I have never forgotten to eat a meal in my entire life. That just does not compute. But so you're still doing it.

SPEAKER_02 56:28

I used to I used to have a roommate, he's a very high-functioning individual, he's he's actually highly intelligent. And like when him and I lived together, I used to make him meals and drop them off at work because or because yeah, because he would just sit down and get so hyper-focused, it would be six hours, and he's got like he'd get three days worth of work done in six in six hours, but hasn't like hasn't gone for hasn't gone to the bathroom, hasn't had a cup of coffee, like nothing. You know, you might have one coffee before you left in the morning.

SPEAKER_01 56:56

And like a hobbit, bro, it's like, is it time for second breakfast yet? Like I've I've done work for seven minutes. I've earned this, I can go cook lunch for two hours now. So that's still that's still an issue though for you. You're saying like the the eating and and cooking for yourself.

SPEAKER_02 57:15

It's it's partially habit because I haven't done it in a number of years.

SPEAKER_03 57:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:22

And it's also partially um, I I don't want to say there's a mental block, but like just standing in the kitchen and moving around in the kitchen is so limited for me that like it used to trigger a lot of pain. It doesn't trigger as much as it used to, but it's just it's it's one of those things when you haven't done it in a number of years, the getting that getting that train moving again just takes a little bit longer.

SPEAKER_01 57:47

Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm glad that you're actually highlighting that, man, to so that we don't give this false impression of like I drank ayahuasca and my life is now all fixed. But you know, people you're familiar probably with that analogy with the neuroplasticity of um psilocybin or ibogaine or whatever. It's like putting down a fresh coat of snow. So like you've got your your ski mountain and you've got the channels carved out of the snow because you are doing things the same way all the time. And then something like ayahuasca or large dose of psilocybin or whatever, it's like a fresh coat of powder, and now it erased all those channels, and now you have an opportunity to carve new channels. Well, inherent in that is like, well, don't carve the same channel, but you don't know how to do that. You're you're used to going down this one route, and even though that channel in the snow isn't there, that's still the route that you're used to. That's still how your habits are set up, that's still how your environment is set up. So it's not like okay, I have this reset, now I'll just immediately be different. It's like, no, well, you had this reset, and now you have to try over a prolonged period of time to carve a different channel. So I feel like that's what you're experiencing right now, and it makes a lot of sense, man, that you're not gonna undo the last two decades of a learned behavior just because you sprinkled some ayahuasca on your neurons, you know?

SPEAKER_02 59:03

Like the yeah, you either get the fresh snowfall or the groomer goes over the hill. Um, I've heard it kind of both ways. And yeah, you've still got to ski that hill a new way. Uh you you've got to you've got to figure out a new way to ski that hill. And and and it definitely started that way. Like I fed myself pretty much all through December. Um yeah, coming home from Costa Rica, my life turned into like a Japanese, I called it the Japanese tea ceremony, um, because I was setting it a place to to eat, like I was setting the table, I was uh placing everything out. Um, so I was really taking time with the meals. Um basically I was really taking time to just take care of myself on a on a really basic level for the first for the first month. And as like sort of crept back in.

SPEAKER_01 59:48

That's what I was gonna say. Like, why did that not last?

SPEAKER_02 59:53

Uh I would have to say it was probably the hamstring issue because the hamstring issue pulled a lot of things up for me emotionally. Um, because like I I you know, I I came out of I came out of Costa Rica pain like completely pain-free. I could move around, I didn't really have any issues. Um, and then when the hamstring thing started showing up, it was causing me to limp. I I limped more in I limped more in five weeks from the end of January till into March than I limped in probably the previous seven years. Um like I yeah, they gave me a cane right at the end of January just because it was on the list of things I'm supposed to have as a having a hip replacement. Um and I started using it almost immediately. No, I didn't because I wanted to, but it just it it and then I realized with the cane, I was like, oh, I can get myself back to walking quicker by using the cane by than not using the cane.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:48

Why did that bring up stuff emotionally for you? What did you what do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:55

Well it's the chronic pain started in 2014, 2015. And so to get back to a place where the pain was it's one thing to have pain and you and you're just sort of moving through things, but when you have pain that disables function, that's where that's that's really what caused me to struggle because it was like, what the what else do I have to do to get out of this situation? And it's just sort of it was moments of not trusting the timeline, not trusting the universe that like, hey, I'm gonna get through this. Um and that's we were talking about the shift. That's the other thing too, is like I'm really in a place now where my brain like really does think it's like, oh, this is that no matter what happens, this is gonna work out. Um and and so that's helped tremendous, tremendously as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:48

Dude, yeah. I mean, if you're operating from that place, it doesn't fucking matter what is happening, if that's just the default state of like, well, whatever's going on, I'm gonna deal with it and get through it. And probably this is actually teaching me something for my benefit. If that's how you approach everything, like how would you ever be defeated by anything?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:06

And I don't have that knot of anxiety in my stomach anymore. Um, the general thought in my brain now is I'm right where I'm supposed to be in this moment, and that's helped me because like I would go to I would have jiu-jitsu practice or I would go to yoga, and like for yoga, I will leave two hours before class starts just because sometimes there's issues with the like sometimes I can get off the island in in in five minutes, like you pull up in the ferries there waiting, and then sometimes you get there and you gotta wait 30 minutes because there's there's like a half dozen cars in front of you. Um, but even getting off the island, like you would think, okay, I'm only gonna have the anxiety while I'm on the island until I get off. But yeah, I would have that knot in my stomach until I parked in the parking lot, I would have that knot in my stomach, and until I step through the door, I would have that knot in my stomach. So I mean now the knots not even there.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:59

I think that is a standard veteran thing, by the way, just the like anxiety of like I need to leave two hours early for this drive that takes me 17 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:07

But 10 minutes, two, five minutes prior, 15 minutes early for all timings.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:11

Yeah, not to say that that's good or like acceptable, but standard as far as that goes.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:17

It makes you it makes you uh a a good human being when you work for a company, but when you're living day to day, like I shouldn't be freaking out that I'm going to yoga class. That's not that's not something that should cause me stress.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:30

No. Man, I saw a video one time, you've probably seen things like this. I think it was like a it was like a compilation from like folks in the army, in the US Army, but I'm sure it applies across the board. Whereas like someone would be like asleep, like home on leave or something like that, just like asleep on the couch, and like their brother would start playing whatever the song is, like Reverie, or like whatever song they play on the yeah, that like would wake you up when you're in like fucking boot camp, and they just like snap out of sleep and like snap to attention, and they're just like panicking. Like, that's not good, bro. Like, that is not a healthy nervous system at all.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:06

So when I was uh when I was doing my apprentice training for signals intelligence, uh-huh uh so Sigant in the Canadian military is what they call like a purple trade. So you have army guys, air force guys, and navy guys. So it's the same job, you just happen to be wearing a different uniform. You say purple trade? Yeah, it's just the term they use because it's purple. Because you have like a hard green trade is is like the army trade, so like tanker is a hard green trade. Um and then like a hard blue trade is like an Air Force trade. Okay. So they would they would use they would use the colors to like this the Air Force.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:44

Who's purple though? What's what's purple?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:45

Purple is a trade that it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter what branch you're wearing. Okay, it's the trade that sort of dictates things as opposed to a purple trade basically means it's not hard, it's not hard fixed in any one of the three branches.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:02

My brain is just so hung up on the color theory of this.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:04

Yeah, I think a combat. Okay, okay. Yeah, the purple is just go on, the point being is that we had um we had re a couple of the remasters were from the navy, and um that actually used to be a running joke is every once in a while one of them would play the bong bongs, which is the the like the alarm for like for the ship, like action what they would call action stations. And so like one of them would play the bong bongs, and you would watch the other guy like like he would freak out for about three seconds before he would relax into the classroom. Like, yeah, so I I totally understand the Revely thing because it was like we're watching a guy who's fully awake, like literally stand up and go, Oh, wait, I'm in a classroom, I'm not on a ship. Like, you know, he's running to his whatever, you know, like there's a fire somewhere or there's something something going on. I need to, I need to start moving immediately.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:52

Yep. So yeah, I mean, not healthy for them while they're in it, but you know, serves a purpose. And then that shit, there's no like Deprogramming period when you fucking get out of the military. I mean, I know we're not stumbling on any uncharted territory here. Like, obviously, the the the discharge process is so fucked. But like that shit all gets baked into you. And then okay, good luck. Go be a civilian now. Have fun.

unknown 1:06:18

Dude.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:22

So what's life look like for you now, Peter? Like, what are you what are you doing all day?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:27

Uh mornings are slow. I'm still just sort of doing uh rehab and physio a couple days a week. I'm back to yoga class two days a week in the evenings. So during the day, I'm I'm still pretty much on my own schedule. I'm doing a fair bit of coloring, doing a fair bit of reading, probably watching a little too much YouTube. I try and keep it educationally focused as opposed to just random nonsense as to what's going on in the world. Um just I and honestly, most of the world stuff, if you only check in once a week, uh once or twice a week, you don't really need to know what's going on in the rest of the world. I I equate that to uh I heard something recently where it was like, yeah, like you can get more information in an hour on your phone than what your grandparents got in a week. And you know, a week or a month. Like, yeah, we we're so overloaded with information we don't need, and and just I think that's just causing more issues. So I try and step away from that as much as I can. Um, and I the last two weeks I've just actually just been spending a lot of time in silence. Um just yeah, just a lot of time in silence, just sort of a lot of time meditating. Um and and just figuring not figuring out where I want to go next. Excuse me. Um getting the house sorted so that it's not it's there's still a lot of clutter. I got a bin outside, so I'm I'm exercising the house, so that feels good. Um, and then getting the reno sorted out. So for me, the next stage is sort of for the next couple months is let's get the house sorted out. So now it's not a now it's not a trigger for my depression because I'm turning it from a house into a home.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:13

Not a crack house, Peter. It's a crack home.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:16

Yeah. And then focusing on uh traveling. I'm looking at probably Japan in September. Oh yeah. And then fingers crossed, I want to be in Turkey uh end of November.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:32

That Nerve like overlap with some solstice or eclipse or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:37

No, actually it doesn't. Actually, fuck now you just gave me an idea. Maybe it's gonna be the beginning of November. Um yeah, maybe it'll be the beginning of November now because that's that's when there's a a major uh there's there's some major comets and stuff, so that would be cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:52

I'm surprised to hear actually that that was not a factor in the trip planning. Uh all right, hang on. You said something, you said two things I want to hear more about. You spent time coloring and sitting in silence. What is the value there? We need boredom.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:11

Why are you doing that? Yeah, we need boredom. You need time for your uh for your brain to emotionally reset. Your brain needs time away. Your brain needs time, like thankfully, because of where I live, I can sit on my back deck, I'm in nature. I can just there's there's no other noises. There's some nights I don't hear anything. Um, like it's just it's I I say it's so quiet, you can, um, it's so quiet, it's deafening. Um, and then other mornings I'll sit out in the deck and the sun comes up and you got nothing but the birds, there's no cars, there's nothing, there's nothing else. Uh some evenings I'll sit out and I'll listen to the coyotes. Um so yeah, the silence is more just we need some boredom in our in our lives, because that's time for your brain to reset. I'm trying to, I'm trying to do that more, especially more in the mornings, because I I noticed my again with the with the medicine, I started noticing it's like, hey, my default pattern is I get up, I go to the bathroom, I let the dogs out, and then almost immediately I've got some sort of YouTube video or I've got music playing. So I was like, let's let's just ride out the first hour in source.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:15

Speaking directly to me right now, Peter. I've been it's I'm working hard to just not listen to a podcast when I have like a patio right there. I swing a kettlebell. And why do I always need something in my ears, dude? And on the days where I don't, I'm like, wow, there's a lot of fucking birds around that I never listened to. Like, that's pretty cool. Why, why are we, dude? Why are we this way, Peter? Why why do we fucking want shit in our ears all the time? I commend you, dude, for doing this, genuinely. Like, that's actually so difficult to do is to just sit quietly.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:48

Isn't that so fucked up?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:50

It's uh it's one of the things I actually had to work with the medicine in the last couple months is to just sit and read. Um, I used to enjoy reading. Um, I I'm still a big advocate of audiobooks more for more so when I'm driving. Sure. Um and but just stories, because that's the other piece that we've forgotten is that when you're reading stories, your brain is active because your brain, as you're reading the story, your brain is creating that story in your head, and that's that's healthy for your brain, and it it it resets your emotions and and just your circadian.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:26

Oh man, Peter, I needed to hear this today.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:31

Now for the coloring, yeah. I bought a bunch of pencil crayons when I first retired, went to the dollar store and bought a bunch of just cheap coloring, uh just cheap pencil crayons and and coloring books and stuff. Okay, yeah. So I was well, so I I I will get to this because I stepped into the art store and I had I I had a had an education. Um so I was doing that, and then when I came home from Costa Rica, I started doing it again. Because and I did it for about the first month, month and a half when I first retired, and then I just dropped it and everything just sat up here in the room. Uh it was one of the first things I pulled out when I got home. Now they also recommended our therapy, but I was also sort of drawn to it as well. Um and it allows it allows me to work with my intuition, which I need which I need to continue to work on because I um it's one of the things I guess I'm not a scientist. Uh apparently male versus female, females will rely more on intuition than men when men will. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:41

Biological things with with getting mates and and sh stuff that I won't get into because I'm not educated enough on. But yeah, there's there's some like long-term biological development stuff that like with intuition. Um but it also allows you to to figure out what you want to do and what you're drawn to. Um so I'm using the coloring just as much as sort of a mental break as to sort of help build my intuition because you're trying to figure out colors and things. Um, but yeah, so it started with started with pencil crayons, and then it moved into colored pencils, uh, which is a different thing when you get into the art to meet you.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:17

What's a what's a pencil crayon? Like crayons? Like I have a two-year-old, I know what crayons are.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:22

So you have crayons, and then you have pencil crayons. Maybe this is a Canadian thing. Then you have pencil, and then there's also pencil crayons, and then there's colored pencils.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:32

I think it's just probably how I have never heard the term pencil crayon. I've never heard pencil crayon in my entire life up until today.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:42

I feel like I need to go get a box of pencil crayons and show you the preview, but oh don't worry, dude.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:46

I I just I just googled it. Uh these are fucking colored pencils, bro. Yeah, yeah. But I think that this is a this is a French thing because it says colored pencil, and then it says crayons de color. That's just some French bullshit that you guys have up in Canada. That's the same fucking thing. Maybe.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:03

So, and then I and then I uh recently stepped into like uh since probably February. Um, I've stepped into pastel pencils. So you have pastels, and then there's pastel pencils. I'm doing smaller things, so the pastel pencils work better. I actually was supposed to do an art class last weekend for for colored pencils. Um it unfortunately got canceled last minute, so I'll I'll take it in the future.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:28

I'm almost positive that pastel pencils are the same fucking thing too.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:33

No, no, pastel, pastel pencils are legitimately like the the core is a lot softer.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:38

Okay, okay, fair.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:39

And and I I the reason why I I prefer one over the other is colored pencils, when you color on paper, the color you get is based off of how much pressure. Whereas with the pastel pencils, you can smudge. So you can take your word for it. You you get better, you get like a different coverage with the uh with the outcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:04

Peter, as somebody who almost failed art class in high school, I didn't take art in high school. Well, no, I well this is what this is what this is what I'm getting at. Like I am fucking zero percent artistic, I don't like it for the most part, like that kind of stuff. Like coloring drawing doesn't do it for me. Other forms of art for sure. Um big proponent, like we need to be creating, etc. But how does coloring help you with your intuition? Like, I I my brain does not connect those dots. Please connect them for me. How what does that have to do with anything?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:37

I'm not mindlessly coloring in pictures, I'm trying to get an effect as I'm as I'm filling in the picture, and then the next stage is I'm gonna probably get back to sketching in some form. Okay, and then I'll start coloring those in. So but the idea is that so with the intuition piece is that because it's art, art doesn't come, art doesn't come from the same part of your brain.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:02

Okay, yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:03

So I'm just working with colors, I'm working with the picture in front of me. That's and then I'm trying to get a different, I'm trying to get an effect that I see in my head as I'm coloring in the picture.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:15

What effect though? Again, as someone who doesn't fucking do any of this, I don't know, man. This is like hard for me to like wrap my head around, but I want to understand it because I am such a big proponent that like we need to be creating, we need to not just be in consumption mode all the time. And literally every single client that comes into our program, we try to figure out what kind of creative outlet you can have. But I'm just trying to understand like what this does for you because I it is so important and I probably need more of it. I just don't, I don't know, man. Does not compute for my brain.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:46

Um so one of the things I I I'm gonna I'm gonna answer your question. I'm gonna get a little bit of a quick story on this. So one of the things I struggle with when I I first got injured, and like this is pre-hip surgery, but like we're we're talking like the last year before the hip surgery was my major outlet for my emotions for everything was going to the gym and lifting heavy stuff. Um I I transitioned into powerlifting around around 2010, 2011. And so I could focus all my anger, rage, all the bullshit from work, everything into going to the gym and literally almost trying to kill myself with a with putting weight on the bar and trying to squat it. Um surgery, working with the doctor, that was one of the realizations I had was like, oh, I need more tools in the toolbox. Coloring paper gives me an outlet, gives me a focus that isn't physically related, but mentally I get a similar engagement because my brain is allowed to focus and it becomes calm in the moment. That's to me, that's where the because it'd be the same thing. I could work out problems in the gym because you're hyper-focused on this, and then in between, your brain is completely calm because you're just waiting for for the next set. Coloring is the same thing. I'm just like, I'm just working through, I'm just trying to figure stuff out. But your your brain becomes hyper-focused. It's it's one of the reasons why a lot of veterans like to shoot because it's something we know, it's something they taught us. And um it's I I've known a few guys at a PTSD that like, yeah, they loved going, they love going to the range a couple days a week. Because when you're shooting, the only thing you're focused on is is what you're like on your drills. So it's a it's a way of sort of getting yourself into a mental flow state that all the other bullshit falls away, and now you're just focused on one task. And I think that's ultimately that's that's why I say it sort of helps with the intuition because the intuition doesn't come from an emotional place, it's coming deeper inside your brain. So it's allowing that to come to the forefront.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:56

Interesting. All right, so then with that lens, my my question to myself is like, all right, what could get that state? Because I don't I don't know that I have anything that tunes my intuition in that way. I don't know. I'm gonna have to reflect on this, Peter. This is why I like doing this stuff, man.

unknown 1:19:16

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:18

I just fucking hate coloring and art. That's probably something to look at. I was always, you know, had this feeling that I wasn't good at it, and so I was like, fuck this when I was a child.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:26

I don't like it. I got a bunch of stuff from my mom in December, um, besides just the the buttload of comics that we thought were lost for 20 years. Um yeah, like I have over a hundred uh hundred issues of G.I. Joe comics. Uh really. Like we're yeah, we're going back to like the mid 80s all through. Um cool. Anyways, um, she gave me that, and then there was a couple of sketchbooks because I did remember sketching and and drawing and and whatnot growing up. I wasn't very good, but um, yeah, I pulled up, I pulled out a thing and I was like, oh, this is my old sketchbook, and I'm like flipping through it, and I was like, wait, I did holy shit, I actually had some talent when I was fucking 16. So that's why I say I'm I'm looking at some point I'll probably go back to to doing something like that. And then now that I'm using the colored pencils, I'll sort of combine the two. Um and I do still intend on writing the book that I talked about a year ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:22

Um The World.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:23

There has been there has been some notes. See, I if I was on the road right now, traveling across Canada, camping like I did last summer, I'd probably get all kinds of writing done.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:32

So oh man, you know what? I think the I think I don't words, I don't believe that we've even talked about that book since you did ayahuasca. So I'm sure that like all kinds of new ideas and new angles for this book have been unlocked since during the I think you just gave me the reason why I need to go back and do ayahuasca. Yeah, we do more ayahuasca to write new books.

unknown 1:20:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:56

Well, one of the things was I I put a part of myself asleep during the ayahuasca ceremony. You and I have talked about this. Um, and I don't know what waking it back up looks like. And there was an email last month uh from Ananda Lodge that they were doing uh retreat. I think it's in August. I can't go because it you need to be registered by today. Um but they were take they were doing one for experienced people to go to Peru and do the ayahuasca, like I think, I think with the Shipibo. I think that was I think that's the intent. Or like that's cool. In it basically going all the way down to Peru to do it with with them. It's the same sort of cohort.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:36

I feel like they might fucking bend their registration by a day or two for you because like they know that you are good, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:43

The funds aren't there because I gotta put them in the house, and uh it's it's a it's a Peruvian government thing, not uh not a Nanda thing. Like a lot of people. They need to know everybody so that when you go. Um but that doesn't mean I something won't come up later in the year, but um yeah, so that's yeah, maybe that's an idea for the book. But um the the book is still very much in my head, it still comes up. Uh, it is still very much uh plant medicine-based, more with the psilocybin than anything else. Um, and it's been interesting the last year because when we had three eye atlas ripped through the solar system, that literally just worked right into my story.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:26

All right, give us a five-minute elevator pitch of this book because I was just thinking, like, oh, I'll give some context about it in like the intro or outro, but I will not do it justice. Okay. Unless you want to maintain your intellectual property and like not disclose what this is gonna be about. I don't think anyone's gonna fucking steal this and write a new book, but it's no one's gonna steal this and write this. No, all right, go ahead. Um tell us.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:49

And if they do, if they do, then I wasn't meant to write it. I just meant to put the idea out.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:53

Yep, totally. All right, tell us.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:55

Retired veteran in his 50s, uh, asteroid strikes into his yard. Uh, I've since expanded to some other ideas for that, but basically he gets infected by the mushroom. The mushroom affects his brain, it's able to reheal his body and his injuries and reverse his body physiologically so that he's more like 20 years old, and it maxes him out to whatever human potential is. So he can run as fast as the fastest person on the planet. Um, you know, he can jump as far as the the, you know, a long jumper can run. So basically, he can max him out all his physical abilities. From there, uh, it works into a cross-Canada story where he goes and talks to the silly, the major mushroom network out on the West Coast, um, because the mushroom has its own mission that gets revealed slowly in time. And ultimately, it's about protecting the earth from the return of the Anunnaki, and it also pulls in a bunch of some of the other ancient history stuff. So the pyramids are are included, uh, the um Longzhu Cave in uh China is included. Uh, I'm gonna include some stuff from India because India apparently is some of the structures may be well over 12,000 years old as well. Um, so just you utilizing and then utilizing some of the stuff in Mexico and and in uh South America as well, um, to sort of like to rebuild the Great Circle to protect the earth from the return of the Anunnaki after 300,000 years.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:25

Get out of here, Anunnaki. Dude, Peter, you need to write this book. I need to read this book. Oh man.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:34

Dude, I'm so I will work in Bigfoot as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:37

Obviously. Yeah. He has to be in there, of course, dude. Peter man, thank you for talking to me about this stuff. I appreciate you sharing this because, as you know, healing out loud so other people don't have to suffer in silence is the name of the game. But just for you, man, I'm so proud of how fucking far you've come. Like, it was it's actually been a trip for me to think about that. That there was once a time where you knew nothing about this. Because, like, not that like this is who you are now, like, but you're not like your your identity's not wrapped up in the plant medicine and all that, but it's like you are not that person that was dealing with all the anger and all the shame and all the fucking stuff that we've worked through. Like you're just such a different guy now that it's it's it's actually weird for me to think about that that there was once a time where you weren't just my friend and we didn't just talk about this stuff all the time. That's actually crazy. So it's good job. And it's only been 13 months.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:31

It's fucking wild. I mean, you and I met in January of 2023.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:34

Time is a flat circle, Peter. It means nothing.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:37

But apparently, time doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:40

Doesn't no I've I've I've I've shared this before. There's this one Meister that I met in Peru that we worked with, and he was like so young. And I asked him, I was like, dude, how old are you? And he was like, in the medicine, there is no age. And then he like waited him and he's like, but I'm 23. I think he's like 23 or 24 years old. What a fucking cool answer. In the medicine, there is no age, but I'm 23. Peter, thank you so much, dude. I really appreciate it. I love you, man. And uh I don't know. I hope that this was inspiring. If nothing else, if everyone who listens to this hates it, this has been a lovely reminder for me to sit in silence a little bit more. And I think I genuinely needed to hear that right now. So thank you for for being that mirror for me. Appreciate you, man. So hopefully some of Peter's story here has resonated with you in some way. Unfortunately, right now at the time of this recording, I don't have another retreat for you to sign up for if you want to have a journey similar to Peter's. Uh Cordy and I are committed to taking a year off to focus on our growing family. But we do have enrollment open now for our mindful microdosing program where you might even see Peter inside there as a mentor or bump into him on some of our Tuesday or Wednesday calls. Or Monday or Friday calls. Actually, we have a lot of calls that you can come to inside of that program. So if that all is interesting to you, you can get in touch with us through our website, becoming own.org, or even better, send us a message on Instagram at becoming.om. And we can see if this journey that Peter went on is something that you should also embark on yourself. So thank you very much for listening. Hope you enjoyed it. Until next time, peace out. God bless.