How can psychedelics change your mind?

In this episode of absurd wisdom, a.m. is joined by Ben Heller, CTO of Driver Technologies for a conversation about Ben's experience with psilocybin treatment for OCD. This episode refers to Ben's appearance in the Netflix documentary series, "How to Change Your Mind"  2022 - Author Michael Pollan leads the way in this docuseries exploring the history and uses of psychedelics, including LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and mescaline.

You can find a.m. on Instagram and TikTok at @absurdwisdom. We are produced and distributed by DAE Presents, the production arm of DAE (@dae.community on Instagram and online at mydae.org).

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent. While we make every effort to ensure that the information shared is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or correction of errors.

You can contact us at daepresents@mydae.org.

Transcript

[00:00:46] AM: I'm A. M. Bhatt. Welcome to Absurd Wisdom, and for today's conversation, we are continuing the ongoing series with Ben Heller, CTO of 

[00:00:56] AM: Driver Technologies. Let's jump right in.

[00:01:00] [00:01:00] 

[00:01:00] Scott: Just to start us off, and this is, you know, sort of meant to put you on the spot a little bit. Absolutely. Something that I watched three years ago, and I'm watching, I put it on again and I'm listening and I look up and I'm like, wait, that's Ben.

[00:01:18] Scott: So that was like, oh wait, 

[00:01:20] AM: oh wait, wait, how do we, how do we do this? How do I, you know, 

[00:01:25] Scott: so I'm just going to put you on the spot. Tell me about that. 

[00:01:27] Ben: I'm happy to talk about it. Did you watch the whole episode? I watched the 

[00:01:30] Scott: whole thing before I knew you. And then I watched it again recently. And I, cause I remember I saw the whole thing before.

[00:01:37] Scott: Wow. Fascinating. And then I was like, wait, I 

[00:01:39] AM: knew that guy. So set the context. What's the show? how 

[00:01:43] Scott: to Change Your Mind with Michael Pollan. 

[00:01:46] Ben: Oh, interesting. Yeah, this is a, this is a chapter of my life. I, I don't , I don't open up publicly too much, but it's 

[00:01:53] Scott: up to you if you feel like you and I just kind of keep it very general, very subtle and 

[00:01:57] Ben: no, I'm happy to talk about it with you guys.

[00:01:59] Ben: [00:02:00] I've done exactly that interview and one other since then. Both anonymized, you'll notice, you know, in the documentary, it's just Ben. Yeah. That's it. And part of the reason for that is I didn't want to become a celebrity or a spokesperson for the experience, for really any aspect of it, you know. It's a, when you're a sample size of one and something extraordinary happens in your life.

[00:02:29] Ben: It's a dangerous thing to extrapolate and to say this is something that everybody should try or do or to endorse it in some way or to pretend to be an expert. Having done one thing once. It doesn't make you an expert. It only makes you an expert in your experience. So for what it's worth, I'm assuming you haven't seen this.

[00:02:54] Ben: No, this is brand new information. Yeah. Yeah. So do you want to give some background actually from, [00:03:00] from having watched it? 

[00:03:01] Scott: Yeah, sure. So the way, the way it happened to me was I'd watched it. When it first was released, I guess, what, three or four years ago now? Like, is that what, how long ago? Maybe, maybe 

[00:03:09] Ben: two, two years ago.

[00:03:10] Ben: Yeah. I 

[00:03:11] Scott: remember it was when I was kind of at home, not really working, you know, leaving the house very much, that kind of stuff. So it's all kind of a blur for me of when it happened. But it was, you know, Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind based on the book. And it was interviews about, you know, different, different modalities of using psychedelics for healing and transformation and rediscovery.

[00:03:31] Scott: The end. That was when it looked like it was, you know, a clinical setting and very controlled. It wasn't just you in the backyard, like, you know, like eating mushrooms, like, you know, off the, the crap pile or something. It was like, it seemed like it was very like, you know, intent. There was a lot of intention.

[00:03:49] Scott: I'm imagining much more before you started. So I'm just, I'm just curious as to, you know, what, what the experience has done for you over time. Cause. You know, in, [00:04:00] in the film, you talked about successful journey through that. Do you find that it's a lasting success? Do you have any, any things, any, any other things that 

[00:04:07] Ben: happen?

[00:04:09] Ben: Yeah. Wow. So I, I guess I'll like dial it all the way back. 

[00:04:14] Scott: I didn't want to go into diagnosis. Yeah. I didn't want to go into your, I'm, I'm, 

[00:04:17] AM: I'm, I'm willing to stick on this topic for the hour because I have different thoughts if, if this is the territory we're in. 

[00:04:24] Ben: Yeah. It's strange territory, but I think this is the right time and place.

[00:04:28] Ben: So. You know, I, I spent most of my childhood, I don't remember it going back this early, but, you know, my parents remember it starting around the age of four, with some obsessive compulsive tendencies that really blossomed into, like, full blown clinical OCD. Got it kind of under control ish with a combination of medication and behavioral therapy throughout childhood and kind of early pre teen years.[00:05:00] 

[00:05:00] Ben: Eventually, I grew tired of the medication and just wanted it to be better and kind of willed this thing away by actually integrating it with my personality, effectively saying like, yeah, this isn't a separate thing for me. This is just who I am. I'm going to embrace the restrictions that it puts on my life and my manner of thought.

[00:05:24] Ben: And it was just kind of there. But it led to a lot of Instability, volatility in my life, I would move to and away from things that were comfortable and manageable given the limitations it put on. It got significantly worse kind of in my mid twenties, something like that, and I began to try to figure it out.

[00:05:50] Ben: You know, that's the point in your life where you kind of say, either I'm going to be like this or I'm going to hit this head on, I'm going to try to understand what's going on. Went back [00:06:00] into therapy, went back on medication, was trying to kind of just grapple with, like, what is this? And after years of middling success, I had heard about this study.

[00:06:15] Ben: I don't remember exactly where I heard about it, but it was through Yale. My wife actually knew someone who was kind of working on a team that was doing similar things. And it was like a clinical trial. You could just look it up on the internet. And there was a page of psilocybin for OCD. And I started talking to this group and there was kind of a long, a long waiting list and a long process to get involved.

[00:06:40] Ben: I started doing other studies with them around obsessive compulsive disorder. There was an MRI study where they showed me different images and they were trying to gauge kind of, Do people with OCD have longer reaction times to be able to process things about an image? Really kind of fascinating. But this, this group was, they were just [00:07:00] experts in exactly how my brain seemed to work.

[00:07:03] Ben: And suddenly after years of, Talking to people and not really getting a lot of answers about like, what is this thing? I started understanding how much of my life and behavior was kind of classified under this umbrella. And after a long time of running away from that classification, just was delighted to be around experts.

[00:07:27] Ben: And, uh, it turns out that I'd been, like, pretty severely downplaying its impact on my life to everyone I'd been talking to because I didn't even understand how much of the things I was experiencing were part of this. And suddenly, when you gather them all up, it was like, oh, wow, like, this is hours of my day, every day, that's being dedicated to dealing with this in some way.

[00:07:50] Ben: And I don't want to say I felt desperate, but I certainly needed a return to A cleaner slate [00:08:00] in order to rebalance myself in order to have some type of clarity to start working through those problems. And you know, it's almost like being around a television that's turned to static, really loud all the time, just quiet.

[00:08:15] Ben: I needed to silence that. And I'd been on my own trajectory through just kind of what is now broadly called like talk about the wellness industry, right? I began meditating, I began reading, I really was trying to get to something that was on the verge of spirituality, mental health, research, you know, it was a kind of odd combination of like academic and more spiritually oriented approaches to figuring this out.

[00:08:45] Ben: And so I kind of came locked and loaded to this. trial. And I, I talked to them for a while and then forgot about it basically. And in the middle of [00:09:00] COVID, they reached out and were like, we've got a slot. You're going to be the first participant since COVID started. We figured out how to do this. Let's go.

[00:09:08] Ben: And at the time I started this whole process before I had a child. And at the time I had like a five month old at home. And I remember turning to my wife and going like, Do I still do this? You know, like what, what in the world, how do I, how do I reconcile like being a responsible parent with this thing?

[00:09:27] Ben: And it's not just like a day of dosing. It's actually five days inpatient at the Connecticut Center for Mental Health. So you're, you're in a mental health ward where you're being observed. being studied as questionnaires, there's MRIs as well and brain scans, but there's also quite a lot of, that goes into it, set and setting, setting your intention, trying to understand the role of your mental illness, [00:10:00] in air quotes, in your life and in almost like the way that the people running the study described it was setting your, setting your intention in your foreground brain so that it could send messages to your background brain in order to allow those to be received by your subconscious during the actual session.

[00:10:24] Ben: So it's, you know, Monday, Tuesday, you're in a room. There were pretty scary days, you know, you're, I'm not used to having most of my surroundings changed, your possessions taken away, like in this very clinical setting where you're like, God, you're like, I hope they let me out at the end of the week. This feels very intimidating.

[00:10:44] Ben: Wednesday is a dosing day and then Thursday and Friday, opportunities to reflect, unpack, reintegration. And I can talk about the actual experience, but the, the day of the dosing was [00:11:00] I mean, it was miraculous and the experience that I had, again, this is part of why I don't talk about it because it was so transformative and not, not everybody has that reaction to it.

[00:11:13] Ben: I've wondered since then exactly why. And I think part of it was because I'd been on this journey and it kind of loaded up all of this energy of trying to solve this problem in my life. And it just, in one day, kind of broke the dam and returned me to a state of, of purity, in a way. Just silence. And I, I was given the opportunity to go back to my room and suddenly as all of these patterns kind of resurfaced, They made just no sense, like I couldn't reconcile, like, what is this?

[00:11:53] Ben: This is irrelevant. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna discard it. I don't need that anymore. And it was so easy. It was like throwing [00:12:00] away, you know, a tissue or something just like simple. And you know, Thursday and Friday, sitting in that room was just peaceful, there's stillness, time to contemplate, none of the fear or anxiety of the first few days.

[00:12:18] Ben: Yeah, it was, it was powerful. It wasn't the end, it was the beginning of understanding that I had been given a unique opportunity to return to this place that was uncomplicated in all of the ways that these layers had been built up, and I had to keep it that way. And so developed some routines and patterns of reflection that have allowed me to carry that forward, and when things get a little nuts, I can peel back to that place, remember that experience.

[00:12:53] Ben: And, you know, I kind of have a toolkit for being able to, to rebalance myself. [00:13:00] So that's, that's kind of at a high level what that was, omitting the kind of actual psychedelic piece, which is, you know, I think what a lot of people want to go into when you, when you talk about this. And I think it's when you see that documentary, you know, they animate the whole thing as I'm recounting the story, and it's very dramatic.

[00:13:22] Ben: But the, the piece for me that's important is kind of the before and after. Right. And, you know, understanding what it really means to be living with something that has that weight and to have that lifted and what the process looks like of getting through to the other side and being able to kind of mount that, that just heap that feels so unapproachable.

[00:13:51] Ben: And I think you can do that with or without chemical help, but it is very difficult for a lot of people to do it without chemical help [00:14:00] while still living in society and having obligations to, to people and themselves. Um, so, that's, that's to, that's to kick it off. Wow. Thank you for sharing. Yeah. 

[00:14:13] AM: Yeah.

[00:14:15] AM: Transactional question and then I got more thoughtful ones. Um, do you remember the 

[00:14:20] Ben: dosage? So it doesn't, doesn't correlate because different types of mushrooms have different concentrations. Of course, they're probably giving 

[00:14:29] AM: you extract versus, you know, you're not, you're not 

[00:14:32] Scott: munching 

[00:14:32] Ben: on. Exactly. So this, this was, this was lab grade psilocin, which was fabricated for the actual study.

[00:14:41] Ben: So. It's very difficult to kind of correlate. Sure, but 

[00:14:45] AM: it's the sufficient enough dose, it was not a, it was a, it was a trip. It 

[00:14:50] Ben: was what you would refer to as a heroic dose. Yeah, okay. So, that's the point at which you're sort of at full saturation, [00:15:00] let's say. So, for me, it wasn't, I, there were not like a visual.

[00:15:05] Ben: Yeah, it was, it was straight down the rabbit hole. You know, it was headphones and a blindfold on and, uh, 

[00:15:13] AM: you know. Headphones and a blindfold. Yeah. For the entirety of the Yeah. Really? 

[00:15:18] Ben: Yeah. 

[00:15:19] AM: Hmm. 

[00:15:21] Ben: Okay. So, I mean, it was, well, not for the entirety. I shouldn't say for the entirety. It was sort of encouraged. Yeah.

[00:15:29] Ben: But not mandated. And for the first hour, I was talking with the people who were sitting in the room. Yeah. And at various points, I kind of came out of it. Yeah. And looked around, and there were things in the room to interact with, but they were very encouraging of going into whatever place you needed to be to allow the experience to kind of unfold internally rather than externally.

[00:15:57] AM: So the headphones were, were like noise canceling. [00:16:00] The idea was to block out. Oral and visual stimulation. 

[00:16:03] Ben: They were playing music. They were playing music. They were playing music. Good music, I hope. Sun Ra? It was, I think it was a playlist that was developed by the first place to do a study like this in the post Timothy Leary era.

[00:16:18] Ben: Era, which is Johns Hopkins. Yeah. And so it was a playlist from Johns Hopkins that was mostly classical. Yeah. And some, uh, I guess I'd call it tribal drumming. Yeah. I think music for psychedelic experiences is probably an interesting topic in and of itself. . But yeah. I mean, and I think they were very open about the way it was done being a way and not the way Mm-Hmm.

[00:16:45] Ben: you know, this was beginning to understand and experiment with. How these things can be helpful, and, um, you know, for what it's worth, I think given the fact that it was a, like, clinical setting that wasn't [00:17:00] expressly, like, the express intent wasn't to go out of their way to help people. It was to see if it would be helpful to people.

[00:17:08] Ben: I think they did a pretty good job of respecting me as a participant and the experience. But obviously, obviously there's a, there are a lot of feelings about this, this type of thing. And people who've had these experiences. have intensely personal connections to what is meant for them. What his potential is, what the role of the modern medical system kind of can have in this.

[00:17:40] Ben: Controversies around patents and ownership and access and you know, it's, it's a hot button topic. Which is, which is why I've kind of taken myself out of that. Because I typically when I see people who put themselves as Folks who want to really talk about this and [00:18:00] there's there's always something that's a little bit off of the evaluation of How it's done and and and how they recommend Yeah.

[00:18:09] Ben: It's, you know, everybody's approaching it. But I've had a few people like you who've come up and been like, hey, I saw this pizza. I hadn't talked to him about it. He's like, how could you not? You know, how could you not talk to me about this? Well, as you know, it's a, I just kind of wait until it comes up. It is.

[00:18:27] Ben: It felt important for me to be, to do one interview, because I felt that if any lawmakers were going to see anything, they would probably see the Michael Pollan doc. And if someone saw that and thought, this is helpful to people and should not be like a Schedule I substance, then that was maybe doing some good.

[00:18:55] Ben: I don't know. You know, I know that there is actually the general [00:19:00] motion towards decriminalization in a lot of places, which has its own kind of questions and problems and you know, so yeah, I mean, I sort of have my own experience in this, but It's, it was certainly powerful and certainly transformative.

[00:19:18] AM: Yeah, I want to respect your boundaries on this before I sort of, sort of go riffing on this topic. How, uh, do you, do you want to leave this or do you want to, are you open to exploring it? I, again, I'm totally cool to go 

[00:19:28] Ben: somewhere else. I'm open to exploring it. This is one of the things of like, you put this out there in public and you know, it, it has a life of its own.

[00:19:36] Ben: Yeah. I think we should have the conversation. You can decide what you want to do with it. 

[00:19:41] AM: Yeah, so, so if you're up for that, then, then let me, you know, so, so I've had a, for a longer period of time, similar relationship with like, I'm not talking about it, but I've never shied away from the topic if it came up and up until the last five years, really, it's not a topic that would come up a [00:20:00] lot, five to maybe 10 years, right?

[00:20:02] AM: But in the past, if on a random occasion, it came up, which would be truly random. I was never kind of, you know, shy about it, but I also was not out there, right? I, and this underscores also why I wanted to do this podcast as a wholly independent venture and not tied to my professional life, just to be able to talk about whatever I wanted to talk about and not have it be a connected to, you 

[00:20:23] Ben: know, I don't want you to lose any donors over 

[00:20:25] Scott: this.

[00:20:25] AM: No, I listen. I mean, these days, you know, I, I've said my entire adult life that the, if I had to name the single greatest teacher I ever had, it was psychedelics. Like, you know, the experiences, it was, we didn't have clinical settings back then, right? I was sort of in the period where, you know, post the original clinical settings and pre the clinical settings we have now, I think I definitely would have been up for that sort of, you know, uh, the blindfolds and headset fascinates me for a, a, you know, a mega dose of, of mushrooms.

[00:20:58] AM: That just. You know, it's [00:21:00] still processing that, but you know, I grew up like just, you know, you've heard the kind of broad, everyone's heard the broad stroke stories of, you know, I grew up in India, no plumbing and, you know, and those are just that broad stroke stories. I mean, there's a shit ton of trauma involved in that, in crossing the ocean, knowing no one, the world that was here, like there was just all this, you know, and by the time I hit like my early teens.

[00:21:29] AM: really about 12, there was just a, you know, I was, I was 42 when I was 12 in terms of exhaustion with the world, you know, and that's, that's when my exploration of, of, of kind of wisdom traditions and philosophy started. I started early, I started smoking when I was 13, I started drinking when I was 13 to just as a, you know, but I was good at like the day to day life thing, you know, got good grades and all that.

[00:21:56] AM: And so it kind of just. To your point earlier about the UCA, you can kind of, on a [00:22:00] certain level, it's, it's blind to everybody what the thing is actually going on in your life, you know? Yeah. And just hardcore depression, hardcore depression from an early age, and just kind of moving through life. And then at a certain point in my teens, through just what was in the air, in the circles I was in, as it were, It got exposure to that stuff and it, it, it, it could have had the opposite effect.

[00:22:24] AM: I think, you know, I, I, I do worry about how we're engaging with it these days. We can kind of get to that, you know, I suppose it certainly could have had the opposite effect. I don't know anybody. Um, not that I knew tons of people who were exploring in that way, but I do enough. I don't know anybody who had that, you know, fabled, you know, bad trip that turned them crazy kind of thing.

[00:22:44] AM: But at the same time, I, you know, it was, it was Wild West in, in the approach, right? And a lot of, you know. Unintended bad things could have happened. And I want to kind of acknowledge that, but they didn't. In fact, what happened is in a [00:23:00] different way, but it sounds similar that there was a certain, I don't know, doneness with some, you know, assumptions about the world that led to experiences of the world, if that makes sense, right?

[00:23:15] AM: Do you know what you said? Like the next day you had these. Patterns that show up and you're like, Oh, this seems pointless to throw it away. For me, it wasn't behavioral patterns. It was cognitive patterns as a way of just, you know, kind of thinking about, you know, the world, my place in it, my lack of place in it, all these things, right?

[00:23:30] AM: That after these initial set of experiences, it was like, just, it just doesn't make sense. It just doesn't, you know, and, and it, it just, I don't, I don't, it's not even like I don't need these perspective. It just, it just doesn't make sense. It's just to your point, tissue paper, just throw it away. And then I went back in multiple times, uh, to find other things.

[00:23:55] AM: And I do think, you know, the, the, as a, as a treatment modality, there is a, a ton of potential [00:24:00] there. I worry about two things. One is the kind of yogification of. Where it's just like kind of, Hey, what do you want to do Friday night? Let's do like, it's just this kind of, you know, let's go to McDonald's kind of mindset.

[00:24:17] AM: That doesn't seem great for the masses. I, I, I worry about that at a mass level, you know? And then the second is, is the commercialization, right? I mean, at two levels of commercialization. One is just, you know, do we have to turn every good and useful thing in the planet into some fucking P& L, you know? But then what happens is You know, I'll use a different thing, not yogification, the tumericification, right?

[00:24:45] AM: For centuries, for millennia, people have eaten tumeric, like my people eat tumeric in their diet day to day. It is a massively beneficial anti inflammatory. And now people consume this chemical synthesis in a laboratory somewhere that they buy in a [00:25:00] 32 ounce bottle at Costco and think, I'm taking curamidin!

[00:25:04] AM: No, you're not. You're not. I don't know what you're taking, I don't know what it's going to do to you long term. But that's not the, you know, and so, so, so I, I, you know, I, I get bothered by the commercialization of it for those two reasons, the kind of cynicism of it and the fact that we'll turn psilocybin and other things into some, you know, synthetic version of something that's been around for millennia for, for, you know, more than millennia.

[00:25:29] AM: But then I worry about the, you just kind of turning it into a Miller Lite, you know, turning it into McDonald's, turning it into just, just, you know. Hey, got nothing to do tonight, let's, let's, let's dose and losing either the sacred value in it, the transformative value in it that you're speaking to. And over time, having it just become, I don't know what it does over time when it's just engaged with recreationally like that, you know, but I don't, I'm not sure I want to find out.

[00:25:58] Ben: I was trying to explain this [00:26:00] to my wife as to. Why I don't feel the need to necessarily engage with psychedelics on a regular basis and the analogy I kind of came up with is a like it feels a lot like the Take a penny and leave a penny jar at the cash register you don't really want to take that penny unless you need it and there's there's something about the chemical and the experience itself that has a built in layer of humility and And we'll let you know, I think, if you're taking a penny when you shouldn't be.

[00:26:44] Ben: And that gives it some resilience, I think, against the process that you're talking about, the like, commodification. Um, it is really hard to balance an urge to make something [00:27:00] available. That could be helpful with the idea of not wanting to turn it into such a commodity. I don't, when people approach me and say, Hey, if people come to me and ask me to sit for them for these experiences, and I've said no every time because I said the only way I know how this has been done is five days inpatient with monitoring, with preparation where.

[00:27:30] Ben: I didn't have my phone, I didn't have distractions, right? I had a journal and a pen and my thoughts, right? And putting two whole days of nothing but journaling about what's going on, going into an experience like this. I don't know if that's the only reason that I had this outcome. You know, I, I can't simulate that.

[00:27:52] Ben: And so, it's, you know, if it becomes like a, like a drive through, you know, I, I, does that benefit [00:28:00] go away completely? What's the experiential benefit versus the chemical benefit? And, you know, if it's a chemical benefit, is it just, is it Advil? You know, where does that go? And, and, I honestly don't know the answers to that.

[00:28:14] Ben: It's funny, they, they didn't include this in the documentary, but I was, I was open with the people with the study. I wasn't psychedelically naive going into this. I had dabbled, you know, not a lot. But I, I'd taken low doses of mushrooms before and kind of noticed like, wow, there's a, a dampening effect on everything that's happening in my mind.

[00:28:36] Ben: Like this feels like it could be helpful, but I'd never, never taken enough to really quote unquote trip 

[00:28:42] AM: properly. Have the face of the universe ripped off. Yeah, 

[00:28:46] Ben: that was, that was not, not part of my experience prior to that. And, but there was like this little indication of like, Ooh, it's doing something.

[00:28:55] Ben: Yeah. Something's happening. But that was, that was, I think, the [00:29:00] chemical impact and not the experiential impact. And so, you know, that was kind of an interesting thing to, to talk to them about, which was, you know, I wasn't going in totally blind, but in a lot of ways, I was going in completely unprepared, because how can you be?

[00:29:17] Ben: prepared for an experience like that. 

[00:29:20] AM: So there's prepared in the sense of, you know, I know exactly what's going to happen. And I've got all the, you know, Swiss Army knife of tools I may need, right. Which I agree with you, there's no, right. But there is preparation, right? All of, all of, again, you know, back to the thing we always circle back to is just humanity over a long period of time, you know, this is ritual.

[00:29:43] AM: Like what you, when you just were describing the five days, this is ritual. This is sacred ritual. Yeah. It just so happened to take place in a clinical environment, but, but this is, this is sacred ritual. There's, there's a preparatory phase, there's the initiation phase, and then there is the processing phase.

[00:29:59] AM: Right. [00:30:00] That's all of it. You go get baptized. You go get like, you know, whatever it is, there are these things you do have to get married. I mean, every culture has some version of what the Catholics do around Pre Cana, right? There's this, you know, like the, are you ready? Right. There's some version of, are you ready?

[00:30:16] AM: There's some preparation. There's some, you know, going out on the quest, you know, before you meet the dragon, before the hero's dose, there's a journey and you meet people along the way. And they, they, they play tricks on you and they were like, what, I mean there's all this preparatory stuff before you meet the dragon and then you meet the dragon and you think you killed the dragon, but you didn't, it turns out you are the dragon and you integrate with the dragon.

[00:30:42] AM: Right. And then there's a long, slow journey back, you know, and then you're back. Right. So it's ritual. It's, and this is how we've engaged with all these things. We, we, from tobacco to psilocybin, you know, it's, it's ritual and we, we, and this is what concerns me about. [00:31:00] You know, it's not some, some romanticized notion of, you know, indigenous relationship, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:31:06] AM: It's, it's, I think this is part of the thing, you know, and, and we can have that now, but we choose not to, we just consume it. And that really concerns 

[00:31:16] Ben: me. I think that concern, I mean, it seems to be everywhere. I haven't met anybody who didn't express some type of concern on one side or the other. You know, I, there were people I talked to who had reactions to me doing the study that were incredibly negative.

[00:31:37] Ben: It was how could you participate in that system, right? And, and that was a reaction that initially I wasn't prepared for 

[00:31:43] AM: at all. Oh, interesting. So, so they're, they're, they're pro psilocybin, but how could you do it in that kind of, yeah, interesting. Exactly, yeah. 

[00:31:49] Ben: And, uh, cause I had had this wonderful positive experience where I felt, you know, fairly nurtured by that environment.

[00:31:55] Ben: Yeah. And, um, and so that was something that I immediately had to chew on as a reaction [00:32:00] to it. Um, but I haven't met anybody who through that questioning and doubt and skepticism really feel strongly that they know the answer. Yeah. You know, this is, this is. A very tricky thing to integrate into society, but at the same time, the conversations I've had with people who are not, you know, the type of person who would normally consider psychedelics in their own personal lives in a recreational way or a therapeutic way are suddenly becoming interested in the potential of this.

[00:32:39] Ben: And the thing that feels hard about it is that you have to be able to phrase the question before you can get the answer. It's not gonna give you the question and the answer together. And so how do you know, how do you know when you have the question well [00:33:00] formulated enough? to embark on this experience and make it productive.

[00:33:06] Ben: I didn't know that I had prior to my experience. I think it turns out I did or did enough and there may have been more formulation of that that could have happened. But who becomes the judge or the gatekeeper to say You're ready, you know, in a society where this is part of an existing ritual. There sort of is a structure around that.

[00:33:30] Ben: We don't really, we don't really have that concept in medicine or therapy. It doesn't really exist. And if you, I think it's creating some challenges for the therapists who are actually sitting with patients because Like, well, what happens if the person who's laying on that couch says, what I need right now is for someone to hold me.

[00:33:54] Ben: You know, that's a barrier that you don't normally cross between, you know, doctor and [00:34:00] patient, right? This is a very unique and new environment. And what comes of that are, we're just, we're so woefully unprepared in so many ways. So I'll be curious to see where it goes in my lifetime. Yeah. But it's. You know, I think if you read the Pollan book, he's trying to kind of draw a line between some studies that were obviously done in the 60s and parking it for, you know, decades and like losing a little bit of institutional knowledge and momentum and having to go back to first principles of like, Sure.

[00:34:37] Ben: How do we do this? And it's, it's pretty early days. Yeah. Um, but that's in kind of contrast to, you know, talk to an old deadhead who's dosed 50 times and, you know, they've, they've got a roadmap, they're not too 

[00:34:52] AM: concerned. And in fact you are. 

[00:34:55] Ben: So you know, it's a, it's a very different, it's a different paradigm and [00:35:00] we're kind of figuring out where to meet in the 

[00:35:01] AM: middle, right?

[00:35:02] AM: Yeah, the other folks who go back to one of the first things you said in this last, last piece, you know, the, the, the folks who balk at the sort of institutional, you know, I'm going to go to Yale for five days and, you know, it's, it's sort of how I interpret that as they, they, they balk at religiousness.

[00:35:17] AM: And so you had the religious, I don't mean religious in the sense of God is spiritual, but the institutional. version of this, if I'll extend the analogy, sacrament, right? And, and if I were to ask them, they would, they would advocate for a shamanic, you know, more like an independent outside the system, right?

[00:35:32] AM: It's an absolute ignorance of what shamanism is. It's just an absolute ignorance. It's shamanic traditions are, are actually more rigorous in terms of preparation and initiation and all these things, right? Both have, it's just one has an institutionalized Uniform, consistent across all, right, which is what the medical establishment is, and so that's how they will engage with, you know, psychedelic therapy is, is as a religion [00:36:00] would in a very institutionalized, common practices across all churches sort of way, right?

[00:36:06] AM: But the shamanic traditions aren't just, yeah, man, do your shit. Like that's not what they are. They're insanely rigorous, initiatory. They will say no to you. The religions won't. You know, the, the, the medical institutions won't, or the religions in a spiritual sense won't. They'll say, yes, absolutely, follow our process, right?

[00:36:23] AM: Shamans will say no to you. You're not ready. Get the fuck away from me. Right? And there's a much more, you know, sort of rigor on, right? And so, again, this concerns you. There's just kind of this Wild West attitude around things that are, I don't, I don't, I mean, so there's a possibility that they'll, that they'll, to use a technical term, fuck people up.

[00:36:43] AM: Maybe, right? But I'm, I'm more worried about immunizing people. This thing, I get worried about what I said about yoga, right? I just immunizing them to what's the experience you had immunizing them to the experience you had by virtue of just, I can go down to the corner store, get some, you [00:37:00] know, psilocybin chocolate and dose while I'm watching a movie tonight and miss.

[00:37:05] AM: What is actually available to them because of the lack of this, this real, you know, respect, reverence, rigor, whatever you want to call it for the thing we've got, I mean, see Ann Arbor, Oakland, Boulder, uh, there's five, there's two other cities. So Simon's dead legal. You can just walk into a store and just buy it here in New Haven.

[00:37:24] AM: I know of two places you can go and buy. So I have a chocolate. The police know about it. It's on the counters. You can buy it. It's technically illegal, but like nobody cares anymore It should we're not just we just don't enforce it and you know I'm, not sure where that leads us in terms of you know I just worry about folks randomly dosing on a friday night and how much that that further numbs People in this society to any possibility of a healthy mind.

[00:37:53] AM: How do you 

[00:37:55] Scott: help, not necessarily regulate, but help guide, like, people [00:38:00] into set and setting that's appropriate? Without the sort of, you know, medical study aspect or, you know, what's the I have friends who've gone to somewhere in Connecticut to have an ayahuasca ceremony done by somebody. And they feel transformed 

[00:38:15] AM: by the whole thing or up in Vermont and have a traumatic experience.

[00:38:18] AM: Yeah, it could be, 

[00:38:20] Scott: you know, so many different things that can happen, you know, I was like, Oh, this guy's only got two stars on shamans. com. I'm not going to go. 

[00:38:28] AM: Yeah. 

[00:38:30] Ben: I mean, I think again, my, my experience is the experience that I had and that's going to be everybody's bias is like. What worked for someone they're gonna go out in the world and advise people.

[00:38:49] Ben: Hey that worked for me. You should do it for you I think figuring out what the set and setting is that works for you should be part of that process for [00:39:00] me tearing myself away from phones devices the world and letting that like distortion of the time space continuum happen and then Sitting with yourself was really important leading into it.

[00:39:16] Ben: It was really uncomfortable. And if I hadn't been literally locked in a room, I probably wouldn't have had the fortitude to go through that process. I've never in my life done that. That type of, like, deprivation of the connection you have to other people. And so it's, it's hard to say like, you gotta do that.

[00:39:40] Ben: Maybe you don't, you probably don't, but it's what I did. And, and for me it was, it was hugely important because I don't think I would have faced everything that was there inside me. Without that. Is that standard practice for that study? It was. So they had a protocol for that study. And I think every study is a little [00:40:00] different.

[00:40:00] Ben: Sure. They're running. It wasn't based on a 

[00:40:02] Scott: diagnosis like, you know, having a certain diagnosis means they want to sort of deprive certain triggers that might necessarily be there? 

[00:40:10] Ben: It was the same for everyone. Okay. And they, there was minimum, there were certain criteria for entering the study. You had to have tried medication, not worked, been off of it.

[00:40:20] Ben: You needed to have a certain severity on the, the obsessive compulsive scale, basically. But once you met those criteria, everyone who was running through the study had the same experience in terms of how the days were split out. Now I 

[00:40:33] Scott: remember that period of time that you did the study, you know, like, you know, COVID times.

[00:40:40] Scott: It was pretty much an upheaval societally for a lot of folks. I, I kind of was a little bit ashamed of that time period because I was enjoying it, like, being home and doing my thing. And Spending time with family and, you know, and I felt a little bit of like guilt and shame about that when so many people were [00:41:00] suffering.

[00:41:01] Scott: Do you, do you think that the time period that in which it happened could sort of help you get to a better place because everything else was kind of stopped in some sense? Do you, do you feel like that plays anything to, did it help with your family? Like, you know, your family life, did it kind of help to say I'm going to step away for a week and do this thing?

[00:41:20] Scott: Hopefully it's something that helps. 

[00:41:23] Ben: It, it helped. There were two places where I think it, it, I remember during the dosing, hearing one of the nurses laugh outside the room and having this intense feeling that because I heard human laughter, everything was going to be okay. And it was, that was specifically tied to COVID and the nervousness at that time.

[00:41:51] Ben: And that just, this sort of shed that instantly, hearing this like wonderful laugh. And then afterwards, the solitude [00:42:00] of it, since you've watched the doc, part of the experience was, see, this is why I can't even, talking about it still now is extremely emotional, in a wonderful way. I mean, I really embrace.

[00:42:13] Ben: embrace it, but, well, to see if I can get through it. Part of the experience was decaying as a physical body down into dirt, and growing what's felt to be in real time as a, as a tree, and really branching out and it was a, Very modest tree, when I say tree, it was like five feet tall, but the tree was at an actual place near my, near my home.

[00:42:42] Ben: Because of the solitude of COVID, I, I would go and visit that tree every day, every day. And I would stand in front of it and I would reflect on that experience of nothingness and of not being a person, but being a tree, of being something radically [00:43:00] different and understanding what it felt like to be a tree, not to be a person.

[00:43:06] Ben: And, and sitting with that, I don't think if the world had been going at the speed that is going now, I did that almost every day for a year. I mean, probably like 300 days, um, out of the year, and that was hugely important because I didn't leave the experience behind. I kept going back and reflecting on it and reliving it every day.

[00:43:33] Ben: And, and I think that's what allowed me to carry it forward in a really productive way. Um, and that was a recommendation from the people who sat with me and, and ran that study was find something to keep this alive. And uh, that's, that's one thing it really enabled. 

[00:43:52] AM: Thank you for sharing that. And that, that's just, that's, it's spectacularly encouraging to me, you know, that clinicians at Yale have, have, have that [00:44:00] level of.

[00:44:01] AM: Understanding of, of what the, what that work is versus just a clinical curiosity. That's really, 

[00:44:07] Ben: really wild. Yeah. They have, I mean, I can't speak to every study and every clinician, but the people who, who worked with me, I think I have a phenomenally deep understanding Yeah. Uh, of what they're doing and the import and the path that people take Yeah.

[00:44:24] Ben: Through that. So 

[00:44:25] AM: it, it's, it's, you know, I think it's another metaphor that sort of pops up for me around psychedelics. It's, it's sort of like. Another religious metaphor or metaphor related to religion, it's, it's, it's like going to a pilgrimage site. Then you go to the Vatican or if you go on, what's the one in Spain that, that, that walking El Camino.

[00:44:47] AM: El Camino. Yeah. Camino. Right on. Yeah. I can't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, but it's like, it's like this 150 mile, you know, and you can, most people who go to the Vatican are tourists. They think they're going [00:45:00] to a religious, you know, on that trail that's been there for centuries since the Crusades. They're now like Airbnbs.

[00:45:08] AM: You used to stay at strangers house, they would take you in, like just randomly, you know, but now they're a formal Airbnb, you can book along the way, and, and gift shops, you know, and so they're consuming that experience, and when they leave, what they focus on, what they show people is the pictures and the t shirts, you know, versus the people who actually took the journey, are actually doing exactly what you're speaking to with psychedelic experiences, you For the, you know, weeks and months after they are like every day integrating that experience into their life.

[00:45:44] AM: Because the thing did change them and now they're kind of understanding how do I rebuild me in this new, you know, from this new dirt, from this new, right? Yeah. And, and again, I go back to this what worries me about the, you know, way we're kind of approaching psychedelics is it's [00:46:00] just, it's It's, it's a tourist thing to do.

[00:46:03] AM: And all this, you know, amazing benefit you've gotten, you know, value you've gotten, leveling up to use an entrepreneur term, uh, of, of, of your humanity. Not only gets missed, but it gets, it gets immunized against you. I 

[00:46:19] Ben: remember this whole thing happened like two weeks before Thanksgiving and my family came for Thanksgiving and it was wonderful.

[00:46:28] Ben: It was, it was a great holiday and we were sitting around sort of. And, uh, I was in a room late at night one night and my folks and my own mom, my uncle were asking questions about it cause they were, they were curious. And my uncle who, he was a person who has walked the walk for most of his life, looked me straight on and just said, you're putting in the work, right?

[00:46:50] Ben: And that was his only question. That's great. And it was. I, you know, I, for a second it was like deer in the headlights, like, am I putting in [00:47:00] the work? And then I realized like, I am, I am. I can tell you honestly, I, I really am. And that's something that I try to ask myself still on a regular basis, like, am I putting in the work?

[00:47:13] Ben: How am I coasting? Have I, am I taking for granted the transformation that has been made available? Because I really don't want to feel like. Yeah, there was, there was kind of a, there was a question early on, like, hey, will people with OCD need this once a year as treatment? Or will they need it once ever?

[00:47:34] Ben: Will they need like regular re upping? And it's kind of like, that's a very clinical question. But to me, it feels like if you have that experience once and you hold it close and it's accessible, it doesn't stop being available. to you in a way, and you know, I, I think there, there's ways you can forget and there's productive, it's obviously productive [00:48:00] things you can do with repeat sessions.

[00:48:02] Ben: But for me, the idea of not wanting to let go of that, not feeling like that experience became yet another thing where it's like time for my, like, open up the pill case, open up the Wednesday pill and take it. That felt like somehow. disrespectful to the experience. And so I, I've, I've worked very hard to try to keep that alive and keep that current as much as possible.

[00:48:29] Ben: Um, but it's my relationship to, it's evolved over time. Um, you know, the, they, they followed up for I think 12 weeks formally as part of the study, which is a decent piece, but suddenly you find yourself, you know, in your thirties with This coping mechanism you've had your entire life suddenly gone and needing to rebuild your like emotional capacity and your emotional response effectively from scratch.[00:49:00] 

[00:49:00] Ben: I think it was about a two year process before I woke up one day and went, Hey, you know what? I think, I think I'm good. I think, I think this, I've now built up the thing I needed to build up. I feel resilient. But I'll tell you, like, I still, I'm an emotional person. And I've always been an emotional person.

[00:49:23] Ben: But instead of kind of sloughing it off to what became OCD, as a way of managing intense emotions, now I just feel intense emotions. And that's great. Like, I would, I would rather feel them. And go through that then to kind of push them off to the side, put them in a box and, and let something weird happen.

[00:49:47] Ben: But you know, my son, the other day, there's books I can't read from. I just start crying. You know, this is like too happy. I'm so full of joy. I just, I sob. And he'll bring me books and [00:50:00] go, daddy, is this one going to make you cry? I'll say, no, this one's not going to make me cry. We can read this one. So, you know, it's still, it's still there and it's still fresh in a way.

[00:50:09] Ben: Yeah. 

[00:50:11] AM: Have you ever done a long term fasting? What's three or more days? No, no. So one thing I used to do three day fasts were pretty regularly. And then on a rare occasion, I might do a seven day fast. I think, you know, not very, very rare means three days. And these days I do, you know, a one day fast and occasionally a three day faster.

[00:50:31] AM: So we know at this stage that, that, you know, physiologically. We are a collective, right? Like there's all these, you know, bacteria and yeasts and, you know, and that the, you know, the, the, the microbiome in our gut has such an impact on our health and our, you know. And so you do an extended fast and you could re, you know, one, one of the things that happens is you're recalibrating your microbiome and, you know, the kind of healthy bacteria and the healthy, you know, [00:51:00] yeast sort of repopulate and, and, you know, Candida and, and other, you know, not so healthy bacteria, yeast sort of die off, right?

[00:51:09] AM: And then in the days and weeks and months that follow, you will maintain that healthy microbiome. Unless you go on a two day sugar binge, in which case it'll all just come back. But if you're eating, you know, natural foods and, and, you know, you'll maintain. But it's a practice to eat that way to maintain that, you know, microbiome.

[00:51:33] AM: And it just takes one bad weekend of sugar binging. Or processed food binging, mainly sugar binging. And all that integration will go backwards, right? I think it's similar, you know, the physiological, I think it's similar in the psychological and the ontological, where there are experiences, and, and psychedelics is one of, not the only, but one of the experiences, that creates a certain kind of, you know, equivalent to a fasting [00:52:00] state where all of these microorganisms, psychological microorganisms, That we're not healthy, that we're not part of our natural kind of makeup and yet grew up because of whatever, right?

[00:52:12] AM: Trauma, environmental experiences, biochemical, whatever, however it is. There are these psychological, you know, microbes in essence that grow up. And then we live our lives that way and we keep, you know, the equivalent of getting a sugar hit. And I eat the sugar, it takes care of the thing, right? So the experiential sugar hit, I'll take that.

[00:52:32] AM: And we have an experience like, like psychedelics or other things, um, that, that just, just wipe that. But then it's the same thing as you're speaking to, it requires a long, you know, a long period of ongoing integration to keep the, you know, the psychological bad microbe from regrowing because they have a tendency to regrow.

[00:52:55] AM: And a long period of just, just ongoing vigilance until you can get the system to a state [00:53:00] where it is. I don't know if it's ever fully immune, but it becomes more and more immune to the bad bacteria, as it were, the bad psychological bacteria, the unhealthy psychological bacteria we're predisposed to from popping in.

[00:53:14] AM: Does that make sense, that 

[00:53:15] Ben: analogy? Yeah, yeah, it absolutely resonates. The tricky part is If this becomes more widely available, how do we support that? Because society does not, we're not engineered to allow people to really luxuriate in that process. You have to carve it out, right? And I think part of, you know, your question earlier is like, maybe I was only able to carve that out in part due to this historically unique time where everybody was left to their own devices with I'm going to have to do a lot of space to be able to do that work.

[00:53:55] Ben: Now, if things have, you know, accelerated back to some sense of [00:54:00] normalcy, well, how do we help people who, who don't know how important that is to sustaining that experience? 

[00:54:09] AM: This is the part of the episode where I bring it back to my Core theme, which is the fundamentally dysfunctional nature of the society we're in in a in a in a large group conversation Something came up and Scott asked the question and I figured what the question was, but I said, you know If you are up to your eyeballs in water if you're just floating in water

[00:54:33] AM: It is virtually impossible to get your left index finger dry. You can have great techniques and great tools and great all this, but to actually keep it dry for any length of time is nearly impossible. And so all of these things we talk about, you know, including psychedelics for me, in the context of people living lives that are fully [00:55:00] immersed in this particular water.

[00:55:02] AM: It's a near impossibility and, and I think there's just, it all goes, I get I'm a broken record on it. I get it's a sort of a, a simple and yet impossible solution, but it all boils down to opting out of the narrative that we all got born into. And I think if you opt out of that narrative, these things become possible.

[00:55:22] AM: I don't mean opting out of society. I'm not saying go live on a mountain. With no electricity and all that, right. But opting out of the net, what we, the conversation we keep coming back to right now, opting out of the narrative that life is about productivity, output, utilitarianism, acquisition, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:55:40] AM: And if you can craft a life, even a little bit outside of that, then the question becomes something you can entertain about how do I craft. Time to integrate a psychedelic experience, but that question even has like some some possibility to engage with but short of that if you're gonna keep chasing [00:56:00] The thing that question itself will be a soft source of trauma for 

[00:56:04] Ben: you.

[00:56:05] Ben: Yeah. Yeah I remember remember someone telling me about a professor they had who gave birth on a Thursday afternoon and showed up for her Friday morning lecture And it was kind of a story of like, how wonderful is this professor? How dedicated is she? I'm thinking, that's horrible. I can't believe that that's even, you know, that that's ever happened, let alone something that would be seen as, as admirable.

[00:56:35] Ben: And I think there's, there's a sense too of, it's seen as. Not even just a luxury, but like a little self absorbed, self important to take time to process anything without a goal, without an objective, like without a defined result. 

[00:56:57] AM: Alright, so you're going to be healthy by next Tuesday, right? Alright, we're going to cancel all [00:57:00] your meetings by next Tuesday, you're going to be healthy.

[00:57:02] AM: Great, we're going to reschedule everything for after that, like, yeah, that's, that's how people think about it. Yeah. 

[00:57:06] Ben: Yeah. So, yeah, you know, I think as we sort of approach this, we might have to let go of the sense of like, Oh, well, you know, you had a therapeutic session with mushrooms and that was Saturday and how are you feeling?

[00:57:18] Ben: It's Tuesday now and do you need another one? And it's, it's such a different paradigm that I, I can only understand my own experience as this aberration that happened outside time and space in a way. And so as I see it being discussed in a more Just in general way, I, I truly don't, I don't know how it's going to end up happening.

[00:57:42] Ben: And I, I don't know if it's going to end up happening in a way that shows intent or is reflective of kind of our, our best effort at integrating this because it's not, it's not a thing where we're moving closer to that experience and that experience is moving closer to us. [00:58:00] I think it's trying to carve out a hole in our lives.

[00:58:05] Ben: Without moving closer to the realities of the psychedelic experience where I worry, right? I don't know I think maybe there'll be a really good outcome here Who knows but our natural tendency the way we tend to do things is by not moving closer To that plane and you know, it's a it's a space that demands respect Mm hmm, and that's what that's where it could go could go a little sideways And I think there's plenty of examples of it going a little sideways That also serves to scare people away from its potential benefits.

[00:58:40] Ben: And so, it's a really difficult thing to consider constructively. 

[00:58:45] AM: Well, obviously you can go sideways in terms of, you know, like, the equivalent of a bad trip, but you can also go sideways in the sense of, you know, You can become a Joe Rogan. You know what I mean? Like you can, I mean, we, listen you, another thing about you, you, you, you and [00:59:00] I, I know, know, some common people who, who regularly partake, and in the period of time I've known them, their mental health is appreciably worse, and their engagement with life is appreciably worse.

[00:59:11] AM: And I feel bad. I genuinely feel badly for them. But, but these things are not only not helping, they are, they're masking. What, what, what I, let me jump off of that to, to circle back to something I want to say when you first started, when we first started this and you told your initial story is what, what I appreciated about it, Ben, is for me, I hear as much and maybe even more value in the approach you took than in the one day of the psychedelic experience, because that, that the, the approach to it is what I'm trying to point to when I say about, you know, getting out of the water.

[00:59:48] AM: Yeah. Right, because that approach and one day of, you know, actual yoga retreat, not going to yield the same result, but my point is, it at least stands a [01:00:00] shot of making a dent in your life, right? And, and, and so, you know, absent that level of reverence, rigor, again, whatever you want to call it, um, none of this stuff works.

[01:00:13] AM: And some of it potentially, I think, hurts you. You know, the, the, the, the disconnection that, you know, now I don't know if everybody's taking a hero dose. You know, they're taking like a light doses, but I think even, even at moderate doses, there is a certain uncoupling that this thing does, you know, an ongoing uncoupling outside of reverence, outside of rigor, outside of, of a real intentionality.

[01:00:41] AM: I don't think we know what the, what the, what the effects of that are, but I can't imagine 

[01:00:44] Ben: they're good. Being prepared for, and preparedness in the sense that you mentioned earlier for a sense of disassociation or a sense of being willing to see something, experience something that's [01:01:00] challenging and unsettling and go headlong through it rather than running away.

[01:01:05] Ben: Um, if you're, if your first response is to turn and run, then that's an indication that the work hasn't been done going in. I think you have to be in a place where you have so much curiosity, in a way. Healthy curiosity. Not this kind of like, I gotta see what's around the corner. Just a sense of everything has something to teach us.

[01:01:32] Ben: And there's nothing that isn't instructional. Therefore, even something that's transparently terrifying is curious. That's, that's this mentality that lets you work through something incredibly difficult. And if we, if you sit down with something like this, and you're not prepared, then you will try to run [01:02:00] away.

[01:02:00] Ben: Yeah. The attempt to, to pull yourself out of that has this rubber band effect of snapping you back in and in a very unpleasant way and whether that happens during the session or whether that happens after in the days and weeks and months that follow as you kind of reevaluate and contextualize it, that I think is, is sort of the dangerous territory and, uh, it It's hard to, it's hard to describe it in a sense that is like an instruction manual.

[01:02:35] Ben: Do this, this, and this, and you will stay on the safe part of the map. That doesn't, doesn't work like that. And the, the fluid nature of it and the type of awareness that's required, like, if I can do it, I think anyone can, like, I don't think I'm special or I was especially prepared. I was a curious and desperate person willing to do real [01:03:00] work.

[01:03:01] Ben: In order to try to solve a problem that I didn't feel that I knew I had to get past, but I didn't know what tools I needed to get past it. And I felt ill equipped, but willing to bang my head on that wall as much as I needed to. Um, there, if there's one thing that kind of sums that up for me. It's, it was a composition by the composer Lamont Young, and I, they said you could bring anything with you, you were, that you wanted to, to the session.

[01:03:33] Ben: So I brought this composition and framed it in like a little frame and, and brought it with me. And I'm paraphrasing, but the composition was typed out as a letter in, in English. And it says like, take your piano. Push it against the wall, keep pushing, push as hard as you possibly can until the piano goes through the wall, keep pushing, the piece is over when you're too tired to push any longer.[01:04:00] 

[01:04:00] Ben: And that was the one thing I wanted to see during this experience as I was preparing for it. I didn't bring a picture of my family, I didn't bring anything comforting, I brought that because that's what I felt I needed to absorb. In order to get through that experience. It's amazing. Yeah. I'm lucky it worked.

[01:04:28] AM: I want to clean something up though from earlier in the conversation. You said jokingly, you know, Grateful Dead shows and, and LSD. I just, I hate the mythology around. I know you didn't mean it that way, but out in the world, um, there were reamly few shows of any kind that I saw while on Psychedelics. Not that that stuff wasn't going on, but that mythology is just false.

[01:04:49] AM: That everybody was dosed out at shows. The community was why we were there, the music, um, most of my experiences were, were more controlled with, again, we didn't have labs, but they were, there was [01:05:00] a certain ritualistic reverence for the thing. I would, I listen, I mean, we can put a wrap on this Friday conversation, but I do, you know, folks are listening to this, it, it, it, there's a, there's a core group of folks I know that, you know, I don't know who it is, but we have a consistent following at this point.

[01:05:16] AM: It's small, but it's consistent. It seems. Show yourself people. Yeah. Uh, we're going to start inviting them in, uh, soon. I think maybe in the new year, try to do some live conversations, but, but I think, you know, for me, it's just, it's, it's like, this topic is so, even what I'm about to say, I feel like it is just so much, like I want to say around it, but psychedelics were so formative for me.

[01:05:38] AM: This topic is so important to me. And like we're on the cusp of like, as in so many other areas, you know, technology, AI environment, like so many areas. Right. But in this one, like we're on the edge of making some really, really, really big, important collective decisions on this shit. And this is one that, that [01:06:00] truly could be a golden key and could be a complete, you know, as the experience you had, right.

[01:06:05] AM: And the experiences I had could be truly a, not, you know, just, just do no work and have a magic pill, but, but, but a truly useful, you know. Or it can become, again, just another McDonald's thing that we just, you know, kind of destroy. I don't know. I don't even know what I want to say about that. Just, just, just, just fucking pay attention.

[01:06:24] AM: Just pay attention. Pay attention, pay attention. So what's happening to this 

[01:06:28] Ben: stuff.

[01:06:44] AM: Thank you for listening to Absurd Wisdom. This is AMBOT and you know, conversation, real human conversation never actually ends, but episodes of podcasts need to. So we're going to end here. You can connect with me on Instagram and TikTok at, at [01:07:00] Absurd Wisdom. You can find DAE on Instagram at dae. community or online at mydae.

[01:07:08] AM: org. Absurd Wisdom is produced and distributed by DAE Presents, the production arm of DAE, and we'll be back with more Conversation Beyond Understanding next Thursday.