Larry Norris: Decriminalizing Nature, Psychedelics, and the Future of Consciousness

Larry Norris: Decriminalizing Nature, Psychedelics, and the Future of Consciousness
What happens when personal transformation becomes a movement?
In this episode of Conscious Physicians, Medicine, and Psychedelics, Dr. Anna Yusim sits down with Larry Norris, co-founder of Decriminalize Nature and one of the leading voices behind the movement to decriminalize entheogenic plants and fungi across the United States.
Larry shares his fascinating journey from neuroscience student and consciousness researcher to psychedelic advocate, educator, and policy organizer. He discusses how his experiences with mushrooms and ayahuasca challenged conventional scientific models of consciousness and ultimately inspired decades of work focused on education, integration, community building, and legislative change.
Together, they explore:
Larry's personal journey with psychedelics and consciousness
The origins of Decriminalize Nature
The movement that led Oakland to become the first U.S. city to decriminalize entheogenic plants and fungi through city council action
Why integration is one of the most important—and often overlooked—parts of psychedelic healing
The power of peer support and community integration circles
The role of psychedelics in addiction recovery, trauma healing, and end-of-life care
Direct democracy and how citizens can create meaningful policy change
The importance of protecting humanity's relationship with nature and consciousness
Dr. Yusim and Larry also discuss the urgent need for education, responsible access, and community-centered models as psychedelic medicine continues to enter mainstream conversations.
This episode is a powerful reminder that healing is not just personal—it can transform communities, cultures, and systems.
About Larry Norris
Larry Norris is the Co-Founder of Decriminalize Nature, a grassroots movement dedicated to ending criminal penalties for the cultivation and use of entheogenic plants and fungi. He is also a consciousness researcher, educator, and longtime advocate for psychedelic integration, community healing, and policy reform.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the next episode of Conscious Physician Medicine and Psychedelics. We are here today with Larry Norris, the founder of Decriminalized Nature. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_05 0:12

Co-founder of Decriminalized Nature.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Co-founder, excellent. Larry, tell us about yourself.

SPEAKER_05 0:18

It's been really quite a journey over the many years to get to where we are today. And both in my personal transformation and my personal journey, but also in the cultural and societal journey that we've been on for the last 20 plus years as this conversation related to sacred plants and mushrooms has become more, I want to say mainstream for lack of a better term, but more recognized, less stigmatized, and definitely repealing some of the parts and dissecting some of that misinformation that we've had for the last 50, 60 years plus, you know, thousands of years if you want to go before that, even. So it's really a beautiful space to be in right now, having gone and seen a lot of this transition. And I'm still a young buck compared to some of the folks that were doing research in the 60s and even before that. So I imagine that they're watching this all happen, you know, to go from it was totally legal to research to it's against the law to do any of this kind of research to back now to where it's it's a much bigger topic. But now it's kind of the pendulum's almost swung a little bit too far, where now everyone's like, how do we cash in on this as quickly as possible without necessarily thinking about all the sort of nuance that's necessary to think about? But uh but I started my process uh originally I'm from uh Michigan area. I went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I was uh very interested in studying the mind and consciousness. These are the kind of the ideas that become out of youth that uh for me were most profound. You know, it's like, wow, okay, what is consciousness? What is the nature of reality? How are we engaging in the world? What are these qualities of ineffability? What is this sort of uh in-between space? But I was still at that point in time much more mechanistic in my my thinking, my mode of thinking. So while I was interested in psychology, I focused a little bit more on the sort of the biopsychology and the cognitive science and went into more of the neuroscience realm. Uh, but then at the same time, uh, I was having mushroom experiences. So here, on one hand, having mushroom experiences, uh, where I'm sort of seeing the the um incredible bigness of consciousness, if you will, right. And also having these um, you know, textbook readings of my classes at that uh University of Michigan that was suggesting there's more of a smallness to consciousness, as in it exists in the brain only. And we can track it and we can see what these mechanisms are. And and yes, there are definitely some things related to that. You know, I think that's that's an important part of the puzzle, but it just seemed to be missing so much more from my direct experiences than what I was learning in class. Um, so I did sort of that as my undergrad. Uh I had to do a lot of animal research toward the end. And I'm sure as you can imagine, animal research and mushroom experiences don't often go hand in hand. When you're finding love for nature and that everything's alive and conscious, and then the next morning having to wake up and we uh fill out grant money so that you can do unspeakable things to mice. That was kind of a rough uh cognitive distance I was having in the next one.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

I believe this is big time, yeah. I feel that in medicine too.

SPEAKER_05 3:06

And so I had sort of a crisis of consciousness, you know. It's like basically like, whoa, what do I do? I just spent four years of my life working on this, trying to get a better understanding of this, and then my my direction would be going or I did the animal research, and can I do that? And what does that mean? And is it even something that was interesting to me? I spent so many hours in the lab, and at the end of the lab, all I was basically doing was counting dots on a slide from a portion of the suspension I grew in the brain. So even the end result of it, the goal of the study was not exciting or interesting. It was like, all right, I'm here one, two, three, four, and uh little sections and all that kind of stuff. So there's so much more interesting things to talk about outside of this animal research, outside of just brain studies. And you know, again, I'm happy that it's happening, but this just wasn't the area that I was most interested in. So I took a pretty long sabbatical, so to speak, uh, because in the late 90s, this was in 94 and 98 when I was doing this research, uh, there wasn't really many folks having this conversation. Maps existed, but they were a small office in Charlotte, North Carolina. So I went to go visit them. I think Rick Strassman was doing this work with DMT, but he was again taking it from a biomedical perspective, what's happening to the body. What's interesting about his research is he also took the qualitative components outside of the quantitative data, the biomedical data. He was also finding out that these people had really weird and unusual and profound spiritual experiences that were coming up. So that's kind of the area that I was like, that's really interesting to me. Why are all these people having these similar, although very strange and different experiences of consciousness? Um, so I went to maps, just kind of checked out and say, who else is doing this work across the US in terms of professors, uh, things like that. Uh, did about a 10,000-mile road trip, prison around the US, uh, meeting professors. Most of them were doing this research as a hidden research topic. They were doing something else as their forefront research topic. And then on the side, they're doing this psychedelic research or interested in this kind of sort of conversation. Other things going on, like towards the science of consciousness, which was also sort of dabbling in that University of Arizona, uh, Worlds of Consciousness. I actually met uh Albert Hoffman once upon a time in Basel, Switzerland. The way to talk about psychedelics was to talk about consciousness at this point in time. Um, you know, so that was around 98, 2000, 2001 that time. So I took a little semantical, like I said, uh moved to Hawaii, sort of got moving from Detroit area to Hawaii was a pretty big transition. You know, um, realizing like, oh, I have the body, and oh wow, there's all this, you know, this this place you can just be in nature and surrounded by the sort of the the the the the nectar of the natural world so you can like dolphins and waterfowls and you know waves and lava, bamboo forests, and all that stuff. So uh during this time I came across ayahuasca. Um, ayahuasca really, for someone like myself, who at the time was very much mechanistic in my approach, or this can be explained as a higher consciousness or something like that. For ayahuasca, for me, it really created that phenomenological experience or that inner experience of like, oh, wait, I'm having a conversation with something that doesn't feel like me. Whether that's true or not, that was the sense or the the feeling I had there. Like I was actually engaging in a relationship with, for lack of a better term, an intelligent being, an agent that was beyond myself. And that was pretty profound because I sort of shook my paradigm up quite a bit, even after having plenty of mushroom experiences, to the point where I had to really consider like, okay, how do we relate to these plants? How do we respect and honor these plants and these mushrooms? And how do we sort of engage with them and sort of in good practice? So um, so so with my IOS experiences, it was pretty clear that I was like, okay, now I found something that I'm very interested in in terms of getting back into doing some research on, and I found something that has such a huge qualitative inner experience to explore that I think I could focus on that and not have to um there's there's always something there that I can look into, and there's plenty of data and that type of thing. So I worked with somebody in southern Brazil by the name of uh Dakalu Ciduada Luna. Luna had done quite a bit of work. He's uh worked with Pablo Emaringo once upon a time to start their school out in uh in the Amazon. Uh Pablo Maringo wrote the ayahuasca visions or did the paintings for the ayahuasca visions. He was friends with Terrence McKenna once upon a time. Actually, I think they introduced each other to ayahuasca way back in the day. So they have this long history. And he's been doing work um kind of uh he has a research center in southern Brazil where he's been doing work kind of uh according people's experiences and that's so I started to jump into that. Uh, I went to the uh to find a university that I could do this work at. Again, this is uh 2008-2009 when I started exploring this. Still, this research was not really well recognized in the university setting, you know, a little dabble here, a little double there. I think at this point in time we had the Johns Hopkins study came out, which was pretty profound because they weren't looking at pathologies or sicknesses. They were looking at healthy normals, which I think was pretty great. It'd be nice to see more of those types of studies out right now instead of the big focus just on uh mental health issues, uh, because I think that's also really important in that was speaking to a city council member at one point in time that was saying something like uh seeing these as almost like prophylactics or something that can like help beforehand for the mental health, right? So we can offer and uh provide experiences for people that can create wonder and awe that can help us feel reconnected to nature and community and self and spirit. Um maybe we won't have as much depression or anxiety or those types of things. Um so the the 2008, I think, was a study that came out of Johns Hopkins looking at healthy normals, uh and they found 68 to 70 percent of the people said it was the top five most meaningful experiences in their life. And that was compared with a child or you're getting married or anything, that's really profound. You're like, wow, this is a big, big experience for folks, right? Um, and then they found that those results held for I think 14 months was the second follow-up study they did uh that people still had this meaningful impact. So there's something in there that was also fascinating to me, which I ended up um working on a little bit with my dissertation, which is this this transformation, this the shift that happens. You know, what's meaningful about it to these individuals? What goes from not having an experience to having experience, and then this this impact stays for 14 months, this impact, you know, and that's where the transformation comes in. So I said I went to the California Institute of International Studies, uh, which is a transpersonal psychology school here in San Francisco. It's one of the few schools at the time that would uh really allow for sort of an explicit uh research project on psychedelics or antigens, antigens meaning psychedelic plants and mushrooms. And so uh so I dove into that, and that was pretty great. Uh during that time, I also started um speaking to a lot of people who were also into this research. We had a class together uh with uh Dr. Susanna Bustos, who was doing an antigenic shamanism class, and a variety of folks in that class uh were discussing what do people do with this information? You know, and so Susanna had talked a little bit about integration work as well. And we were like, let's put together like a group that focuses on education and integration and bringing people together. Uh, this was like again about 2010, 2011, somewhere around there. Um, but we had enough people together uh uh to put together a really great conference. And so we put together our first conference, a small little grassroots style conference in San Francisco. Uh but we had like James Fatiman there, Stanley Krippner was there, Bia was there, I don't think he was talking, but she came and a variety of other people were there. And uh it was like, wow, there's like 200 people here, 20 speakers. Uh, we just kind of threw this together for them to get against the wall kind of thing, and it worked out really well. So wow, even in the Bay Area, there's a real hunger for this conversation because it kind of fizzled out, it wasn't really happening. So we uh started our group Entheogenic Research Integration and Education, which is a nonprofit. Uh we started around the same time as another group with San Francisco Psychedelic Society, uh, which was really great because they were doing more, at the time, we're doing more sort of synthetic, recreational, policy-oriented stuff. And our group Erie was doing a little bit more plant medicine, mushroom medicine, traditions, bringing in indigenous speakers and you know, other people who were talking about things that were outside a little bit more in the fringe areas. Uh, we also like to have people that didn't necessarily agree with each other come up on stage and sort of speak about what their topics are so that you could actually hear where the nuances are, where the rubs are, where the edges are, which I think is the juiciest part of the conversation. I think one of the best sort of subtle pats on the back that we had was from uh Dr. Joe Tafour, who said, he's like, Well, you know, usually I go to these other conferences and I speak about this topic, but this is an eerie event. So now I can talk about the things that I really want to talk about or that are a little different or that uh maybe aren't sort of well respected in some of these more corporate or sort of pharmaceutical-oriented sort of conferences and get weird. To me, that's what we're trying to do. That's why I even called the group Eerie as an acronym. People kind of gave us a hard time about that, but it's like that is what we need to talk about. It isn't necessarily all love and light. It might be mysterious, it might make you feel weird, make your hair stand up a little bit. You know, these are the types of experiences, the weird types of experiences that I think uh in terms of integration, at least people are trying to work through. You know, if you're like, oh yeah, I you know, need to heal this relationship with my my friend or my family member, that's sort of basic. But then it's like, wow, did you know how big consciousness is, or did you know that there's these beings that we can have conversation with, or yeah, there's agency with these other plants, like these are the weird types of things that I think were were most fascinating to us at the time. And we noticed that a lot of people, at least in this pharmaceutical Bay Area, were hesitant to go to therapists to talk about some of the weird experiences because they were, at least at the time, especially 2011 time, it's like, I don't want to be diagnosed or given medicine to hide these experiences. I'd like to really just talk about it with peers and sort of unpack it and have an opportunity to like share. Uh, and at that point in time, even the concept of integration was still kind of looked down upon in a lot of conferences. We heard a lot of people sort of, you know, integration is just people's egos talking or this, that, and the other. And but we're doing it in real practice, not just theory on stage. And we're like, no, but people are really getting a lot out of this. There, most importantly for us was that we were reducing the alienation and the isolation that people were feeling because that's really a huge part of your transformative experience. Sometimes when you transform, your friends and family don't like it the most because they're like, wow, this person's different. You're like, Yeah, but I'm healing and look at it, I'm not doing these things, but like, no, we like the person that drank every night with us and got hammered. Well, I don't want to do that anymore, you know. And even for people that knew about psychedelic experiences, there was, I don't know what I'm terming this as, but there was this situation where it's really okay for you to talk to your friends in the quote unquote recreational party scene or whatever, like, oh yeah, I went out and my my face melted, and it was like the super great music, and like you can talk like that, that's fine. But when you're like, oh, I realized that I was actually connected to everything and that we're all divine beings, and you know, here's how I need to heal my traumas and blah blah blah. Whoa, whoa, slow down. We're not ready to talk about that. We just want to talk about the safe recreational stuff where you're just melting your face up, right? So so even within the community, there was needed a space for people to talk about these experiences that was just non-hierarchical, non-judgmental, really just engaging with folks on sort of the base level and listening to each other's stories and sharing and reflecting on it in a good kind of way. And so we started these uh peer integration circles in around 2011, and now it's like, you know, everyone's doing peer integration or doing integration works. So it's cool. Right, true. The fact that the conversation has shifted and that that's a conversation that now it's like it's expected for people to say integration is a big part of this, whereas when we started, it was kind of still a fringe thing to talk about. So quite a transition that's happened. Um, we we did a lot of events over the course of the uh the time, even you know, at California Institute of Integral Studies, they were a little hesitant around integration because their mindset is like, well, if you're integrating, you must be integrating traumatic experiences instead of saying, like, oh, well, there's a lot of things that people just maybe need to make meaning of, you know, and so they were a little hesitant and they were like, we need to get our lawyers and this, that, and the other involved, and blah blah blah.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

To that degree?

SPEAKER_05 14:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah, big time. Yeah, yeah. And our insurance made that allowed you to do this at the school and et cetera, et cetera. And um, so that was great for us, though, because that motivated us to get a 501c3 to become official as a nonprofit. And so in 20, because we were a student group previous to that, but we were having like one-in-person plus events at the um the school and doing all these integration circles. And this was from 2011 to 2014. 2015, we got our nonprofit, and they wouldn't let us do anything at the school anymore because we were now an official external nonprofit. So we expanded out of the Bay Area, which was great because it really helped to uh bring this conversation to a larger audience. Um, so that was going on for quite a few years. Really kind of helped train a lot of people and inspire a lot of people all throughout Portland Psychedelic Society before they began. They called us up and we're like, hey, what's going on? And an Aware project, which is uh place down in San Diego. Everyone kind of interested, hey, we can see the benefits of aware project.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Is that Francisco you said?

SPEAKER_05 15:12

San Diego, San Diego, LA area, I think. So there's quite a few different groups out there, you know, and then from there, I'll just just you know, encouraging people or giving them trainings on integration circles and all that type of thing, or even how to create like a student group or all that stuff. So that was kind of great, you know, just kind of watching the expansion of people turning their lights on, basically, and and you know, and then bringing this resources to their community, whether it be mentorship or just information or just a community environment, I think was really, really helpful. Um, I think that really kind of not just us, but everybody out there that was doing that helped to really lay the groundwork for what we're seeing today. Because it created that sort of beacon in every one of these towns that everyone was like, hey, I know I where I can go to if I want to talk about these experiences. I know that there's some other people out here. It's not just me having this really weird, you know, consciousness expanding experience. Like there are other people that are having similar experiences. So when uh around 2000, late 2018, group is all came together in um in Oakland and we were gonna talk about how do we put together a conscious healing center or someplace where people can, you know, work on different things again, you know, obviously limited because of the criminality around secular plants and fungi or anti-general plants and fungi. So that became part of the conversation. Okay, if we're gonna do this conscious healing center, like wouldn't it be great if we could also engage in a way that we didn't have to worry about criminal penalties, right? So this started the conversation uh around Denver and Denver decriminalizing psilocybin. This is before it had happened, this is late 2018, and then Oregon, which is working on legalizing psilocybin. So we had a sort of discussion. What's the difference between decriminalization and legalization? And maybe we can talk about that in a bit. What's the difference between, you know, psilocybin as a synthetic or mushroom containing psilocybin as an organic material? Uh, what does that mean in terms of empowerment of the individual, in terms of the entrouge effect, all these other things again? We can chat about that in a bit. Um, but that was kind of the conversation that started us to be like, hey, can we do this in Oakland? You know, I think I think we could. This weren't the San Francisco Bay Area. Like, why aren't we part of this conversation already? You know, what's going on here, right? And um, Carlos Pozolo, who was the the chair of the V Criminal Nature Board, he had done a lot of work in Oakland in terms of the city council. So he knew the process and knew how to get things um, you know, sort of how to sort of maneuver and navigate the city council process. And so we said, okay, well, let's try and do this on the city council level. And basically what we would do is sort of follow a similar um approach that was um done with cannabis back in the day, which was sort of a um a deprioritization and defunding, which would be a de facto decriminalization on the city level. So the city has the power to fund and you know, say where the resources are gonna go and to set priorities for law enforcement. Uh, they don't have necessarily the the power to change law on the state level. If they change law or put it in the municipal code, which would be technically called the quote unquote ordinance, which is a resolution, then you might have pushback from the state. And the state could come after the city council members for quote unquote breaking the state law. Right. So we're like, okay, let's find this loophole and kind of engage in it that way. Uh the second conversation we started to really have was around nature. What is nature? What what is our are we only going to do mushrooms? Because the folks in Denver, so a few folks in Denver told us you can't do anything more than mushrooms. It's the only thing that people are ready for. You know, um, this isn't something that uh we can kind of expand beyond. And we're like, okay, well, that's interesting. But again, we're in the San Francisco Bay Area, like all these communities exist on a large scale. There are ayahuasca communities, there are cacti communities, there are Eboga communities, there are DMT communities. Like, why are we going to try and limit everybody? Let's have this bigger conversation around nature. And it also sort of pulls away from the detractors because it's not as easy for them to say, oh, you're just trying to get high on mushrooms, quote unquote, right? But hey, you know, what is our relationship with nature? Why is something that grows out of the ground naturally against the law? Why can't I watch a plant grow? And that's against the law. Like I can't even like grow a plant, even if I don't eat it, just growing it, you know, with mushrooms and peyote, they're two plants that you can't even grow in the state of California. And so we started having this conversation around what is our relationship with nature, which I think is what created the umbrella, which a lot of people were able to sort of feel uh feel represented in when it came to the larger movement for everyone is able to participate in a different kind of way. This is a conversation that um could bring people together in a way where if we're just talking about what substance, we might not have been able to do that. So um, so we'd focus mostly on schedule one substances. Uh there was some um some some good conversation regarding, you know, why aren't you doing all natural materials? For example, poppy and foca are schedule two substances. We said we just wanted to focus on schedule one. Uh schedule two obviously has you know medical value to some degree, and so we'd be fighting the pharmaceutical companies in an even bigger way, which I don't think that we're, you know, as a grassroots organization coming together just trying to make this happen. We were like, I don't think we're ready to take on that fight quite yet. But this is important for that larger conversation because we see now pharmaceutical companies are looking into trying to patent things and are looking into trying to create monopolization around their process and all that kind of stuff. So we're like, okay, let's work on these um natural plants and mushrooms and let's you know engage in this in a community-based way. We held uh first event. We had like 180 people show up to the event, took a lot of great pictures, it was a really great rally. We talked to different city council members. We were lucky to find a city council member, council member Nolgayo, who has uh his grandmother was uh Cudendera, and he comes from the Yakwe tradition, which has a tradition of peyote use and uh other types of plant medicines and things of that nature. So uh he seemed to really get it when we talked to him about it. You know, oh yeah, my grandma's been healing people with plants for a really long time. So so that was really wonderful. And he decided he wanted to help us sponsor it. So uh sponsoring me basically that he's uh you know gonna put his name on it, we can get it on the agenda. And once he went to sponsor it, it started moving really fast. So basically, we went from like kind of shopping around to okay, it's on the agenda at the end of next month, and then it's on the agenda again a week after that, you know. So we okay, let's rally everybody together. Um, we had the first city council meeting, it was a public safety and health meeting. We had, I think, the open city council meeting room is huge. I don't know exactly how many seats are in there, but I would say 250 to 300.

SPEAKER_04 21:14

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 21:14

And it was pretty much full. But there's a balcony above, there's uh space in the bottom, and all that was full of people ready to be excited about this. You know, the outdoor was all just full of people. Also, interesting as a side note, the difference between you can see you can almost tell a city and their relationship to the activism in the city by how big their city council room is. Like Oakland, activist place, been doing a lot of you know, like things politically um speaking for a really long time. Surprisingly, San Francisco, really tight room. Maybe you can fit a hundred people in there total. But this like it's kind of almost like, no, you're not really allowed to, you know, okay, we're gonna do make the decisions here. You let a few of you in really packed, packed, packed. Uh we ended up inviting 20 people to speak. We told Of like, okay, get 20 people to come and talk about their testimony. Uh, testimony also is such a huge thing because unlike voting on a ballot initiative, where your responsibility as a city and the sin is just say yes or no, you don't have to actually have any personal experience. You say yes, I believe this thing, or no, I don't believe this thing. There's not a lot of like um, I don't know, okay, there's still courageous. But in regards to giving a testimony on public record at a city council office saying, Hey, everybody, I broke the law. This transformed me. I wouldn't be sitting here today otherwise. Now that's impressive and that takes courage. And like I said, there's we invited 20 people. There ended up being 100 people that wanted to give testimony on that first day, to the point where we were like, oh, we don't know who these other 80 people are. Maybe there are going to be 80 people who are going to be against it. And I think we almost had 100% of the people were for it talking about their own personal testimony, talking about helping them heal, talking about you know the research and you know what they're seeing in terms of their practice, all these different types of things. So um, so that was really, really powerful to see kind of shake out. And actually, we just had our fourth anniversary, June 4th, 2019, so not too long ago. So it's a nice little celebration.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

Larry, this is so cool. The power of our collective when we believe and when we show up and we have the courage to speak up for what is inherently feeling right and truthful to you. I love it.

SPEAKER_05 23:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, and then that's kind of what it we felt like too was really like people saying this is this is a a people, people-powered movement, you know, and so um, and so so we ended up uh getting a vote that night. We had two abstentions and everyone else had voted yes. We went to talk to the one of the council members who was just trying to, you know, take care of his community. Um, you know, council member um um Taylor, I believe. And um, so we had some meetings, you know, before between the two public safety and the final vote. And uh the the day before the final vote, we met with council member Taylor and some folks, and we walked in and all of a sudden it was like uh right, because this is still kind of new, like all the law enforcement heads of law enforcement were sitting in the office and are like, oh we just we just went on public record talking about how we book the law and we're walking right into the den here with all the law enforcement. And actually, it was uh really I mean, I was impressed with the conversation because you know, usually coming from the history, you know, there's there's some concern about how is this going to be interpreted, you know, how you know there's all the stigma around it. And you know, they were really knowledgeable um of the different substances. They understand they told us we have better things to do than arrest somebody for growing mushrooms, you know, we're in Oakland. This is you know, this is the least of our concerns. Uh, they basically wanted to know real basic things like what do we do if somebody has a challenging experience? You know, how do I be able to tell that between a psychotic break and all these other types of things? And Bob Jesse, who's uh who helped actually with uh the Johns Hopkins studies and also works with Busono, was on a call with us uh on that day, and he made a really good point, which is basically like, wouldn't it be, you know, because they're concerned around like, oh, how do we tell or what do we do if somebody's like tripping out of mushrooms and you know we have to have some sort of conflict with them? And he made a point, which I think everyone kind of just kind of hit hit the floor, and everyone just was like, hmm, yeah. Like he said, wouldn't it be great if instead of having to be in conflict or fear, someone could just say, Hey, officer, I'm having a pretty intense mushroom experience right now. I'm really scared. You just help me. And I think everyone was like, Oh yeah, wow, when you take away that criminality, then there's an opportunity to have conversation there. And instead of it being this conflict or someone's against the law, or we have to go after this person, we can just, you know, sit there and then it allows for law enforcement to call somebody else up and say, Hey, could you help this person out? We have other things to do. You know, this person just needs some closure divers. So that was really great. I think they really heard that, which was good. Um, and then, like I say, really helpful in trying to really um, you know, ensure that people, you know, aren't getting arrested for substances. This should be a you know, health issue of anything, rather than a criminal issue, you know, it was lots of reasons that we can go into around why that could be done. But yeah, I was pretty impressed with that. So we took that, so that was a big relief. And the next day was going to be the final vote. We go into the final vote. I think they were like, all right, everybody, we got it. You don't need a hundred more people speaking, right? And uh, we still had 30 people that were like, no, no, I really want to share my story, be on record, and be a part of this movement. And some of the folks gave testimony that like you could feel the tears welling across the board. One that really stands out for me um is really was super, super powerful. You know, this woman was standing there and she said, I've been doing heroin for 14 years. Uh, I was ready to end it all. This is this was wasn't working for me. I didn't know what to do. I was at the end of my rope, so to speak. Um, and you know, I didn't I didn't know where to go. She said about five years ago I had an e-booking experience. Um, it totally shifted me. It allowed me to get out of my substance use issues and allowed me to start my life all over again. And here's my four-year-old daughter. And they can just feel everybody, like, like again, evil chills too, right now. Just like just like wow, the power of these medicines that somebody's really standing here. Her whole life has changed. She's she's now has a family, she's now, you know, um, you know, in a good space and sharing that story. So, so it was, you know, it was pretty, pretty powerful. And I think any city council member to vote no after hearing stories like that would be like run out of time, you know. So so yeah, so then uh then they ended up putting it up to the vote. There's some other sort of you know, negotiations to make sure everyone was on board behind the scenes, but it ended up being a unanimous decision. And to this day, I don't think there's been a louder applause or cheer that's happened following a city council vote. We get posted on our social media a few times, but they're just like this like once it was unanimous decision, it was like 300 people in the room were like, can you just feel it, you know? Uh and that was that was amazing because that was the first time, not just a voter ballot initiative, but another approach through the city council vote to really convince the city council members how this can be beneficial for the community. I think they all were um in alignment with, and it was a unanimous decision, which also meant that everyone was in agreement, which I think is also really powerful in terms of the a movement builder. And then so we ended up uh celebrating and being excited that uh this was kind of the first stepping stone of this larger movement. And from there, I think all these communities from all these other cities reached out. They were interested in talking more. They wanted to like see if something could happen in their city, um, you know, Berkeley, which is right next to Oakland, had already reached out to us before the Oakland had passed and they wanted to pass something. Of course, they were still working on Berkeley, but hopefully within the next month or so we'll have passed that, which would be great. But uh, but yeah, it just sort of started this movement. It's amazing to think that this movement happened in the middle of a pandemic as well. When people were like, what are we gonna do? How do we even talk to our city council members? Is this a priority for city council? And I've heard from so many people all throughout the U.S. that said, you know what, this was like a piece of hope in the middle of this mess. We're on lockdowns, we can't move out of our house, we can't connect with other people, we're you know, isolated, we're alienated, everyone's concerned about getting everyone else sick. All these things are happening. But here is there's something that we can talk about together, we can connect with together. It's about expansion of consciousness, about spiritual experiences, about the sacredness nature of nature, you know, and talking about uh being in community and being in ceremony and all these sort of ways to engage with these different um plant medicine experiences. I think that really helped people a lot during this process. There was a little bit of a stall that happened at the beginning, you know, I think from you know March when everyone was like, oh, what's happening to later? Uh that it's kind of rough. But luckily for us, there's this wonderful team uh in Ann Arbor, which I maybe gave a little extra time to because I went to school in Ann Arbor. And so you did my undergrad there. So I was like, oh, well, there's this great team in Ann Arbor. I'd love to see Ann Arbor pass. Uh so we we spent a lot of time. They were like, you know, hey, we're already meeting every week. Let's keep trying. This is gonna hurt. We're just sitting around. We can't we're not doing anything anyway because of uh, you know, all the other conditions that are happening. And let's let's try and see this one work. And they ended up breaking through the veil of uh the pandemic, so to speak, and they ended up winning. And once they won, it was like the next year was great because we had a lot of cities that were like close or that that were like, okay, maybe this can help with mental health issues or substance use issues that are coming from the pandemic and all these other things. And so they think we had like, I think maybe 10 or 12 cities passed in that first year after Ann Arbor passed, which was pretty great. Uh, then we had a little bit of a lull. Uh, I think we only had about two or three cities last year that passed, but this year we're already at two, you know, maybe hopefully have five more before the end of the year. Um, so uh what's great about this movement is even though there are 100 cities that started off that were super pumped, maybe a lot of those fizzled out because of the pandemic and other reasons. Uh there's this constant flow of people that were ready to sort of engage, are ready to um, you know, make change happen. I talked about this a lot too, is that um before this happened, I didn't know anything about politics or city. I mean, I know politics, you know, okay, you know, that's happening, you know, but like how do I engage? How do I actually make change happen? Like, sure I can be angry about what's going on, or sure I can, you know, sort of, you know, be all humbug about like I don't like this thing or that thing. But if I'm not doing anything, how can I really complain? If I'm not really going up and making sure that those people with big money have an opposition to what they're saying, if that they're trying to control something or monopolize something or you know, influence politics as lobbyists and things like that do, then really, you know, how how am I really engaging in it? I'm just being upset about it. So so I think for myself and probably a lot of other folks who are really training and teaching people how do you engage with your city council? How do you engage in local elective politics? You know, on the federal level and the state level, it gets a little out of hand because you have big money that can come in and influence, but on the local level, that really is where the people that make change happen. And so, um, you know, how do you call up a city council member? How do you write a resolution? What types of how do you bring a community together? How do you set up a testimony? What how long are the testimonies? What types of things do you need to worry about in terms of the city manager and the the the chains of command and is the mayor strong or is the mayor weak in terms of can they veto a proposal? How many city council members do what's your city council members? Like there's people like, I don't even know who my city council member is. And so it's like it's it's sort of engaging in this direct democracy that I think we've lost as a society, as a community in terms of change, and we've become so apathetic that we've sort of forgotten that, like, yeah, it's uh it's our responsibility to protect consciousness. If we don't do it, then of course they're gonna just eat it up because there's no there's no sort of um um pressure from the people's side of things. So so that's been really beautiful to see. And uh it's been quite a movement since then. And uh, like I've still been helping out a lot of people that are doing the the city work to also help build local educational structures or local integration support systems, because that way at least you know the city council can say, okay, we don't need to over-regulate this. This is happening in community, let's let's lean on that, let's let's have good relationships with the community members that are doing this work. If we have any questions, we need to go back to them. And this also sets the table for us to be able to have the conversation at the state and thorough level. Because now when a state decides, okay, we need to figure out like who are the stakeholders, if the state has passed a bunch of cities, then they're gonna reach out to those local communities and get their input on the so again, you know, while some people might say, oh, well, cities, it's not really that big a deal. We've heard that before. Oh, cities, there's just cities, right? Of course, it's the big money people saying that, right? You have to do it on the state level for it to be important. Go back around to Colorado. We had when they started off saying, Oh, we can only do mushrooms, and this movement happened for three years, and then their recent bill that passed uh 122, they used all four categories that we use. But the the cact that contained the mesclan, the evil game, the mushrooms of psilocybin solicin, and uh ayahuasca or and plant combinations similar to ayahuasca that contained VMT. So we had done enough in the conversation, enough in the news, enough in uh the general movement in general, and the folks in Colorado were also really pushing how hard that now this became the new conversation. And that's valid in issue. So that means it wasn't just convincing 10 people, it was convincing thousands and tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to vote on a particular direction. I think it was 60,000 or something like that of who voted for it, but but the shift that happened. And I think that's again the benefit of talking about nature because it's not really threatening to folks. Rose of the ground, why is it illegal? Why is it that if we're really concerned about safety, we don't also criminalize poisonous mushrooms, as many poisonous mushrooms as we want. Nobody says a thing, we won't go to jail for it. So it's not really a safety issue that people are concerned about. And so I think people are seeing sort of this the silliness criminalizing nature, especially on the back end of cannabis where like all the world didn't end, you know, which I think was the fear that people had, like, oh, if we decriminalize cannabis, everything else is gonna be riots in the streets and everyone's gonna be it's gonna be what are we gonna do? Exactly, exactly. So so that's a really long bio for it, Larry.

SPEAKER_02 34:26

Oh my gosh. The way you talk about this movement, and I love how you talk about direct democracy, because we lack that. In Albuquerque, in New Mexico, there's a lot more local movements that happen. It's a it's a very poverty-riddled state, the top three most poor states out of the country every single year for forever, right? We have a huge native population here, we have a huge Hispanic population here. And we have a huge issue with polysubstance use here and addiction. And, you know, one of the things I was doing last year is exactly what you were talking about, trying to reach the city council and also at the state level, reaching the representatives and saying, let's talk about this. We had a House Bill 393 that came out, it was November of this past year, um, for psilocybin. And it was beautifully written. And I just recently got to meet the person who wrote it to include the native population, to include physicians who are end-of-life physicians like palliative and hospice, to include experts in the addiction world, to include people in the just the indigenous as well in different layers. And I I thought it was brilliantly written, but it's so cool to be talking because I would love to bring that here, you know, to bring it and raise that awareness and kind of see it didn't pass. It didn't get funded. They were asking, we would need 150,000 to be able to do the research and to implement certain things. But it would be so cool at some point for us to get together and talk about this. And I love that you talk about education and that local community integration practice. It's everything. It's everything. I've done this studying on my own for the past 10 years, direct experience, also holding space for others. And the, you know, and I hadn't read anywhere that integration was a big deal until very recently. And I kept pushing that on the national level, on, you know, local level. I'm like, if you're gonna sign up with my program, we got to do the whole thing, the prep work, the work and the ceremony and the integration is everything. It's everything, um, it's just as important as the other parts, as the entire container. So I love that you have put so much effort into figuring out how to integrate because as it stands now, we still lack that community, that peer integration circle is lacking in a lot of practices that I see within New Mexico. I see in the East Coast. As a physician, I see a lot of ketamine clinics pop up where they're doing infusions, or you have practitioners, physicians who are going to people's homes and giving the injection intramuscular, or you're using spravata, or you're using the lozenges, but none of them are really doing integration. I have a physician that I've been working with with microdosing psilocybin, and she did eight sessions of ketamine, and she did not have any resolution to her suicidality, which she was suicidal every single day. In fact, she got more suicidal, severely suicidal, which had to be watched. And I asked her, I asked her, what was the container they were using? It was a very sterile clinical setting in a room by yourself. There was no pre-work, there was no one sitting with her during the infusion. And then she goes home just like that. And she's like, I had all kinds of visions and all kinds of hallucinations. And she had severe trauma that we were able to work through through the program, but it was she was like, your program really changed my life because there was that caring, loving interaction and relationship building. And so to me, when you say that peer integration circle, it's really life-saving for individuals. Um I would love to learn how we can collaborate to bring this here.

SPEAKER_05 38:42

Yeah, I would love to do that both in terms of the policy and also the integration work. I think the key with the the types of integration that are emerging right now, too. You have sort of your one-on-one moment. But there's something about the peer integration circle that is unique and different, and maybe it's maybe slightly harder to put it in a box for those that want to be a little bit more sort of uh organized with it, but it is, but it allows for a lot of things. Like in a one-on-one, there's always opportunities for editing, you know, like you're speaking to the person in front of you instead of speaking to your experience. When you have a peer group, you know, there's a lot of people there. So you're just gonna be kind of raw. At least this is what I've seen, raw with your experience. Also with the peer groups, there's a more chance that, and again, there might be therapists and other people that are doing the one-on-one stuff that have had a lot of profound experiences, and so can sort of touch in on that. But in a peer circle, you're really talking with other people who are diving deep. And so you have that sort of camaraderie of familiarity, if you will. The other people in that circle can say, Oh, yeah, oh, I know what you're talking about. And we might have spoken about this before too, but the there's one I forgot the the title of the ineffability, but there's a like four or five different types of ineffability. One of those is even if you have the perfect words to describe your experience, unless that other person has also had something similar in the experience, it's just gonna kind of right over their heads, they're not gonna really kind of get it. And so I think the peer integration circle strategy approach is really great because you were able to have conversations with people that are at least somewhat familiar with these spaces and can share or reflect from something similar that they that they've done. Now I'd be really curious. Um, well, uh was uh a couple of questions. Can I ask you a couple of questions? Is that right, Anna?

SPEAKER_04 40:14

Please, please, yes.

SPEAKER_05 40:19

So um was uh HCP 393 was that mostly a research bill or was that also uh a D crim bill or how did how was that coming?

SPEAKER_02 40:26

I don't know the details, to be honest with you. I need to speak to finally now that I'm connected with the person who wrote it, I'd like to sit with him and like really get to the details. I think D Crim was definitely a part of it. It was a jump off into hey, we need these layers, we need the research, we need the right people so that we can decriminalize, so that they would put the minds of the of the representative at rest so that it would move through. I can connect us together with him. You can ask all the proper questions that I don't have answers to.

SPEAKER_05 41:02

The reason I'm asking just is because it seems to be a quote unquote safe strategy for state politicians. But it's always gonna be something like, oh, this is gonna cost us a hundred thousand plus dollars, whereas declinization is just like gonna save people money because we're not using resources to arrest people. And at the end of the day, do we need to do more research to say, yes, we shouldn't arrest people for this? So I think in that regard, I think we're okay with not having now if it's it's a legalization model, maybe that's something different. How are we gonna regulate this? How are we gonna put this in a good space? So there might be some need for that. But in terms of decrement, which I think we should do first, which is basically saying let's not arrest people, um, I think sometimes the state politicians get stuck in the like, oh, we need to study this, and then it costs money, and then people say we can't, you know, so it gets stuck in that process of of of you know not moving forward necessarily because of that. And most of the time the the research bills, you know, um, it doesn't really need to happen through the state because most of the universities already have the licenses that can do the research. So it's kind of just like an extra thing if this if the the um state universities can get the funding for that and get the research to go to happen, then you don't really need a a state bill to make that happen. But um, but I think what's interesting about New Mexico too, which probably you know a little bit of, is that isn't in New Mexico you can grow mushrooms, you just can't dry them. So you can eat fresh mushrooms, or I guess you can't technically put them in your mouth, but it's not it's not illegal to grow. There's already a little bit more of a liberal policy regarding mushrooms there, which I think is really beneficial for the people. Um, and if we can just get them to be like, okay, you can also now dry your mushrooms and put them in your mouth, uh the way they're right.

SPEAKER_02 42:36

It's happening already, and that has happened for centuries because of our indigenous populations, right? We have a very strong history of peyote use of, you know, in our native population. We have, I mean, miles and miles of reservation land here, which is wonderful. We have a huge history of intergenerational curandera traditions here. And so it's very much in tune and in alignment with the new Mexican culture. And it's definitely, and hence also the intergenerational trauma is so vivid here that people who are suffering naturally gravitate towards something that works. And if it's if it's through nature, like why not? Right. But yeah, growing mushrooms, yes, it's you know, I I think that is I think if many years ago there was a case where um a man got arrested for having minimal amounts of mushrooms on him. And I gotta look up the story because I looked at it like five years ago, so I forget exactly what happened. But in that they released him. They did not charge anything against him at that time, which made big news because you know, they were like, Oh, it's just mushrooms, you know, just like we're talking about. It's nature. So to me, I think you hit him nail on the head with. You know, instead of them having to dish out money in order to look into it and all of that, hey, if we already know, then why don't we actually save you money? So that approach is a very different approach. And that's I think where it got stuck.

SPEAKER_05 44:15

Um, okay. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I definitely would love to chat with you and then the author and just see how we can make things happen, even if we can start getting some things passed on the local level, that'll help them on the state level as well. Yeah. And then I have question part two for you. Yes. Really sort of a two-parter question. First part is can you sort of help me sort of I I I have a basic understanding of the difference between palliative care and hospice care, which one is like kind of well before, and then one is like really close to um, you know, possibly passing away or whatever. Um, how do you see both kind of that dynamic and then also doing this work? I talked to somebody out here who was um working or or learning about ketamine, and and her thought, which I hadn't really considered before, was that she was like, maybe hospice care is too close to the end and there's not an opportunity for integration and maybe healing relationship challenges or things like that. What's your thought process in terms of the timeline, or how do you best provide integration for somebody that's in the hospice part? Or is it the integration is like, hey, we're preparing for this next step in your process of your soul, and you know, here's how we're gonna help set up the conditions for that. How do you sort of see that?

SPEAKER_02 45:23

You know, that's a great question. This is it's on a continuum. You have palliative care patients where they are they are diagnosed with a terminally ill diagnosis, like metastatic pancreatic cancer to the lungs and whatnot. And they still want to try Western medicine. They they have a child, a young child, let's say, and they're like, no, I don't want to stop. I want to see what other clinical trials I can meet criteria for at MD Anderson, at you know, the Mayo or whatnot. We know that they have very limited time, right? So, but they're right there between palliative and hospice, it's really the patient's decision at that point that I want to either go the aggressive route of Western medicine, or I'm kind of done. Like I'm post-wipple surgery, I can't really eat much food, I've lost all this weight, I'm in a lot of pain. Um and I've done my chemo and I'm just over it. And they sign up for hospice care where we only keep them comfortable and we, you know, we only focus on quality of life. With both, we work on symptom management significantly. With both, I see significant existential crisis and anxiety. And so being able to openly, and I can't right now, as a physician in this work, I cannot prescribe them. And it's so difficult. It is so difficult to say, I know I can help you, but I cannot give it to you. Like that's criminal to me. That's criminal. And yet I'm loading up with opioids like roxanon, we have fentanyl, and we have MSCantin and Oxycoton and Lurazepam, and you just keep going with all of that or mood stabilizers. And then I'm like, okay, that's okay. I can do that, but I cannot give them psilocybin. I cannot help them expand their consciousness so that their anxiety is low, so that they don't need that much opioids. Because a lot of my patients have the pain that they're experiencing, it's is suffering. Is that suffering? Is that relationships, as you mentioned? It's that they don't know how to reconcile their mortality with the guilt and the shame and all the things that we carry as humans. And when we have not resolved, it accumulates. And now we're like, oh, the end is near. What am I gonna do? How am I gonna reconcile of that? So, to be honest with you, I don't think it's ever too late if the patient and the family are open to it. Now, there are hospice patients where I take on and they have a week to live or they have two days to live. And you can tell, like having had the had the experience for so many years, now I know like you're at the end, and yeah, we'll we'll do whatever we need to do to keep you absolutely comfortable and in a state where family can be there for you in the in a comfortable position too. And what's really interesting is the family dynamic. And when the family has a lot of baggage from the past and trauma, if they are not able to let go, the dying patient has a really hard time letting go. And so it's really holding the family and sitting with them and talking about all of this or resolving their past issues and traumas. When they let go, the patient goes. It's fascinating.

SPEAKER_05 49:09

Yeah, and I believe there is some research, and again, this like speaks to like how we need to understand the death and dying process because like our mindset is well, we give it to the patient who's going through that process. But what you're speaking to is like, hey, how about we also bring in the family and do some healing with everybody? So everyone can just help that go a little bit better.

SPEAKER_02 49:28

Yes. And you know, there are some traditions in South America where where there's conflict in the family, they bring the entire tribe starting age eight and up, and they have a solo sabbin ceremony with the entire tribe to resolve and to be able to be in a place of peacefulness and serenity. So, you know, I think that model would be incredible to bring to the, you know, as soon as someone is diagnosed with a terminal illness, to bring that conversation in, hey, you have options. Same thing with addiction, right? Hey, you have options. It's not just methadone and it's not just Suboxone. You also have psychedelics if you want. And it's not all these medications, all these antipsychotics. You know, I have a, I also have a small practice in addiction medicine that I do in Santa Fe. And one of my patients, like, I'm an addict. Stop shoving down drugs down my throat. I don't want them. I don't want them anymore. You know, like that's why I'm in recovery. And I went through detox and it's hell, but stop giving any medications. I'm like, hallelujah. Yes, but we don't, we have not gotten the training and the education as physicians or nurses or just in the in the medical industry. And it's an industry, right? So of course the pharmaceutical comments are trying to push that and not have that conversation, right? But to sit with the patient, give them the options. Hey, when you have an addiction, you're here for recovery willingly. Why don't we give you, yeah, you have these options, the pharmaceutical options, sure, but you also have the option of not being on any medication. And you have the option of these psychedelic medicines with the entire container, right? Because when you're in cover recovery, you have a very comprehensive crew of people. If you're in a good program, you have the meditator, you have the acupuncture, you have the, you have the whole being kind of well-being that's take being taken care of in addition to medicines or not. But those two, the no medication route or the psychedelic route are just not options right now. You know, we just keep prescribing and keep prescribing, and it's just sickening. You're like, I don't know. Obviously, it's not working, you know. Um, and and the same, same in the palliative route. I would love to see us put that on the table for the patient and their family. You have this option. We can do the medications, we can do all of that. Um, and and I have some people come to me with for microdosing who are in the palliative um umbrella and they're not on hospice yet. And man, does it help with their anxiety and depression? And I'm talking about not living at all to fully living and connecting with their child, with their husband, with their family. Feel like, wow. I mean, powerful stuff.

SPEAKER_05 52:32

What uh when when we decriminalize, this is a conversation we have with a lot of medical folks, medical practitioners, people that want to incorporate this into their practice. The problem that we've been seeing sometimes with decriminalization is that uh medical practitioners and others are held by a different standard, which is their license and their insurance and their board. How do we address that when we're trying to change policy to allow people that are doing this good work to not have to be sort of trained by the state to do blah blah blah blah, but do what you're normally doing and incorporate this new sort of tool or medicine into your practice without having to be um, you know, sort of penalized because you're sort of held at a different standard than the legal system is even. But where's our sort of sort of where's the the weak point of that issue so that we can bring more folks into this conversation?

SPEAKER_02 53:16

Totally. You know, the source of it is the scheduling. And I was talking to Rick Straussman about this. So we're talking about he's like, I don't know how we would change that because he dealt with that significantly, right? Trying to get DMT, you know, through the all of it in the 90s. And he didn't know the answer to how do you how to change that? It's it's gotta be at the FDA level, but it's gotta take just the same type of like direct democracy kind of a deal to get that scheduling changed. Because when it's a schedule one as a physician, then all of those things are possible, right? Where you lose your license, all of those things. But if that isn't there, then the missing piece becomes education. And that's where I'm very passionate about education. Um, because I think with having the knowledge, both knowledge-wise and experiential, we can close that gap. That won't be a problem. But from a legal side, scheduling is is the first step, is what I see.

SPEAKER_05 54:18

And that would have to be federal scheduling, not state scheduling. So we'd really have to go all the way to the federal or if the if the state descheduled or rescheduled, would that be okay?

SPEAKER_02 54:27

You know, I don't know the legalities behind that. I don't know. Is it possible? I'm sure it's possible, but I'm thinking about cannabis. I don't know, you know, that because each state did their own thing. Now, you know, we went from the medical cannabis model to now we have dispensaries that are like for recreational use. How did we do that in the medical model previously? And you probably know much more about that. But was that also at the state level? Probably, because right?

SPEAKER_05 54:57

Because I'm sure there are doctors prescribing it before it even made it up to the state level. But I don't know that the doctors were often chastised and stigmatized and doctor and all that kind of stuff, which is disappointing to see because again, people are providing medicine for people that work stuff.

SPEAKER_02 55:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So maybe even even that, you know, it would be interesting to do that research and to see how we went about with medical cannabis. And I know one of the things that we all get concerned about is with psilocybin not having the education in the community. Exactly you said, as the city council people were concerned about the psychosis and those issues that may come about. What are we gonna do? Right. Um, and and would the answer be the same similar model to the medical cannabis? Would it be medical psilocybin practices that we would have where we would have a multidisciplinary team of physician or MP plus therapists or you know, a community and a community, that integration community? I don't know, just some thoughts where yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 56:04

Yeah, I think I think it's like this double-edged sword, right? Because that's that approach will be really great for some particular people. Maybe, maybe other people that wouldn't work for them, but for some people that'll work great. But unfortunately, like you're saying, like it's adding all those additional people in. I mean, even on a non-medical level, which is what's happening in Oregon, you're already looking at $3,500 to $15,000 for someone to have an experience, right? Which is out of the range for 95% of all the people out there. They were doing the medicalization in Australia, and I think they were saying it was $25,000 to $35,000 Australian dollars, which I think we'll just have to about 16 to 20,000 US dollars have an experience. Um, so again, it's like the more people that are super qualified that we bring into the picture, the more I think it'll cost. And and also we do know them in safety-wise, I think we're pretty good, but maybe there are some things like people with suicidal ideation or people that are working with really, really challenging you know, substitutes issues or hospice care or palliative care or neural regeneration, or you know, um, dementia or other things of that nature, that perhaps medical practitioner might be the best, best thing to do. But then you get in the conversation of, oh, we're gonna have to have insurance pay for it.

SPEAKER_04 57:12

Oh, and I just like oh, it's a expensive it is, then insurance gets in.

SPEAKER_05 57:17

Now, insurance is controlling how you have the sacred experience of consciousness or healing. And uh, so we're like you're stuck in this weird kind of box that we're trying to get out of, but yet it's still holding us down with these bungee cords and these like, how do we make this work? How do we how do we bring everyone's skill sets together and utilize them in a good way to help for healing or personal spiritual growth or or even just letting people have their experiences and exploring consciousness, all those different types of things are possible? But I guess like how do we maneuver, give them the sort of certain scenarios we're we're stuck in right now?

SPEAKER_02 57:50

Yeah, a couple of things that come up. Um, I trained a physician up in Baltimore, and she has an addiction medicine and um pain medicine, a practice that's very successful. After our work together, the one of the conscious life practices that we work on significantly is meditation and contemplation. And I call it awakening meditation because wake up and sit and meditate, because that's how you start your day. So she it was very cool that I brought her on the podcast, and she has found a way to build insurance for group meditation for her patients, for pain patients. These are patients who are severely on really high doses of pain meds and all of that, but knowing that with meditation, you can actually decrease pain. And she's now there's like a code, there's an insurance code that you can bill for from a medical practice that covers it, covers group coaching and group like medication. And so she's doing that. And it's so cool that there are ways we can go about it that would make sense, where you would bill for time instead of for diagnosis, and you include the diagnosis. And of course, like the patient who's coming to you for palliative care issues, they have a terminal diagnosis and 15 other things, probably that they were given all along the way. I think. Can we pioneer this? We could, but that scheduling has to change before we can say, hey, so I'm seeing this palliative person who's here, and I had a two-hour session with them, let's say with ketamine, I am ketamine. How do I bill for that? Now with still a side band, it's a much longer six hours. So then we would have to figure out, oh, would insurance pay for six hours in one day, right? Um, or could there be a hybrid model of patients being able to pay out of pocket because some of it is paid by insurance? For the therapeutic portion of it, the integration, why not have therapists get paid the same amount they get paid? And average what I see uh in the market is 125 to let's say 250 an hour, depending on years of experience, the type of thing that you're doing and all of that for a therapist. And so let's say your integration is you do three sessions of integration over the next three weeks. Most people who are getting therapy already obviously can afford it, right? So um I think thinking about it from a different perspective is what we need to do now. Instead of thinking, majority of us are thinking a bundle, and in in that bundle is three to five thousand dollars at least, right? Because of the amount of time you spend, expertise you have, um, the level of experience you have in the room. Now, the other thing that I keep hearing about is potential for the nonprofits or formation of a church, right? And so under that church model, then you get donations. And some people are practicing that way. He's talking to a group in Alabama who is doing ayahuasca and psilocybin groups with a native church, and there is it's just by donation.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:07

Yeah. And do you do you envision that as things move forward and maybe insurance needs to get involved or anything like that? How do you see the dynamics playing out between the questions that are? Oh, I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:20

How do you how do you see the dynamics playing out between synthetic psilocybin and mushroom psilocybin? Because, for example, in Oregon, they even limited there to only be one type of mushroom, which is a Kubenzies, but yeah, you can go outside and pick a variety of other different types of mushrooms that are also hundreds other types, right? Right, right, right. So, how do you see that playing out? And do you see that being effective, or do we need to like really? I mean, I I have my own biases, obviously. I'm all about the nature, but what's your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:45

I am not for synthetic, period. I think the whole plant has a consciousness that is sacred, and we have to honor that by this Western medicine way of extraction. We have seen harm to millions of people for many, many years. And I'm not for it. I'm all about that whole plant nature. Look, psilocybin mushrooms have been used for millennia, right? Millennia since the earth was has been around and humans have been around, animals have been around, still have mushrooms and they've been used, and animals have eaten them and have used them, right? For evolution. And and for us to come and say, let me take this molecule out for monetization, sickening to me. That's criminal to me.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:36

Yeah, yeah, we're on the same page with that. Yeah. And it's it's so it's so interesting. You know, you mentioned this as a sort of a side topic there, the conversation relating to animals and these different plants and mushrooms. And it really, that's you know, really sort of begs the question of like, oh, we would like to think of like humans as like the pinnacle of consciousness. But here we have these other animals that are also seeking out these plants or mushrooms, whether it's the reindeer eating ammonitas, or I've seen bears and and foxes eating ammonitas as well, or you have um the elephants that uh eat this particular type of fermented fruit, you have the dolphins and the puffer fish, you know, you have all these different types of animals that are looking for altered states of consciousness. And I think you know, there's some speculation that even um ebogane or iboga was discovered because they watched gorillas eating the roots of the ibogo plants. So gorillas have been eating ebogo for longer than humans have, that type of things. Um, so I think that's you know an interesting sort of side topic there is like, you know, even these animals are working with plants, and so it's it's safe across many different to say that we as humans have lost our way, that animals have always been connected and they continue to be.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:40

They know when to eat a particular plant. I watch our dogs go after certain weeds in the yard or when we go on the trails and walk, or one of them likes the sunflower. Um we wonder what time, like like what is happening that she craves that type of at that certain time. There's so they are in tune, we're not in tune. Once we use psychedelics, then we're more in tune, of course, with ourselves, with nature, with animals. And I think that's really the trajectory that I would love to see for our earth to go to, right? Is that's what we really need is that us humans change our wavelength to be connected with animals and with the plants so that we stop destroying and hurt people, hurt people. And so I get that, and I've been there, and but that's why we're in on this path of evolution to to get better and to not better in a sense of a bad and you know what I mean. It's to evolve ourselves, evolve ourselves so that the trajectory of our planet goes towards a direction of healing, but once we heal ourselves, that's what we are gonna see too, which I I love.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:53

And yeah, and I and I agree with that. Like the the connection, you know, part of healing ourselves is healing our connection to nature, and that we aren't actually suffered from nature, we are nature, we're also right. And there's uh there's this group in in Detroit that's uh doing some really amazing work. I know that uh one of the gentlemen, Mudu Baki, uh, he's done some uh incredible community work out there. And one of the things that he would do back in the day is to reintroduce, you know, no matter where we are, we have, for lack of a better term, plant blindness. We don't even know that there's a sunflower there, or that the star jasmine has, you know, evil gain in it, or that this flower is morning glory and has LSA in it, like, or this this grass has DMT in it, or this tree does, or you know, it's all around us, you know. And we've sort of we we've sort of uh come to the point of saying, well, like, oh, it's just there's just all this stuff we need to cut it down or mow it down, or like these weeds everywhere, oh you know, these bad plants, you know, like that's just our our mindset. And so he actually would would kind of flip that mindset and he would take people on walks around the city of Detroit. And Detroit uh had been very industrial in the past, but over the last 20 years, between a lot of uh many issues, including a lot of fires and things like that, arsons and things like that, that have happened, a lot of The housings and things like that, the buildings have kind of run down, collapsed, don't exist anymore. So more recently, when I've gone out there, I've been like, wow, like Detroit is actually a lot of nature there because a lot of these properties and things like that. So you have these properties with all what maybe some people would say weeds or blight or like this, this, this problematic overgrowth, right? And he's going in there and saying, Hey, everybody, let's come check this out. On this property, this plant is this and it does this and it's medicinal. It's not a weed. Or this plant over here does this and it does this thing, and this flower you can eat, and this over here, and like just kind of changing our even view of how we see nature. Instead of it just being like, Oh, this needs to be taken down, and we should put some cement there and as a side note.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:37

Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:38

And just really, really like really engaging, re-engaging with the plant. Even that that comes into our conversation, even. And I I try I say it a lot, so I'm also, you know, someone that does this, but but uh I try really hard to be aware of of like languaging and wording. So a lot of times when we talk about someone that's doing something that's um, you know, on the edge, we might say they're paving the way. But what does paving the way mean? It means we're getting rid of the plants, yeah, we're putting pavement down, we're making it easier for humanity to walk on without any consideration for the living beings that were there before. And so, how do we not pave the way but plant the seeds, feed the garden, nourish the soil, like trying to find other ways to really even think about that, even in sort of like myself, speaking for myself, just an understanding of how we engage with the plant kingdom and the natural kingdom, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:28

I'm gonna pick that up. I'm gonna practice that.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:30

Yeah, exactly. It's I watch it come out of my mouth sometimes and I try and like pull it back or whatever, but it's just a good mental practice because it does put us in the headset of like, oh yeah, we are in relationship with our environment. And paving over stuff isn't necessarily in relationship with it's it's it's dominating us. And so so, really, to just even think about that. So I've really been appreciating what they they've been doing in Detroit in the past, really taking advantage of the fact that, like, okay, we have all these plants growing everywhere. Let's learn about them, let's figure out what they are, let's figure out how they help us, let's figure out what our ancestors are, how our ancestors use these plants or how the ancestors of the area use these plants, you know, work with these plants. Was there special songs that people sung? Was there any traditions or lore that came around particular plants? What's the mythology of this plant? Does it have a you know an archetypal entity that is associated with it? Like there's so much that we can learn, there's so much mystery there still. What about these fragrant flowers that you know like here in in Berkeley area where I'm living right now? Like you can walk around certain areas of the neighborhoods in the springtime, it's like the smells are intoxicating. You can feel like the back of your like your minus is dripping with these smells because it's just so amazing, right? And these flowers. And and yet also on the other side of it, we have certain policy that it's changed a little bit now. But when we started, kept seeing this in policy, probably related to cannabis policy. Was like, you can grow a plant, but not in public view. Like we have to hide these beautiful flowers, we have to hide these beautiful plants, these beautiful smells, we have to hide nature from other people. It's dangerous. We can't have other people seeing that this is a natural plant. We need to know so so again, it's just this is interesting where we're kind of, and I think that's what's fascinating about this dynamic that we're seeing playing out between natural plants and mushrooms versus synthetics, and like where's our struggle in terms of the our relationship with nature? Are we in this? Like, I think we're in this tug of war between nature and technology right now, kind of like, where are we going? Where are we going? You know, and and really trying to figure out uh how do we both be grounded, but also not not to throw away technology be super beneficial for us in a lot of different ways, but to realize that we come from interconnected, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:22

There's interconnected is it's technology, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:26

So, but but to realize that we are part of this bigger thing and maybe think about more about like biomimicry versus you know destruction of, right? So it's a fascinating time to be in because you know these plants and mushrooms can help us tap into some of these things that can help us respect. I mean, you think there's a lot more respect for nature when you realize that there's sacred beings there, that that they can help to elicit this experience of consciousness. It's not just, you know, I mean, yes, it's wonderful to have things like blueberries that are sweet and wonderful and tasty, or strawberries or kale, or all the different wonderful things that we can also eat. But then when it's like, wow, we can actually explore consciousness from plants too. Why are these here? Why is it possible? Why is DMT the most ubiquitous compound in nature? What's going on there? It's just an interesting question. Some might say, Oh, well, it's to protect protect the plants from being eaten, but you know, or you know, whatever, but actually didn't work, right? Because now people are like, Oh, we need more of them. So, but uh, but you know, if you take like Michael Pollan's idea of botany of desire, where we're getting sort of cultivated by the plants so that we grow more of them, and that's an interesting theory. But it you know, again, brings us back to our plants conscious. What's our relationship with plants? How do how do plants speak? They speak through chemicals, they speak through fragrances, they can't move around, they have to like get attention in other ways. So I'm I'm sure you know of uh Monica Gagliano.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:42

No, I don't know her about her.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:44

A nature person, she's uh talks a lot about thus spoke to plants, and so she talks about how you know how we view consciousness and then different ways that plants can also engage in consciousness. So like speaking or like sending booms at the bottom of their roots so they can find out where water is, or if there's another plant nearby, like have this sort of sonic conversation that's happening. Or most recently, I think even with the last six months, there's a paper that showed that plants, when they're out of water or they're cut, will actually make little sounds almost subperceptual, but enough that it's like actually making a noise to say, Hey everybody, I need some water. Hey everybody, like I just got cut. There's another, I'm sure probably like three years ago, I think the study came out, maybe a little longer, where they showed that through the mycelial network of the roots underneath the ground, or was communication. So if a one plant was getting eaten by a giraffe, let's just say, there might be a tree on the other side way farther down that would now make we would hear or would through the communication of the mycelial network would now be like, oh, okay, there's some danger coming up. I'm gonna make my leaves more bitter. The giraffes aren't interested in my leaves. And they weren't even trees of the same species or anything. They were trees that were totally different from each other. But there's this conversation happening. So what is consciousness? What does that mean? How do we how how are we not aware of the consciousness that's happening in plants that are exist uh out there? So uh lots of big questions, of course, but I think that's another thing about us talking about nature, talking about plants and mushrooms that we are allowed to talk about them now in a bigger way, rather than it just being something that we extract or synthesize by the human being that's kind of lost some of that dynamic.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:15

Yeah. And you know what it what it makes me want to do is go lay on the grass straight now and just like hug it, hug it all, and give the love to all the roots and under the ground things that we don't see. And it's so funny as humans, if we don't see it, it doesn't exist. And to be held by all of it, that we're held by just these million organisms underneath the earth. We're being held and and upheld. It's so beautiful. I love it, Larry. We're gonna have to talk more. I have questions for you.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:48

My turn.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:49

But I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna ask you next time because I I want us to have another episode or many other episodes. Um, there's just so much goodness that's coming out of this conversation. I love it. I love it, I love it. Um, so yeah, we're gonna conclude this episode with I mean, there's deliciousness. Thank you so much for being here. Just sharing your wisdom and experience and perspective with all of us. It's invaluable. Thank you so much for the work you're doing. Um, and I'm definitely gonna, we're gonna continue this.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:25

I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you very much for inviting me. It's really great to have a conversation. Thank you for letting me uh ask you some questions because I think that's a beautiful uh sort of emergency conversation because you know that's that's stuff that I think we all need to hear from different perspectives and and uh and you know you're you're coming from such a an interesting perspective as well, with so much skills and knowledge, and and uh I really appreciate learning from you as well. So so I really look forward to future engagements and podcasts and maybe some collaboration and some other work as well, and some local decriminalization as well. So reaching out and inviting me here.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:59

Thank you, thank you. That's awesome.