Episode 1: Beyond the Ceremony – Why We Started This Podcast

What happens after the ceremony?

That's the question that inspired this podcast.

In our very first episode, we share the story behind Beyond the Ceremony, why we felt this conversation needed a home, and why we believe the real healing doesn't end when the medicine wears off.

After losing our Instagram account without warning, we realized how easily conversations around plant and amphibian medicines can disappear from social media. We wanted a place where we could have honest, thoughtful, long form conversations without trying to squeeze complex topics into 60 second clips.

In this episode we discuss:

• Why we created Beyond the Ceremony
• How losing our Instagram accelerated the decision to launch the podcast
• The difference between the ceremony and the integration that follows
• Why healing isn't something a medicine does to you, but something you continue to cultivate afterward
• The philosophy behind Tribal Detox and our approach to working with Kambo and Bufo
• How Jason and Kelly met through the medicine world
• Kelly's journey from opioid addiction to Ibogaine and eventually Bufo
• Jason's path through Ayahuasca, Kambo, homelessness, and rebuilding his life
• The unlikely beginning of Tribal Detox, from living in a minivan and DoorDashing to building an international practitioner community
• How training hundreds of practitioners and serving thousands of clients has shaped our understanding of these medicines

This podcast isn't just about ceremonies.

It's about what comes after.

It's about integration, relationships, healing, purpose, spirituality, science, responsibility, and the lifelong process of becoming more fully human.

Whether you're completely new to plant medicines, an experienced practitioner, or simply curious about consciousness and healing, we hope these conversations offer insight, perspective, and practical wisdom you can apply to your own life.

Mentioned in this episode

• Kambo
• Bufo (5-MeO-DMT)
• Ibogaine
• Ayahuasca
• Integration
• Tribal Detox Kambo Practitioner Training

Coming Up Next

In the next episode, Kelly shares her remarkable journey from addiction and recovery through Ibogaine to becoming a Bufo facilitator and founding the Church of the Amphibian Arts.

Subscribe so you don't miss future conversations as we explore plant medicines, integration, spirituality, science, psychology, and everything that happens beyond the ceremony.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:12

Welcome to the Tribal Detox podcast, Beyond the Ceremony, with Jason Fellows and Kelly Lamb. We finally got here. This has been a long time in the making. So uh I guess we should talk about why we decided to start this podcast. So, you know, this podcast really the idea for we we've been thinking about it for a couple of years, but uh it was what was it, August last August?

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yeah, it was August of last year.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

August when we really realized that this needs to happen. And it started with Instagram. We've had the tribal detox Instagram probably for the last six or seven years, I think about seven years.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Yeah, and the Instagram is the main way we talk about this, these, you know, the medicines and this kind of topic. Um, but that's pretty much through our Instagram how we educate others about these modalities.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Yeah, the whole purpose of the tribal detox Instagram essentially was just to educate people about plant and amphibian medicine. You know, and you know that the amphibian medicine that I specialize in is Campbell, and Kelly specializes in Buffo. You know, we've been working with these medicines for the last, well, Buffo probably for the last since 2021. Since 2021, and I've been working with Campbell since about 2017, 17, 18, somewhere around there. And through working with these medicines, you know, we've served several thousand people. And we started a Campbell practitioner program where we teach other people how to work with Campbell, and we've offered Buffo, kind of like as a graduation at the end of those schools, and um, you know, and then we serve this to the public as well, and we have learned so much for ourselves, you know, our own healing, our own understanding, you know, of life and ourselves and the universe, as well as seeing what they've done for other people. So we've used the Tribal Detox Instagram basically just to kind of share and educate about our understanding of these medicines, what we've seen and you know, how they've helped so many people. And last August, that Instagram was in an instant just taken away. Instagram shut it down and gave us no other reason other than we violated community guidelines when we really have not done much of anything different, you know, whether it was just some new policy of censorship on talking about psychedelics, but because it wasn't just our Instagram. I remember there was a lot of people getting their pages taken down at that time, you remember?

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Yeah, and especially because it was surprising because you do a pretty good job of you know trying to be careful about how things are worded and you know, not make it. I mean, the only thing I can think as far as community guidelines is talking about promotion of illicit substances, but you do really careful about it being about education and not necessarily promoting smoking buffo.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Yeah, and it was scary. You know, it's like we'd built this online community, we'd built this following, and felt like we were sharing just a really positive message, got a lot of positive feedback from our followers, and then it was just without any warning taken away, which made us realize how sensitive of a topic this is, and even being very careful with our wording, how our ability to talk to people about these things can be censored so easily, which brings us to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Yeah, that's what kind of initiated us to. I mean, we talked about the podcast probably before that happened, but it's kind of what initiated the like, yeah, it we really need to do this.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Yeah, because even with Instagram, you know, trying to be careful the way we talk all the time, and there's just so much to share about. And even if we weren't being censored, I feel like we still have too much to talk about, too much to share about, too much to educate about with such uh I guess short form content. Short form content. We really needed the ability to express these things in a more long form content or a context without without the uh fear of being censored.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

So, yeah, and you know, this podcast is called Tribal Detox, Beyond the Ceremony. Um, and Jason, can you answer why it's called Beyond the Ceremony?

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Yeah. Um, and bear with us. I know we sounded a little choppy on this first one. This is our first time out the gate doing this, so we've had to learn the equipment, you know, get our format down, and now uh the opportunity to actually speak in these long-form contexts. But I promise this will this will get better each and every one we do. But yeah, so beyond the ceremony, you know, and the reason it's called Beyond the Ceremony is when people come into the plant and amphibian medicine arena, it's all focused on that one specific ceremony, that session or that that night of whatever medicine you're going to experience. You know, ayahuasca is usually nighttime ceremonies, buffo uh is the daytime ceremonies, mushrooms, things like that. Mushrooms, LSD can be either LSD. We even though LSD is not a plant medicine, we will talk about some of the synthetics as well. Um but so there's all these different medicines, you know, and a lot of people have heard about these medicines a lot through social media, YouTube, as they get more popular. And, you know, they hear about the experiences and the benefits, and people start to think, I need this. This is something I need to do. I'm suffering from anxiety or depression or grief that I can't seem to get past, or or even just, you know, filling a void of wanting to develop even more of a spiritual practice. So they think I need to attend a ceremony. But I think what a lot of people think the ceremony is, is like a switch. You know, they they think it's like, you know, I have this thing going on with me that I don't like that doesn't make life comfortable. And if I attend this ceremony, it will flip that switch to where I don't feel this anymore. And and wouldn't you agree with that?

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Yeah, I mean, that's I mean, not just with medicine work, but sometimes, you know, when people are in a tough spot, a lot of times they approach whatever modality with the intention of it fixing things. But you know, our whole uh, I guess, methodology of even what we teach in our trainings is all about developing a relationship with the medicines. And that happens inside and outside of the ceremony. And a lot of times people's focus of the magic behind these medicines is a ceremony, which of course, I mean, ceremonies are very powerful, you know, just out of this world, unbelievable experiences, but that's always a very small piece of what the medicines have to offer.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, the medicine is just the beginning, the medicine is the introduction, it's the lesson, right? And you know, even though because you we all hear about doing the work, if you're going to heal yourself, you need to do the work. And people tend to think of the medicine as the work, which is completely understandable. Like I've had some ayahuasca ceremonies, some mushroom experiences that felt like work that were just really, really challenging. And, you know, once you move through the ceremony on the other side of it, you feel accomplished. But the work is actually taking what we learned from that ceremony and applying it to our lives that's going to benefit us and and the people around us, you know, who we spend our time around. And that's, I think, is where a lot of people miss the mark on understanding how exactly these medicines heal.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, because that can be um easier said than done. Exactly. Especially when it's very promoted about just focusing on sitting with the medicines, which, you know, is very prevalent in the medicine world. I mean, you meet people all the time that have sat with, I mean, some people even hundreds of ayahuasca ceremonies. Um, but yeah, doing the work outside of the ceremony is definitely easier said than done.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Exactly. You know, and even though the ceremonies are they're they're very interesting, sometimes they're very visionary, they can feel cosmic, they can have an essence of divinity to it, and you know, and and we may come under the assumption that I from having this experience I've I've arrived, I have reached enlightenment. But you know, something that we you know, a phrase we kind of use sometimes is that experience, it's in it in and of itself, it's kind of like mistaking the billboard for the destination. It may be very interesting and very bright and pretty and fun to look at, but if we haven't been able to take that experience and apply it to our life in a meaningful way following that experience, have we really arrived?

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yeah, and the we always say too the ceremony isn't the work, it's it's the doorway to the real path.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Yeah, exactly. You know, and after the ceremony is when the integration of that ceremony begins. And unfortunately, a lot of people don't hear about even hear the word integration sometimes until long after the ceremony. And, you know, if you don't know, and this is beyond the ceremony, right? What happens next? How does the work begin? Because it's the integration of these experiences that is going to begin to shape the understanding of ourselves, of how we show up in the world, our understanding of the world and the things that are happening in the world, and how do we move through the world, knowing what we know, but seeing so much suffering, you know, and if you're not prepared with an integration plan beyond the ceremony, then life a lot of times can devolve into chaos. So uh Kelly, we'll start with you.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Okay. I mean, as far as who we are, you know, like we s in we're the owners of tribal detox, you know, we're the people that started tribal detox. But, you know, of just like a lot of people in the medicine world, but you know, we have a very unique, interesting story. And the birth of tribal detox, you know, really didn't come into play and such essentially until we met each other. And you know, Jason and I both met each other at low points in our life. Um, you know, for me, I was trying to overcome an opiate and crack addiction, and you know, that's pretty much how I came into the medicine world, is because I was looking for a solution outside of um, you know, just the general path people go down with addiction, like rehab and stuff like that. So my introduction into the medicine world was sitting with ibogaine to overcome an opiate addiction. And through that, indirectly, I met Jason because after I sat with Ibogaine in Mexico, I went down to an IBogaine aftercare, which is essentially a um rehab for people that have done ibegain, and that's where I met Jason because Jason was contracted out to serve Cambo there. And um, you know, I signed up to to sit with Cambo being at um the IBGAN Aftercare. And, you know, Jason also was at a low point. Essentially, you know, tell them about where you were at when you first served me Cambo.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Yeah, and you know, we're gonna get more into our entire stories in the next couple of episodes. We'll do one on me and one on Kelly. But, you know, essentially when I met Kelly, I'd been working with Cambo for I guess a little over a year. And, you know, my story to Cambo was, you know, as one of brokenness. I didn't I'd found my first bottom, you know, through psychological torment. And um, you know, found out about plant medicine, ended up going down to the jungle, drinking ayahuasca, which was very healing for me, but also very difficult and challenging that that made it really hard for me to continue with ayahuasca, and you know, which kind of led me to a different part of the jungle to where I found Campbell. And, you know, almost overnight I could feel Campbell repairing my psyche, my spiritual body, my physical body, and I just knew there was really something to this medicine, you know, and um so you know, I went, got trained, um kind of had a falling out with the organization that I trained with, ended up diving into my own research and understanding of Campbell, and developed my own way of working with it that just really resonated with a lot of people. They were able to sit with Campbell in a manageable way that wasn't overwhelming while still being able to tremendously benefit from this amphibian medicine. And through working with this down, and I was, you know, this was close to 10 years ago where not a lot of people knew about Campbell. You know, so I started to gain a reputation down in Texas where I was living. And, you know, this um owner of the Abigain Clinic, which Abigain's the West African psychedelic, you know, that really helps with opiate addiction. She had kind of it's kind of like a halfway house, like uh like a rehab for people that went the Abigain route rather than the traditional uh 12-step program route, I guess you could call it. And, you know, and what she was wanting to do, because she she had had experienced Campbell before as well, and she knew the benefits of it. So basically she'd asked if I would come and serve her clients that were 15 days out of Ibogaine, if I would come and serve them Campbell, um, you know, to put clarity back in the mind, energy back in the body, and just help them with the recovery from the addiction. And, you know, so I'd been doing this for a little while with her for about a year or so. And then I had actually moved down to Austin. I just went through a catastrophic breakup, which left me pretty destitute. Uh I was broke. I I was living out of my car, essentially homeless.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Yeah, the the day that you first met meme when you served me Cambo, you were technically living out of your Toyota Siena.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Yeah, I was living out of a mom van.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Which it's funny, even when I uh saw, you know, to me at first Jason was the Cambo guy, I saw the Cambo guy's car pull up, and I was like, huh, that's strange that he lives in a or that he has a mom van, but okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Yeah, and I'd been living out of it, living in Austin, trying to get Cambo to take off. And uh this one particular time that I was called is when I met Kelly, and Kelly was going to sit with Campbell, and uh, you know, and over the next couple of weeks she'd sat a couple of times, and we'd we started to develop a little bit of a friendship, and then you went back home to Colorado, and we just kind of stayed in touch. And I remember, I guess about we met, I think, at the end of August, beginning of September, and around November, I remember I was going through a really hard time, you know, just trying to make things work in Austin, and you said, Well, my family's closing down cabins on the guest ranch that we own. And there's one still open if you want to come to Colorado and relax for a couple of days. Uh, you're more than welcome to. And I was like, Yeah, that's exactly what I need to do. And I went up there and we hung out for a couple of days, and uh we've been hanging out ever since.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

I mean, obviously, in both of our stories, we've had our own individual shifts, which I'm sure we'll talk about more on each of our individual episodes. But it's more of we should talk about how us meeting, like, even though you had started working with Cambo, us meeting is what sparked everything happening. I was excited to be in the medicine world because I was excited about what I discovered, and I was the muse to even give you the idea for tribal detox. You know what I mean? Yeah, like meeting me gave you a lot of inspiration, I would say.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Okay, so we met in our we met in at the end of August. I came to visit in November, and then you ended up moving down to Austin in January.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

Yeah, so well, and it's it's interesting too, because we both, you know, came out of you know somewhat rough relationships for different reasons. Mine was for different reasons than yours. But even when we met, like neither of us were looking really, you know, I guess for a new relationship. And so, you know, we met in the fall of 2018, and by yeah, January 2019, I moved down to Austin. And um essentially, you know, I just lived with you and through we, you know, I lived there for three or four months, and living in Austin, um, yeah. I mean, back then our relationship was way less complicated because we didn't have the training, but it was essentially me learning how to serve Cambo, serving Cambo groups with you. Um, because I was very new to the medicine world. Like I wasn't necessarily at the time interested in learning how to work with the medicines. I was just amped up about psychedelics and just wanted to take mushrooms all the time when I lived in Austin with you. Um, but you know, it was, you know, it was for lack of a better word, you know, fun to get to be a part of serving Cambo groups with you. Um and yeah, of course, like during the beginning parts of the relationship, that's always the funnest time. You know, like during we always say Austin was the city that we fell in love. Um but yeah, I I I don't I don't know what else to to say about that.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

And I would say, but you know, even though I had been working with Campbell, I would say the birth of tribal detox really began that January. When, you know, you came to Austin, we started working groups together, I started to develop a reputation between Austin and Dallas, and Campbell started to become a full-time job. We were serving a lot of people. And um we were serving a lot of complicated clients as well, complicated illnesses, you know, and we were learning a lot together.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

And it was something we committed, you know, ever I mean, even though our life was simpler back then because we didn't have the training, but we committed our life essentially to, you know, doing this work together. And, you know, that started early on, like as soon as I moved down to Austin. Um, but even like in the sense that we neither of us had jobs while we lived down there because we wanted to focus on this, and you know, we door dashed and walked dogs in between in order to be able to make it work.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Yeah, yeah. I remember we needed to make a hundred dollars per day to pay our bills, you know, and as long as we can make a hundred dollars per day doing whatever, whether it was delivering food, walking dogs, we would make our quota, make our hundred dollars, whether we finished at noon or two o'clock.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

But if it was a hundred dollars through a camo session, it was a good day.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Yeah, and then everything outside of that, we were just brainstorming, we were talking, we were dreaming, you know, and as we say, I've I've always been a visionary.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

Um you've always had a visionary mindset. There's no visionary stuff going on in my brain. But my piece is I I'm the realist, I'm the one that filters your ideas.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

Yeah, really helping me because you know, even though I had a lot of ideas, I was still a hot mess. I was disorganized, I was very transient, and I could bounce from one thing to another very easily.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Quicker than I wanted to do.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

And uh, and we just, I mean, we we made the perfect team, you know, to where we could finally iron this thing out into not just backyard camo sessions, you know, but an actual practice.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Yeah, and I would say the the the spark of the whole story happened in Austin, but it wasn't until after living three or four months with you in Austin, then you eventually moved up to Creed, was when the Campo training program came into existence.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Yeah, we had learned so much. You know, we had we we'd really got to fast track ourselves because I was the only one, or one of the very few in not just Texas, but the U.S. at the time, as Campbell was starting to take off. And, you know, I got the opportunity to serve close to 2,000 people within maybe 18 months. So we'd learned so much. And, you know, as these new modalities are coming to surface, everybody's learning how to work with it, right? How it's worked with in the jungle is a lot different than how it's worked with in our culture. You know, the same rules don't always apply. There's a lot of different complexities to take into account with illnesses and psych meds and you know diseases and cancers and drug addiction and you know, suicides and things like this. So, you know, we had to learn how to adapt or yeah, adapt this Amazonian practice to help fix the problems of a first world culture. So, you know, Campbell was still being worked with very dangerously by people that didn't quite understand it or were trying to use it the same way that they were taught in the jungle without and it was just lack of knowledge, right? People just didn't know. So, because of everything that we had learned in order to curb some of the, you know, the incidents or injuries that were happening out there, we decided to start the tribal detox Gambo Practitioner School. And I came to visit Creed, and Kelly's family had an old Victorian house that her parents had built years ago before they ended up going out to caretake their grandmother's ranch when she passed away. So the house was just left here, not quite finished, almost full of construction equipment, paint cans all over the place, you know, but it'd just been sitting there for years, and you just showed me the property, and we were walking around it, and I remember it just hit me. I was just looking around and I was like, I think we can start Macambo school here. And then what did you say?

SPEAKER_00 27:14

I said, Do you think anybody will come?

SPEAKER_01 27:18

And we didn't know. But and at that time we were getting so busy, we never had this grand idea to start this big school to train all these people. It was just, it was getting to be too much for us, and we needed to make more of us, and it just started out as if people, as long as people continue to come, we will keep teaching them. And that was seven years ago, and then people just never stopped coming. So we just kept teaching and we continue to teach. And this is really also where we just started to gain our understanding of the medicines, like deep understanding, because everybody, we've had about 300 people come through our program, and everybody has a story. Nobody gets to Cambo's school on a life built on sunshine and rainbows. Like it is trauma that builds the Cambo practitioner. So, and it's always Cambo's not typically the first modality people find. Typically, they find Cambo through another plant medicine, whether usually ayahuasca, right? And um, so we just started hearing all these stories from people of the traumas of their life that led them to plant medicine, how plant medicine saw them through it and you know, cared for them through it, which eventually led them to Cambo, to where they started to get their body back, their psyche back, their spirit back, their life back. And then wanting to take that and pay it forward and learn how to facilitate that for other people. And it just really allowed us to zoom out and kind of see the medicines work from a bird's eye view, just from not only the hundreds of practitioners we've trained, but the thousands of people we've served. So, and essentially this is what the podcast is about. All right. The podcast is sharing with you our understanding of the medicines, how it's shaped our view of the world, how it's helped shape our view of humanity, of our relationship, right? And we plan on sharing everything that we've learned and continue to learn, our opinions about things. We'll get guests on here from all sorts of modalities, from the professional to the unconventional, to just continue to share the wisdom of all these amazing modalities. So I think we'll close it out here. Kelly, do you have anything else?

SPEAKER_00 30:21

I don't think so.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

So in the next episodes, we will do an episode on a deep dive into Kelly's journey to Abergain and Buffo and her journey to creating the Church of the Amphibian Arts. All right, we'll wrap it up and we'll see you on the next episode.