Mushrooms and More with Katherine MacLean

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Welcome to Synchronicity. My guest this week is Katherine McLean. Katherine is a psychedelic research scientist, who was just really a research scientist who was part of the Johns Hopkins clinical studies on psilocybin, which you will hear about in this episode, especially some of the things you might not think about came out of that, but the direct experience she had administering and watching this process. But also more than just being a research scientist, she's someone who is avidly and keenly tuned in to psychedelics and mushrooms. And not just their impact on people's consciousness, but how it fits into the broader cultural paradigm, if you will.

Basically, Katherine knows a lot about this stuff and sees behind the scenes of kind of what is emerging or what is able to emerge from the current narratives that are going on with psychedelics, right? We have a lot of things going on. So one of the things we get into in this episode, because I was bringing it up, is the semi-parallel between the cannabis industry and what would theoretically be the psychedelic industry, it's not legalized, they're doing small clinical studies right now, which is already relatively different than cannabis, right? Most of the clinical studies that are being done about cannabis now are being done after the fact it's been legalized both medically and recreationally.

It wasn't a tremendous amount of data before that. But psychedelics, there's a much more kind of cautious empirical approach being taken. But one of the things that's happening is, when you have positive results, even if they're anecdotal or even if they're just slightly better than average, very quickly, someone is gonna start seeing dollar signs, right? They're gonna be like, you know what? This is helping people. We can turn and flip a quick buck on this baby. And one of the things we get into, I think it's really cool in this episode that I haven't really thought about, is that the second you try to start pitching mushrooms or a psychedelic as a cure for depression or a cure for anxiety, you're treading up a slippery slope, right?

I mean, yeah, it could absolutely help people. I know plenty of people who speak to the power of psychedelics and how it has helped them tremendously with their psychological, emotional, just their well-being. But there are people who have very negative experiences. Oftentimes, people have both, right? An individual have both ends of that spectrum. And knowing how to kind of deal with that, mitigate it as best as possible, but also just hold space for an individual or person. It's just knowing about what the fuck we're ingesting, right? It's culture, it's, it's, it's, it's culture. And I'm just gonna say it's history, it's culture, it's etymology, these things are really important.

So we get into a lot of that. You'll hear some early stories about Maria Sabina and Gordon Watson and his wife. There's some, there's just lots of juicy tidbits in here. And you'll also just realize that Catherine has a true appreciation for the mushroom. And I think that's a really big part of a lot of this that when we start trying to look at psychedelics as these things that we can pull their value and extract it kind of like a genetically modified organism, GMO, pulling it out and using the good parts. I think about this a lot with CBD too. CBD is just blowing the fuck up. Everyone, CBD for this, CBD for that, CBD.

I love weed, I love everything about it, all of the compounds, but I mean pulling this out and presenting it as a cure all is just, it's not, it's not, it can help with all of those things, but it's not gonna help everyone all the time. I can promise you that. And just trying to understand that this stuff is a natural organic compound that is connected to all of its other ones. Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked just because the CBD stuff wrinkles me. But my point is that understanding where psychedelics and just any substance we're ingesting from, as much about them as possible before creating a structure or in a system that kind of walks you down the path of here you go, oh, you have this problem here or take this, there you go, is really important.

And being aware of that and recognizing kind of we're still in the incubation stages of any industries, including the cannabis industry, still very much in the incubation stages, the early stages of being able to direct what happens with this stuff. So yeah, just got out of my little tangent there in the intro, but I think about this stuff a lot, especially just watching what's going down with weed, legalization efforts and the resistances and the valid resistances and objections, the what I would consider fear-based reactions to things like that and not wanting to see something I love that is, again, much like mushrooms, at least in this case, we're not talking about LSD.

It's hard to synthesize, you need some equipment, but mushrooms and cannabis are things that anyone can theoretically grow. It is not a complicated process to grow either of those, those, well, once a plant, once a fungus, but either of those compounds and what do I wanna call them? Beings, consciousnesses, 'cause that's what they are if we're really getting to the meat of it, right? That's what they are, they be you and you smoke some cannabis that then integrates with your consciousness and you've got weed mind for as long as it's in your system and it may direct your mind somewhere else when it's out of your system.

So it's really integrating fully with another consciousness and having the respect and reference for what that actually means, I think is pretty important. Just, just my two cents. So Catherine, go check her out at her website. There are links to everything she's doing. She mentions a cool project that she's working on at the end related to kind of bringing people into a psychedelic state, songs, psychedelics. So that's pretty cool, that's it. Oh, no, it's not. How about this? This is a lot of this about mushrooms. It's four-segmentic sponsoring the show. This episode is brought to you by four-segmentic.

Listen, their mushroom elixir is one that I continue to drink because it's good and it makes me feel good. We're talking about mushrooms. Listen, it doesn't just have to be psychedelics or psychotropic substances. Anything you put into your body affects you. We are made up of many different things, right? Are atoms or organs or who knows what's in control? Let's connect it with other cool things like racy and lion's mane and these wonderful people who are sponsoring the show. So go to four-segmentic.com/sync, get 15% off your order for any of this stuff. So if any of this in any way appeals to you, use that link, follow it in the notes or the page or every, I don't know, how do you guys get your podcast?

Probably the podcast app, one iTunes or what are they called? iOS, it sucks, it's a terrible app. I understand that, but what are you gonna do? It's just it is what it is. You can click things there somehow, some way. It's difficult. I can't even fucking figure out how to do it most of the time. But it's possible. You can go to syncpodcast.com, click the link. Just, there are options is what I'm saying. So you can do that. Thank the big thanks to four-segmentic. You guys are nice. I think officially enough tangents have been met. Yes, tangent quota has been met. Intro is now over without further ado.

Here it is, Catherine McLean. Thanks for coming on. You're welcome. So I was trying to think back. I've been meaning to get in touch with you for longer than I actually realized because I think we have a mutual friend, John F. Simon, who- Right, okay. Yeah, and he had mentioned you, I went to his house, like when we first moved up here a couple of years ago and he said, "You should definitely get in touch "with Cap." And I'm like, "Yeah, that's a really good idea." And, you know, we were just adjusting and somehow it got lost in the shuffle. But then I got retuned into you recently. And I'm really excited to talk to you about a lot of things, but I think one of the most important things or issues that I'm most interested in at this point in time, just related to what you've been doing with psychedelics research is making sure that their diversity is represented in what is now emerging as kind of not an industry yet, what kind of the pre, you know, foray into psychedelic medicine and industry.

And I'm really interested in, 'cause you're one of the few people I know who I've seen speak about this. You know, what do you think of kind of the current state of where we are with psychedelics and how it fits into kind of our Western culture right now? I'm sure you have some thoughts on this. I'm sure I do. So this is the platform. Yeah, you know, it's like psychedelics mean so many things to so many people. I haven't really encountered hardly anyone who doesn't have an opinion about psychedelics, even people who, you know, there are people who have strong opinions, obviously, in favor of psychedelics and then so many varieties of opinions among that group.

Yes. And there are people who have strong opinions against psychedelics for various reasons. And there are even the people in the middle that have been so educated about risks and dangers that, you know, even normal people tend to have an opinion about psychedelics that's typically negative. Right, right. And so I think we're kind of, we're going about it in a little bit of a funny way. And by we, I mean kind of the torchbearers, the people who have a lot of the spotlight have the, you know, have the active listening of the media and journalists and get invited to conferences. And that's a very small portion of the people who could, who should be having a say and who could benefit from psychedelics.

But let's just say the approach that we are using is this kind of this medical route, which says, you know, psychedelics are medicine, they heal people. We can study them scientifically because they're a chemical that interacts with our bodies and brains. And so therefore the most reasonable way to integrate psychedelics into Western culture is through science and medicine. And there's an assumption that that's correct. And so I think as a scientist and having worked with a lot of medical doctors in institutions, what I've been exploring the last five years or so is questioning that assumption and kind of asking, is science, are science and medicine the territories or the ways in which psychedelics should kind of enter or re-enter our society?

When if you look back across history, psychedelics have primarily been in just a few categories, one is religion, the others in American culture are kind of the art and music scenes.

Right, right.

And then you just kind of have this catch-all category of recreational drug use. And so none of those categories really interface while with science and medicine. And so what I'm kind of tending to see is a lot of older white male scientists and medical professionals and now older white male businessmen having kind of a lot of the say about what we do with psychedelics and everyone else kind of being in the watch and wait category. Like you just let us do this and then you can have a say once we get legal MTMA or once we get legal psilocybin then maybe we'll see what are the other options for you.

Yes.

My feeling is we're actually at a really important point where we should be inviting in everyone into the conversation and providing as many options as are possible. And so that's, I'm starting to kind of explore that new idea. Maybe it's a little bit late. Like I don't have much left, right? You know, I have like two or three years to advance a narrative that can compete or provide an alternative to the scientific medical narrative.

Yes.

But at least it's two to three years. You know, I think we're not gonna see legal MTMA or psilocybin for about that long. The powers that be, the organizations that have a lot invested in this are not gonna be super excited by this narrative but I think it doesn't really matter because their investment strategy, their development strategy doesn't depend too much on convincing the public. So I think they're just gonna keep going where they are directed. And their job is to convince FDA, DEA, the government agencies and eventually legislators. And so I'm like, okay, well, I'd rather just talk to everyone else.

And develop a narrative that even if they succeed, even if they fail, the people will have enough information that they can make good decisions for their own lives. And then part of, I guess the other, the final thing I wanna say about where we stand is that we're actually at a really kind of great point where it isn't a done deal yet. It's like a lot of people are getting interested. We're already making a lot of mistakes, but those mistakes aren't sealed and they're not sealed yet. So we can say, hey, we haven't really incorporated indigenous voices into this conversation. Let's start doing that now, this is the moment.

We haven't really incorporated women's voices as much. Let's do that now before it's too late. We haven't even given two seconds of a thought about what black people have to say about psychedelics. Let's actually invite that huge part of our culture and population into the conversation. So it's, I could be cynical about it, but I also am very optimistic that it's a great time for everyone to start paying attention and to be involved. And I'm excited to create more platforms for people to do that. And so it's just kind of a new idea, but I'd love to talk more about that.

Well, I love it because there's so much of what you're saying lines up with what I've been observing from afar and kind of like enmeshed in it at times. The first thing, I'll go in order about what you said, that strikes me when you're talking about psychedelic research and the medical kind of empirical scientific route is cannabis, of course. And I'm in the state of New York and you could have been talking about cannabis in this specific state of every single thing you said, essentially what's happening now. And for all, the legislative support seems to be there for legalizing recreational cannabis here, but the obstacles that are now happening are this clash between the powerful kind of lobbying and industries, medical cannabis, also recreational cannabis companies that are waiting to get in, set up shop and essentially bar the doors, right?

Make it a prohibitive cost to compete in this place because they have all the expertise and now a lot of the pushback outside of the people are just against cannabis for whatever reasons is coming from people of color, communities who have been negatively impacted by the war on drugs specifically related to cannabis in marijuana. And it's now this very, very, I'm a huge cannabis supporter, just completely, but I'd rather wait to see legalization happen until we can start addressing some of these kinds of social equity issues. And when you're talking about psychedelics, I'm generally a very optimistic person, but I am much more reluctant to kind of say the prognosis for psychedelics.

Just as a layman, I'm not that optimistic because I think the pushback from the opposition to it will remain vigorous just to harken back to what you were saying at the beginning. Most people have kind of a negative connotation with this. It's changing subtly. We have people and voices coming out here that are kind of softening the narrative and letting people know that these can have practical and therapeutic uses, but it's still relatively resistant and it's not, like you're saying, this narrative of having to go just down the medical science route is also, there's challenges there, right? I mean, that's not something that's just like this easy thing that you can kind of put on.

Cannabis shows a little bit more promise with some of the medical things, but treating something like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, while we know some of these substances are incredibly effective, or at least in clinical trials, have shown to be, it's not like this is gonna be fast tracked right up the charts. Like, we're still, there's no legal psilocybin anywhere in this country, is that right? I mean, no one's allowed to take this outside of clinical studies that are pretty strict. Yeah. And there's only one very small, open label, exploratory trial of psilocybin for depression that exists in recent history.

And you've got this group in Germany that just announced $40 million investment in developing psilocybin as a medicine. That compass pathways, my dear former friends who've decided to put all their eggs in one basket and run hundreds of participants through clinical trials all over Europe and the United States. I can't really think of a worse business idea than taking a drug that's so powerful, unpredictable, not specific to depression, and already grows everywhere and would copy my business model. Why on earth would they develop this out of all of the other possibilities? And so I almost kinda feel like, and I don't wanna talk anymore about the corporate stuff because it is such a bummer.

Of course, of course. I'd love to talk more about some of the other alternative perspectives, but I will say that I think that they haven't fully thought through how this might fail. And if it fails, it's gonna fail in a big way. People are gonna get hurt and we're gonna be left with a legacy of, well, maybe psilocybin shouldn't have been a medicine, and if these groups couldn't make it successful, then we're way back before the drawing board. It's like now the public, it says, well, we already have a negative view of psychedelics and then you just basically proved it doesn't really work that well for the one thing that you said it was gonna work for.

Yes, yes, yes. I mean, before that narrative really gets entrenched, I'd love to just start back with one of the Mazotek indigenous women who worked with mushrooms. When Westerners started coming down to see her, she said, we use the mushrooms to communicate with God and we use the mushrooms to divine and understand the future. So we ask the mushrooms questions about healing that are of spiritual nature or they're part of our kind of cosmological belief system that says it is possible to glean information about future events or lost people or lost things or maybe someone presents with this problem with their foot and it's kind of an infected wound and why would mushrooms, if they're a psychological medicine, work on a foot?

It's because the mushrooms don't work like that. The mushrooms are telling the healer what herbs and other things to use that will heal the foot.

Yes, yes, yes.

So it's a totally different approach than psilocybin for depression or psilocybin for society. And it's just funny to me that it's like, here we have one of the wisdom keepers, this woman, Maria Sabina, who everyone knows now, it's like thanks to Michael Pollan, at least he included her name.

Yes, yes, I'd like to talk about that, yes, yes, yes.

And she's telling us how it works and we're like, well, we're not going to do it that way. We're going to do it the totally other way and just keep our fingers crossed. And, you know, her, you know, she was pretty dismayed, I think in her interactions with Westerners and I think it continues still to this day with the masotec because they see people coming down there with a totally different view of like how to be healed.

The connection cut off here with Katherine but she did get back on and while I don't sound better 'cause I was still using my computer mic, she's on the phone and it sounds a lot better. So that's the bonus. She's about to tell a story of Gordon Watson's wife who famously encountered Maria Sabina who introduced the Western world to mushrooms. So here's that story.

Yeah, so the story as I've heard it is that Valentina Watson, you know, she's a pediatrician, she's the academic person in the relationship. She's a mushroom lover. He's a kind of like a mushroom folk. He's not convinced and he's a banker. They're actually all these like weird, I've heard someone mention that like maybe Gordon was like some kind of CIA agent. I have no idea it's too conspiratorial for me but basically they went down there and they were kind of going on the hunch and some other information from a couple previous mushroom like micro file botany groups that had gone down. They're like, we think that there's this psychoactive mushroom and he's asking around all over town and no one's like really helping him but then eventually it's some kind of holy day or like a day where basically you're supposed to help desperate people no matter what.

And whether or not he knew that it's an interesting question but basically he was talking to one of the town officials and said, I really need help. Something's wrong with my son back in New York and obviously this is well before any way of contacting people remotely. And he said, could someone here help do a mushroom ceremony help figure out if my son's okay? And Maria Sabina was the one who agreed to do it. And so it was Gordon deceived the Mazatek. He deceived them when he said there's something wrong with my son and it wasn't about his healing or anything. And so he basically got her to give him the mushrooms and that started the relationship which actually then continued for a really long time after that but it caused a lot of trouble for Maria and her family.

The Westerners all flooded down there and the rest as I say is history.

There's a curse basically in the end for her, yeah.

Yeah and even still so I'm trying to bring a group of people down to either Oaxaca or another part of Mexico where mushrooms grow, they kind of grow in different areas and there are different traditions, different kind of approaches but I'm trying to bring a group of actually Buddhist meditators and thinkers down because I think in America at least the mindfulness and Buddhist movement was happening at the same time as the psychedelic movement and then psychedelics went underground, Buddhism kind of stayed above ground. And these folks have been kind of through the same issues as we're now facing with psychedelics.

And so I'd love for them to help be a dialogue in a bridge with the existing wisdom tradition in Mexico. And if we all take mushrooms together with the practicing healers now and we get to meet some of the young apprentices, maybe it could be like the mind and life dialogues but for mushrooms where the Dalai Lama started talking to a few neuroscientists and now we have a really rich tradition that goes in both directions. It's not just the Westerners taking something from these ancient traditions that we're actually potentially giving something back. Maybe this is where the science can help that it's like maybe these young people actually want to learn about the neuroscience of how psilocybin works in the brain.

They want to learn the psychology of how we treat these illnesses. And so, but it's with the kind of mentality of like how do we screw up before? It's just, well, everyone went down there and said, I want to feel better. And it's like the mushrooms, there's this really great quote, this woman who I just met who's in New Mexico. And she said that for the longest time, she was just like, I'm sick, I'm sick, I'm sick. There's all these things wrong with me. And then in one ceremony, the mushrooms are like, when are you going to stop acting so sick? And she's like, no, but I really need help. I'm really sick.

They're like, it's okay, we've got time. We'll wait.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And she, when she finally started asking the mushrooms directly, she got such different answers to her own health. And the indigenous traditions understand this, that it's a relationship, it's a communication, there's a dialogue. The mushrooms themselves have intelligence that humans don't have. The plants have intelligence that humans don't have. And I don't mean it in an anthropomorphic way. I mean, they literally are older than humans, plants and mushrooms. And they have a kind of intelligence that maybe we don't understand yet how to communicate with, but some people do.

Yes. - And before we end up with psilocybin and a pill for depression, maybe we should ask the mushrooms. Like, do you have anything to say about this thing that we call depression? Like, can you help us? Or is this just something we have to work on in another way? And you're here for a totally different reason, right? Like, I'm curious what the mushrooms have to say about that. I'm curious what the Mazatek healers have to say about that. I'm even more curious what the like psychonaut who's been taking mushrooms since he was 15 has to say about that, rather than the scientists, honestly, at this point.

It's like, who has the most experience?

Yeah, well, I've been taking mushrooms since I'm 15. (laughs) Yeah, I mean, I couldn't, there's so much stuff. You just said there, I'll touch where my mind goes. Yeah, I mean, the narrative of, and when I say narrative, I just slash reality of the mushrooms having their own form of consciousness and that the interaction between that consciousness and our own is what is actually taking place when we ingest psilocybin or any other type of psychoactive mushroom, like that, is something that I think people, it takes many, at least for me, it took, I'd say probably half a dozen, two a dozen experiences with mushrooms to understand that you could communicate back and it was a two-way street.

It had been brought up at one point, and I was like, "Oh, that's an interesting idea." But looking back, I think it's evident that it happens at any given point, and so that's an invitation for anyone who is, you know, experimenting with this stuff or using them in a ritualistic sense. I think that's a very practical use of them. That narrative, obviously, just in our culture, even as wonky as it's getting out there in real people world, it's still not a very palatable narrative that this is what's taking place, right? I mean, I see a tremendous amount of resistance. Even when I say, "Hey, yeah, like you can talk to mushrooms,"

or there's a consciousness there that we interact with and can actually guide us, because a lot of times it has to be an experience thing, right? I mean, and sometimes having the framework of a wise elder or some kind of, you know, etymological evidence that this stuff really can be used that way, I find that that's harder in our culture to push that narrative, what I really like, something you mentioned, is bringing down kind of the Buddhist meditators down into the Mazatek vulture. That type of connection and bridge building, I do think is tremendously interesting, right? That's something, those parallels, I like how I never really thought of it like that, that the Buddhist stuff still kind of remained above ground in mainstream and grew in popularity, obviously with the mindfulness movement in the past decade or so, and yes, like it does, it's still up until like the past five or 10 years, where we're deep underground, like deep, deep underground.

Now we have different kind of attempts to move it in, but mainly through the lens of science and empiricism. And I couldn't agree with you more that I think that is a decent lens to look at it through sometimes, but it's not always gonna play nice. If this is reality bending, the thing you were talking about in terms of the original deception of Gordon Lawson and the intent of using these mushrooms, I think is very much still being experienced now. That's a guy coming in with a lot of money, older white guy coming in and saying, "Hey, give me this thing, this magical thing. "I'm gonna take it and use it for what I wanna use it for."

This is kind of what we're experiencing now with the, a lot of the industrial and corporatization of, or attempted corporatization of these things. And I think just to go back and put a positive slant on this, I do think this is incredibly fertile ground and there's a lot of opportunity to shift these narratives and at least explore the other possibilities and get some other voices in here because if not now, when it does certainly seem that like enough of the pieces are in place that, you know, they wanna serve you psilocybin and a pill. They just, I just thought they're doing it with ketamine, all of a sudden, a powerful dissociative drug.

They're now putting in a pill to treat depression and I'm thrilled that that has clinical value and is helping people, but it's also, you're taking a dissociative. You're going to some other reality that is valid and you're playing around because, you know, a doctor is trying to make a quick buck or a pharmaceutical company. So it's a very interesting place we're in. What do you think like in terms of practical steps? Let's say I'm someone listening to this podcast and I have access to mushrooms or I've taken mushrooms. On an individual level, what do you think is kind of a practical, pragmatic way of interacting with psilocybin or psychedelics in general?

Yeah, I'm kind of thinking of, you know, proposing what is basically a conservative, cautious, but accessible kind of self-exploration model that like any, pretty much anyone could engage with. And so it will be disappointing to people who wanna take drugs all the time, I'm sorry.

Yeah.

It will be a little bit scary for people who don't wanna take any drugs. But I think what it does is it finds a middle way where it says essentially, and this is coming from all of my personal experience as a guide, my own, you know, practice, the ways that I see the challenges that come up for people, the kind of obsessive, re-engaging with cosmic landscapes that just don't translate to ordinary life.

Yes. - So here's the model. I wanna kind of shift people away from just focusing on the drug experience because that's the thing that's so contentious, right? It's like, it's illegal, it's taboo. I don't even know how to have that experience, but imagine if you only got one chance a year to have that experience. So just kind of like, let's kind of put a little bubble around the perfect psychedelic experience and let's just assume that given most people's resources and we can increase access, that experience can happen. Then if you kind of go backward in time six months, what would it take in your life to prepare for that perfect experience?

Going so far, I mean, just really reviewing everything in your life, establishing habits, finding a therapist, if you need a therapist, tapering off medications that might be dangerous, finding a spiritual advisor, setting up, making sure you have enough vacation time and sick time and childcare, so you can really focus on that one experience. Everything that you need to do, and I know six months is a long time, but you'd be surprised, people's lives are like a mess. They're not prepared to take psychedelics. And so take six months, really, really prepare, establish a personal practice, being in nature, really asking the tough questions and countering your fears, really getting creative, whether it's through art or music about your dreams, setting those intentions in motion, then you have the perfect experience and say it goes exactly the way it's supposed to go.

And then six months after you have a really intensive integration period that capitalizes on all of the preparation you did and that perfect experience, but for that six months, you don't re-engage with the medicine, you don't go back after a month because oh man, ordinary life is kind of how I left it and it's really challenging and I just really want to go back to that amazing mushroom space. So you end up with six months prior, six months post, one experience. I think we'd be surprised at how much people could get out of that kind of model. And the next step is then how do we make that perfect psychedelic experience accessible?

And I think the medical setting is the least optimal for almost everyone else.

Okay, we're in agreement there.

And I'm not even just being, you know, like melodramatic to make a case. I think that the medical system is racist, it's sexist, it's dangerous, people make errors, doctors are sleep deprived, most doctors aren't trained to even give basic medicine and psychiatry and know how to follow up, let alone psychedelic medicine. Most people don't have this spiritual knowledge and intelligence and upbringing to understand the mystical experience when they encounter it. So I don't think doctors are prepared any more than most people are prepared, but especially not people like who've been trained away from spirituality.

I do think the best situation is in private homes that are safe where people feel comfortable. In community spaces that are safe where people feel comfortable, but, you know, there's a kind of a group cohesion or group kind of rapport where people could drop in and have an experience in a group and in religious rituals. So kind of, what do we need to change about the law to allow private home use, community healing spaces and religious rituals again? And I think if we manage to create those three settings and people already, they look at those settings and they're like, "There's no way we can change the law."

And I'm like, "Let's try." You know, if we know the ideal way for people to have these experiences and really have an amazing year of their life, you know, and take the risk once, what would it take for the law to recognize each person's ability to do that? You know, we're not asking for a free-for-all, like, you know, everyone can take mushrooms as much as they want. Like, what if we can think about a really kind of conservative, cautious thing that the public can appreciate?

Hello.

Yeah. A really, this technology thing is great. And I guess it's appropriate for your sync of your podcast.

That'll work.

Like, making me crack up. There's a whole other conversation we could have about the mushrooms and communication, but I think that, I actually don't, you know, this isn't a side and we can get back to it, but I think that the mushroom medicine is about connection and communication. I don't think it's about healing. And the diseases that we have right now in our society are because people are disconnected and are not communicating. And so that's why the mushrooms happen to work for anxiety and depression and all these other things. It's also interesting that they work for pain and pain in our society is a lot about isolation and disconnection and not being taken seriously, right?

Like, you try to communicate your pain to a doctor and your doctor doesn't even believe that headaches could be that bad or that pelvic pain could be that bad or postpartum pain could be that bad. So then why would a psychedelic fix physical pain? Because the pain isn't just physical. And so I think, again, it's just like reworking what these medicines do.

So this is incredibly interesting again that you're talking about. The distinction between healing and connection, I think is very important. And I think you've elucidated great that connection and community can lead to healing. They're not, you know, it's not like they're mutually exclusive. This has been my experience with mushrooms as well. There is a communal connection, communicative experience that can happen not just between you and the mushroom, but people, everything around you, trees, animals, plants. And this is a very normal reaction to many psychedelics, but the way it works seems to be like it forms this psychic mycelium, right?

That connects people who have had these experiences, not even who have the experiences, but who are on the kind of wavelength of recognizing that this is kind of a global, hopefully antidote to what is happening to our planet and us as people and our broader ecosystem, which is the more disconnected we become from each other and our actions, the worse things get just from an ecological perspective, just in our ability to sustain life on this planet, let alone sustain a life that's worth living, where it's not filled with fear and dread and anxiety for a lot of people. So it does seem like this consciousness really engenders that type of communication.

It's been, I'm really at this point, rarely surprised, even though it happens with regularities, there's no other real causality for it, of people I have very deep connections with have had very intense connections to psilocybin and mushrooms in particular. And like to the point where it's not just like they had a trip and it kind of changed their life, but they recognize that this was this shift, this cosmic shift to them viewing reality substantially enough different that they changed their life in big ways. And yeah, I mean, I see this more often with mushrooms than probably any other psychedelic and again, trying to box that up and present it as a cure-all for people as like an anxiety or depression, something that's gonna be allotropic and it's brought with peril.

Plus, like as we know, it'll be apparent in this episode, we've had a lot of drop connections. It's a trickster too, this isn't a straight line, it's a B thing a lot of the times. It's certainly been the case of my existence. So I mean--

Well, sometimes I wonder, it's like the mushrooms like share all this information with me and then they never like don't talk about this but I think sometimes they're like, "Wait, we didn't mean for you to talk about that."

Well--

And what I say, I also wanna add, it's like, you know, someone reminded me 'cause there's this, I know that there are people who take mushrooms all the time and it's kind of like a badge of like, you know, it's like a merit badge. Like, I've done 10 grams, I've done 15 grams, I do it every full moon and it's like my experience, my relationship with mushrooms is very infrequent and it doesn't even depend on ingesting them anymore. And I think that that's where things got it very serious for me that I realized I was not in control of that relationship. It wasn't like something that I could set aside and decide how much it affected me or say I'm not going to engage with you for another year and then I'm gonna engage full on with a certain dose.

It's like this really challenges the scientific medical model that how can I have a relationship with a consciousness that I, that physically isn't acting in my body right now?

Yes, yes, yes.

And how can that medicine continue to act on my life in real substantial practical ways through connection, through suddenly so many different realms being connected and kind of this synchronous, meaningful, purposeful overlay or kind of weaving being obvious, all around me. And it doesn't actually depend on taking any more mushrooms. So this is also what the medical model doesn't get. And I think it's one thing if the medical model heals people and then people go back to their lives, but they're not gonna go back to their lives. You're gonna deal with this kind of, I don't know what you wanna call it, cosmic aftermath that the medical system is not set up to deal with.

And then what's, what are the ethics of that? That if you give someone who's depressed this cosmic medicine and then expect them to just go about their lives the way they did before and then they can't, how are you gonna help them?

Right.

You know, it's like where are the integration providers? Well, they're all underground. How are they gonna find them? If the medical people don't know how to refer out, what's like who are you gonna send people to?

Well, it's this underground system. It's probably why you and I get asked these questions from people whose friends have just totally lost touch with reality because it's the only system that's available right now. I mean, and it's true. Like this is, it's one of the biggest travesties of just kind of Western medicine in general over the past hundred years or so is that, especially when it comes to states of consciousness, like we're really trying to do surgery with like a knee cleaver. Like it's just like, there's no granularity or understanding of what these different things, even though there's a lot of history and writing on this stuff and shared experience.

It's not like it's not there, but it's not, it's just regarded. And again, to get back to the point of what I think a lot of this has to do is like, this is the opportunity where we start weaving in voices that have wisdom here that can be shared. People who we're not normally having conversations with, if this, if mushrooms and psychedelics in general can bring people together to have open and honest conversations where they both agree and disagree, that's, this is our opportunity. And I don't know how long this window stays open. Like you're saying, it's not like, we have forever to get this right.

Like this is gonna be getting mushrooms and psychedelics will continue in my estimation, get closer and closer to mainstream. It seems like that's the general kind of propelling. And I think that's act because reality seems to be breaking apart from those people. So why not have the psychedelics be at the forefront of people's consciousness? But I mean, it really is an important time and place to provide these spaces and have these conversations about this because that's kind of all we have right now. There's no other like, join the scholarship program for changing the way people are talking about this stuff.

Yeah, and I think, I mean, something else you asked about like what can an individual do? I mean, you know, when people ask me, where should I go take mushrooms? And I just feel like the options for leaving the country and going to where there are legal retreat centers are not workable for most people. I don't think it's the best option. So what would it take? And I'm not asking people to like, do something that puts themselves or their families at risk or like breaks the law. But like, can we get creative about, you know, providing safe spaces to support people? So what would it take in most cities to create kind of like a drop in space, which I call like a psychedelic sanctuary space where there's no drugs given, there's, you know, no distribution, there's no selling.

You're very clear about that. But you are allowing anyone who feels like they need support to show up.

That's such a cool idea.

And you're not saying you have to be tripping, but you could be. And we're gonna basically have a bunch of awesome trained, you know, people with personal experience who are sober that night. And if you show up, we'll be with you. We'll be with you for four hours or an hour or eight hours, whatever you need. You can talk about your experiences. You can talk about stuff that's going on in your life. You can just lay there and listen to music. And so you're taking the festival environment and the idea of like sanctuary spaces and you're just bringing it into ordinary lives. And I know that this is like, you hear me say this and people are like, well, that's not possible 'cause of the ray back or that's not possible because of the, you know, the old like, you know, drug gang landlord rules that I don't, people like throw all this stuff at me.

And I'm like, I think it might be possible. And if you, if it's done in a really reasonable way where we say we care about our community members and we don't want people to be suffering, then like let's just start trying it and you're not trying to do it underground. It's very different. You're actually saying very publicly, you're not saying like everyone show up. You're, if anyone asks like, yeah, this is just a safe space for psychedelic users and anyone is welcome and maybe it's not open all the time but maybe it's open like one or two days a month for 24 hours and it's staffed by people who are just good Samaritans, not necessarily professionals.

I think we need to start getting really creative within the system we have of how we can support each other so we can start to show that it's not so dangerous. You know, if Denver decriminalizes mushrooms in two weeks, whatever it is, three weeks, I could see these kind of sanctuary spaces being really effective there. And you actually want law enforcement to occasionally show up and see that there's actually nothing that exciting happening. Just be like, hey, look, this is actually pretty boring. There's that guy laying over there. Like, you know, a guy showed up and he was just really drunk so we made sure he got home or like someone came with some pretty serious psychological issues so we made sure that that person, you know, could get the support she needed and maybe, you know, we even had to get someone to a local ER because they were having a physical situation that we can't handle.

Right.

And all of a sudden they're like, wait, the community is like taking care of all these problems for us?

Yeah.

And so it's like you show up as a solution rather than a problem.

Yeah, and it just also would alleviate a lot of the stresses. I mean, the stigma and negative kind of vibes for lack of a better term if you're out in the world using psychedelics clearly can influence your experience, right? I mean, knowing you're doing something illegal and you find yourself pressed onto a bus or a train, you know, and you're not familiar with what's going on and you know this is like, you know, you can be put in jail for what you just took.

That's horrible and I think it seems to me that like the underground and kind of, you know, people understanding that this stuff is less and less dangerous than we've been told for the past 40 years is naturally getting up there. And I think the microdosing aspect has been somewhat effective although not a cure all for changing people's ideas about this stuff, but, you know, shows people that there may be some other ways to interact with these things. But yeah, it's very, yeah, I hear you wanna say that.

Well, one thing I also wanted to add, so I think as an individual, you know, we can show that community consumption is safe and is actually easier for a lot of people to access than medical options.

Yeah.

But then the flip side, so it's like, what kind of individual do to educate their friends, family, you know, their community about why the medical model isn't great? Because that's like us, people don't understand that, they're like, "Oh, well, she's just saying that." But we all know that a medical clinic is safe. Well, is it, you know, in New York state, black women are five times more likely to die during childbirth than white women. Why is that? Same, you know, same access to doctors, same access to hospitals. And yet, you know, when a certain member of our society needs help in a certain way, are they actually listened to?

Right.

You know, if someone says I'm in so much pain that I need, you know, more attention after I get a C-section and they keep ignoring that woman until she dies, you know, that's the kind of medical system we're talking about integrating these medicines into. And we can't fix the medical system and then introduce psychedelics. And we can't assume that the psychedelic therapists are, quote, good people, the way in which, you know, none of the other previous therapists and doctors have been good people. But the thing that I will also add is, I saw what happened on the inside of the clinical trials. People tried to escape and needed to be sedated.

That happened several times.

I'm really nuts of fries, totally here.

You know, there was a, there was a, and this was, this is all in the public domain. I'm not like sharing information that hasn't been reported. A study participant with cancer had a disappointing reaction to a low dose of psilocybin and ended his life 10 days later when he was dropped from the study. So that suicide I consider to be, in my opinion, a risk of interfacing with the clinical medical model. I'm not sure that the same kind of person would have had the disappointment reaction to quote the clinical guide.

What's going on, yeah, yeah.

If he had had access to the right dose right away and didn't have to, you know, get randomized to a higher dose later on, which is really hard to understand when you're suffering, right? Well, you got, you didn't have a great experience today, but just wait. And maybe next time you'll get the dose that makes you feel good. I can't tell you for sure, it's a double blind, right?

Yeah, yeah, gee.

It's really hard for a normal person to understand that when they're suffering. And so I think there are risks that have already been made clear to me in the clinical trials. You know, in my opinion, these are risks that are real and haven't been addressed by any of the organizations that are trying to develop these medicines. They just have not been addressed. Finally, the ethics piece. So sexual abuse is rampant in Buddhism. It's rampant in shamanism. It's rampant in the medical community. I think the only answer, if we don't want more people to be abused with psychedelics is to take it into a community setting.

You can't have the one teacher or the one doctor or the one shaman with the authority. You have to, it has to be a more equal kind of terrain where the whole community is keeping each other accountable.

Yes.

And I'm not saying that this is, it is something that we haven't really tried before because if you look back across human history, it's like you really were just trusting, you know, the priest or the shaman or the Buddhist teacher or the medical doctor or the, you know, the healer. And so what if, right, and now what if instead we say, this time around, we're reintegrating psychedelics in a flat way across all of these different types of people, sure, people are still going to get abused, boundaries are going to be crossed, but you're going to be accountable to your whole community. And people will be less likely to hide.

I think it's the only way forward. I mean, it may also fail because that's human nature, but we have to try something else. We can't just assume that people are safe in a therapist's office with two people. You know, there's a public lawsuit right now. I know this just took a pretty dark turn.

No, no, I like to go back.

No, it's really important though because a lot of what we talk about in this show, like I try to emphasize the shadow aspects of this stuff 'cause if we don't look at it, it's not going to get solved or addressed. So it's dark as it may seem, there's a purpose.

So I'm going to be vague about this. I want this. I want the victim.

Hold on. Okay, I want the victim in this case to have the full attention and respect of the criminal justice system. But there's a public lawsuit by a person that was brought by a person who was part of one of the clinical trials that alleges that the therapist who or the acting psychedelic therapist actually unlicensed engaged in a sexual relationship with this person after they went through the clinical trial. And in pretty much every area of psychotherapy, psychology, psychiatry, this is considered to be a pretty clear ethical, you know, boundary. Like don't engage in sexual relationships with your current or former clients unless it's been like years.

You know, in California, it has to be like something like two or three years since you last saw someone as a therapist to engage in a romantic relationship with them.

Sure.

And this happened in the context of psychedelic therapy. Okay, so some people may say like, yeah, no shit. Like that's obviously going to happen. But it's already happened with the people who we were told were the most trustworthy. Like it's already happened with the most experienced people who were trusted to do early stage clinical trials. So what are the chances it's not going to keep happening with the people who don't even have the training? And so, you know, I'm not trying to throw anyone under the bus, these organizations that are developing the clinical trials, some of them are doing the best they can, others are like inherently not ethical about it, but this isn't going away.

It's like we can't wish this problem away, we can't pretend that we're the good people, you know, conquering the bad people, you know, or like bringing the like savior medicine into this flawed system.

Yeah.

Like we're part of the imperfection. So we have to figure out ways to keep ourselves accountable.

Yeah, well, I like the solution of the idea of having it be more community-based and egalitarian, at least in that respect, just because I agree like for many, I don't do psychedelics regularly anymore, I do small doses, if anything, but going through adolescence to now, you know, about to have two kids, I can see the potential for abuse always being present in a one-to-one setting, even for quote unquote good people who have never done anything wrong. Like it's, we have to understand a lot of these substances, even if you're not on them, really have a way of warping reality. And I don't even mean that it's changing it from what reality is to something else, it just shows you the malleability of everything.

And that alone has the potential for abuse. I think what you're touching on is a way to mitigate that. If you have a more communal way of looking at this, have a group of people who you know, their job is to look out for the interests of the people who come through the door seeking, you know, any type of health or any type of support, that's gotta be a better situation. And I also think, I mean, it's fair, it's more fair, you know what I mean? It doesn't also become just the one person saying something and the other person saying something, which we know it has its own limitations there. So I do think that's a pretty good proposition in terms of how we look at these things, how that jibes with current, you know, tracks towards legalization for these things.

I don't know how much that messes with. I don't know if we can have so, or if that's where these things are going. It's a very weird time to say the least with this stuff.

Well, and what I can say is the reason I bring up the suicide and the issue of sexual abuse is those are kind of like boogeymen that no one wants to talk about. It's like everyone wants to pretend that psychedelics are like somehow nicer or more sterilized or cleaner than they are. And like, I think we do ourselves a disservice of not talking about the truth and not talking about things as they are and saying, hey, you know, if you give this to someone in a hospice setting, they may have an experience that's really challenging and really disruptive to other family members and people who are just down the hall.

You know, it's not gonna be this quiet, beautiful resolution of their whole life in this like peaceful, pre-death moment. Like it could be really, really challenging and wild and terrible and like brutal. And if you think, and I remember I brought this up to someone when I visited a hospice back when Compass was a nonprofit and, you know, they were like, well, just don't talk about, you know, that kind of stuff because we don't want to scare, you know, the stakeholders. I'm like, but it's gonna happen. Like it's not like I'm making up stories. Like these things have already happened in the clinical trials.

They always happen when people take mushrooms. It's how it works. - Yeah, yeah.

And it's like the impression is they want it to be easier to integrate than we know it will be. And I just, in general, I've gotten the sense that the powers that be want the narrative to be nicer. And my view is that the narrative should be truthful and let the public really understand what this is gonna be like and understand that it's not gonna be that easy. What that does is that when there are things that go wrong in the future, then the public can't say, well, you lied to us. Like you said that this wasn't gonna happen. You said that there, you know, there weren't gonna be mistakes. And now look what's happening.

Kids are ending up in the psyche are again, just like in the '60s. - Right.

You know, why did that guy kill himself if he got this miracle cure? Why didn't it work? You know, why does my mom seem so weird? Like, you know, she got this treatment for her anxiety and she's not anxious anymore. But now she's like talking about all these like weird ideas and like she seems crazy.

Right. - And so it's like, what are the cultural side effects of the medical approach? And it's like, nobody wants to talk about those. It's like, don't even, don't even, you know, bring it up. It's gonna scare all the politicians. It's gonna scare the investors.

Yeah, so how do we, how, I mean, I know, I don't expect you have the full mapped out solution for this, but how do we weave in the, what psychedelics really are through our own experiences and the indigenous cultures with people with, you know, how to relationship with this stuff for hundreds and thousands of years? Like, how do we weave that in? So people understand that, yeah, like, you know what? Sometimes having an experience with mushrooms will lead to a very unpleasant experience for about four to six hours that may last after it's out of your system. Because that, I agree, I think so much.

And I see that the spiritual and new age movements brought with this as well. Like, we want these quick, cure all reliable things that we can do that will solve our problems or our trauma or our anxieties or our complexes. And like that, any, like, person who, like, relatively has their shit together and has lived a full life will tell you that's like not how it works. Like, you know, they didn't take this pill and then all of a sudden, oh yeah, she got so much easier. It's just not how things work. So what do we inject into, and I know we've touched on a lot of these and you've been really, some really cool ideas coming from your side.

How do we start to, like, kind of get to these other ways of looking at these things? 'Cause I sense the genuine attempt from your part because it's the more truthful way of presenting this. Like, anyone who says, I've never once said to anyone who's come to me and said, you know, should I take mushrooms where I'm like, yeah, it's awesome, definitely do it. There's nothing bad about it at all. You know, it'll change your life, but it'll be so great. I'm always like, yeah, like, first thing to understand is my experience with mushrooms is it's a trickster, which means it can go either way. But if you understand that, you may have a little more leniency if things aren't going in a pleasant way than if they all.

So, yeah.

I mean, I think, I honestly think, so my friends and colleagues, a few of us in the scene have like been talking about, it's not a new idea. I just gave two talks with this title. It's not even my original idea, but it's called Psychedelics for the People. And I guess there was like a movement at some point called like Science for the People. So this woman, Jay, wrote about this in a piece for Chicuna. And Jay and I are kind of like putting our heads together. And like, what would it mean to bring the psychedelic, you know, the mind frame to the public? And I think it has to be through storytelling.

I think it has to be through personal stories. Symposia has done some of this. Psychedelics today has done some of it, but it still ends up being interesting, mostly to psychedelic people. And so it's different. It's like psychedelics for the people is, you know, I wanna hear, it's a platform for people sharing stories like the firefighter who had to use mushrooms to cure his chronic headaches, but it turned out that he helped him reveal this trauma that he had from his job. And so it's like he didn't go to mushrooms to heal his trauma. He went 'cause he just had this debilitating pain. And yet indirectly it kind of helped him get to the root of his trauma.

That's compelling, yeah.

Maybe it has to do with like a mom who has such severe postpartum depression that like in desperation, she tries mushrooms or MDMA because she realizes she can't take care of her kids and keep living this way. And it worked, even though, you know, she's like, it's like I was stuck between like one really scary decision and another. - Yeah.

And I just think it's gonna take a lot of personal stories around ordinary people's lives kind of taking that chance and taking the psychedelic medicine and talking about how it went.

Yeah.

And so, and then coupling that with education. So it's one thing to just have a bunch of personal stories, like little video testimonials or written accounts or whatever. And then people are like, well, now what do I do? And so I think it has to be paired with expert education and support so that people can kind of get inspired by these stories, it normalizes everything. And then it's like, well, now what do I do? Well, here's a bunch of like online resources and educational platforms. You can learn more about psychedelics, find out what the options are for you, where you are, get connected with community.

But also if you need to talk one on one with someone who's an expert, like you can arrange that. And this is how you do it. But you kind of put it all in one place, whether it's just a website or some other kind of resource so that eventually normal people will find their way to that if they have even a little bit of interest in learning more.

Right, right.

Yeah, and so I do think it has to be personal stories. I think it has to be in bite-sized chunks that people can be interested in. I think most of the attempts to do this so far have been too insular. They've just been within the psychedelic community and it doesn't quite get outside of that. And again, it's like the people who are talking to the media and ordinary people are, it's like there's a kind of a gap, right?

Yeah.

It's like there's the psychedelic community and then there's the resources for everyone. And there's nowhere that an ordinary person can go and say, "Hey, I want to learn about mushrooms."

Right, right, right, right, right. I mean, there is a huge gap there. I mean, it's slowly filling in a little bit, but no, and I mean, it's been systemic in terms of its suppression. So it's no surprise if there's a gap there, but it is something that I like the idea of the personal narratives because all of this stuff, at least for me at the end of the day, is experiential. Like you can hear someone talking about all of this stuff and it may be the impetus for you to go actually attempt it, but the proof is in the pudding, right? I mean, it can do it and it has a positive impact or it'd be insightful for you in some way and helps you or the people around you, like that's ultimately what you're gonna be looking at is the broader year for success, so yeah.

Yeah, and I think the group in Denver has done this to some extent and I think it's helping convince voters. They've got a lot of different types of people talking about why they use mushrooms and why they wanna keep doing that the way they are. They don't want to have to do it in a doctor's office. They don't wanna have to do it with a diagnosis and through insurance. They just wanna do what they're doing and not go to jail. And I think that's the kind of the difference is like, people would say, oh, well, if you just wait a couple years then you can, this can be like your prescription medicine.

Right.

Setting aside the fact that it's psilocybin, not mushrooms, you know?

Yeah.

And people are like, no, I just wanna live my life the way I've been living it and I would rather not have to interface with a extra risky black market. I'd rather just take care of myself and my family and not have to risk the legal consequences. But the final piece about kind of how you make even the medical model safer with psychedelics is we have to start providing resources for the public so they know how to engage with psychedelic therapy. So like say you have depression and you wanna go get psilocybin and you heard about this clinic that just opened up. What kind of questions are you gonna ask about the service they're providing so you know you're not gonna be a victim of abuse or it's not like the creepy dude who's been waiting his whole life to give his clients MDMA.

And so it's like you're basically arming people with more information and education and resources so that even when the medical option is available people know how to use it. And it's not just like going in blind like with antidepressants, not understanding that if when you're suffering and someone gives you a pill three months later you may feel better but then a year later you're stuck on that pill and you can't get off of it.

Yeah, it's what it really just it always pops in my mind the parallels and similarities and differences in some of what guards between what's going on with cannabis in this country and psychedelics and how these things are beginning to shape out for an industry that's taking root pun intended with cannabis to seeing I just personally I don't see the same model even coming close to working for psychedelics and mushrooms for many of the reasons that you've said and just the it's not the same experience. I think cannabis is a psychedelic if used in the correct setting as well. So I'll be clear about that, but it's not the same as having kind of a life and death experience on a high dose of mushrooms, you know, it's just not the same.

So yeah, I am very optimistic that over the course of time we get to the right place on this, but it's also important to remember the realities of kind of our culture and government and industries that the capitalism tends to kind of try to make money off anything that's presented is something that could potentially make money and this is certainly something where people are seeing dollar signs and we see this a lot with some of the compass stuff and other things that are taking place. And, you know, I think the best thing we can do and you've mentioned this a lot is like, you know, stay aware of what's going on and how can we use this stuff in a responsible way?

And I think you have a lot of really positive solutions for this. What, you know, I have my end questions at the end, but I have one more question for you for that. What are some of the steps that you're looking towards taking? I know you mentioned a few of the things you're up to, but like what's next for your kind of personal relationship with psychedelics?

Well, the mushrooms were pretty clear last few time. I mean, they, and I don't even, I mean, you know this, I'm saying this seriously, it sounds like a joke when I say it to most people. They really like brought my children to earth. And so I'm living the integration of that. It's like, kids are young, it's like, I'm in the thick of it, we talked about this. It's really, it's like the best, baddest, most challenging trip of your life being a parent to young children. And the mushrooms were pretty clear that like, you're a mom right now. Like, this is what we've entrusted you with, this responsibility.

And I keep actually thinking about Maria Sabina and how she was a mom and that she had so many kids. And you know, one of her, you know, some of her children got sick. One of them ended his life. Her husband died. It wasn't until she had really lived life that she decided that she could be a healer, that she knew she was from the time she was a little girl. And you know, I think there was some quote that she said that she had, she was able to walk back and forth through the doorway of death so many times that she lost the fear. And the fear is what got in the way of her healing people. And so I kind of, I think about that.

I'm like, you know, what is my relationship with mushrooms? And it's like right now, it's just to be like a mostly sober, ordinary mom. And to advocate for other people to be able to do this, you know, it's like the education piece is so important and I can do that and it's legal to do that. You know, it's important to do that. And it doesn't entail this kind of extra risky behavior that it was actually really hard to do as a mom. And so thank God, it's like the mushrooms are super clear. I was like a bit stubborn about it for a while. But, and this other thing that they like don't, I say they, it's like, it's just kind of my own idea.

And I think they find it humorous is I've developed this meditation technique that allows people to access psychedelic states while sober. And it's like not tricky. It's just basically if you've had a psychedelic experience in the past, it's helping people access that in a sensory way like directly. And so I'm teaching that more and more so that people realize that like no one owns your mind. Like no one can say whether your mind is illegal or illegal. And at the end of the day, you have your mind and you have your experience. And so, you know, if this is how you want to free yourself, like you can do this, it just takes a bit of, you know, a bit of magic and a bit of faith that you can do it on your own, that no experience that you've had is lost to you.

It's already there in you. Of course. And so unless you've never taken a psychedelic before, so yeah, you've got to get like one under your belt. I mean, there's probably other ways of doing it, but it's probably easier if you have that reference. Right. So I'm kind of focusing on those two, which are like decidedly non-drug routes and it's kind of exciting and makes me. I think that's really cool. Yeah. Kudos to you for also just mentioning that like being a mom and integrating, having children is like a thing that people do because like it's lost, right? I mean, the world we live in, I know it very well.

Do you know it? That's cool. Do you have a name for that meditation thing? Like where would we go? Yeah, it's on my website. It's called Raft. And it actually involves like imagining yourself on a Raft and it's a little bit like a hypnotic induction, but it stands for remembering to be aware of your feelings and trust your experience. So remembering to be aware of feelings in your body and trust your experience. So it's kind of like a guide to the psychedelic experience, but it also is a guide to like mindfulness. And yeah, it's like a 15 minute thing. People can do the meditation for free on it's on YouTube right now.

I have people kind of adapting it and using it in like integration circles. I didn't realize what I was developing until after I developed it. And then people started having really powerful experiences and I was kind of like, oh, like I didn't realize what this was doing. And so now I'm being a bit more intentional about it. And when I do guide people through it, I kind of prepare people like this will probably be more intense than you're expecting 'cause it sounds like it's really simple. So again, now it's just kind of, it's a fun thing. And yeah, it does seem like a doorway into the psychedelic space.

I like that a lot. We're a little shaman alchemy there because I love it. Really, it's been a pleasure having you on. I have three quick questions and then one open ended one. But really a lot of the things we cover here are simmering in my consciousness a lot just because I try to stay, I've luckily not made my profession into psychedelic scene, but I've always known quite a few people who are in and around it. And you always notice stuff, you notice things. So it's always fun to be able to talk about it kind of in an open and public format like this. Here comes the very hard questions. What's your favorite color?

Green, I didn't know my favorite color was green but that's what's coming through.

This happens more than you would think. What's your favorite number?

Three.

What's your favorite animal?

Wow, there are a lot of competing animals. Wait, I'll just worm. Worm, I just saw a really cool worm on a fail yesterday. It's pretty cool.

I don't know if I gave you accurate answers but I gave you the ones that wanted to be said.

Well, I have repeat guests and I'd love for you to come back on again sometime. And they have the answers changed. We recognize what's going on here. Last question, what's a practical tip? It could be anything that's helped you in your life that you could share with people listening.

A practical tip. Well, because we've been talking about mushrooms and synchronicity, I have found over and over and over again that when I relax and pay attention, the universe is very willing to kind of present to me reminders that it notices me, it's paying attention, it cares about me, and I'm kind of on the right path. And I think my practical tip would be like, don't try to like solve that riddle. Like if you have lots of meaningful things that are entering your life, quirky things, weird things, synchronous things, allow them to like flow through as just like, hey, you're doing this, like we got you.

We're paying attention. We're part of you, just keep going. And rather than trying to like analyze and solve it because the times that have gotten hard is when I really tried to like bear down and analyze and solve those meaningful things. And the times where I just let go, not only do they increase, but it's like way easier. It's just like, yep, got it. Okay, yes, I see that. Yep, all right, there's another one. That's my practical advice.

It's amazing and it's like you're speaking directly to me. That basically is my philosophy related to synchronicity. And I obviously have a podcast ahead of many experience with it called synchronicity. That's probably the best explanation I've heard of my approach to these things is I've gone through the periods where you try to analyze and figure it all out. Good luck. Just use it as the intuitive guidance you need at the time. I love that. Catherine, thank you so much for making the time to come on and know kids. We know, you know, but I really appreciate it.

Thank you, it was so fun.

All right, thanks. We'll talk to you.

Okay.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

Thanks for listening to that episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Catherine McLean, go find her on her website, links available on this page in the episode notes. Uh, that's it. That's all I got. Rate, review, subscribe. I think it's somewhat easier to see and comprehend the ratings now. Seems like iTunes changed something on their webpage, which used to look very bad. Isn't it weird that Apple doesn't change? Like, this is a modern, I got all this money and the iPhones, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go to iTunes, it looks like shit. Fix that shit. It looks like, I've been, this looks like Winamp. Worse than Winamp, does anyone remember Winamp?

The MP3 player, how about Sonyc? Anyone remember this? I know my friends and I used to skip school and smoke weed and watch the cool. Sonyc had this thing, this plug-in where it would, you know, sync to the music. It was like a light show for your computer screen. We would do that, shit was awesome. Anyway, iTunes sucks. Get it together, Apple. What the fuck is going on? I got a potty mouth this episode, sorry, for people who don't like potty mouth. Okay, congrats to people who do like potty mouths. All right, ending it. More guests next week. Fun times. See you next week.