Unpopular Opinions with Tao Lin

(upbeat music)

Welcome to Synchronicity. My guest this week is author and artist, Tao Lin. I've been connected with Tao for a few years here. Somehow we got connected on Twitter. I don't know how. He sent me his latest book at the time, which was Leave Society, which I really enjoyed. And since then, it's just been kind of a pleasure seeing his tweets and getting to know him a little bit. This is a wide ranging conversation. It has, you saw, it's called Unpopular Opinions. Trigger Warning, if you don't like talks about vaccines, Trump, other stuff like that, psychedelics, tune out. Save yourself the trouble. There's no reason.

I've gone through the ringer with all of that stuff in the past, so I'll give you the warning upfront. But it's a really nice conversation. I'm sure you'll enjoy it if you are not offended by those things and opinions on them. And that's what they are, they're opinions. Quick order of business, Patreon Rockin'. We hit some major thresholds the past month, and I'm really proud of them. We're doing cool stuff over there. Weekly bonus episodes, weekly tarot readings, monthly live streams, the next live stream is tomorrow. March 28th, Thursday at 7 p.m. Eastern. So if you wanna tune into that, you can do that by joining the Patreon.

That's it, other stuff, Stand Store. I mentioned it, the crypto stuff. Listen, it's there. All the links are in the show notes, all the links are in my bios and all the places. Fun times. TikTok ban, will it happen, will it not? I don't know, we'll see. TikTok's been going good for me. They recently changed the payout structure, but it seems to be a-okay, no worries. That's it, go check out TOW on Twitter and Instagram. He also makes mandalas, which are very cool. I think you will enjoy those. And he has a new work coming out, a new book. Nonfiction, soon. I think in 2025, it's gonna be released.

Really good author. Really enjoyed this conversation with him. I encourage you to connect with him. However, you can. Just kind of a really cool guy. It was a very pleasant conversation. All right, I think that's it. I don't have anything else to say. I guess all that's left to say is without further ado, here is TOW, Lin. (upbeat music) Oh, there we go. How you doing, man? Good. How are you? I'm doing really well. I gotta say, it's kind of a, I like the start of spring, or at least the idea of the start of spring. And I like that the eclipse season has underway. And I'm actually, I think we're gonna see it in the path of totality.

It's like three and a half hours north of where I am. So hopefully it's visible, but yeah, it's kind of a nice, interesting time. So this season has a lot to do with how you feel. I think so. I mean, I live in a part of the country where it is a drastic difference in terms of seasonality. So I think when the weather tends to get nicer and things come back to life, I usually feel like I have more energy, I would say. Yeah, me too, when I lived in New York, the changes were so drastic. And I would feel better during the spring. I also like the fall too. Yeah, the fall is amazing. That's probably my favorite.

But where I live now, it's always the same. In Hawaii, the temperature changes a little bit, probably by like five degrees, but the plant growth is always the same. It just has been interesting. It's harder for me to remember, years without the magic. Where are you in Hawaii? On the big island, it's the biggest island. It's in the right bottom of the chain. Cool. I have not been there. I've been to Maui a couple of times and it was very magical from what I remember. Like the feeling of being on that particular island felt like it's one of the few times that I felt like this is like kind of like a holy place immediately upon exiting the airport and being like, wow, this feels magical.

That's cool. When did you move to Hawaii? I moved here in 2020 right before the pandemic to house it. At first I came to see, I came just to house it for my mom's sister or my mom's friend from college. And then after that, the pandemic happened and I just kept staying in Hawaii and I stayed here. I don't think that's a bad move from what I remember of Hawaii. It seems like you could be doing worse. Plus we were saying you don't have daylight savings. That's pretty nice. Yeah, yeah, it's really nice here. It was just cool, man. There was just no reason to go back to New York during the pandemic, especially in the city.

I lived in Manhattan in Midtown and there seemed to be like riots and people breaking into stores and stuff. It was crazy. I forgot about how just how insane it was at the beginning. I'm a couple hours north of the city so we were relatively immune from that but I know my friends in the city and in LA were like, this is chaos. This is absolute chaos. I haven't experienced this level of dysfunction in the city so I don't remember these cities before. But pandemic vibes, what are you gonna do? Well, thank you for coming on, man. I really appreciate it. I will say that I became aware of you when I think on Twitter, you followed me and I'm very stingy with my Twitter follows.

I've just found it's kind of a nice way to navigate that particular social media platform is to not follow too many people because it can become overwhelming and people have a lot of different perspectives. But I followed you because I read some of your tweets and I'm like, this is nice. Like I actually like reading these things. So from there, I think we got in touch somehow and you sent me your latest novel, Leave Society. I know you have a non-fiction book coming out. You said sometime in 2025 and I loved it, man. I was really impressed. I admittedly hadn't read a novel in some time and it was awesome.

It was just the way it was written. I hadn't really found something that felt so resonant in a long time and I was really impressed and I've been enjoyed connecting kind of with your online presence at least. So I'm excited to have you on, man. Yeah, thank you for having me on. I don't remember why I followed you exactly. I really like your aesthetic and I know you're interested in psychedelics. Yeah. And I've listened to a few of your podcast episodes. So it's probably one of the-- Cool, man. Cool. Yeah, psychedelics in particular are, I think, how a lot of people end up getting connected just because I think there is a huge connection between psychedelic use and just people becoming interested or furthering their interest in spiritual paths, which for a lot of people, they don't have a strong connection with growing up.

I think where you're born in '83, right? Yeah. What about you? Yeah, me too. Oh. Me too. I think if I saw it correctly, we're both cancers. You're born in July as well. Yeah, I'm like cancer, yeah. Yeah. I recently found out my wife has been going to this kind of like full moon, new moon dream phase remotely with a teacher. And she was saying that people born in '83 have some of the toughest astrology out there. I was like, fuck, really? It kind of feels like that, but don't say it out loud. So we got that going on. That's fun. The reason I bring it up is you've lived in seemingly two worlds, right?

You remember, like I do, a pre-internet age, where we lived most of our youth. And then as we were kind of turning the corner into elements of adulthood, we saw this massive rise and takeover of technology, right? With the internet and everything else. And I know that's been a big part of your work previously, especially. I mean, what are your imp-- I just say this is a fellow '83, where we're kind of like this gap generation between millennials, Gen X, and whatever came next. How has the experience been for you being an '83 Earth? It's been interesting. And I thought about it through my writing.

My internet usage, I started with AOL, America Online, when I was probably like 11 or 12. And then soon after getting AOL, I found this massively multiplayer online role-playing game that was text-based. And I started playing that a lot. It was called Gemstone 3. And I got addicted to it and played it heavily for like two years. And then after that, it was high school. High school, I had started. And I feel like I didn't use the internet much through high school. Like I didn't have people I emailed with. Right. And instant messenger, for some reason, I wasn't using it during high school that much.

And then in college, I started using the internet more. And that was when Google came out when I was in college. Yeah. But then since then, for my writing career, I've used to internet a lot. At first, when social media came out or Twitter came out, I was using that. And I got really into tweeting and tweeted heavily for many years. And also just spent a lot of time online emailing and doing other stuff. Harley, because I don't do-- or I've had periods in my life where I've been really the gore of COVID. And being online just gets rid of that. What about you? Yeah, I mean, it's not totally dissimilar.

It's actually funny when you mentioned high school kind of being a lull. I started using the internet probably right around the same age as you. My mom was a attorney for AOL. She had her own law firm. So I was a really early user of AOL and also aim their instant messaging thing. And it was kind of a part of my high school, but I really don't remember being-- you know what I remember the internet for? Porn. I remember I was just coming of adolescent puberty age when porn was going on in the internet. And I was really into it because I was like the perfect age to be discovering this thing where you could just go online and find pictures of naked women.

I remember that being primarily what I used the internet for in high school. And then afterwards, exactly like you said, it just became almost this dominant form of communication between instant messaging or email and then Twitter. I think I joined in 2009 and just also found myself tweeting and enjoying it as a space to kind of find out about things, connect with people. And then over the past, I don't know, what is it? 10 years, 15 years, it's just become this kind of intrusive, weird layer of consciousness that we interact with that I don't know how it happened. But it seems like just something that people got plugged into.

And I think it has its good sides and its bad sides, obviously. But it is interesting to see how it kind of snuck up on everyone. And it's been a very weird experience. I guess if I had to sum it up, that's what I'd say. It's been a weird experience. Yeah, I didn't realize how immersed it is we are in it until you just mentioned that because I'm so in it. But I wanted to mention that I also looked at porn a lot in high school in Africa. And I've been addicted to porn for many years. That's a big part of the internet for me too. It's a huge part. I mean, the thing, I just remember the realization that this stuff was accessible.

And then again, much in the same way that social media has evolved, it's just there. It's a part of so many people's lives. I think as I've gotten older, my relationship with porn has actually been a little bit healthier. But I think that's purely based on just not having the time and space to engage with it. That's a huge part of it. But I mean, I don't know how a kid going through adolescence and puberty now, I mean, you just have free reign. It's all there. It's just kind of crazy. I had a wait for the JPEGs to load, right? Like you would see it would literally be like bar by bar by bar, right?

And so like now it's just like a whole other world. And it's very weird to think about how people will be interacting with it. But I don't find it surprising that a lot of people do have an addiction to porn because it's just so accessible. It's crazy. Yeah, and it's so addicting. It's so addicting. It really is. I feel for kids these days, like I wonder how they're dealing with addiction to social media and porn and other online things because-- It's really-- Yeah. It's just been hard for me getting addicted to various things. So it must be worse for them because I often think about how much more toxified and damaged the younger people are.

Just from increasing toxins and increasing nutrients. So it must be really hard for them. I came across on TikTok recently. There's like this concept or idea that Generation Z or Zoomers are aging much worse compared to their millennial brethren. And I didn't really get it at first. But then like I started seeing all of these people posting and I'm like, holy shit, they look super old. And I was like, do I look that old? And I looked in the mirror and I'm like, I actually look pretty damn good for 40. My idea of a 40-year-old when I was a kid was like some old person. I'm like, I think I look pretty good.

And I think it's exactly what you said. I know this is something you care about just from your tweets. The dietary distinction between what we experienced, our parents experienced in this country or the country of origin, like it is night and day. I mean, what they have done to the food supply in general and kind of globalized this thing is just it's atrocious. And it's like almost work just to get to a normal baseline of vitamins and nutrients as they threw food, which is a shame. And then you put on top of these other kind of potentially addicted layers of kind of digital consciousness and like, yeah, how are they doing out there?

I mean, I have young kids, but they're like, they're not in it, you know what I mean? They're not really interfacing in that way. Like my oldest is going to be eight. He doesn't have a cell phone. You know, he's not really aware of that layer yet. But when you start to get, I don't know, 10, 11, 12, you kind of get plugged into this weird matrix thing. And it is interesting to think about like, what's that like for them? We didn't have that. Yeah. So your kid, does he ask about the internet? Have you ever mentioned it to him? So yeah, of course, I mean, I have an eight, I have a soon to be eight, soon to be five, soon to be three-year-old, right?

So they're now two, four, and seven. All of them are aware of YouTube, all of them. All of them can navigate YouTube. Some have restrictions on it because YouTube gets real gnarly for kids, real fast. But I don't think they fully understand what the internet is. I think everything is just accessible. It's theoretically for them. So like that's just the way it is. It's like it's always going to be like that for them, which is different than having grown up. Where like if we wanted to look something up or learn about something, I often think about this with spirituality, how it's such a different approach these days.

Like you're inundated and kind of blasted with spirituality. If you express any interest online, you're gonna get a lot of input. Where 20, 25 years ago, you kind of had to go to a bookstore and get a book on something, or maybe find some weird meeting. Like the internet was kind of emerging as a place you could go out and look for things, but it wasn't this inbound kind of spirituality. And even 10, 20 years before that, so we're talking about like when we were born, you had to go to a library or something. Like these things were just fringe and now they're kind of mainstream. So I just, I don't think my children have awareness that there was another way.

It's like trying to explain, you know, a pre-car society before cars. Like we can kind of understand it, but a lot of our lives are based on like automotive transportation and it's just like that's what it is. It's hard to imagine horses or some other thing. So I don't know, I mean, they're eventually gonna come into contact with it. I think I have a few years at least, but once they get a phone, it's like, it's kind of over. I haven't thought about it yet.

Do you remember what the thing you read about Zoomer seeming older that they attribute that to anything?

No one, it was just Zoomers kind of talking about it more than anyone like delineating a clear causal reason for it. And I think it's anecdotal because this isn't like an actual study that was done. But I do think it makes sense that just the base level stuff that people are putting into their body is pretty shitty. I was lucky I had a mom who has always been, not always, but like for at least the most of my childhood realized kind of what was going on and like tried to be as healthy as possible through like organic and like all these things that now, you know, are like kind of just out there and available for people.

She kind of saw what was happening. So I was grateful for that, but like most people just don't know. They just don't realize the extent and how pervasive kind of the poisoning of a population is. It's kind of dystopian if you look at it for too long.

Yeah, I agree it is dystopian. And part of the result of all this can be seen, I think in autism and autism, touching rates of autism.

Yeah, I'm really interested to actually talk to you about that. I had my sister on who kind of gave like the breakdown of autism from her perspective, but I know that you have mentioned kind of healing and curing autism for yourself. And I'm curious about, obviously that's gonna touch a nerve with many people, but who gives a shit? I'd love to hear about kind of your experiences with autism, what you think that means for you and how you kind of like cured it in a sense.

Yeah, I didn't hear about autism growing often. I probably first heard of it in a psychology textbook at college and I probably saw a photo of a kid like rocking in a chair and it seemed pretty extreme as a disorder and I didn't think that I was autistic at all. So I didn't think about it. But then after college, as I started publishing books, people, readers and journalists would say that my characters were autistic. And then when I started doing media, people would describe me as autistic. And I looked into it and I saw that the symptoms. So deficits and social interaction and communication and repetitive behaviors are the two main symptoms.

And then there's a lot of other ones. But looking into it, I agreed with everyone that I was autistic because that's how I acted. And if you act autistic, you are autistic because there's no blood test or some other way to find out with physical examination, whether someone's autistic or not. It's just based on different tests. A lot of them, you can fill out yourself. And I filled out one pretending I was in high school and I qualified definitely. And the mainstream definition, the official definition by the CDC, it's just that if you have deficits and social interaction and communication, repetitive behaviors and that these two things cause significant impairment in your life.

Right.

And that's really subjective. But looking at myself, I thought back about my life and thought about high school and thought about, if I noticed anyone more or less autistic than me, I only noticed probably like one or two other people out of 100 or three or something like that that I judged as being as autistic as me.

Right.

And to me, autism, this is leading up to later on in life, like 10 years, yeah, 10 years after journalists started calling me autistic, I was researching or, never mind, let's jump ahead. Or just at some point, I researched autism gradually over the years. And I came to think that it was caused not by genetics as the government says, but by environmental toxins.

Yeah.

And this viewpoint is not acceptable in mainstream media, because mainstream media is highly funded by the pharmaceutical industry and the toxins that are causing autism, probably most of them come from the pharmaceutical drug industry. So they don't, obviously you don't want to admit that they've been causing autism for decades. So all the pressure is to support this genetic view to the point that if you express the toxin view, you'll just be dismissed as a fool in mainstream media and in certain other places, but--

It's true and not to stop you right, I just want to make a brief point about this. This is a deeper kind of cultural belief in either kind of the innate exogenesis effect of bacteria, viruses, and the genetic predisposition for those, that's what modern science and the medical kind of field work off of, that there are these things that are attacking us and we need to do things to fight them off. And it's not like how we treat our bodies, what we put into it, those types of things have much of an impact. And this is where I'm seeing this kind of great divide. And it gets blown up into vax, anti-vax conversations, but I think ultimately that seems to be where a lot of people who I know, I've been labeled anti-vax.

I wasn't vaccinated for COVID just because it seemed a little weird to me that was developed so quickly and it hadn't really been studied. That was my only real reason outside of the VMM protest of my mom and my wife, who I think are pretty smart when it comes to this stuff. I got labeled as anti-vax and all these weird things. I'm like, I have children, they're vaccinated for a lot of things. I try to get as few as possible, but unfortunately we're plugged into a system where that is if they wanna attend public school, they need to get them. So I'm not anti-vax, but I do believe, I think which is what you're saying.

I'll let you continue that there's not no impact from these things. There's a pretty clear correlation in the data, but yes, continue.

Yeah, when people say anti-vax, they actually mean that you're a person who doesn't 100% agree with the government on vaccines.

Yeah, that's so true.

It's true.

And it's so bad for them because they don't wanna be anti-vax. So they can't say anything negative or anything not positive about vaccines. So the people, the people who use this term the most, they end up getting the most. It's not funny, well, in some one way it is, they end up getting the most of vaccines and then they get damaged the most in my view. Yeah, I've gotten called anti-vax a lot.

Yeah, I mean, it's harder seemingly to have certain opinions publicly. I mean, I know you've dealt with this too, just from your career. And I also think it's a trip that like one of your first tips that you may have had autism, which I do wanna get back to your journey on that, is journalists saying this guy and his characters are auditioning. You must have been like, what the, what? I was just writing. This is how I write. So that's crazy, man. But yeah, please continue, yeah.

One more thing about the anti-vax, I think.

Yeah.

I first got, started getting caught this in 2017 because I had been researching vaccines a lot through glyphosate and-

Yes, yes. I had encountered glyphosate through psychedelics, I think, because glyphosate inhibits an enzyme that animals and plant life need to create DMT and psilocybin. And then-

I didn't know that.

I did some more research and notice that glyphosate, people have published peer reviewed papers, or there's been one peer reviewed paper saying that it's been found in vaccines, glyphosate.

Yeah.

And it makes sense that it'll be there because vaccines contain gelatin and soy and sucrose and other ingredients. And it's not pure organic gelatin. It's like the cheapest gelatin they can get, which is filled with glyphosate because it's made from cow and pig ligaments and the animals are fed glyphosate filled with soy and other things like corn. So I found out glyphosate was in vaccines and by that time I had distrusted vaccines to some degree because just from seeing stuff written about it in the natural health places I was reading. But then my brother had a kid and I thought that I should share what I had learned about vaccines with him.

And I wrote him an email basically saying just to minimize the amount of vaccines he gets and to spread them out because most-

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah. To spread them out and to just follow a more non-American vaccine schedule because the American vaccine schedule has two to three times as many vaccines as in Europe and Asia.

It's insane.

Yeah.

It's insane. This fact alone, it should get people interested but they've just been calling people anti-vaxx so much that they can't look at this or think about it. But then I posted that email to my brother on my Twitter just thinking like I had typed this long thing. It might be a beast to other people and that's when I started getting caught anti-vaxxed and had tons of people unfollow me. Yeah.

Yeah, it's not the most popular of opinions to have because like you said, and everyone is guilty of this at some point in their life or another. So it's not a judgment on people who may identify as a profound supporter of vaccines. But you back yourself into a corner if that's your default kind of moral imperative and I saw it happen so quickly with COVID because it was such a scare for so many people. I mean, this was a virus that was relatively deadly in its beginning stages and vaccines seemingly offer to some people an alternative to that even though if you look at the efficacy of the vaccines throughout the years, it was pretty bad and did not do any most or if any of the things that purported to do.

And it seems clear that there are negative ramifications and implications from getting that vaccine in particular. It's like you cut yourself off from a world of potential research and wisdom and knowledge. And I co-parent with an ex and she was more pre... She was more like aligned I think through another reason than just like the media or what we kind of grew up with that vaccines are good, they're totally safe, there's no issues, everyone should be getting them. And then I, for the health and safety of my children really started sharing like articles and research study papers and like things that are going on in the pharmaceutical world and its ties to the FDA and other things that are approved and mandated.

And she was like, yeah, maybe we don't need to do that. And it's exactly what you said. We live in a state that they mandate vaccines for children but we spoke with our providers for our children who are actually very as far as like real doctor's offices go are very aligned with people. They didn't mandate COVID vaccines for people. They're very understanding. They spread them out at the very least. And when we were kids, I got less vaccines than my sister who was born three years after, right? So she already was getting starting to get exponentially more vaccines than I got just three. So this has ramped up since the 80s in terms of like how many vaccines kids are getting.

And I just feel like an option should be here because the efficacy of vaccines I don't think is what people necessarily believe it to be. And it's a nuanced and multifaceted conversation that I think it's just easier to make up your mind whether it's good or bad, you know?

Yeah, there's been around three times as many vaccines are mandated now than when I was born, when we were born.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, it's insane. It's truly insane. Oh, okay, back to the autism stuff though, because I think this is fascinating. So you started researching, you starting to see correlations, what's going through your head at that point?

I'm just thinking like glyphosate is in vaccines. This is hardly, it's amazing that this fact is out there. It's been besides the peer review paper, another group, a nonprofit sent vaccines to get tested and glyphosate was also in them. So I put that in my book trip about psychedelics. I just put that back in there, that glyphosate has been found in vaccines. And I didn't think about vaccines that much. Occasionally I would tweet something negative about vaccines.

Just poking the bear a little bit, no big deal.

Just to remind everyone. And I just feel the need a lot of the time to tell people about stuff I've learned that seems important. That need, it's gotten down over the years, which is good I think, because in the past I would just do a bother me wanting to talk about it. And then people's reaction to it would bother me too. But I didn't think about autism much until an editor asked me if I wanted to write about it for its magazine. And I didn't want to at first just because my view was not shared by like every media outlet and probably just thought no one would like it and people would just think me, dismiss me even more.

But then I wrote about it and it got a much better reception than I thought it was. There seemed to be a lot of people out there interested in the perspective that autism is caused mostly by environmental toxins. And then while writing the essay I just, I put down my belief. I had already talked about for like 10 years that I had cured my autism. Like I tweeted it once and would talk about it. And in this essay I just examined it more and confirmed that I did cure my autism just examining my past and thinking about myself now. And one way of looking at this, because it seems hard for people who think autism is genetic to think that it can be cured or treated.

But going by the official definition, if your behaviors don't cause a significant impairment then you aren't autistic. There's no other way to look at it. So going by that definition in high school and college I was autistic. And at some point after that I cured my autism. But curing your autism, I don't feel okay just saying that like, there's.

I know what you mean.

There's more to it because autism actually it fluctuates like by the day or week or month depending on your health, how much sleep you've got it and who you're talking to even or recent events in your life. Like I can be autistic some days or some time in some situations. That's the better, more accurate way of viewing it I think is to think of it as like depression or anxiety.

Yes. - Like no one.

Yes.

It's gonna tell you that your depression is inborn and you're just gonna be depressed forever, no. But if you can imagine a society where people did say depression is inborn and they kept trying to find a gene for it and they found like 1,000 genes that are involved and the rates keep going off and they can't figure out why it's going up. That would be exactly like autism.

Exactly.

Something like that could happen like it could be a science fiction novel where everything's the same except depression has also been labeled as genetic. And autistic people, a lot of them, if they go to a doctor who thinks it's genetic, part of their treatment will be applied behavioral therapy. And during this, they try to teach kids how to act normal. Like they'll give them rewards or punishments. There's only like one place that does punishments anymore but in the past, in order to like make eye contact.

You're gonna Pavlonian train them.

Yeah, it's like taking someone with the flu and trying to treat the flu by like forcing them to act happy and vibrant. It seems really torturous.

Yeah. I think that also seems to have to do with the tendency to try to treat things symptomatically in this culture. For the most part, at least the medical culture. And there is, I believe, an element of introspection and kind of, it's a little bit deeper. The roots may be deeper than that. And I think this viewpoint comes a lot from psychedelics or deep spiritual pursuits or meditation, whatever kind of clears the mind or offers a different perspective or maybe even a multi-perspective view. That helps, but that also isn't usually the best way to create a system or a organization or a kind of bureaucracy behind it.

So those two kind of approaches are seemingly at odds but I'm seeing, I'll be at limitedly a change in kind of people figuring out how to be a little bit more deeper thinking about these things. I've seen a lot of natural and herbal medicine take off in recent years and I think that's more aligned with how to try to treat these things. So what were some of the things you did that helped you kind of alleviate the symptoms or the debilitating systems of autism?

I did a lot of different things. And I feel like anything that I can do to improve my health is gonna improve my autism symptoms just because social interaction is like the most complex human behavior so if you feel off in any way, if you're sick or you're not optimized or part of you's not functioning, you're gonna show that in your social interaction, I feel. So I've been working on sleeping better, eating better, I've researched diet a lot and worked on my diet and that's been a major thing helping me and I worked on treating my chronic pain. Chronic pain is a big cause of, not a cause of autism but yeah, the cause of autism because when I've been in chronic pain, I just act autistic like I don't have the energy to be talkative and make eye contact in all of this.

So caring.

I never thought about it like that.

Yeah, yeah, or reducing my chronic pain was really helpful and I did that through diet. And then one thing that helped a lot is just doing a lot of interviews and talking a lot through my writing career. Over the past almost 20 years, that's been a big help. (birds chirping) That makes a lot of sense. That's kind of like the more mental, psychological realm emotional too. The physical stuff is hugely important. I think that's kind of been my bigger realizations over the past five years, maybe 10 years. It's how important that was. I think when I was younger, I didn't realize the body was such a crucial part 'cause it's so when you're young, when you're a kid and going into your 20s and stuff, the body is so, it's so adaptive to like most things you throw at it.

And I still feel very grateful that I have a body that is treating me very well and responds when I make good decisions pretty quickly. But it's not the same as when I was in my 20s. So I think I've developed a more grateful relationship to the body as kind of a way to process feelings and also see how you're actually doing. I said I hadn't thought about that in terms of like when you are in pain or sick that you do kind of start to exhibit traits of autism. If it's interfering with your ability to be present because that's dominating your psyche, that makes a lot of sense. And it also is interesting to examine just kind of the broader collective through that lens as well because I think pain, whether physical, psychic, emotional is a big theme of what people are experiencing these days.

It seems to be a very big theme, if not universal. So it's very interesting. I never thought about autism in that way.

Yeah, another contributor is porn. When I was watching porn a lot in my 20s, it would make me autistic around attractive women 'cause I would see an attractive woman and immediately start thinking of porn I'd watched and I just feel like inhibited and weird.

I mean, I get it. I mean, it's also just like a weird fantasy realm. Like porn rarely takes on, it doesn't usually look like that with sex. In at least in my experiences, and I think most people's, that's usually, it's like a performative thing. It's like a theater in some ways and that can definitely fuck with your relationship if you're seeing people you find attractive. So I mean, I get that shit.

Yeah, and it also drains dopamine out of progressive your life. I've noticed that other, not just porn, but masturbation. I've noticed like if I masturbate the rest of the day, I'll enjoy other things a little less just because I had that high suddenly, but readjusting my thing or pleasure, my life, I don't know.

I wonder, yeah, I saw your tweet on that. I was thinking about it. Yeah, it's an interesting, I don't know if I ever noticed the correlation between, I mean, in my good masturbating days back in, you know, 15 probably peak masturbation, right? Just getting into the throw of it. I'm trying to think if that could have contributed to a loss of interest. I mean, sex definitely dominated my mind then to a degree that was like, it's almost unfathomable even now. I mean, it was just like the only thing on my mind is like a 15 year old kid. Incidentally, the first year I had sex. Proof that imagination works, by the way, there you go.

It was literally on my mind all the time because it's just, that's the age I was. That's an interesting thing, I've never really thought about that. I don't really watch too much porn these days, but I do watch it, it's still a part of my life. It is an interesting thing to notice how it would affect other kind of experiences in life relative to dopamine. I never actually examined that, it's interesting. When did you notice that?

Some time in the past few years, I said something that helped me notice it was just both. Dopamine nation. And then just all these health influencers talking about dopamine, that if you spike it with some activity, then it just increases the amount of, or it makes you more tolerant to it. So your other activities will seem less, you will get less of a dopamine effect, something like that. I mean, that's also the basis for the opiate addiction issue as well, because that's exactly what it does. It floods your opioid receptors, which are processed dopamine, and it points it, it gets it to such a crazy level that everything in comparison kind of is bleaker.

And so it's interesting. That's obviously a more prolonged experience than an orgasm. It's a pretty short thing, but yeah. I mean, that's very interesting.

Yeah, I think that-- - Oh, sorry, go ahead.

No, no, no, you go ahead.

I was gonna say that it's part of why people are selling the pharmaceuticals now, and not able to see that toxins have a larger effect. It's just that the distrust of nature, which also comes out in the overly, being overly trusting of technology. And psychedelics is one aspect of culture that seems to have gotten through this. It seems like the mainstream is interested in psychedelics, but in so many other ways. But another one that's gotten a lot of good attention is exercise.

Yeah, yes. - I wouldn't say that it's, like you didn't see the president in the health, the CDC directors and all these other people recommending exercise. So it's not gotten that big, but it's pretty popular and effective. And exercise is a big way of trusting nature, just everything exercises. And it gives you such a sustained, it gives you sustained good feelings that don't reduce over time, because you've evolved to function best when exercising, unlike the opiates, which will get you reliant on them in other negatives.

Yeah, lots of other negatives. And also just the criminalization of a lot of that too, I think adds a huge layer. 'Cause drug use, I mean, it's interesting, you look at certain places that have legalized even opiates and you don't see the rate of addiction exponentially go up as many people would predict. It actually just makes the conditions in which one may find themselves addicted to a substance that they may no longer want to be. It at least have options for getting off that without a huge level of inconvenience and stigma. So there's a lot to be said with that. The opioid thing is a whole other thing, but I mean, the exercise stuff, I will say, any period I've felt where I feel attuned to a version of myself I truly enjoy being, I've usually been exercising regularly, I've usually been paying some attention to my diet and there's usually a crossover with an interest in some type of spiritual pursuit, right?

It depends what time of my life you find me at, but those three seem to be aligned for sure. And psychedelics I think have been, and I don't want to say omnipresent, I go extended periods of time without taking psychedelics, but I found LSD in particular to be very kind of instrumental in opening my eyes of seeing different kind of possibilities or way things could be and microdosing in particular was kind of a novel and new way to kind of shift perspective. And I think you're right that psychedelics have broken through in kind of a major way, considering how fringe it was not too long ago to even like admit to this type of drug usage or psychedelic usage, it's massively important.

I mean, it's just, it has a way of just quantum shifting people to different perspectives and modalities of awareness which necessarily impacts the way you view the world and what, how things may be working. So I'm glad that that they're still popular and seemingly are becoming more decriminalized even in states that are kind of like police states. But yeah, I mean, it's been, when did you first do psychedelics? In around, when I was around 27 or so, and I got into them from my pharmaceutical drug, just my drug addiction, which was mostly pharmaceutical drugs. And during that period, I just was wanting to try every type of drug and that's how I started using psilocybin and LSD.

And psychedelics are somewhat better for mental illness than pharmaceutical drugs. And they've been a big role in reducing my autism symptoms as well. Cannabis has reduced my autism symptoms a lot throughout my life or since my house 30 or so. That's been a big factor. But in the 1960s before psychedelics were illegalized, there were like 10 studies using LSD and psilocybin on autistic kids and it improved their symptoms a lot. And that's fascinating. It could be really useful now, I think, because even if a kid is autistic because they feel so uncomfortable, like they have stomach ache all the time and headache and all this other stuff, if you let give them a small dose of LSD, for example, they'll be in a totally new mental space where they also feel euphoric and also feel their pain and discomfort reduced.

So while in this new mental state with catalyzed imagination, they can act in a non-autistic manner. And that the memory of being able to act that way will help them move towards acting that way in the future.

Especially if it's reducing their input of pain and kind of like having to withdraw. A lot of autism symptoms, from my perspective, seem to be based in kind of protecting yourself from stimuli and situations and just relationships, which I think why it's a spectrum is a lot of people can understand situations where sometimes you just have to leave a group or a room because you are overstimulated. That's not an uncommon thing. I will tell you this, I don't disagree about the LSD thing. That is another super unpopular opinion. I think the only other person I have seen express that is maybe Alex Gray, who I saw once speak about kind of the benefits of potentially giving LSD to children.

And again, sub-trip threshold amounts. We're not talking about giving them like 200 mics of acid and saying, "We're gonna solve your autism." But it is kind of perceptually shifting their environment and maybe accessing different parts of their mind through different neural pathways that would be useful. I would love if we could get to that place, but it is so often viewed as such a mind-altering and powerful thing that to put that in the realm of children with developing brains, I think there's a ton of resistance there, unfortunately, just because it does seem like it could potentially help with those types of things.

It really does, it would be nice to imagine a world where there was an aspect of that built into a therapeutic program. Hopefully, it gets there. If it gets, once they get started researching these things, that's when that change, I think, begins to happen. That's like the first barrier.

Yeah, I think we could get there where they're using LSD to treat autism. In the studies--

That'd be really cool.

In the studies in the 1960s, they were giving them huge doses, like 200 micrograms or more.

Wow.

And, yeah, which is interesting. Maybe we're just--

It is interesting.

We're just too afraid, or maybe for a kid, like it's not as scary, I don't know.

It's such a, there's so few examples. I've met one person who did psychedelics before me. I did it when I was 15, which I don't think is that old of an age, but I did pretty heavy doses. But I knew someone who was unintentionally dosed back in, I think, the '70s, through some orange juice or something, with a pretty high amount of psychedelics, and she had a very negative experience. It was a very traumatic and disorienting experience, but obviously, that wasn't in a clinical setting or with the intention of helping someone with something. So, I see how people can have different perspectives and beliefs on it related to children, but I mean, anything that could help someone who's in pain or suffering or having a difficult time, I think it's certainly worth exploring psychedelics for.

That's one of the best benefits. It kind of gets you out of your own head, guaranteed for a little bit or a lot of it sometimes, and that can be useful for people. And it's not permanent, it doesn't last forever, that's another nice part of it, so.

Yeah, the effects don't last forever, but LSD, for example, lasts much longer than, say, Xanax or Adderall, which seems another way it's helpful for autism, just to spend more time in that space. And then the come down isn't as bad as pharmaceutical drugs.

And. - There's no come down, really. I mean, especially at low doses, I mean, it's.

Yeah, I feel that way. - LSD in particular. Yeah, it's really, it's not like you're doing this. Sometimes, I've noticed when I have microdose LSD, if I take it past, like, say, 3, 4 p.m., I have noticed sometimes in the evening, or at night when I'm trying to go to sleep, like I'm a little jacked up. That's about, I would say it's no different than having some caffeine before trying to go to sleep. It's not like crazy, but you're, that's the only symptom, I would say. I've experienced, and the positives far outweigh that by like a million, so.

And sometimes it can be scary because of just how intense it is, how different your reality seems. But that, to me, is good because people these days, they don't make their kids go on vision quests or make them fast for four days and some ancient ritual. There's a lack of difficult situations and psychedelics offers a safe, intense, challenging experience. So, that's part of why I think it's useful. But instead--

It's really interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

But instead, our kids are given, they're giving all types of drugs, anti-depressants, benzodiazepine stimulants, and it just makes them worse. Like, at a raw, stimulant might improve their symptoms for like two hours. They'll be more outgoing and have more energy and make more eye contact. But for the other 22 hours, they're gonna be even more autistic than they would have been without this drug, which.

It's speed, I mean.

It's obviously, yeah. It's obvious these types of drugs aren't gonna change someone for all 24 hours. Everyone knows that if you drink coffee, like later on you're gonna feel a lack of coffee, but somehow psychiatrists don't center this fact. They kinda just overlook it.

I mean, this is what's been coming out with SSRIs recently. People have been prescribed these and they're trying to get off them and they're like, "I'm going through withdrawal." And they're like, "No, you're not." And they're like, "I am." This is a thing. And now enough people have had this experience where this is a reality for people. But of course, like you're, I have a very, let's say complicated relationship with just psychological and psychiatric kind of viewpoints over the years. Primarily because of psychedelics and at one point a diagnosis of being bipolar where I was prescribed lithium for about three four.

How long did I take lithium for? About four years, almost, little less. And while I was on it, I felt no difference. It's one of those things that was, it's a salt. It's an element. And if you don't have bipolar or what is the behavior characteristics of what bipolar is, it should have no effect on you. It's not like you take someone's lithium stash and you get high off it. It's not how it works. It's not like a benzo or speed or depressing or anything like that. It's just a salt. But I took it for three or four years and then I graduated college. I moved to Manhattan and got a psychiatrist there, kept my prescription up.

But at one point I was like, you know, I think I wanna get off this. I don't think I need it, but I wanna do this in a way that doesn't, isn't just me like flushing down the pills and being like, I didn't wanna Kanye it basically. I wanted to go through like, you know, let my family know, let the psychiatrist know that this is something I wanna try and see how it works. And that was in 2008. And I have been off of lithium since then. And I really don't think I was bipolar. I think I had a very intense kind of spiritual awakening that was brought on heavily by psychedelics, which back then sounded kind of crazy, now seems a little more par for the course in today's culture.

But back then was very much frowned upon, but it was kind of a journey of figuring out what helped provide the necessary insight to live a life that felt comfortable or authentic for me. I don't know that I have a ton of autistic characteristics. My sister thinks that I may, but I think for the most part, I actually have a pretty, for an introvert, I have like a pretty good extroverted life when I want to. But I do think that a deep examination and introspection of one's life can always help. It's never like a bad idea, it may be uncomfortable at times, but that really gives you a chance to kind of form your beliefs and just go through your existential kind of thoughts and feelings and just like really parse out what's going on in your life and what you think this is about.

What are we doing here? Why are we doing these things? Which a lot of people are all too comfortable to not think about and will put any number of hurdles or obstacles or chaos in their way to not deal with it. But I think that's ultimately what people are looking for and autism in a lot of ways seems like a kind of detachment from aspects of culture and reality, which may be just the response to kind of what people are feeling on the inside, which is another interesting way of looking at it. But I also do happen to believe that vaccines, nutrition, glycophate, you could even look at the 5G stuff, the wireless stuff to think that these things don't have an impact on our physiology and our minds, especially.

It's kind of silly to me. It's just like maybe they might, right? It's not like definitely not. So that hopefully is people are understanding that are waking up to that on some level.

Yeah, I totally agree. And not looking into it, part of it is just so much money is involved in these things, like telecommunications. Of course, there's gonna be a ton of propaganda out there saying that their product is safe. But somehow many people aren't able to see that or aren't able to just distrust governments and corporations. Somehow.

Well, or cherry pick, when that's a thing. People hate pharma for opioid use, but vaccines, a lot of people like, yay. These are the same companies. They're not different companies, not like, oh, that's the only bad one. They tried to do that with the Sacklers and Oxy. Like they were the only ones who did this thing. It's like everyone was doing it. There were a million generic knock-offs that you could get for this shit. It was just oxycodone. Like, give me a break. It's not like this is one evil cabal of people who initiated this whole thing. They were particularly nefarious, no doubt about it.

But like, it is. I mean, and it's a shame that money is equalized with kind of power in society because from what I've seen, it's not like the more money you have, the more fulfilled and happy you are. That's just, I've, even from personal experience, I can speak to that. It doesn't mean money doesn't have value. It doesn't mean it can't improve your quality of life. If you're not worrying and stressing out about money, there's that benefit, but there may be some other things going on with you and how you're feeling. That's not just based on money. So it is a shame that money seems to be still such a massive motivating and solely driving force for people that they would hurt their fellow people, which violates in my rule, my only rule for like engaging with reality if we're using like metaphysical and paranormal, whatever you wanna call it, miraculous stuff is, the golden rule.

We just don't do anything and wish anything on another person that you wouldn't want for yourself. It's really not that complicated. It's like about as simple as it can get, but you do tend to see a lot of evidence of people disregarding that principle out there. So it's a weird place.

Yes. And I think part of the problem with people being able to see that big pharma isn't to be trusted, but then on vaccines, trusting them is just how dysfunctional society is right now that there's multiple layers of lies for each problem. So people have to get through the first layer too. Like people have to distrust big pharma in terms of opiates. And then some people will be like we dig, we dug down and found the truth. And then some of these people might, or there will be other people who will be like, no, you only dug down one layer, there's more layers. And for certain topics, there might be like five layers or something.

And it's been, I've seen this in my life, like for many topics, I'll just find one thing, one lie that's hurting me. And then for a long time, I'll think like I've learned everything about this topic, but then I'll discover there's another there. And that happens a lot for various topics. So I think it's good when someone distrust big pharma for just one class of drugs, they're on the way or possibly on the way. Like you can use that as a metaphor for other problems to try to convince them. But I think the mocking is one of the biggest problems, preventing people from doing that. The belief, 'cause if you're mocking people like that, you believe that there's people out there who are just like either trolling you or just complete idiots.

And the problem is just that these people need to stop being idiots or something. But that's not-- - Which is not, yeah.

Yes, that's not how it is. But if you read like the New York Times, that's the attitude they have. They'd be like, there's this conspiracy theorist. So we know he's insane and then there's this about him. So people's worldviews just get really resentful and they don't look into anything. They just blame this other group who needs to do something.

What do you think that is? What's the driving force behind that kind of that tone or that approach? Is it fear? Like what do you think kind of drives the belief that you need to get a narrative and combat other perspectives so vehemently? What do you think that's based on?

Part of it is just that it's the easiest way. Like if you've already been reading the New York Times for 20 years-- - Right.

And everyone you talk to thinks it's the paper of record. The model is all the news that's fit the print. And every day you're talking about it, referencing it as the fact, it seems really, really hard to change. You'll lose a lot of your friends if you start criticizing the New York Times, probably.

Yeah, I mean, the momentum is there, right? It's like that has already kind of created its own force almost. It's like, were you really gonna kind of try to interrupt that and potentially have like a sycifician situation where you have to push this thing up now? Like it's a good point. I never thought about it in terms of the ease of kind of feeding a narrative. But we see that on all spectrums, right? Politically, belief-centered, it's how long can these beliefs coexist before they come so ridiculously obvious that people are like, all right, I think we gotta do something else here. 'Cause I feel like we're approaching that level of novelty and opinions and beliefs for people.

It's hard to have many of these at the same time.

Yeah, I think it's changing in that way too. The mainstream media side has so much money and that's one way that they're able to keep this going, I think, through the advertisements and stuff. But alternative media is helping a lot, I think. Like Joe Rogan and then something I like about Trump, I know he liked Trump, right?

I get pegged as a Trump lover. I am entertained by him as a figure. I didn't vote for him. I'm not gonna vote for him this time. I'm not gonna vote for Biden. I have long made it clear I've written in Dan Marino whenever I've gone to the presidential elections. Like I'm not, it's not happening, but I do find him to be a fascinating character. So I guess in that sense, I am a Trump fan.

Yeah, the thing I was gonna say about Trump. Oh, I just like that he criticized mainstream media so much because all his criticisms, I agreed with them and it felt, or it seemed good for so many people to be now questioning the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and Fox News and all these places. Just to say something positive about Trump for a while.

Yeah, it's rarely done for many people. It's funny, it's hilarious that this episode, we've spoken about Trump and anti-vaxx. I lost swabs of listeners and email subscribers and patrons because I never said I'm voting for Trump. I think he has great political opinions. I agree with him, but I just didn't hate him and people couldn't hack it. It then started becoming about white privilege or cis male privilege or all these things. And I'm like, I mean, guys, if you can't laugh at a Trump press conference, I don't know what to tell you. Same way that I used to laugh at George Bush. It doesn't mean I don't recognize things that they do that are awful and objectionable, but that's kind of just like what a president does.

It's not like they're this squeaky clean, morally superior person. That illusion died, I think, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right? Who basically, not Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with John Kennedy, that illusion has been erased from our collective consciousness in terms of what a president is. I just found him to be so hilarious, so candid, so clearly readable, too. There's very little guile there. As much as people think he's a Huxter or a con man, it's like he's very transparent. He's airmilling this shit for so much. It's not like he pretends to be who he's not outside of maybe making up and elaborating wealth.

And things like that, so what? How many rich people probably don't do that? They add a couple billion or a few hundred million here because they're feeling vulnerable or they don't have enough. Who gives a shit? To me, he was just a person I could read easily, whereas other presidential characters and figures, I felt, I don't know what the fuck is going on here. Or their evidence has been, there's some really weird shady stuff that is just a little too buried deeply. You were talking about the layers. It's maybe a few more layers concealed than Trump's kind of borishness. And I do, I fully expect him to win this election.

I don't think it's really, it might be close, but I believe he'll win.

That would be nice. In terms of if Biden doesn't win.

I agree. - Yeah. And one thing that made me admire Trump a lot is that he tweeted like 30 times that vaccines have something to do with autism.

Yeah.

Which, that just made me trust him a lot because out of all the people who will find out that vaccines have something to do with autism, only a few of them are going to actually be able to believe that and then even the last amount is going to go out there and tweet it 30 times and alienate a bunch of people. So that helped me get a VU on his character from having this kind of inside VU on vaccines and autism. But, and he won as far as wanting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to form a vaccine safety group.

He worked for him. That's right.

But briefly, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. he says that after that Trump got a donation from some pharmaceutical company and stuff.

Yeah, he's gonna take the money.

Yeah, to me.

He's gonna take the money.

That's another example of the layers. Like, like if there was only one layer Trump would have gotten Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in, and they would have figured out what was going on, but there's multiple layers. Like the first one is just money being offered. But still, I think him just tweeting it so many times is very valuable to get that out there to so many people.

Yeah. I mean, and a lot of people would just label that misinformation. And that's the shame. I think in a lot of this is that it doesn't spur more research. I listened on audiobook to a R.K. Jr. some, his most recent book on all the Fauci stuff. And it was really difficult to listen to. And it is not as crazy as anyone who hasn't listened to it thinks it is, it's or Reddit. It's really pretty practical. I think the one takeaway I had from reading it that would be a criticism of sorts, I guess, is that it did make things seem a little bit too binary in terms of like evil and good. And it was very kind of trapped in like an attacking versus defending or protecting mindset, which I think buys into this victim villain, protagonist kind of like hero mindset, which is, I do think a limited way of looking at social interaction and just relationships.

'Cause at any, at least in my life, and I know a lot of other people's, you will play the martyr, the victim, the villain. Like that is going to happen to you and to think that you were just one of those things or there's just one agenda out there. This stuff tends to be a little bit more complex than that. But for the most part, all of the arguments were very convincing. They're backed up by real scientists. It's not just RFK with like, you know, the Charlie from, it's always sunny in Philadelphia, me and behind him. It's like he really worked with a lot of these people. You had a deep care for the environment initially and then saw people basically going through this crazy shit and it was very clear that it was vaccine related and there have been changes, meanwhile, from vaccines.

There's no more mercury in them. There's other things that they've taken out of them but that just goes to show you. It felt like this wasn't a thing. Like they have at least made tacit admissions that these things have not been perfectly great. But yeah, it's a shame. I just don't think we're at the point where people have the time or patience to dig into these things and it's easier just to kind of accept what is the common sense, quote unquote view on this. And I've seen this acutely with people who I would consider relatively liberal or progressive. That's primarily been where I've seen this kind of deviation in terms of beliefs between me and a lot of people, not all of them.

And unfortunately, there is a silent majority who agree, who just do not want to say the stuff out loud, which I understand, 'cause it really can get people upset and it's like, shit.

Yeah, and the silent majority just doesn't have all this media to support them. And an entire academic system, like all the universities are pretty much mostly left leaning. And yeah, no one, there's not enough time to do all this. I often think about how a lot of my research and to health and other stuff is, I was able to do that because I'm a writer. I'm an autobiographical writer, so I get to write about all these things I'm doing. Otherwise, there'd be no way I'd be spending so much time researching this stuff. I'd be too busy having a job.

You're doing what you, yeah, yeah.

And it's just impossible to get through the layers without going layer by layer. So it takes so much time.

Yeah, it's really interesting to see that people just don't have time to do this type of stuff and then can also react so negatively because they just didn't have the time to look into it. And there is an inherent sense of trust, even if people kind of know the government doesn't always have their best interests at heart. It's like, that is the structure that is the authority. I think we're seeing that kind of crumble, which kind of gets me to one of my last questions for you, which is I saw you recently say that the first kind of half of your writing career was what you would call bleak towel.

This is someone who was kind of exploring themes of addiction and kind of suffering and isolation. And then the latter part, which you said you're still in, is kind of spiritual or looking for solutions and health-oriented, which seems very optimistic to me and it's something that, at least since I've known you and become aware of you, there does seem to be a undercurrent of optimism, even when looking at things that may be kind of bleak or kind of there is suffering or even conspiracy or shitty stuff going on. What do you attribute to that shift in perspective primarily and what's something you're optimistic about for the future?

The shift, a big part of it, was just breaching a bottom with my pharmaceutical drug addiction and realizing that that didn't work. So I want to go in this other direction. If I want to have a happier, less suicidal and just more enjoyable life. So that encouraged me to go away from pessimism and negativity, which I was really immersed in before with my writing. Writing a lot about depression and confusion and alienation. But it was hard to get away from all that. And one thing that helped was a psilocybin trip I had. I had the psilocybin trip well, already wanting to stop using pharmaceutical drugs but not being able to.

And after this trip, it just gave me the perspective and motivation to finally actually stop using those drugs and to find other world views and other information to replace the bleak ones I had before like existentialism and literary novels. Because a lot of literary novels are about atheists who feel dysphoric in some way. So I got away from those things and just got more in this psychedelic culture which led me to Terence McKenna. Or Terence McKenna, I encountered him first and he led me to study nature and aborigines in human history and getting a wider view of things has made me more optimistic.

Because I see that for one, I see that the last 6,000 years has been a deterioration and that for at least 4,000 years before that people were living peacefully and they had no military budgets. And so that's just one human history way that I've become optimistic. Because now I think instead of just being stuck in this war-addicted world forever, now I think this is just like we fell down and we could get off.

A stumble. - Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Yeah, I love that. I mean, that is what it feels energetically to me. That's what it feels like. I remain optimistic. I think it would also be kind of crazy to have as many children as I do if I wasn't somewhat optimistic for the future. Otherwise you're just kind of bringing in beings to be tortured by like a horrible place. So yeah, man, that makes a lot of sense to me. It's interesting to hear that you kind of were in the throes of the opioid addiction too. What was like kind of your lowest point with that where you realize like you didn't want to be doing this but you found yourself not being able to stop?

My main pharmaceutical drugs were Adderon benzos but also--

Oh, benzos, yeah, those are deadly if you get off.

Also opiates too, basically any drug like cocaine too. And I feel like soon after I started using these drugs maybe a year into it I started not viewing them as sustainable and wanting to stop but I was addicted. So it took a years to finally stop using them.

Yeah, have you tried ketamine?

Yeah, I have, I have--

Do you like it?

I feel like I didn't, no, I didn't like it that much. It just made me feel weird or not wishing.

Weird, no, weird is the right word. Honestly, if there's one drug where weird is the most appropriate, it's ketamine.

Yeah, yeah, weird. I think I would like it now though. I was using it during the time when I didn't know anything about psychedelics and was just using Adderon stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but now what about you?

I tend to go on, outside of cannabis which I have really used almost an uninterruptedly since '15, it's just it works for me, it really works. I've taken breaks, I've taken months, year off daily usage many times, but it just works for me. I tend to go through like a couple, two year periods with drugs. Psychedelics though I did use from '15 to about 22, pretty heavily. But outside of that like cocaine I used for like a year just out of high school, hated it, hated how much people spoke on it and all these plans and things were spoken about, none of them materialized. It just drove me insane. I remember doing like splitting an eight ball with two friends one night, which is the most I ever did.

And we had to take a train up to Boston the next day. And I just remember being in so much agony, I couldn't breathe, my nose was fucked up, I was tired. And I was just like, this sucks. So I didn't like cocaine so much, haven't used that since my, or whenever I stopped then, literally no interest. Ketamine I found three, four years ago, right around the time of the pandemic. So it must have been four years ago. And had a brief love affair with it, which I think it was very, very helpful and healthy for me to find at the time I found it. I do not use it really anymore, but I wouldn't be opposed to it.

I think it can be very helpful for people who find themselves constantly thinking about things, obsessing, being unable to distance themselves from various emotions. I think that's why we see it pop up therapeutically now as treatment for people to me. I could not imagine doing IV ketamine in a clinical setting. It just seems wild to me, but I know that it has helped many people. But at home use medically, safely, I used to make a nasal spray. I took it to LA for a month. It was wonderful. I could use it out in public. You don't get sloppy. I think it's a really interesting substance. I'm skeptical of how many of these substances come to market though.

The tendency of money to be involved in the rollout of drugs and therapies is really kind of messed up. And you see this implemented even with something like cannabis in various states and just how not great it is for a lot of reasons. But I think we'll probably see better and better usage of things like ketamine and LSD and psilocybin and maybe other novel analogs. But I don't know when, I just don't know when. I think it's kind of a rocky road. I have family members and people who are involved in kind of how this is shaping up who have been deeply immersed in kind of the psychedelic field for decades.

And it's interesting. It's interesting to see how it's kind of turning in some places and in some places it's just not. So yeah, drugs.

Yeah, when I came out with my 2018 book trip while I was writing that, I felt weird. I felt like a weird hippie. And people would think I was unseemly and stuff especially in the literary world that's very detached from nature. But I've got there just in time for the Michael Pollan book. His book came out at the same time as mine. It got pretty mainstream.

It did. He kind of blew it up in an interesting way. And people need to start somewhere, I think. And even if it's at advanced age, I think psychedelics have a lot of potential for people. I don't think it's a panacea. I don't think it's a cure-all, but I certainly think compared and relatively compared to other things. There's a lot of good that can come from those specifically. My friend, thank you for doing this. This was easily one of the better conversations I've had recently and effortless. Where can people connect with you and find out what you're doing? What do you got going on? I know you're working on some stuff.

Where do people go to find out more about you?

Just my Twitter and I have 10 books and the one, the two that might be more interesting to your listeners are probably the most recent ones. Trip, which is a nonfiction book about psychedelics and Leave Society, which is a novel that has a positive message and it also contains a good amount of psychedelics. I love talking about vaccines so much. I can't expound from other topics like that that I don't get to talk about that much in the letter it will.

Well, I get it, man. I mean, I also have that apparently, maybe it's the 83 thing and why our lives are complicated. I don't know what it is, but yeah, I was kind of the first ever public pushback I've ever had from anything I've spoken about and I've spoken about psychedelics for a long time, but it was kind of to an audience that was predisposed to that, I guess. But man, once you veer from any kind of filter bubble, it can get dicey. But I really enjoyed having this conversation with you, man. I enjoy following you on Twitter. Looking forward to staying connected and thank you for doing this.

Yeah, thank you for talking to me. I enjoyed it a lot, looking forward to more stuff like you.

Yeah, thanks, man.

Yeah, all right.

Thank you. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music)

I hope you enjoyed that episode. Go connect with Tao on Twitter and Instagram. The links are in the show notes. Go pick up his books. They're really good trip and leave society, as he mentioned, are probably the most appropriate for this listener base, but he has a bunch of others too. That's it, guys. Go check out the Patreon if you haven't joined already. If you are into the crypto stuff and you've stayed for this entire episode, I can just encourage you to get involved somehow. I do monthly webinars, so for beginners and intermediates, if you have questions, you can ask there. Those webinars are also added to the crypto course that I created last summer, and they're updated every month and added as additional modules.

So if you're looking to get started, you don't really know what to do, that's a great place. Of course, if you join the Patreon, you get lifetime access to the Discord, which is heavily crypto-focused at times. So you can join the Patreon and then quit. And you're still in there. I don't kick you out, isn't that nice? That's it. I will see you next week. Bye-bye.

The savings are here.

Happy birthday, America.

It's America's 250th birthday.

We're celebrating all month long at Nielsen Ford.

By giving you freedom of choice. Save up to $250 off service. Save up to $250 off accessories.

With leases for $250 a runder.

Perried, a Route 23 North in Sussex, or shop online at NielsenFord.com.

At Nielsen Ford, fun is in the driver's seat.

All offers will improve and see dealer for details.