Divergent States
The Divergent States Podcast, hosted by "3L1T3", founder of the Psychonaut subreddit with over 500k members, and co-hosted by Bryan, a USMC veteran passionate about psychedelics for therapeutic healing, explores the intersection of psychedelics, science, spirituality, and culture. Featuring guests like Hamilton Morris, Dr. Rick Strassman, and Dr. Rick Doblin, we blend cutting-edge research with personal stories to showcase how psychedelics transform mental health, creativity, and culture. Join us as we navigate the frontier of consciousness.
Divergent States
Dr Rick Strassman - My Altered States
Here's the very first episode of Divergent States: The Unofficial Psychonaut Podcast. Introductions, interview, music and a wrap-up. Be sure to listen all the way to the end to hear the shout-outs! We talk to Dr Strassman about a number of different subjects, and talk about his new book, My Altered States, available on Amazon 12.11.24.
In this engaging conversation, Rick Strassman, a pioneer in psychedelic research, shares his insights on DMT, consciousness, and spirituality. He discusses his journey into DMT research, the influence of personal experiences on his work, and the importance of understanding both the positive and negative aspects of psychedelic experiences. Strassman emphasizes the significance of integrating various frameworks, such as psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism, to make sense of altered states. The conversation also touches on the potential of psychedelics in enhancing creativity and the unique perspectives of individuals on the autism spectrum.
We talk about upcoming guests, give some acknowledgements and shout-outs, and we talk a little about the interview. The music comes from Dyalien on reddit.
DMT, My Altered States, Rick Strassman, bad trips, consciousness, episodes, interviews, podcast, psychedelic, psychoanalysis, psychonaut, spirituality, zen Buddhism, psychopharmacology, psychology
Music by Dylalien
Hey guys, welcome into the very first episode of Divergent States, The Unofficial Psychonaut Podcast. Excited to be here. I'm here tonight with my friend, co-host, producer, Brian. Thank you, Brian.
SPEAKER_3:Yeah, no problem. How's it going?
SPEAKER_2:Pretty good. I'm excited to finally get this going. We've, you know, I've had to run the subreddit for 16 years, and it's been a labor of love. And I'll probably tell the story again and again. I'm sure everybody will get tired of hearing it, but I kind of started it just out of a desire to kind of talk to friends and of, you know, what we'd talk about when we would do psychedelics. And I've kind of felt like this was just a natural extension of that. And so, yeah, I know you're not as experienced, so I think it'd be fun to bring you along on the journey.
SPEAKER_3:So, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm excited. Like you said, I don't have a lot of experience with psychedelics. I mean, I've tried here and there. I've done a couple of things, but, you know, not like, you know, like passionately or consistently in any capacity. But, you know, knowing the benefits that are out there and looking at some of the research, those are the things that I'm excited about.
SPEAKER_2:Right. And it's been a lot of fun so far, just reaching out and then starting to talk to some of our guests here. So tonight, we're going to be talking to Dr. Rick Strassman. Brian, I wish you could have been there. He had worked stuff, speaking of which, support us on the Patreon. That's going to be our hashtag, help Brian quit his job fund.
SPEAKER_3:That'd be great. But I know I'm having a good time. I'm out here in Vegas right now, getting ready for the MJ BizCon, which will be a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_2:Right. And speaking of that, we've been kind of chatting with Maps and we might be going to Vegas, or no, it'd be Colorado, my bad. So we'll be going out there to somewhere out West, to possibly the Psychedelic Conference 2025, which could be a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_3:Could be a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_2:Right. So tonight, again, I'll be talking to Dr. Rick Strassman. He's a world renowned figure in the field of psychedelic research, best known for his pioneering studies on DMT at the University of New Mexico. He conducted the first US government approved human trials for psychedelics in over 20 years. He's got his BA in Biological Sciences from Stanford University and his MD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He's got an extensive background, academic and clinical, just everything, psychiatry, psychopharmacology, spiritual studies. His groundbreaking book DMT, The Spirit Molecule, not only illuminated the profound experiences of DMT users, but also inspired a widely acclaimed documentary of the same name. Dr. Strassman has appeared on many prominent platforms, Joe Rogan, MAPS conferences, Common Speaker, just a well-known figure throughout. So I think this is going to be a great interview. We're going to sit and take a listen. We'll come back and we'll give some thank yous and acknowledgments. And hope you guys enjoy. Rick Strassman, thank you so much for being here, and thank you for being our first guest on the very first episode.
SPEAKER_1:Well, thanks for having me as your first guest.
SPEAKER_2:Oh, you're very welcome. I guess I got your email when you were talking about coming up for the AMA and your book, and I just finished the first script as I was looking at doing something on maybe set and setting, and then I got your AMA request. I was like, man, it's all like Kismet, so yeah, it's great to have you here. Most of our listeners are probably going to be familiar with you from your work, DMT, The Spirit Molecule. It's been a huge part about how we talk about psychedelics, DMT, consciousness, and even spirituality. You talk about it a little in your new book, but could you share what initially drew you to study in DMT, and what stood out to you most in those early years of doing your research?
SPEAKER_1:Yeah. The main impetus for, well, there are a few reasons for doing my studies. They matured as time went on, like as I was thinking about performing the DMT research. At first, my interests came about from an interest in correlating the experiences that some people had on meditation with those brought on by psychedelics. I thought to the extent that they resembled each other, there must be some common biological denominator. And I was even back then in college interested in what has turned out to be, or what was coming about at the time as modern psychopharmacology, the relationship between pharmacology and the mind, mind-altering drugs both for mental illness and for other purposes. I was intrigued by the overlap in descriptions of the two sets of experiences. Not long after that, I was interested or became obsessed in a way with the notion that psychedelics could save the world. If only everybody could have a big experience on LSD, they'd be happy, they'd be healthy, there'd be world peace, those kinds of things. So, there were practical, like everyday scientific questions that I wanted to answer, which were closely linked with some messianic idealism. The messianic idealism took a back seat after a while, and I was more focused on the basic psychopharmacological questions. Was there a biological correlate of the altered states brought on by drugs than the altered states that were brought on by meditation? And I was first drawn to the pineal gland just because of its esoteric connotations. I learned about melatonin, you know, ran a melatonin study in the early or in the mid-1980s. And there wasn't much known about melatonin back then. You know, there were some indications that it was quite psychoactive. It made depressed people more depressed, even psychotic. It might have helped psychosis. It might have worsened psychosis and schizophrenics. We didn't really know that much about it back then. You know, so we did a painstaking study of melatonin psychopharmacology and found out it was only sedating, which everybody knows now. Yeah. And so by that time, I had learned about DMT, which is a known psychedelic and it is made in the body. So I turned my attention from melatonin research to DMT.
SPEAKER_2:Yeah, I mean, this is kind of a... You go over that a little bit in your book and you talk about how you go on the Messianic, the early draft of your script to the Messianic kind of ideals. And that kind of leads me into the next question people were talking about. And I know you've kind of answered on the subreddit before, saying, you know, it's kind of annoying how people will get your kind of theoretical, hypothetical research and ideas and kind of run with it. And the question, I guess, would be a lot of the psychonauts that seem to be interested in DMT for spiritual experiences and things associated with it. Do you think it's something connected beyond our minds, like a Jungian collective consciousness, or as you talk about in your book, with Aristotle's theory of active intellect? Or are these more of an experiences of an internal reflection of our own consciousness?
SPEAKER_1:Yeah, I don't think we can really tell at this point. You know, I do speculate in the DMT book, The Spirit Molecule, about parallel universes and dark matter and those kinds of things. You know, but I've tempered my, you know, speculation to, I guess, you know, just referring to the things that we see, especially the beings, which a lot of people are focused on, as revealing things which were previously invisible. You know, so that, you know, covers all the bases. It might be out there and we couldn't see it before, or it might be in here and we couldn't see it before. You know, the issue of Aristotle's, you know, notion of the intellect and the imagination, the imagination contains things which are perceptible, as opposed to the rational faculty, where you intellect, you know, things, you think about them, as opposed to perceiving them. You know, so, my theory or my belief is within an Aristotelian model, you know, the psychedelics stimulate the imagination more than they do the intellect. You know, the visions and the voices and the emotions and the somatic effects are much more pronounced than any, you know, specifically new ideas. You know, the new, you know, the old ideas, which one contains, you know, take on new meaning, you know, more significance. You know, but I think, you know, meaning and significance are more of a felt thing, you know, more of an imaginative activity. So, if you, you know, think of psychedelics as, you know, preferentially stimulating, you know, the imagination, it makes things perceptible, apprehensible, which wasn't the case before. You know, so, as opposed to, you know, trying to figure out, you know, where do the beings reside, I think at this point, it's probably more important to figure out how to learn as much as we can from what information they seem to be trying to convey.
SPEAKER_2:Right, yeah, I agree with you there, like I said, and I kind of, it's kind of a Jungian, you know, that's how I kind of perceive it, is more of a collective consciousness, that it's our types, that we kind of reflect from reflections from our own consciousness, that kind of are really, yeah, they just tend to take, you know, take form. So have any of your own experiences with altered states influenced the way you approach your research?
SPEAKER_1:Well, I wouldn't have performed any of my studies if it weren't for my own experiences. Yeah, I think, you know, there's a, you know, there's a couple of ways, I guess, that, you know, my altered states experiences over the years have influenced me. You know, one was, you know, to become a psychiatrist because I could relate to mental illness because, you know, some of the states were extremely unpleasant. And I got through them, understood them to the best extent that I could. Yeah, you know, so I think those experiences both fostered my interest in psychiatry and made me a better psychiatrist. You know, those experiences stimulated my interest in, you know, psychopharmacology, like, you know, how do drugs affect the mind? And, you know, and, you know, could those effects, you know, be turned to good, you know, sorts of purposes? And also, it stimulated my interest in, you know, I'm an actual, you know, practice of, you know, spiritual tradition. I was, you know, raised in a Jewish household, but, you know, but there wasn't much, you know, feeling I'm involved in, you know, Judaism as understood by my family. And the, you know, the impactful, you know, quality of the big psychedelic experience, you know, made me start, you know, looking for practices or traditions, you know, which emphasized, you know, direct experience. And, you know, Buddhism was increasingly popular back then. And I happened to, you know, find a good organization, a supportive community, an impressive teacher. Yeah. And, you know, which began a decades long relationship with Zen study and practice. And also, I think it influenced, you know, my handling of others, your psychedelic experiences, you know, like, oh, I would do this if I were you, or I wouldn't do that if I were you. You know, so I, you know, when it seemed appropriate, I would give people advice, you know, based on my own experiences.
SPEAKER_2:Yeah, I've always found the, I love the utility of Zen Buddhism. You know, it's very practical. It's very, you know, you can use it in your everyday life. And I really, I really, if I find anything spiritually, I guess, meaningful for me, that's, that's where I tend to fall towards. And as you bring it up, you know, that your new book, My Altered States, a lot of it's really personal and talks about your own journeys, both drug-induced and not. And there are some places in it that are kind of, you know, heavy and talk about some stuff in the past. And what really inspired you to make such a personal book?
SPEAKER_1:Well, I suppose I like telling stories. I'm a pretty good storyteller. You know, like I, my speaking voice isn't all that great, but my writing voice is. And I like telling stories. And I've got a lot of good stories to tell. I have no kids to, like I have no biological kids and my stepkids live in Canada and I rarely see them. And I've harangued them with enough of my stories. I mean, in a way, it's, you know, it's a personal legacy. You know, like all my books have been and, you know, you know, personally, you know, a lot of people, you know, wonder, you know, how, you know, how people are interested in, you know, how am I gotten to this field? And, you know, like in the beginning of, you know, my public appearances and whatnot, you know, people asked me, you know, did you ever use DMT? Have you taken psychedelics? And, you know, back then anyway, after the Spirit Molecule came out, I was kind of cautious about answering that. You know, the field was so nascent, you know, that I didn't want to do anything, you know, to jeopardize it. You know, so my stock answer, you know, back then was, if I tell people that I have used DMT or other psychedelics, I might be accused of being a zealot. And if I denied using them, then I would be accused of not knowing what I was talking about. So, you know, I just didn't answer. You know, but I think, you know, how people get to be the way that they are, especially if they're in any role of importance in a particular field, I think, is of interest. And, you know, there's a lot of, you know, glorification of the psychedelic state. I think Michael Pollan's book, you know, both was useful with respect to increasing people's awareness of, you know, the long history of psychedelic research. You know, but at the same time, it was a bit like, you know, gilding the lily. You know, there weren't really any, and, you know, like it was superficial with respect, you know, to, you know, what is a fully psychedelic experience like? It isn't just all love and light and mystical experiences. It's, it can be fairly down and dirty. And it isn't just I was afraid, it is I was afraid of this and that, and then it became this and, you know, then it became that. You know, so in some ways, you know, my book is a counterpoint to, you know, the, you know, the love and light approach, you know, to the psychedelic state, you know, by offering a more nuanced and, you know, fulsome account of what, you know, psychedelic experiences can be like.
SPEAKER_2:Right. And that's something, I mean, I really personally liked about the book that you talk about is the importance of talking about just not the good and blissful states, you know, as I call sometimes the sunshine daydreams. But you're also talking about the kind of the bad trips as well. And I agree, it's something that we really need to talk more about as psychonauts. And, you know, I've heard someone say something like a bad trip is a sign of a weak mind, for instance, and it kind of carries a negative stigma with it. What would your response to be that to that? What would you say your personal experience as to why it's important to gauge with these challenging experiences?
SPEAKER_1:Well, so the idea is a bad trip is this is a sign of a weak mind. Yeah, right. That's a bit macho.
SPEAKER_2:Right. That's how I kind of took it. I was like, really? I always found them to be more learning experiences than anything.
SPEAKER_1:Yeah. Well, they're just bad trips, you know, set and setting and dose. And you're, yeah, you know, so you're such as, you know, who you are at the time. You know, who has a strong mind all of the time? I mean, I don't know anybody. You know, the young one crazy for three years. Yeah. And you're Freud went through a lot of problems.
SPEAKER_2:And yeah, yeah, so that is his problems with the Bolivian marching powders.
SPEAKER_1:Yeah. Yeah. And you know, Jordan Peterson, you know, got hooked on clonidine and clonidine, clonazepam and was unable to get off of it, had horrible withdrawal. Does that mean that these people have weak minds? I think everybody has problems. And if you amplify what's going on in your mind, which psychedelics can only amplify what's only in your mind, you're bound to have some difficult experiences. So, you know, the more important thing isn't like, you know, to call yourself weak or strong or whatnot is to dust yourself off and figure out what happened and try to avoid that in the future by doing the work that needs to be done in order, you know, for your mind to be more settled when you trip again.
SPEAKER_2:Right. That was, to me, that was always my experience as the, seemed that the best way to actually enjoy myself with some of these, the higher-dose trips especially, is I just had to kind of learn to be comfortable with myself, to know myself, to know what was going on. And once I was able to achieve that, I had no problems.
SPEAKER_1:Well, you know, the accounts in My Altered States end at 22 years old. And I did take a long break from tripping. And when I moved to New Mexico in my early 30s, I got involved with a group that was taking psychedelics, either brand new ones or old ones. Like it was a high level group, you know, physicians, you know, nurses and lawyers and psychologists and whatnot. But after a while, every single experience, no matter what the compound was, led to the same state. I was empathizing with girlfriends that had other boyfriends, and it was just ridiculous. And after a certain point, I said, I don't need any more drugs, I need therapy. And so I stopped tripping for years. And I found myself solid, feet on the ground, psychoanalyst, who I worked with for four years. Yeah. And I resolved a lot of the issues which were becoming clear on drugs, but I wasn't able to resolve them in any way whatsoever.
SPEAKER_2:Right. And that kind of brings me to my next point. How you mentioned in your book, you analyze all of these experiences that you go through in the book, with psychoanalysis, psychopharmacologies, and Buddhism and Jewish metaphysics. I find it interesting how you're able to blend all these perspectives kind of into a single kind of wrap up at the end of each chapter. Can you tell me a little bit more about how these frameworks probably make sense of what you've experienced in your own life?
SPEAKER_1:Well, you know, like I like to read, like as a kid, I liked reading the World Book Encyclopedia on the toilet, which I went through, you know, twice. You know, once when I couldn't read, but just looked at all the pictures, and I went through every single page of every single volume. And once I learned to read, I just went back and I read every page of every volume. You know, so I like to read. I like to learn things. I like to synthesize different ideas. Yeah, you know, so each of those things, each of those fields that you mentioned, I've spent a lot of time studying or practicing. You know, the psychopharmacology part, I was trained in psychoanalysis. I went through a four-year course of a classical treatment, taught, you know, residence, psychoanalytic, psychotherapy. Yeah, you know, did it myself with my patients. You know, Zen Buddhism, like an over, you know, 20-year relationship, you know, with a venerable community. You know, Jewish metaphysics, you know, that was in preparation for writing the book DMT and the soul of prophecy, which was an 18-year project, you know, for me getting to end. I had to, you know, teach myself, you know, biblical Hebrew, and I read a lot of commentaries on the Hebrew Bible.
SPEAKER_2:Wow, that's pretty heavy.
SPEAKER_1:Yeah, I became an amateur, you know, Bible scholar, you know, but I learned my stuff. Yeah. And, you know, lots of, you know, the commentators or the ones I was interested in were flourishing in the Middle Ages. And, you know, back then it was all about metaphysics. So, you know, these were the smartest people in the world. And, you know, they were trying to understand what was the Hebrew Bible saying and how did prophecy occur and what's the message? And, you know, what do the visions mean? Yeah, you know, so I had to, you know, bone up on Neoplatonic Aristotelianism, which was, you know, the model for the Jewish philosophers back then. So, yeah. And I've lived alone most of my life and I was in Gallup for 14 years, which is in the middle of nowhere. I had no friends. I just, you know, like I read and wrote, you know, so I had the luxury to immerse myself in all of those different fields.
SPEAKER_2:That is kind of interesting because I was actually reached out to, I think it was Benny Sharon at the Israeli University to talk about psychedelics in the Old Testament. You know, they had found, I think it was cannabis residue on some of the altars. And so, yeah, I'd reached out to him and said, wow, that might be an interesting kind of episode conversation to have too. So, I mean, it kind of all ties in on that. What do you think about the non-drug-induced altered states, like meditation and breathwork? Do they still have as much value in modern consciousness exploration?
SPEAKER_1:Sure. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, a few of my subjects, you know, when they came out of the big DMT state, they said, oh, can't you reach this state with meditation? And I said, well, good luck. You know, so I think it's more reliable anyway, you know, taking drugs is also more dangerous, you know, because, you know, you're shot out of a cannon. And, you know, your meditation, prayer, your breathwork is all voluntary. You can stop whenever you want to stop. You know, that doesn't mean, you know, that there are no adverse effects from breathwork or from meditation. You know, but I think if you're supercharging your consciousness with a strong, you know, psychedelic, you know, the risks are greater.
SPEAKER_2:Right. Like they say, you buy the ticket, you take the ride.
SPEAKER_1:Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, to the extent that non-drug states resemble those brought on by giving DMT, it makes sense, you know, that endogenous DMT is playing a role in those states. You know, that's the point I'd like to make in reference to the Hebrew Bible. You don't really need to look for cannabis in the residue of, you know, ritual items or speculate about the burning bush being an acacia releasing DMT fumes, or, you know, the manna being an ergot containing mold. You know, the presence of DMT in the mammalian brain, you know, militates against that endless search for outside agents.
SPEAKER_2:Right. It's already there anyway.
SPEAKER_1:It's already there. Exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_2:Like the doctors say, don't go hunting for zebras. You hear hooves, it's probably horses.
SPEAKER_1:Yeah, it's a lot more of a parsimonious explanation. You know, the question then becomes, you know, what causes that elevation of endogenous DMT? And, you know, that's where, you know, practices come in, or, you know, divine, you know, grace comes in, you know. So, it changes the conversation significantly.
SPEAKER_2:That's very true, too. Yeah, I like it. So, I was reading in your book about the default mode network and how psychedelics decrease functional relationships and higher brain functions and weakens control over the lower functions. I've mentioned in our emails, and I'm autistic, I wanted to share, I wanted to ask you, there are times when I've been on very high doses of psychedelics where it seems that my social blindness kind of just disappears. And, like all the social cues that I'd normally miss, they really become just super apparent, and it's like almost like I'm watching a play. To me, this sounds like LSD or whatever it is, is just messing with that default mode network. And suddenly I can see what most people see all the time, or even possibly amplify it more to the effect, to how I see it. I mean, what would your opinion on something like that be?
SPEAKER_1:Yeah, well, you know, there were studies back in the day, where they gave autistic kids psychedelics, with the hope of increasing their sociability, their interactions with folks. Those were crude studies. They gave a kid psilocybin and interviewed them, or just had a conversation with them. Yeah, so those were promising results, but still, those kinds of studies wouldn't really hold up nowadays. It's an interesting question. I think Charlie Grove used MDMA or psilocybin, I think MDMA, in a group of spectrum adults, and that increased their sociability, reading cues. I can't remember, I think it may have been even in the archives of general psychiatry, but it was some time ago. Yeah, but other than that, there haven't been a lot of modern-day studies using psychedelics.
SPEAKER_2:Can I say, if you ever need a guinea pig, I'm more than willing.
SPEAKER_1:Well, what happens when you microdose? Have you tried that?
SPEAKER_2:I haven't tried a lot of long-term microdosing. I have tried for a few weeks, but I haven't tried social experiments like that. Like I said, my experience is it's usually been fairly high doses of LSE when I felt like it was almost like watching a play. That's when it really came on where I was like, oh, wow, is this what people see all the time?
SPEAKER_1:Yeah. I just can't think of anyone that's currently looking at autism with psychedelics. It would be a rich vein to mine, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_2:Right. That was also kind of part of my own inspiration. I was like, well, I'm autistic. And then I know that psychedelics kind of affect that at a certain, at certain differences. I don't know if they've really been studied as much. So I figured, well, I had you here be an interesting question.
SPEAKER_1:Yeah. And I don't know the answer.
SPEAKER_2:That's fair. So, you know.
SPEAKER_1:Yeah. Like I love saying, I don't know. That's one of my favorite expressions or terms.
SPEAKER_2:That's a great one. I've been trying to use it more and more when somebody's like, well, what about how did this? I'm like, you know, I don't know. I'm not a biologist or I'm not an astrophysicist. I'm autistic with very specific, special interests. So, you know, that's how it goes. Do you think there's any specific reason why some people are more prone to having spiritual or mystical experiences on psychedelics, where others might just have more visual or sensory experiences?
SPEAKER_1:Well, you know, the nature of any particular psychedelic effect is, you know, setting in dose. You know, so occasionally people ask, you know, how do you have a more spiritual psychedelic experience? And it's kind of a dumb answer on my part, but I say be a more spiritual person, you know, live a more spiritual life. You know, so if the things you're thinking about and reading and your comrades are into spirituality, you know, chances are that psychedelics will magnify, you know, shine a light on certain aspects of your spirituality that you've already been working on. You know, same with, you know, creativity, your psychological problems. Yeah, you know, so there have been a couple of studies using psilocybin to enhance the effects of meditation, you know, one with ayahuasca as well. I think one was a Vipassana retreat, one was a Zen retreat and scores on meditative ability increased. You know, Jim Fadiman, when he was back at Stanford, you're doing psychedelic research, you know, gave psychedelics to scientists, you know, that were, you know, stumped working on a specific scientific problem and it enhanced their creativity and the answers, which, you know, came up to them or, you know, that they came up with, you know, held up under scrutiny. You know, some people, you know, do not respond to psychedelics, just like one of our volunteers had no response whatsoever, you know, to our, you know, very high dose of DMT. And maybe a couple of times a year, I hear, you know, from people who smoke a full dose of DMT with no effect and other people in the room are responding normally. You know, so I think, you know, there are some, you know, biological determinants of specific, you know, kinds of states, you know, in the case of no response to DMT, I think it may be some mutation of the serotonin 2A receptor, you know, which otherwise isn't affecting them in any other way. Yeah, you know, so, you know, the biological receptivity to certain effects of these drugs, I think, you know, is also a very interesting, you know, potential area of future research.
SPEAKER_2:Yeah, absolutely. That makes sense, though, and it kind of goes back to like what we were talking earlier about how kind of the Jungian collective consciousness, and as you were talking about earlier with the spirituality, too, which you, you know, if you go back in, and that's what you're after, that's what you're putting into it. That's more what you're probably going to get out of it.
SPEAKER_1:Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, what else can these drugs work on other than what's in your mind?
SPEAKER_2:Right. Right. So thank you again.
SPEAKER_1:Yeah. Yeah. So good luck with the show.
SPEAKER_2:Yeah. Thank you. It's been, yeah, it's been kind of a real just, it's been a work of, hey, this is what I've got to do and put my energy into. That's kind of how it's been.
SPEAKER_1:Yeah. Well, so when do we do the AMA?
SPEAKER_2:I think, didn't you say December 11th?
SPEAKER_1:Let me check. Yeah. I'm going to be on the Joe Rogan show on the 9th.
SPEAKER_2:Okay. Cool.
SPEAKER_1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_1: It looks like 7:30 PM Mountain Time on the 11th is the AMA.
SPEAKER_2:Okay.
SPEAKER_1:Yeah.
SPEAKER_2:Saturday. Okay. Yeah. I'll be on there, should be on there for most of the time, just looking for trolls or anything.
SPEAKER_1:Darn trolls.
SPEAKER_2:Yeah, I know. You just, you can't get anything nice.
SPEAKER_1:Okay.
SPEAKER_2:Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it again. And yeah, well, I'll get all this, the rest of this wrapped up and I'm, I'll probably release the interview and then the first episode will probably come out a week early. I can send you a copy if you'd like.
SPEAKER_1:Yeah. If you will, is it going to be online? Can you send me the link to where it appears?
SPEAKER_2:Yeah, I'm going to do, I'm going to be releasing early on Patreon. So I'll, I might be able to get you on there, but then I'm going to, then a week later, I'm going to try and where it comes out publicly on Spotify and Apple and everything the same day as your podcast. Or your AMA. I'm trying to do it all so that everything kind of coordinates up. And I think it'll be awesome that way.
SPEAKER_1:Okay. Yeah, good. All right.
SPEAKER_2:I'll send it to you.
SPEAKER_1:Okay. See you later then.
SPEAKER_2:See you later. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_3:Bye.
SPEAKER_2:All right, so welcome back, guys. So, Brian, what did you think?
SPEAKER_3:Oh, dude, that was great. I wish I could have been there to participate in the interview, but man, it was a lot of fun listening to you guys.
SPEAKER_2:Yeah, me too. It was a lot of fun. He agreed to come back, so hopefully we'll both have a chance next time.
SPEAKER_3:Oh, yeah. And I got to tell you, what first stood out to me was the visions that are similar to meditation, how that got him started on studying all of this in the first place.
SPEAKER_2:Right. And I saw something like that on the subreddit the other day. People were kind of mentioning, and Strassman talked about that, that some meditation is, what was it? Somebody said psychedelics are training wheels for meditation, and it's kind of more the opposite. It's like what we were talking. Meditation, you can control, you can stop at any time, where the psychedelics, you're there and you're stuck there. You can't control that. So, kind of the other way around.
SPEAKER_3:That makes a lot of sense to me because when you think about it, the point of meditation is to kind of strengthen your mind a little bit by giving it space to kind of recover from all the stress, right? And so, if you're taking time to meditate and practice and get your frame of mind right before going into psychedelics, I don't see why that would lead you to a better experience.
SPEAKER_2:Right, that goes back to the set and setting. That good mindset, meditation helps you with that.
SPEAKER_3:That was a big takeaway from this one, the set and the set goes.
SPEAKER_2:Yeah, and that and what did he say? There's a time you just have to kind of step away and then work on your own self. It's like a therapy or however else you choose to do it. I think that's an important lesson for all of us to kind of step away. Sometimes you have to take a step back and touch grass, as they say. Yeah, so yeah. Great interview. Thanks. Yeah, I really appreciate it. I can't wait to have him back. You guys check out his book on Amazon. It's coming out December 11th. Want to say some quick thanks. Shout out to Brad Burge, Integration Communications. Dylan Alien 23 did the music tonight. Speaking of which, anybody out there who's got any music, send it our way. We'd love to hear it. Brian, thank you for helping me out with all this.
SPEAKER_3:Of course.
SPEAKER_2:Yeah, no problem. Next month, we've got Joshua White from the Fireside Project coming in. Brian actually got to be there for that one, so it was a lot of fun. Oh yeah, he had some really good advice and talked about what to do if you ever start to have a hard time. And that's one of those subjects, I think, that's going to end up coming up in a lot of these conversations. I've said a couple of times now, I've heard the bad trips and what you do to how to get by that. And if it's actually a bad trip, if it's just a difficult time, basically. And everybody, you guys, don't forget to follow us on Patreon. You'll get early access. You can chat with me. We're going to get Brian set up on one, so we can all have our hashtag Brian quit his job fun. It'd be a lot of fun. Yeah, follow us on social media, Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, Patreon is the big one. That's the one that's going to be able to keep us being able to do this every month. So support us there. And we'll talk to you next time guys.
