Transcript of Episode #136 Featuring Dr. Dave Rabin Part 2! Everyone's FAVORITE NEUROSCIENTIST! "A Simple Guide to Being Alive"

Today's episode is sponsored by Apollo Neuro. Apollo Neuro is the leading doctor-recommended wearable technology. Apollo's award-winning SmartVibes AI works effortlessly behind the scenes, automatically integrating into your life to deliver gentle personalized vibrations that activate your vagus nerve, helping you fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and wake up balanced, focused, and ready each day. Not only that, but the Apollo Neuro is the first and only wearable that improves your HRV. Apollo is effortless. Simply wear it throughout the day and night and let it do the work for you. It's safe for anyone and everyone with no side effects and is the only wearable that can be worn anywhere on your body. Optimal health requires both the mind and body to be in line, and Apollo is the key to establishing that connection. Check the description below to save $90 with my special discount. Take control over your health today with Apollo Neuro. All right everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Gemelli Podcast. Most excited I've been on a show to date, and I'll tell you why. If you follow me, then you know I talk about my guest's device, the Apollo Neuro, all the time, but It's more so about him himself, everything about him, everything since I met him, everything that we've talked about together that you've taught me personally, the time we've got to spend together, not enough for me, but a good amount.

Um, but he—

More to come.

Yes, 100%. That's damn right. It's everybody's favorite neuroscientist. He's the co-founder of the Apollo Neuro, which is what you're well known for. But what I'm most excited to talk about you today is the new book that is going to be coming out soon. We're going to give you some insight on that and the topics that are covered. There's some stuff in there that it just excites me to no end. And it's called A Simple Guide to Being Alive. But I mean, it goes without saying, the impact that you have, the things that you do, and the heart that you carry is why I love you and think of you as family. And it's just, it's so good to be back with you. And this is part 2. with my guest, Dr. Dave Rabin.

Thanks so much for having me, Dylan. It's a pleasure to be here with you as always.

Well, what does it mean to you when you put this together, A Simple Guide to Being Alive? Because to me, it sounds like a handbook of life.

I think that as a doctor, we often get patients coming to us all the time, confused about how to live a good life, how to live a long life, how to just struggling to figure out how to enjoy life and make enough money and do all the things that we feel like we're supposed to be doing. And when I went to medical school and I, you know, I've spent more time in school than most humans, right? I've been in school for like 12 years post-college in training. So it's a lot of time. And I realized myself, you know, coming through the end of my training that there were still a lot of gaps. And I learned how to treat people with severe mental illness. I learned so much about how to help people heal and recover. But I also realized that for a lot of people, many of the techniques we were taught to use still weren't working. Like they weren't making a dent and people were still symptomatic for life, on medications for life, having a lot of side effects from medications. And there were, you know, we were taught, I think one thing that was really astounding to me is that we were taught not to use the C word for mental illness, right?

The word cure. Like other, all other practices in medicine are able to use the word cure for different things. We're not taught to use that word.

Really?

Because our treatments don't cure people. Our treatments stabilize people and they stabilize people for life, but people are still sick. And so in part, that's why we've seen, when you look at the statistics for mental illness around the world, but especially in the US and the Western world, Mental illness rates have skyrocketed over the last 10 years. Addiction rates have skyrocketed over the last 10 years and they're not getting better. They're getting much worse every year, which makes me think, and many of my colleagues think, well, maybe we need to be asking different questions about how we're approaching this, right? Maybe there are other ways to approach mental illness, not from let's just stabilize somebody. Mm-hmm. But let's get to the root cause. So when I started to dive into the root cause, I realized that whether you look at Western medicine and what we were seeing in the clinic in our patients, or when I started to look at what, where Western medicine had gaps, like in the Eastern and tribal medicine approaches around breathwork, meditation, yoga, mindfulness, plant medicine, and psychedelic medicine, I realized that. that these are all different disciplines that are approaching life from different angles, but through the different lenses.

Right. But we're looking at the same thing. When you— well, step— taking a step back, when you look at trying to solve these really complex problems with mental illness that are epidemic worldwide now, and you look at trying to solve those problems from just a Western lens or just an Eastern or tribal lens, it seems really complicated. people are confused, people don't get better. But when you actually look at the field, taking like a 30,000-foot view and trying to figure out, well, what do these different disciplines have in common? Right? What is Western medicine have in common with Eastern and tribal medicine? And how are they all— how can they all come together? You start to actually be able to put the puzzle pieces together into the solution and solve the puzzle because you have all the pieces. So I started to look outside the box and study other traditions in the way they— that were much older than Western medicine. And long story short, I just realized that when you look at the whole view of, of life and mental illness and, and ease and disease, and you try to, and you look at it from the three perspectives together, Eastern, Western, and tribal medicine with all the pieces, the solutions are actually a lot more simple than we thought.

And so seeing that we weren't getting taught this in medical school and none of my medical colleagues and practitioners that I worked with were getting taught this stuff, I was, I just realized, you know, I need to write this book. Like I need to put all these pieces together for people so that we could have a simple guide that actually pulls from all these different disciplines and gives people all the pieces they need to solve this puzzle on their own, helping kind of reframe this as, as actually as simple as it really is, which is really getting back to childhood wonder and joy, innocence, play, awe, imagination, intuition, like spirituality, all the good stuff that has been talked about for thousands of years by Eastern and tribal cultures. We're now finally proving in Western medicine and Western science are real. And not only are they real, they change our biology. They extend our longevity. They increase our heart rate variability, right? They do all the things that people are injecting stem cells and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for therapies for. And if you could get the same benefits with reembracing childhood wonder and play for free, people should probably know that.

So that's kind of the thesis of the book.

I spent so much time only focusing on fitness, nutrition, and I never understood how important and how dominating the mind is over that, over everything. And what I'm coming to find is the more deeper that I dig and the more intellectual people that I talk to, even the guys that, like, what I'm going to do now that I haven't really gotten into you with, he's a chiropractor, but he's doing like nervous system work and resets and things that go in deep, because without doing that, all these other things don't work.

Like the nervous system has to be in a state that's receptive to what we're offering it.

So the alignment's off, and if the alignment's off, It seems to me— now you tell me, because I do believe in, in the mind-body connection, and I don't want to say that one is more important than the other, but I swear to you, the more I look at it, and, and I'm, I say this because now it's just progressed month after month after month after month, that the mind is the more dominant part of this, that it, it really is the key to getting full health alignment. I don't think that if you're not there, you're ever gonna be fully aligned no matter what you do. And it's too dominant over the other aspects. You tell me what you think.

I mean, it's so, yes, it is. The mind is dominant, right? Because the mind is where our ego lives. And when we are trained into a state of self-protection, because we believe the world around us is unsafe for any reason, then the mind, the grip of the mind takes hold. And puts our bodies into a state where we resist change and learning. And so this is actually what I call in the book Dr. Dave's Mind Blowers, which are these very simple concepts that have been taught incorrectly in, in modern education. And by modern education, I mean for the last couple hundred years that we still teach these incorrectly. Like for instance, we teach that the mind and the body are disconnected. but we know, and separate, but we know definitively that if you are mentally and emotionally ill for an extended period of time and you don't do anything about it, you do become physically ill.

Oh yeah.

We know that stress increases your heart rate and your blood pressure and, and your breath rate. And we know that when you slow your breath rate intentionally by choice, your heart rate comes down and your thoughts slow down and you start to feel better within 90 to 120 seconds. So there's very clearly a mind-body intimate irrevocable connection, right? And if we deny that at the core, then we lose out on the opportunity to engage that relationship and take the wheel, right? We let the environment steer what, like dictate what happens to us rather than us saying, oh, well, I actually have a say in the outcome because I can change my mind.

Yeah.

Right? Like I have the power to change my mind. That is incredible power. It's, it's like potentially unlimited power when you realize that the way we choose words, for instance, actually dictates our reality because our words apply meaning to our existence. Right. And so, so that's a, so that's like a core piece is that, you know, like going back to what you were saying, that the, that the mind and the body are connected so that. If we are taught, for instance, that, that the world around us is unsafe growing up because we're exposed to extreme hardship, lack of support from our, from our parents or our role models when we're growing up and facing challenges, people who tell us many times, like we've all experienced, like, what's wrong with you that you did that thing? And what's wrong with you let that happen to you? And when you hear that from a role model, it all of a sudden makes us think that we can't trust ourselves to keep ourselves safe. And that's the core of trauma. It's actually like adopting a victim mindset. Like that's a, it's like a broken bone.

Right.

It's a fractured self-trust. If somebody I respect tells me that I did something wrong, that I couldn't keep myself safe, and that I caused a certain problem and I'm at fault, then now rather than overcoming the challenge I just had with support, I I feel guilt and shame around that situation, right? And then that fractures my trust in myself and my ability to keep myself safe. So when that happens psychologically, the biological reflection of that is my amygdala, this fear center in my brain that goes back to ancient— we call the reptilian brain, right? It goes back to ancient reptiles that's there to protect us from threat and keep us alive, starts to fire off all the time because it thinks that We are always under threat. And when we're under threat, we can't let the body lead. We can't let our intuition lead because we don't trust our intuition anymore. And coming back to our bodies and coming back to our intuition, which generally knows what's right and what's true, where our minds are often doubting what's right and what's true and questioning and judging, which is useful in many circumstances, but we— But it often should not lead.

The mind is meant to follow the body and intuition should lead. And that's something that's also very, very much not taught well. When we learn to not trust our bodies, then the fear control of the mind and the amygdala leads. And then that takes such a firm grip and hold on, on us that we end up effectively doubting every single experience we have and not being able to be present. Yeah. So to your point, yeah, in modern day, the mind, the grip of the mind has been trained to, in this ego-dominant state, to protect us. It's not trying to hurt us though, right?

Right, right.

Like, that's the thing that I think a lot of people don't understand is like, it's like our minds are not trying to hurt us. They're not trying to make our lives hard. They're just trying to protect us because they perceive that there is danger. Even though there isn't actually danger. And so in the book, I really help break this down from an evolutionary perspective where people can understand this part of the brain, the amygdala, evolved not just in us, but in all animals dating back to ancient reptiles to really protect us from 4 things: lack of air— In, and in order of what will kill us first, right? And fastest. Lack of air, lack of physical safety and shelter, lack of water, and lack of food. Those are the 4 things that will kill us faster than anything else. Then the other 2 are lack of sleep and lack of social connection to our community. So when, but when those first 4 issues are checked off, you can say, I have all these things, right? I have physical safety. I have air, I have water, I have food. Then when we run that checklist, we can actually shut down the amygdala.

We can say, Oh, my, these boxes are checked. I can take a deep breath right now and come back into my body knowing my body's safe. And then you reset and it's just that simple. But again, if we don't, if we don't learn how to do that, those skills just become elusive to us.

Right.

We forget how to come back to the body.

So a couple thoughts that I had there while you were talking. So if you look at it from this point of view, if you get injured and You recover and you get over it. Let's just say you get a decently bad injury, 6 months, right? But if you get verbally injured, that can last a lifetime. And I'm, I'm correlating this in the difference between mind and body and why I feel like the mind is more dominant.

Mm-hmm.

Then think about this. If I'm running a marathon or a race or something that's so just difficult, my mind can do one of two things. You can't do this, stop. Or you can do this, run it. Control everything that we're able to do. And that's part of the reason why I'm understanding, okay, yes. I'm not saying that you, you, of course we want to address the health side of the fitness and the nutrition. Obviously that goes without saying, but you're not gonna be able to do it. You're just not if this isn't done first. Now, vice versa, if your mind's right, you can always go and do the other stuff. Yeah, you can. Doesn't mean you're going to, but you can. Right. It, The other way you just can't, right?

It's impossible.

Yeah. So it's just dawned on me right now. Hallelujah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, it's all about alignment, right? It's about harmony. It's about the mind and the body working together where they're both listening. There's a, there's a clear, like as the, as the, uh, Amazonian people talk about the indigenous people and, and even Eastern traditions, they talk about clear energy flow back and forth. right? So it's about, it's about clear lines of communication and alignment and harmony. So not a battle, not a fight between this and this. It's clear communication flow between this and this, between mind and heart, mind and body.

Yeah.

And when those channels are open, then when the body sends signals to the mind, the mind can understand them without judging them first. It can just listen. And when the mind listens to those signals without judgment, it can actually understand what they are by feeling them rather than by shutting them down before feeling them. If we don't feel feelings, which are just signals, they're not good or bad, then those feelings get stuck in the body and then they can't get out and they just keep knocking at the mind being like, hey, I need you to feel me. I need you to feel me. And when you don't feel them, They're like children. They just knock louder. They scream louder. Like, I need you to feel me. I'm trying to send a message to you. Like, answer the damn phone. Right. And it just keep calling.

Yeah.

And we call that anxiety. Right. So like, that is what causes restlessness. That's what causes chronic anxiety and chronic stress is not— it's paying attention to things we can't— that are outside of our control. It's also dissonance between mind and body, not harmony. Harmony means signal of emotion comes in and we don't shut it down or resist it because we think we're not supposed to feel it because it's uncomfortable or because we were told we're not supposed to feel it. We just feel it for what it is. And guess what? It passes by in 90 to 120 seconds and then you can take the message that you was supposed to be sending to us, understand what that is and learn from it. And And feeling goes away and you move on to the next thing. Right. But if we, if we are— resist that and don't allow the feeling to happen, then we're creating dissonance between the mind and the body. And it's effectively like an orchestra playing out of tune and out of time. It sounds horrible and it feels horrible. And so, so that, so that is kind of the metaphor, best metaphor that I found for like how to think about.

what we're talking about, which is it's alignment, it's balance, it's being in tune and in time together like an orchestra, not out of tune, because out of tune sounds horrible.

Let me ask you a question then, and this is like a personal question about myself. I'm going to correlate this with what you're saying. So in my heart, like, I have this amount of love that's like abounding, like just full of compassion and full of care, and sometimes just maybe even too soft to a point for, for others. But I go through these points in time where it's there, but I can't let it out. And, and I don't know why. It's not like I'm sitting here going, Dylan, don't let it out. You know, like, but something in my head is not allowing it. So my question is to correlate with what you're asking, cuz I feel like it falls into line there. What would one, cuz I'm sure there's plenty of people that go through the same thing. Yeah. Um, and I like to victimize myself here to people and tell people how the problems I have, but—

No, we share your vulnerability.

Well, yeah, man shit.

I've got a lot of it.

So, um, what causes that? Like, what is the underlying issue there? Is it different for everybody, or is it something that happened?

I mean, think about it like yin and yang, right? Like, yin is cool, feminine, receptive, sensitive. Yang is, is hot, masculine, active, doing, right? And in the yin yang, those are constantly in balance with each other. So when we're taught growing up as young men, and I'm sure you experienced this the way I experienced it, which is when we express sensitivity as young men, what was the first thing as a young man that you were told?

Well, it's weak.

Exactly. So you internalize that. I internalize that every single young man in the world that grows up in Western, or at least in Western culture, internalizes this concept that being sensitive, which is really just having a balanced yin yang, because the yin yang is about balance. It's not about— it exists in all of us, right? There's masculine and feminine energy in all of us. Eastern tradition around them. It's not like because we're born men, we're just yang. No, we are physically male, but we have yin and yang in us, just like women have yin and yang in them. And so the energies balance each other. So if we are taught expressing sensitivity is weak or not okay, then we shut it down. So when we start to feel that sensitivity come up and we start to feel those powerful emotions in our bodies and our hearts, at any time, even when it normally would be safe to express them, there's a part of us that has been trained now for decades that says, it's not okay to express that. You're a man, be a man.

Yeah.

Right? Don't show that, don't show that weakness, but it's not weakness. Right? And so do you want to necessarily start shedding tears in the middle of a board meeting? No. And there are certain situations where, it's totally okay to say, you know, I'm feeling really sensitive right now, but this isn't the right time. But to come back to it later, right? To make time.

Mm-hmm.

To come back to it later and restore the balance because maybe in that board meeting you need more yang. Maybe when you come back after the board meeting and you're chilling in your home with your family or by yourself with your pets or at the beach, you can bring that yin out again.

Right.

Right? And so it's all about just this dynamic understanding, this dynamic balance, and then balancing it. Right. And if we don't acknowledge that none of it is weak, it's actually weak to shut it down. Right. It's the rejection of the balance is weakness. And that's what creates weakness. Because when we reject the balance, if we say like, my sensitive parts are weak, I won't allow them to come out ever. Right. Then those sensitive parts start to try to take over the system because they're like, why are you ignoring me? I'm part of you, right? And then they start to become manipulative and overbearing and start to like try to control and, you know, take over the situation in different ways because they're not allowed to express themselves.

Right.

And all of our parts need to express themselves and feel safe within the whole. So that's actually a big part of why we developed Apollo, because when we talk about this stuff, it's really important to talk about, but we call that top-down learning. This is another thing that's really poorly taught that I talk about at the beginning of the book. Is that there are two ways we learn, right? There's people listening to this podcast and, and reading the book and reading the books you're— we're learning in school and all that. And that's top-down learning, cognitive brain-to-body understanding through the brain. We try to pass that down to the body through practice. Then there's the other kind of learning that is equally important, if not on— speaking of balance, right? Which is body-first learning, bottom-up experiential learning. Yeah. Watching somebody do something and then trying to imitate it, feeling a feeling and then trying to re— like recreate that feeling based on feeling, not based on understanding. Have you ever tried to ride a bike by reading an instruction manual?

Negative. Right?

How hard would that be? Would be so hard.

Right.

Or to play any sport by reading an instruction manual. Like we just don't do that.

Not much of an instruction manual guy.

Exactly. But you're still learning. Right. And you're mastering. Because your body's leading the learning in those cases. And so we learn everything by top-down and bottom-up together.

I see.

That's how we maximize learning. That's very poorly taught, but you're— we're missing 50% when we only try to learn by understanding and not from the body. So Apollo is the bottom-up tool that's like, that teaches the body how to feel safe with yin and yang at the same time, how to feel safe being sensitive, how to feel safe being dominant, how to feel safe in all these different situations where it's appropriate, right? And then how to feel safe and not weak expressing ourselves and expressing and feeling our emotions. And then the book is the top-down, which is the explanation of how it all works.

Mm-hmm.

But we need both. And so the body always needs its own instructions. And so it's really when we think about learning in general, Aside from like Apollo in the book, just learning in general, it's really about balance, similar to what we're talking about with feeling. And so that's why, because of what we're taught growing up as young men in this culture, that's effectively why we shut a lot of that stuff down and why it comes out in all these weird ways as we get older.

Man, I'll tell you what, I don't know what part of yin or yang I'm in with this new vibe you put on, but it feels pretty solid, man. I feel pretty damn good. Yeah. 'Cause I was a little tired when I got here, but I don't feel like that anymore, man. I, this is nice. Yeah.

So we're both rocking the Conference Vibe right now, which has a brand new vibe we just put out, which is like energizing social focus flow.

Mm.

And you know, just like you, you know, like I've been, I've been like staying up like 3 nights a week all night, you know, 'cause I have a 16-month-old at home. And so I can't write the book during the day and finish because I don't have any quiet time and it requires all of my focus to do this kind of work. And then I'm running a company during the day and seeing patients and all that. And so I have to do the book stuff at night. And so I'm super sleep deprived, flew here today to see you and do this podcast. And, and so, you know, we just got on the same vibe and now we're rocking.

It feels good, man. I'm gonna start doing this every day. I told you, like, I'm the most same regimented guy, so I do the same ones every single day. But I think this is gonna be super helpful throughout the week. And that's what I love that you do is the innovation coming out with new ones. And we talk about ideas and everything, but there's so many different things that you can trigger within a system to get it going in a different direction.

Right.

I would have never dreamed of thinking, because in my mind it was like, man, this is— when I first got learning about it, it's amazing. But I never really thought about, well, you could go 20 different routes now, 30 different routes, and just keep going and going and going.

Right.

How do you keep coming up with these ideas? And how difficult is it to create a different feel for what you're trying to, like, push through into a body?

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think—

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The, so there are infinite states and situations that knock us out off balance, right? So it's not, so there are, there are infinite situations that we can create vibes for. The vibrations that come out of Apollo are songs for your body. They're literal music. It's sound waves that we discovered in the University of Pittsburgh. That is a sound wave algorithm that my team and I discovered. And we talk about the story in the book for the first time, really in depth. And it's, it was from studying music and the effects of music on the nervous system.

Okay.

And soothing touch effects on the nervous system and MDMA's effects on the nervous system. And it turns out that at least back in 2014, when I started doing this work, All of these things, soothing touch and soothing music and all these things had great effects for our patients with trauma and depression. They were self-medicating with these things, right? They were self-medicating with their service animals. They were self-medicating with their, with their favorite songs all the time. Right. But you can't always listen to music when you're at work. You can't always have your animal with you at work. And so that's when they started to get knocked off balance. So we started to look at. You know, well, what's actually happening in the nervous system when you get a hug from somebody you like on a bad day, or when you hear your favorite song come on by surprise on a bad day. And when I was, at this time I was studying MDMA-assisted therapy because this was the best, most effective treatment that had short and years-long lasting benefits to trauma treatment, better than anything we'd ever seen before. Like just 3 doses of medicine in 12 weeks of psychotherapy.

Mm-hmm. And like an antibiotic protocol effectively, and people were better, no longer better as in no longer meeting symptom, like diagnostic criteria for PTSD at 1 year out. And some people, the benefits were lasting 5 years with just 3 doses of medicine. This is the opposite data statistics that we were seeing with our— Our treatments where people are sick for life and you stop the medicine, most of them relapse, right? So this was like leaps and bounds better than what we were seeing.

Right.

It was paradigm shifting for the field. And so I thought, well, we need to figure out how this thing's working in the brain.

Right, right.

Like if MDMA is really doing this, which it was in the trials, in double-blind randomized, incredibly the most rigorous form of clinical trial, it was undeniable it was working. And these were the same patients I was seeing in the clinic that were struggling. And I'm like, we have to figure out what parts of the brain this medicine's activating and why it's working so that we can figure out how to, how to activate activates these parts of the brain naturally.

Yeah.

Turns out, guess what parts of the brain it activates? The insulate cortex and the amygdala. The same parts are involved in soothing touch and hearing your favorite song on a bad day. And so I was like, wow, I never had a good explanation for why that felt so good.

Do you? No.

Right?

I mean, how would I know?

It's a universal human experience that we just all accept is real.

Yeah.

And we do it, but we have no idea why it works. And I was like, I need to figure out how this works. And then it was like a light bulb went off when I started studying MDMA and the neural pathways that it activates. I was like, oh my God, this is the same neural pathways that getting a hug from a friend or hearing your favorite song activate. So then we started to play around with these different vibration patterns and started, rather than composing, knowing that music has been proven for thousands of years to induce different mood and emotional states for any situation.

Of course.

Right? Like we just accept that it's true by fact because it's a universal human experience. I was like, well, if music can do this, then what if we just compose music for a different sensory organ system? Right? So what if the music is wearable on your body rather than through your ears? And then you don't have to have headphones on to get the benefits, which you can't have headphones on all the time. You seem like really disrespectful to the people around you when you're wearing headphones on all the time. You and I know it. We see Gen Z people doing it all the time nowadays. Oh, I know. Like when they're supposed to be like, in a customer service role and you're like, are you wearing headphones?

Seriously.

You're probably just really stressed out. So like, I feel for them, but like, we can do better now in the 21st century, right? Like now that we know that the skin can receive music, that is what led to the creation of Apollo. And so we can create vibes for anything. So now we're in a pattern that since we, I have more time, a little more time to do this, we're in a pattern of releasing a vibe a month for people. And each vibe is basically whatever our people reach out to us and they say, this is what we need. We want to feel more confident when we're tired. We want to feel more energized. We want to feel like we can dive in and study something that bores the crap out of us for extended periods of time.

Yeah.

We want to be more calm and present with our loved ones after work. So we just, we just survey everybody and we're like, tell us what vibes you want. And so we just started composing them. And so we've been composing them in the lab and releasing them, and, and you get to try the one of the latest ones right now.

I love it. Well, I mean, and it's, it's cool because it, it does give you that different sort of feel for what you need and what you want. Because I, you know, like you said, no, I never really understood why until recently that when you understand that we were made and created to love, I mean, that's the whole point in creation. It anything in the Bible always reverts back to love. I read the, I read the whole New Testament.

Yeah.

And it, I remember the first time I read it, I said, well, this essentially is just talking about love the whole time until you, then you grasp what it's really saying. But it revolves around that. That's what we were created to do. So it goes without saying, we get that, we feel good instantly because that's what we were designed to feel.

But again, the Bible is top-down learning. Right, right, right. So that's why so many people have trouble Yeah. Learning and actually manifesting that in being, right? Because it's just taught down. Yeah. We're missing the felt love, right? I'm missing like, oh, what does that love feel like? Well, I forgot. So I'm just going to do what I think it feels like based on what I'm reading in the Bible. Well, you're missing 50%. Yeah. Like 50% at least of love is feeling. Yeah.

At least. It takes implementation. You can read all you want. I mean, I could read and become the smartest in the world, but it doesn't mean it's working.

Right. And if you just read about what hugs feel like, but you never actually get one, are you actually going to know?

No.

Not even close.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You can't— those words can't explain that, right? Words are at best, words are best, at best, even with the best words and the best authors, words are an imperfect description of reality. Reality is mostly feeling.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah. So words are trying to describe human experience. Human experience is reality.

Right.

Words are one layer of separation.

They may make you feel something for the time being, but it's not gonna be a constant or consistent at all. It's just, it is what it is in the moment and that's it. And then it's gone.

Right.

This is nonstop and you can do it day and night or however you want. I mean, I try to keep it on as much as I can. The days I don't, I never really thought about it until I thought about it. You know what I mean? Like, what's going on today? I said such a hurry. It's like some days I just forget. You know, you just do, you know how it is. Some days you get up and it's like you just are immediately, something's on your phone and you just like, everything goes AWOL.

Yep.

You know?

Thought there was a fire to put out today.

Yeah.

Oh shit.

Never stops. But, Yeah. So, okay, let's dig into some other stuff in the book.

Let's do it.

And then I want to talk about some MDMA therapy too. I want to get into that, but I want to get into something in the book. One of the things that I loved about you was when I saw the excitement when you were talking about, we can prove that spirituality through science has this real effect. To me, that's like the greatest thing in the world to hear, cuz I'll fight that all day and I won't sit here and go, I got all the science to prove it. I don't feel like I need to, but I want to learn it. From somebody that does, you know, I, I speak more in the confident understanding of God's with me, but I want the science too. I want to hear it. And I want you because nobody is better ready to rattle that off. So tell me what you found, please.

Well, so again, this is not, this is not just what I found. This is like a, a synthesis of hundreds of years of Western science research that from backbreaking labor of, of incredible scientists that came before me. That we're in search of the same mission, right? Like that arguably for even longer, even for thousands of years, we've been trying to prove the existence of God. And, you know, growing up, many of us, myself included, I think really struggle and wrestle with belief in God because when you actually learn about, like, I learned that God existed when I was a kid, a really little kid, but then I started to learn about like Holocaust history and like, like start to see war on TV every day and like the news and like all the tragedy and it's like hard to believe that there could be a God when there is so much awful stuff that happens in the world every day. And I think a lot of us wrestle with that, but don't talk about it enough. And I think that there's this idea of faith that faith has to be blind faith. And I kind of reframe that in the book where there's actually a science of faith and that faith need not be blind, but it actually can be based on evidence of knowing and feeling and listening.

And when we listen, when we literally learn that our— and to remind our, our minds that our bodies are safe places to inhabit, then we start to listen to all of the signs around us that are evidence that God is real, right? And that, or whatever you wanna call it, right? You don't have to call it God. You can call it the source, or you can call it divinity, or you can call it whatever words work for you.

Mm-hmm.

But the point is that we start to realize that there is profound evidence in every moment that spirituality exists. And it's really just that we're distracted most of the time.

Mm-hmm.

We're not listening. It could be distracted by your phone. It could be distracted by too many responsibilities. You can be distracted by thoughts that your body is an unsafe place to be because people told you that growing up, right? Or trauma now, even we know from past generations that gets passed down. Any of those things, infinite things distract us from listening.

Yeah.

And so what we start to realize is that in Western science, and this is some of the coolest stuff from my pers— from what I think as like a as a scientist, a neuroscientist, I start to think about like, well, what happens when you believe in something to the body, right? What happens when you pray? What happens when you express gratitude for being alive as a simple first step, right? And you start to realize that when you measure people's bodies and they're expressing gratitude or they're expressing active belief, like real belief, like I believe that something is going— that I believe in myself, or I believe in a higher power that is actually there and I'm actually a I'm a part of it, or I pray as if I actually know that I'm praying to something real. And you actually look what happens to those people's bodies, their bodies change. They recover from illness faster. They live longer. They are happier. Their heart rates come down during the act, right? And the studies of gratitude to me, because gratitude is so— Can I swear on the show?

Yeah, absolutely.

Gratitude is so fucking fantastic. Because it is a positive feedback loop.

Yeah.

Right? Like even the science studies show this, that when you, and I don't know why we don't teach this more, but this is again why I wrote this book, is like when you practice gratitude, thousands of years of knowing that this thing is real, we forget in Western science because it wasn't originally proven in double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trials. Now it is. Haha. Yay. We're showing it's real. Congratulations. But we've known for thousands of years, right? That when you, practice gratitude for anything, which is gratitude is— we can define gratitude as the act of saying thank you for something good, for noticing something good that could be earned or unearned, right? Just something good. Like just being alive right now, being able to take a breath, feeling the sun shining down on your face and feel the warmth and just anything. anything you can find, when you express thanks for that, you feel more grateful.

Absolutely.

And when you feel more grateful over time, you start to embody graciousness, right? And when graciousness is like what people identify as patience, compassion, presence, humility, connection, humility, right? All these like very positive human characteristics that we kind of hold up as like very, very positive things. And, um, and that increases mood and that increases resilience and it decreases stress and anxiety. And we see this now in clinical trials. And when we, when we spend time practicing, practicing this and we get to graciousness, then as graciousness over time becomes gracefulness and gracefulness is the goal state, right? To be graceful means. to flow with nature. Like, as Bruce Lee said, it's like, be like water, right? Water doesn't— what— when water is in a cup, it becomes the cup. When water is in a stream, it becomes the stream. It doesn't enter a cup and be like, why am I in a cup? I don't want to be here. Right? Water doesn't do that. Water just is what it is, wherever it needs to be. If it— if we are in a stream with water and we push back against it, We get overrun, right?

And it's painful and you eventually will die resisting, right? And it's, you'll suffer the whole way. And, and this is, you know, again, going back to like ancient Eastern philosophy. And so gratitude is about like flowing with the, flowing with the rhythm of nature. And gracefulness is— Gratitude is the recognition of grace, right? It's the recognition of good things that are there regardless of whether we earn them or not. And so it creates this feedback loop of the more we practice gratitude, the more gracious, the more grateful we feel, the more gracious we are. And then the closer to grace we become. Grace is godliness. And it's a lifelong journey. And, and the more we do it, the more it helps other people feel gratitude around us. It's like an energy that ripples out and Now studies have shown this. So it's like, for me, this is so cool because it's neuroscience and spirituality coming face to face and being like, we're speaking the same language, right? Like we actually can show how this works. That is so freaking cool.

It is.

It is so freaking cool. It's not all about fear and danger and protection and, and fighting and battles. It doesn't have to be, right? It's just, what are you paying attention to? Are you paying attention to what's bad and what's dangerous all the time with your time? Since you only have limited time on this earth. To pay attention to anything, or are you paying attention to what's good?

Yeah.

Right? And that is something that we have control over. So like you were saying, the mind can govern the outcome in a lot of ways as the stronger part. We have the power to decide where our attention goes.

Sometimes I do this now and it took me 44 years to figure this out.

Yeah, it took me a long time. Perry Vidal figured this shit out too, by the way.

So, and, and, and, and for you and me both, it takes, it takes a lot of suffering, a lot of mistakes, a lot of things to go through to figure this out. But Sometimes if you sit there and you say something out loud and think about it, it makes a hell of a lot more sense as opposed to just going through your day. And that's where that comes into time. So I hold a high value on time, obviously with— I've lost—

Our most valuable asset.

It's it. You can't buy it, you can't recreate it. Once it's gone, it's gone. It's gone. Right? So if you factor in the time that you spent being gracious, having gratitude, being humble, as opposed to the time you were stressed, fear, cocky, greedy, all of these negative—

Protecting yourself.

Yes. Not accountable. And then you look at the time that you wasted doing that and what you got from it and who you hurt because of it. And then you take the other side, the joy, the grace, everything else. Think about how that expands your time.

Exactly.

Because it makes it more valuable, right?

It makes you more present. Yeah. So time actually literally slows down in gratitude. Yes.

Yeah. You actually, that's the only way to increase your time is by the quality that you spend in it.

Exactly.

Right. And the time you spend arguing or stressing or whatever, it makes it go like this. Right. And it ages you faster.

Yep.

Right. So if we could just teach people a little bit of that, and I practice the prayer of virtues, so I don't pray for all this money and all this everything. I mean, do you, you know, those things. They're insignificant. If you can get what you're talking about, all of these virtues, the humility, the perseverance, the endurance, all of these things, that's how you add the time.

Yeah.

That's the only way to buy the time.

Right.

Yeah. Because it enhances it.

Yeah. And, and that's actually, that's actually one of the, there's these little gems in the book that come out as you, as people, you know, will start to read, they'll see that one of the things they talk about is like time traveling. Right. And like time traveling. Is not about inventing a machine that allows us to go back in time or forward in time.

Right.

The past no longer exists. The future has not yet come to be, so it also doesn't exist. The only time we have is right now. So the real question is, if you want to time travel, then, or you want to consider that as a thing that could be, then if you want to grow your time or expand your time, The way to do that is to be more present in the moment, the only moment that exists, which is right now.

Yes.

Right? Right now. The more of us that is here right now, meaning the less of our attention is on the past or on the future, the more of our attention, if you only have 100% of your attention as a finite resource available to us at any time, the more of that that's right here, right now with us together. Then the more we take in in the moment, the more we take in in the moment, the more the moment expands and slows down. And I argue in the book that Einstein actually knew this, and that is kind of the root of what I would consider the theory of relativity, which is our motion and position, not necessarily just physical motion and position that dictates our perspective of time, it's our mental motion and position. So if our mental motion and position is in the past or future, the time speeds up and contracts.

Yeah.

If our mental emotional position is— our mental motion and position is in the present moment, time dilates and slows down. And the reason why I know this to be true is fit— like, actually, actually scientifically true is because one of the most common reports of people who take psychedelic medicines for therapy or for whatever purposes is that they experience dramatically increased gratitude, significantly increased meaning and love as two of the most common reports. And the third is that time slows down.

Yeah. Right?

Those don't exist independent of each other. They exist at the same time. Gratitude increases, love increases, presence and meaning increase, and time slows down. That is not an effect that is limited to a molecular action of a psychedelic substance. It is something that we can create ourselves endogenously with our own attention. So you're like spot on there.

Old vitamin G. I gave a speech on it the other day. I did. I talked about that's the one thing that is the key. Yeah.

The key.

If you want to get in full health alignment, I always say it's God first, but it comes down to gratitude. The gratitude will fix the mental, which will then fix the physical.

I love vitamin G. It is great. That's great.

The one that you can't buy, you got to create it. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

That's the best. It's free.

It's free.

Yeah.

The best stuff is free. Really? Come on, Kainzuru. It is.

Okay, so what I want to do then, because I'm genuinely curious myself, and you and I have never really gotten into this discussion other than on the podcast. We never talked about—

Never talked about this stuff.

Yeah. So the MDMA treatments, like, I've had multiple people bring it up, want to talk about it, and I honestly kind of, I avoid the conversation because I want to save it for talking to you first before I get into it, because I feel like not that you're the end-all be-all, but I feel like you're the most that I trust and the most well-versed that I want to learn from first before I go listen to anybody else's shit. That's kind of— yeah, it's my comfort zone. But I do want a little bit of insight on that because that is one of those topics that you're going to get a million different viewpoints on. And you're always good about never saying, oh, it's government this or money that. That's not your thing. And I love that about you because you just keep it real.

Now the government's on board. Well, you see, they say the border.

I know, it's amazing.

The same Republican government that shut it down in the 1970s just reversed it. So we'll see how that actually—

It will see. —in practice.

But it's pretty incredible that we're finally getting there.

Well, my first question is, why was it something that was viewed a certain way? And then secondly, let's just talk a little bit about the benefits, how it works, what it does. Just some basics for people that are wondering, 'cause you hear that and most people are like, oh shit, I'm gonna go trip or whatever. And they don't even understand what it is or they think it's some illicit street drug and everything. Please break it down.

So first off, so psychedelic, the word psychedelic is not about drugs at all. It's about a state of being. Psyche— psychedelic as a word was coined by Aldous Huxley and, you know, the author of Brave New World.

Yeah.

Humphrey Osmond, famous physician in the 1950s, 1953, I think. And they came up with this word to describe a specific state that is a natural state of being, but it's a state that can be induced by medicines like LSD or mescaline or other psychedelic molecules because we didn't have a word that was appropriate at that time. And language is a living thing. They saw language as a living thing and they said, we're going to figure out the right word to describe this experience, right? Knowing the limitations of language. And they developed this word psychedelic because psyche means mind in Latin and delos means to show or to reveal. So what psychedelic states are, taking a step back from drugs, psychedelic states are states of being where our mind is revealed to us.

Okay.

Okay. So that's where it starts. And it has nothing to do with crazy '70s dance parties. It has nothing to do with Richard Nixon. It has nothing to do with the Vietnam War. It has nothing to do with the counterculture revolution. It has to do with a state of being. And that state of being is innate to all human beings.

Well, just everything I ever knew just got blown up.

Right? So let's forget about all the politics and the bullshit. Let's just throw that away and let's come back to language, right? Language is very helpful in that way. So, so, um, whenever I give lectures on this, I think it's really funny because I start talking about psychedelics and I see people in the crowd being like, listen, leaning in, leaning into their friends and they're like, I've never tried that. And then I'm like, guess what? By the way, you already have because you've had a dream. Dreams are the very first psychedelic experiences we all have. Because What happens when you dream? Your ego protective mind that's protecting us and involved in all of our self-identity decision-making stuff during the day feels safe enough to relax. And then all the material from our subconscious and unconscious becomes aware. It kind of enters awareness, right? That is our mind revealing itself to us because we're safe enough for what's underneath awareness to come out.

Yes.

So our awareness, our minds, our consciousness as a whole is like an iceberg, right? Only the tip of the iceberg is visible during our waking life. Only the tip. But 98% of our consciousness is still there beneath the surface of the water. So when we dream or enter a psychedelic state, could be when we are sleeping, it could be with meditation, mindfulness, yoga, deep breathing exercises. Exercise and runner's high flows, soothing touch, orgasm, climax, any kind of different awe-inspiring, beautiful sunset, you name it, that something that makes you feel holy and alive. That's a psychedelic state. That's when our ego feels safe enough to, to our self-protective part feels safe enough to relax and take a nap in the backseat, right, of the road trip of our lives and let someone else drive. Let some part of our unconscious, subconscious, inner child drive for a little bit.

A minute.

Right. And that is psychedelic. The most common experience with MDMA, for instance, which is what we were talking about earlier, that's currently the most studied medicine in clinical trials, psychedelic medicine in clinical trials. The most common experience that people report from it that I think is fascinating is they call it child's eyes. They call it looking at themselves as if they were looking at themselves through their eyes as a child again. Right? Like, think about how that is so—

Pure.

Makes so much sense and so pure, right? It's not a hallucination. I hate that word, hallucination, in this context because it's not a hallucination. It's not— hallucination implies it's not real. We're not talking about something that's not real. We're talking about seeing what else is real, right? What else we might— that's real, that might be more real in some ways than what we're missing during our day-to-day lives because we've forgotten what's real. And we all have our inner child inside of us. It's in most cases begging to come out and play more often, but it doesn't feel safe. It's like knocking, like, hey, is it safe yet? Right? Right? Is it safe to come out? Nope. You're weak. Stay down there. Right? That's what we tell it. Sometimes we take out the belt. Seriously, right? No, it's true. Like, I'm in a board meeting. Shut the fuck up. Right? Like, this is life. This is the lives that we have created for ourselves. You know, like we, We, um, Art Devaney, I use it, I reference his quote in the book. You know, he says this really, his really great, great poignant statement of, you know, we, I might mess it up, but it's something to the effect of like, we are not prepared for the world that we created for ourselves.

Right.

Like we were not built for this world. We accidentally created a world that's designed around goals of productivity. And accomplishment and status and money. And that is not actually what we want. It's not what our inner child wants. That's— our inner child is who we actually are. And in fact, I would argue, and I argue this in the book, that our inner child is more real than the adult selves that we created, thinking that we were trying to figure out what's real. So that's— these are the kinds of questions that we need to start asking is like, you know, the real questions of like, What, what does it really mean to be alive? Right? Does it mean to accumulate the most stuff and the most status, or does it mean to live the most fully? Yes. And that's what psychedelics teach us.

Well, the breakdown, amazing. That's what I wanted. Let, let me ask you this, because like you said, people get this wrong idea and I, shit, I do too.

Like you, you hear it. We all do. Yeah. All learned in the wrong.

We're programmed to think danger. Uh, street drug gonna hurt me, gonna harm me. Can you talk about how it's used efficiently and if there is any sort of danger? And, and look, if you abuse anything, this is, let me just preface this for everybody. If you abuse anything, you can, you can drink too much water. I mean, that's extreme, but you could.

Yeah. You could kill yourself drinking water. Yeah. So let's just look at, I've seen it seriously. I've seen it.

Oh my gosh. The context of proper use. Yeah. Right. Tell— just run me down some of the benefits and potential risks for people or anything like that. And what type of people this would be good for.

For sure. Yeah. So psychedelic medicines, getting to the drug side of it, are not a panacea. They're not for everyone. Yeah. You know, they are profoundly altering to our consciousness. Famous, very famous psychiatrist who was one of the first psychiatrists to receive LSD from Albert Hoffman in the 19— late '30s, early '40s. His name was Dr. Stan Grof, still alive, brilliant, brilliant man. And he was the first to coin this understanding of psychedelic drugs as nonspecific amplifiers of awareness. So when you think about the iceberg metaphor, right? If our awareness on a normal day is just what's sticking up the tip of the iceberg, we can see. There's 98% of the iceberg, 98% of our consciousness is beneath the surface that we are not aware of. That is not just good stuff down there. It's everything. It's good stuff. It's stuff that makes us really uncomfortable and squirmy. It's injured, wounded parts of ourselves in the past. It's parts of ourselves we forgot were there. And it's also endless joy and wonder and imagination and all the good stuff of our inner child, right? It's everything. So what psychedelic medicines do, even— And again, when I say psychedelic medicines, I include anything that significantly alters our awareness and reveals our mind to us.

So this includes THC from cannabis, ketamine, psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, and anything in those families. So it's not like a lot of people try to break it down into like, it's this or it's that. No, no, it's all of it. It's anything that's altering your awareness of yourself is considered a psychedelic substance. And so it just makes it simpler when we think about it as that rule, right? And instead of like over-reducing it, so the, or dividing it into too many different families, they're all altering how we see ourselves, all changing awareness, but they change awareness non-specifically. So effectively, this comes back to your question, which is, well, how do these, these medicines can cause harm? Like any medicines can cause harm when they're not used correctly. And that comes down to this really important skill we don't teach very well called intention. right? All humans have intention. Intention or intentionality is like, what is my intention behind what I'm doing? Right? What is my why? What is my North Star? If my North Star is to take a drug to escape reality, because reality feels too painful right now, then guess what? I am going to increase my risk of addiction and side effects and dependency because Sad to say, well, not sad to say, it's just the reality is there is no escape from reality.

We're here. You can't escape from something that you're in. Like if you just entertain the idea of escape as a fantasy and then you go escape into your fantasy, guess what? As soon as the fantasy wears off and the drug wears off, you're right back where you started, but it's way more uncomfortable cuz now you're like still wanting to go back to the fantasy because you've convinced yourself the fantasy world is real. But the fantasy world is a fantasy. So the most important thing about the way we use medicine, not just psychedelic medicines, but medicine in general, is intentionally. Intentionally means that we are using it to engage reality, not to escape from reality. There is no escape from reality. There is only engagement, you know, and more. And so if you teach the brain to stop feeling by numbing it, then when you come back, your brain has just spent a bunch of time not learning how to feel, or not, right? Shutting down feelings. So guess what? It gets flooded by more feeling and it's like, oh, I want to go back there now.

Yeah.

Right? And that's what makes the drug, whether it's heroin or opiates or benzos or cocaine or whatever it is, that, or psychedelics, which have the lowest addiction profile of all of it. They are the least addictive and probably safest of all of these drugs I just mentioned. Lowest toxicity profile. But anything can be addictive if you use it to escape. I've seen people who do hundreds of ayahuasca ceremonies and they're like, but I'm still not where I want to be. I'm like, did you ever think that maybe that's not the right—

right?

It's not working for you, bro. Like, your intention might be off.

Yeah.

Right? Yeah. And so it's like that intention is our human energy and our intention, our actions must be aligned. So your intentions to escape, but you're doing the right action, right? Ayahuasca, for as one example, can heal people. Psychedelic therapy can heal people. But if your intentions to do it to escape, then your action of doing the healing practice with a misaligned intention of escape is not going to get you to manifest your goals of healing because they're not aligned. So we need to align the use of the action with the intention. And the intention is to engage. Engagement is what leads to healing, engaging with ourselves, engaging with the world around us more effectively, breaking, like bridging the gap of what we perceive to be division. Division is disconnection. Disconnection is it causes distress and distress causes disease. So we really want to get away from that and get to more connection.

Yes. Right. So here, because I don't know the answer to this, this is my assumption from what you're saying, and I could be completely off, but I would assume then based upon what you just laid out on a, um, like an MDMA type of therapy or whatever, this is something that you wouldn't require you to do a ton of it. Like you'd get that experience, it would start to bring that out of you and it's like, I don't need to do this every day like a medication or anything like that. No, no. Yeah.

Not at all. Yeah. In, in the actual treatments, like whether you use psilocybin in the trials or MDMA or ketamine in our clinic and, you know, or in some, many of the psychotherapy clinics that do it well, it's 1 to 12 doses over a year.

Okay. That's what— that makes sense.

Not, not daily.

Okay.

Right. And then you're done for a while.

Yeah.

1 to 12 doses, not daily. Right. It's a stark contrast to what we do in traditional what we call like stabilization medicine, which has its place in Western medicine.

Sure.

Mental health, stabilizing people's important when they're really off. You can't use psychedelic medicines when people are really off the rails. So we have to stabilize people first, but when we're actually trying to get to the root cause after we've achieved stability, psychedelic medicines are, are working these, they create punctuation marks in your life, right? That's what they're doing. And they create, it's like if you think about it from a video game analogy, I know you're a gamer, it's a save point.

Yeah.

Right? Yeah. You're creating a save point. And then that's a save point you could always go back to.

Yeah.

And it's not for everyone. Like people who have, you know, diagnosed schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychotic disorder, severe personality disorder, these people are not good candidates for psychedelics. We do not recommend that you use them even with a highly trained doctor, very, very dangerous. And you can worsen your symptoms dramatically by using them. Definitely, if you have one of those diagnoses, do not use them recreationally, stay far, far away. But for people who don't have those risks and who don't have a family history of those things, then like an immediate first-degree relative family history, when these medicines are administered properly with guidance—

Mm-hmm.

The guidance is really important because again, The medicine amplifies what you bring in. It amplifies your mindset and it amplifies your setting. If your setting is filled with uncertainty and fear and anxiety, that's what gets amplified by the medicine. If your environment and your setting and your mindset has been cultivated through working with a trained practitioner like myself or someone who understands how to do this work and guide you, or like an indigenous lineage trained shaman, for instance. Mm-hmm. That creates the safe space for you to have this vulnerable experience of reconnecting with yourself and the world, then you— the medicine amplifies safety. And when you amplify safety, you help people feel safe enough to remake meaning around past traumatic events. And then healing starts to unfold because the vulnerable, injured parts of us feel safe enough to come out to the surface.

So if you do one of the treatments, ayahuasca retreat, ketamine treatment, do they act similarly in how they work or is there a differentiation? Like, I mean, what's the difference between some of the ones you mentioned? Let's just say ketamine and MDMA and—

Yeah. I mean, it's, so it's, so for a long time we looked at these things as all separate and different. What I think we're starting to see from the recent trials that we've been doing is And first off, just phenomenologically, when you look at how is medicine, how is ayahuasca being used to treat mental health crises in the jungle, in the traditional setting, in the Amazon, and then how is MDMA and ketamine being used in Western, modern Western approaches, they're all being used to treat trauma. So that was the first clue to me, which was— that when I started to look at how all these different experiences are being used, all these different medicines are being used. Yeah, molecularly they have some similarities, but they're different. And that, and the protocols are different. It still is medicine amplifying safety in a, in a clinical ceremony or in a tribal ceremony that helps people feel safe enough to remake meaning around past traumatic events. So from the shamanic perspective, they look at it as spiritual energy alignment from. the Western psychiatric perspective, my surgeon colleagues call it psychosurgery, right? So like, which it is, like, I feel like I—

It makes sense.

I feel like I'm tying a rope to myself and tying a rope to, to like a pillar of the, of the room over there. And I'm like diving into your consciousness with you and helping you feel safe enough to fix stuff down there and allow the traumatized, hurt, injured parts to come out and reassemble into part of the whole.

Right.

So. They're all getting to the root cause, which is unprocessed, unhealed trauma that blocks our energy from flowing freely, as the tribespeople say. So like, from that perspective, they're the same.

Okay.

From the, from the— but, but we, for many years, have looked at them as different. And they do have chemical differences. What's different about them chemically is how long they last, right? How intense the experience is. What kind of experience is it? Is it more like interpersonal connecting, like, but your eyes open in interaction, or is it more internal, closed eyes, deep introspective, like meditative, right?

Okay.

And so they all have different kinds of experiences like that, but they all get to the same root cause, which is unprocessed, unhealed, injured parts of ourselves, like helping repair broken emotional bones.

Effectively.

Yeah. Right? Like, that's what they're doing. It's just like healing a physical bone in the emergency room. It's just an emotional broken bone, and that emotional broken bone is self-trust.

Yeah. So is it feasible for someone to go in there and do it once and just come out changed and never need it again? Or is that just ridiculous?

No, it does happen. I mean, we say to people, don't have expectations. Also, the tribespeople say, don't have expectations, because expectations set you up for disappointment.

Going blindly, right?

Right. We never tell people that's what's going to happen because we don't know that that's what's going to happen. But I can tell you, like, I just interviewed for my, the Psychedelic Report, um, a few days ago, I interviewed a military veteran, Benjamin Forrest, who wrote a book called Trip of a Lifetime that was about his first experience with psilocybin mushrooms when he was struggling with severe depression that would just not get better. And he was one of those people. Who went in, single dose of psilocybin in a group setting. It was really like a really safe container for him to just be himself and, and let all of his parts, his injured parts come out and grieve his sadness and loss from all the challenging experiences he's had, like loss of family members and that kind of thing. And within one experience, he— He wrote this book, definitively changed, like definitively changed because he had allowed his, he was, he had allowed his emotions to be felt and processed in that experience in a way he had never felt safe enough to do before. It was too sensitive. It was too, he had been taught it was too weak to, to feel, right?

Like same things we were talking about at the beginning of this show. And so he, within one dose, was changed.

Changed.

Yeah. And it, and we see that in some of the psilocybin studies for depression, that one single dose done in the right way. Can actually result in long-lasting benefits that last and are still detect major benefits that are more intense, more like significant benefits than people get from SSRI antidepressants. 6 months, 12 months out, people are still feeling really great and feeling healed. But more often than not, I would say I've also seen that with ketamine. We've seen that with MDMA. More often than not, it usually takes a few doses of medicine. like 1 to 3 doses at least and a bunch of therapy, right? Yeah. Like, you can't ignore the talk therapy part because the talk therapy is the preparation for the experience. Make sure you're ready and you, and you're ready to feel safe enough to let go and allow the medicine to show you what you were meant to be experiencing during the experience. You allow yourself to feel safe enough to look underneath the surface of the water to the rest of the iceberg.

Yeah.

Whatever comes up is fair game. Right? You allow, and if you're safe enough to allow, then healing can happen. Vulnerability can come to the surface and be healed. And then the second part of the talk therapy that's really critical is what we call integration, which is what happens after, because psychedelic medicines have this way of disintegrating your ego protective parts. And so what has to happen afterwards is you have to reintegrate your ego and protective parts, honoring them for protecting you, not dismissing them, not throwing them away. Mm-hmm. They're not, they're not bad. They're just protecting you.

Yeah.

They thought there was danger, right? They're like a, it's like a really, you know, it's like the most advanced alarm system in the world that's actually been triggered to go off at the wrong times. Right? Like that's what it is. And so we don't want to turn the alarm off forever. We don't want to tell the alarm that it's a, it's bad. It's not bad. It's just incorrectly calibrated. Right? And so then the integration is, is, is, is taking that for those protective parts of ourselves and then like understanding how those now fit in, knowing that you're safe, knowing that you don't have to be on guard all the time. And how does that now integrate and fit in with your sensitive parts? And then what does your life look like now on a moment-to-moment, day-to-day basis when you actually feel safe in your own skin for the first time in maybe decades?

I got it.

But for the effects to be long-lasting. That integration has to be there. Otherwise, oftentimes people just get confused with what to do after.

Right. That's what I was going to ask you next, was about like what's the steps, because I just think Burning Man, dude, like, that's all I could think of was that, that experience, and then whatever they tell you there, and that's it. So for you, it's like, this is a, this is a really like dramatic type of layout almost, where we have to go through stages, and there's a lot of talking and understanding, because I figure that there are certain categories of people that would, would qualify for this. People with trauma, people with depression, anxiety, high stress levels. Those are the type of people that would be coming to you, right?

I mean, the people who come to me usually are people who have mental illness that they've been trying to treat for years.

Yeah.

Everything under the sun and the traditional way and nothing makes a dent. So you, I see people who predominantly are what we call treatment. They like Western medicine has labeled them as treatment-resistant mental illness. I see lots of people, but that's just the majority of the people that I see. And then a bunch of people in my practice are people who've had really bad psychedelic experiences with people who are untrained providers, or they accidentally overdose themselves in the wrong environment and then got set back. And so then they work with me to bring them back to their fully functioning state prior to taking medicine.

I see.

So I would say that's like 40-50% of the patients I see. Are actually people who've accidentally re-traumatized themselves with psychedelics. So that's why I'm so bullish and passionate around teaching people how to use these medicines properly and how not to use them incorrectly, because you can totally fuck yourself up if you don't do it right. I believe it. They're very powerful. They are amongst, easily amongst the most powerful medical tools we have ever had access to as human beings.

Wow.

So we need to treat them with respect.

Yeah.

And in doing so, treat ourselves with respect. Oh yeah, 100%.

Man, I, I went through this with years with people wanting to run testosterone on their own and explain, like, you just, you just don't know what you're doing and it's not wise.

Like, all medicine has to be treated with respect. That if you take too much Tylenol, you'll kill your liver and you'll die. Absolutely. Right. You take too much ibuprofen— these are over-the-counter drugs— take too much ibuprofen, you'll kill your kidneys and you'll die.

Toxic vitamins. I mean, right. You know what?

Yeah. So it's like everything has to be treated with respect. But yeah, these medicines, another level. Yeah. Well, they're not, people get lulled into a sense of safety because it's almost impossible to overdose on mushrooms in a way that you can't kill yourself with mushroom toxicity from psilocybin mushrooms. Your body can take a huge amount of mushrooms and not physically die.

Yeah. But mentally?

But mentally, your ego takes a major hit. Same with ketamine. You could take a huge amount of ketamine, a huge amount of LSD, and physically what we call the LD50, which is like the, like the 50% of the dose required to, to result in, to result in somebody having like a biological episode that would be physically impairing to you or causing death. The LD50 is very high. So like pharmacologically, they're very safe drugs. They're much safer than Tylenol and ibuprofen, much safer than alcohol.

Everything's safer than alcohol, man. But that's another story.

But that's the, but, but I think that's where people get confused. And so they're like, oh, I can just take a bunch of like cannabis, like you couldn't ingest enough THC to kill you. It would be so hard, you would have to eat pounds of weed for days, right? So like, that's where people get confused. But they still, they still will take a tremendous toll on your mental-emotional body. And so we have to treat that with respect because they're so powerful as mental-emotional healing tools.

Anything like that. I spent 40 years smoking pot till I quit 3 years ago. And I'll tell you what, man, and I want to relate this to them.

You've been smoking since you were 4?

Shit, I wish. 11. Wow. Yeah. And I stopped when I was 41. I gave it up for Lent.

I'll bet you felt a lot more clearer.

I haven't smoked since.

Yeah.

3 years ago. I haven't smoked since. And I feel like a million dollars better. And that's where I was kind of going with this, is it got to the point where it was causing me harm. I used to say, but it helps me pay more attention and study more. I had panic attacks every night. After a while, I couldn't stop, and it was becoming— it did a role reversal on me because I misused it.

Exactly.

Even after all that time.

Yeah.

And that's where I was kind of going to go back to this. When you were talking about people that misuse it and you have to bring them back, I mean, that could really, really destroy your mind, couldn't it? I mean, just actually alter it to a state where you're just worse off than— far than you were before.

For sure. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Because it distorts thinking.

Yeah.

Right. But I think the— in, in in Shipibo and Amazonian cultures, they call it the shitana, which is the, the dark energy of a plant that manifests inside of us when we abuse or misuse it or disrespect the plant. We invite the dark energy of that plant into us. And they also have another word that it's escaping me for the light energy of the plant that comes out when we heal ourselves with it by using it respectfully.

Right.

The point is that's a different lens of looking at the exact same thing that we're talking about that is now clearly validated with science. Just because it comes from indigenous people doesn't mean that it's not true. Like those words, that word shitana was not a word that was developed in a lab, but it's a word that describes the same phenomena that we experience when people abuse medicine in Western culture. And what you're— but the good news is that for anyone who's struggling with addiction or substance abuse or dependence, which is a specialty that I specifically, uh, work on. Is the good news is that you can heal. Yeah. Like all it takes is making the decision to say, no, I'm going to stop. I'm going to change my relationship to the substance, to this plant, because I respect myself enough to do it. I respect my autonomy, my agency, and that I have control.

Yeah.

And when you start showing that respect to yourself and thereby showing that respect to the plant or the substance, all of a sudden your relationship with it completely changes. And then you might be abstinent for a while from it.

Yeah.

But then over time you can, with enough discipline and thoughtfulness, potentially start to have a relationship with it again that's respectful in a healing way or a way that it facilitates pleasure but not abuse.

Yeah.

So I think like that's— there's a fine line where we get caught up because We start using it for escape from discomfort rather than for engagement with pleasure. Engagement with pleasure means respectful use once in a while in moderation. It does not mean every day, all day. Right. And we've, we've all fallen into that pattern in different ways in our lives. Like whether it was with work or sex or gambling or like, you know, video games, right? People get addicted to video games.

Yeah.

People get addicted to social media now. I coined the social media addiction in the book because people deny that social media's addictive. Guess what? It is. It's just as addictive as video games, gambling, or drugs. Yeah. Right. In some ways more so, cuz it's right there and it's socially acceptable and encouraged. Yeah. No, I get it.

When, when we're talking about forms of like MDMA, ketamine, and psilocybin, is that all mushrooms or how is that ingested?

Well, it just depends on, on the environment and the medicine.

So it comes in different forms.

Yeah. So psilocybin comes from mushrooms. Mushrooms grow in cow dung traditionally. Now they grow them in all different kinds of things. Yeah. You, with, with psilocybin mushrooms, you eat them orally or you eat like an extract. MDMA is oral. You take it orally. That's primarily how it's used. Ketamine is not, is broken down almost entirely by the gut when you take it orally. So we don't really use it orally. We use it what's called sublingually. So you use it by swishing it in your mouth, or we do injections or IV. Other medicines like LSD can go through the skin or be oral, orally ingested. LSD is hands down the most potent psychedelic that we've ever discovered. It's what— it was actually helped us discover the entire serotonin system because when Albert Hoffman discovered it, we didn't really have a good understanding of the serotonin system at that time, but it's a potent activator of the serotonin receptors. And when people take it, they experience an almost immediate shift in meaning from the world. And that's really interesting, which I also talk about in the book. So there's a lot of studies now that have been done that look at and explore how we make meaning from the world through the serotonin receptor system.

So I don't want to digress too much, but yeah, you can— I mean, different medicines have different ways of taking them into your body, some of which are better than others.

Is the LSD safe? To use if it's used properly?

Yeah. I mean, I mean, all psychedelic medicines are safe to be used physically if used properly. I would say the only one that we know of, I mean, again, this depends on that. There are exceptions. If you have bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, psychotic disorder, personality disorder, if you have, you're taking certain drugs, if you have high blood pressure, in certain cases, you're taking certain drugs that are not compatible with psychedelics, like antidepressants are not compatible with most psychedelics, then you're not a good candidate for these kinds of things. But assuming that none of that is in the picture, then psychedelic medicines like LSD and others are extraordinarily physically safe for the body. The only psychedelic medicine that is now gaining popularity in the, in the news media because it helps treat opioid use disorder is ibogaine. And ibogaine is a fascinating molecule that comes from the boga plant that was traditionally, is traditionally used by the Bwiti people in Gabon in Africa. This medicine is, uh, is one of the most intense, most powerful psychedelic experiences that people have. It can last, I think it lasts 18 to 24 hours. That's too long. It's really long.

Yeah.

It is serious. It is no joke. If ayahuasca is the compassionate grandmother spirit, as the tribespeople call it, Iboga is like the grandfather spirit that's going to whip you into shape. Like, it is intense. And it is one of the only, if not the only, major psychedelic molecules that we know of that comes from plants that can kill you. They can cause sudden cardiac death, and we don't know how to predict it.

Wow.

And cause sudden cardiac death in healthy people. So it's very rare. It's extremely rare. So as long as people are cardiovascularly monitored during it, we can avoid that risk. But the point is it requires some monitoring and some extra care. All the other psychedelic medicines, if you don't have any contraindications, you're not taking any medicines that can interfere, they're extremely safe.

Well, I'd never asked you this now that you brought that up. So you said that could last way too long. That scares the shit out of me even thinking about— what is a standard kind of timeframe for just a general dose of something? How long does ketamine— Yeah, how long does it last?

So ketamine lasts 60 minutes. Which is why it's one of the best, easiest first-line psychedelic medicines we use. It's also fully legal currently. And so when we administer ketamine in the clinic, like in my clinic, we'll do— it's a, it's a 1-hour active time of the medicine, but we work with people for 3 hours during that time. So we do some talk therapy before, uh, and then we do— or 2 and a half hours. We do some talk therapy before, get people prepared, feeling comfortable. We administer the medicine. They're under the influence of the medicine for somewhere between 60 and 75 minutes, and then they have some fade-out time where they come back into their bodies and feeling safe again and back into the, you know, they get to reintegrate a little bit with us there. Then they go home and then we meet again the next day and do integration.

So are they talking to you while they're on it?

Sometimes with ketamine in particular, it's more of an— one of the more introspective medicines. So most people are guided by a music playlist, very highly curated to them. And to what they want to get out of the experience. It helps them dive deeper in. It helps quiet their minds. The music with psychedelic experiences is extremely important. Everybody has Apollo on at the same time, helping calm and ease the body. And, and then they have a blindfold on.

Oh, okay.

And so they're going inward. And with ketamine, that's what I'm saying, the way the medicine is used is different for each one. Ketamine is not like a group experience where people are talking and hanging out. It's a deeply introspective introspective, quiet mind, what we call observer mind meditative experience. MDMA has those internal components when we use it in treatment, but it lasts about 4 hours on a single dose. So it's less than psilocybin, which is about 6 to 8 hours, less than LSD, which is 10 to 12 hours. And MDMA has people go inside and do the introspective work, but then a lot of the experience is also eyes open, talking, communicating. empathy level. So I think it just depends on the medicine in a lot of ways of how people interact when they're on it. But ketamine is fascinating because, I mean, I think it's so cool. You give somebody a medicine after doing a whole bunch of trauma prep work, and then they go inside. They witness what they need to see themselves for themselves, and then they are doing the work and you get to watch them do the work.

Wow.

Right? So like, they're doing the work. It's clear evidence that the source of healing is coming from within them. I'm just holding a— I mean, just, it takes a lot of work what I'm doing, but I'm holding a safe space for them to allow the work to be done on their vulnerable parts and the healing to be done on their vulnerable parts. But they are fully doing the work. They're fully doing the work. I am the supportive guide. Right. And so it's like just reaffirming these ancient principles of healing that came from Hippocrates and Maimonides and the founders and and ancient, nameless now, people of tribal and Eastern medicine who all came to the same conclusion from completely different parts of the world with no internet, that they all agreed that the source of healing comes from the person who's seeking to be healed.

Man.

Right? Not from a pill, not from a doctor or a therapist, and not from a system. It comes from the person seeking to be healed. And when you do this work, it is so humbling and such an honor and a privilege to witness because you get to witness that healing actually happening. Where people are healing themselves in real time. It is so cool.

So since I'm coming to California like once or twice a month, I'm booking a session with you.

Okay.

Serious. Because I just picture myself listening to Pink Floyd, Time, and going off into the yonder with you and just getting myself right, man. Like, it sounds so amazing, to say the least.

It's pretty incredible. I mean, especially from a spiritually connecting perspective. Like, I tell this story about one of my patients. I tell this story about one of my patients who was one of my favorite patients over the years. So I have this, I have this, one of my favorite patients to talk, to tell a story about is this woman who left a cult that she was raised in with her husband through her, through her 30s. And in her 30s, she realized that they were lying to her about the outside world and that they were trying to control her access to God and spirituality. And they said, your access to like the world outside is cruel and dark. We are the light. We are your only source of, of life. We are your only connection to God. It's not through you that you get to God. It's through us. And she eventually said, you know what? I don't think this is true or right. Doesn't feel right to me. I trusted your intuition. She left and her and her husband left. And about 20 years later, she was struggling with severe depression and PTSD, feeling completely disconnected, lonely.

COVID hit, made it much worse. She reached out to us for, for therapy. And we did one ketamine session with her. And in one ketamine session, this wasn't even in person, this is over Zoom.

Wow.

So pharmacy delivers ketamine. Ketamine's an incredibly safe drug. Pharmacy delivered the ketamine to her home. Her husband was in the home in case we needed him to come in, but we were on Zoom with her. She takes a very low dose of ketamine, but just enough to get her to an altered state of consciousness. And first, the first thing she said was in the session that it was so funny. She, she like, she just like has like a light bulb, right? And she's like, this is how they did it. And we're like, this is how who did it? She's like, this is how the Beatles wrote all that music. My gosh, dude. I was like, you are a funny lady. Then in the integration session afterwards, she just had that insight, right? In the integration afterwards, we're chatting. And I think it was within 24 hours, it was like the next day, she told, she said to us, I didn't know that I could access God on my own. I didn't know that I had an independent relationship with God. I thought my whole life that God came through this cult that I was raised in and that they taught me that I had was disconnected from God and spirituality forever because of them, because of what they told me.

And I never reconciled that. All of a sudden, I had this experience with ketamine where I felt God. I felt God. I felt my connection to divinity and spirituality for myself without anyone in between. And I realized that this is inside me.

Yes.

And now I can cultivate that for myself. I can continue to have a relationship with God that I nourish without going through anybody else. That was more healing than anything else for her.

Yeah.

That was more healing than anything that we did. We just created the safe space for that to happen. She allowed that experience to happen because she trusted us to hold that safe space for her. And then she repaired this injured part of herself that was preventing her from connecting to her own spirituality, her own source of divinity. And then she didn't need us anymore. I was like, best, best outcome ever, right? Like she's just, yeah, we did a couple more therapy sessions. But she didn't do any more medicine sessions after that. She was just able to take it, take the lead on her own.

So beautiful. That makes my day to hear. It gave me chills that honestly, that is the good way to end because it's such a positive note, man. I loved hearing that.

Thank you for sharing.

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that story. Well, we already got part 3 in my head lined up for the next run. So dude, I mean, I don't even know what to say other than Every single time I do something like this with you, or even talk the 10-minute talks, it's— I'm always— I always tell you, I'm always in a good mood every time. So it's just— It's just not a pleasure to do this. It's a pleasure to know you. It's a pleasure to call you a friend, a family member, a whole nine. But your work, aside from ours, just your work and what you do and everything— and I've told you this before in conversation, and I sat and got to talk to you one-on-one and really feel when I remember asking you in the car, why do you do like, why do you do this? Just fill me in. And you told me and it's just like, man, I remember calling Queenie that night and saying, this is just one of the best fucking guys I've ever met in my life.

Oh, thank you.

Yes, it's true. And excuse me for saying that, but I'm saying it because it's— that's how I feel. So thank you. I can't wait for your book to come out. I can't wait to show the world and tell everybody. Can we preorder yet? What's the deal? How do we get it? When can we expect it?

So the book's coming in June. Thank you again for having me, by the way. Oh, always a pleasure to be with you.

Always.

I love our conversations. You, you take the, always take these in a direction that is different than everyone else. So like, I, I really appreciate that. So yeah, please come find me on socials. Of course, I love to hear from everyone. I love answering questions and teaching in case you can't tell. So please ask me your questions. Um, and, and so yeah, just go to asimpleguidetobeingalive.com and you can learn about the book. You can get first access to the super discounted preorder, and we'll also have the opportunity to get live Q&A webinars with me where you can actually talk to me, cuz I love to teach. So we're gonna create opportunities even though I'm really busy and I have a 16-month-old. I'm going to make time to connect with everyone. And to share this knowledge firsthand because I had great teachers and mentors in my training. I would, I have a chapter about this in the book too, that I really believe that mentorship is something that we've lost in our society and that a lot of people who achieve a certain status forget that our responsibility is to teach and pass down knowledge. And I wouldn't be here without my mentors, you know, without the people who took the patience and the time to teach me when I was stupid and young.

I'm curious.

I wouldn't be here. And so I'm so grateful to those people. And so, in the same vein, I really wanna make sure to give back to everyone and actually be accessible. And so if you go to asimpleguidetobeingalive.com, you put your email address in there, we'll make sure to let you know when the super discounted pre-order comes online, and which will be in the next few weeks. And then we'll also make sure to let you know when the webinar with me, Q&A webinar comes online so you can join and, and get access to some of the fun teachings and get any of your questions answered.

Check the link. Or the description for the links. I got a nice coupon as I do in all my, my posts here. When I post the podcast, you get $99 off the Apollo, the link for the book, the link to follow Dave. And we'll have video content out to watch. And he's always not only answering questions, but he gives live speeches at some of the biggest and best conventions. I would definitely encourage you to go see them. We'll put lists out for all of that. You check my socials, everything else. So that being said, my man, thank you so much for the time, the conversation, education, and the care. Dylan Gianelli, Dr. Dave Rabin, signing off.

Bye.

Hello.

Hello.