Episode 112. Trauma to Transformation: Psychedelics with Matt Zemon, MSc
Host Alicja Matusiak speaks with Matt Zemon MSc, a specialist in psychedelics and mental health. They delve into the profound effects of psychedelic medicine, and its potential benefits for individuals dealing with PTSD, trauma, depression, and end-of-life anxiety. Matt shares his personal journey into the world of psychedelics, including reconnecting with his deceased mother during a magic mushroom journey. The conversation also covers important considerations like preparation, integration, and the comparison between synthetic and natural substances. They discuss the therapeutic benefits and how these medicines are being integrated into both ceremonial and medical practices to help individuals heal and grow.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Matt Zemon, MSc, an Educator, Author, and Leader in Psychedelic Wellness, specializes in the impact of psychedelics on mental health. Author of the best-selling Psychedelics for Everyone and the preparation and integration journal Beyond the Trip, he holds a Master's degree in psychology and neuroscience from King's College London. Matt combines academic insights with a passion for safe and sacred psychedelic use, focusing on broadening understanding and access to these transformative substances. Additionally, he consults with medical practitioners in psychedelic therapy, contributing his expertise to further the responsible integration of psychedelics in healthcare.
FIND MATT ZEMON MSc
Psychedelics for Everyone Book
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
02:21 Matt Zemon's Journey into Psychedelics
05:43 Integration
07:30 Bad Trips
16:06 Healing Potential
22:23 Retreats and Ceremonial Practices
22:57 Integrating Ceremonial Practices into Medical Protocols
24:10 Source, Set, and Setting
26:05 Physical Sensitivities
28:07 Legal and Community Resources
29:09 Preparing for a Journey
30:06 Psychedelics and Mental Health Considerations
38:20 Addiction
40:44 Final Thoughts and Resources
TRANSCRIPTION OF EPISODE 112 OF NAKED TRUTH: A THERAPY PODCAST
Trauma to Transformation: Psychedelics with Matt Zemon, MSc
I realized how really amazing the medicine is. You connect with God, you feel so connected to everything around you. It doesn't seem to make you feel like you want to use it over and over and over again. In fact, it's kind of like a workout, like a hard workout.
These medicines have been shown to be radically risk reduced and not a drug of dependence, not a drug of addiction.
The most dangerous drug for self and others was alcohol. It's a 72 on his scale. Mushrooms, it's a 6. There's research of people who've done this once in their life period, and 40 years later, 30 years later, they're still talking about it, and they can still remember it. We're seeing amazing work being done with end of life care, with people who are experiencing depression and anxiety because they've been given a terminal diagnosis.
And while this medicine doesn't change the fact that they're going to die, what it does is it changes the way they live. Profound. It's like, what is this? I went from not having any belief in a higher power and a sacred power to complete belief in six hours. Three sessions with MDMA. Seventy ish percent of the people who went through that program
We want the ceremonial leaders sharing their best practices with doctors and doctors with ceremonial leaders and everybody having access to the best information so that they can make the best decision for them and so that they can heal whatever it is that they want to heal or grow in whatever way they want to grow.
I love that. That's perfect.
Thank you.
I'm so excited today to talk to Matt Zamen, who is our wonderful guest specialist in psychedelics. Welcome to the Naked Truth podcast, Matt. And I want to call you Damon, Matt Damon.
Yeah. You can call me anything you want, but that is, I'm happy to be here, Alicia, and thanks for having me on, and thank you, I know you've done a number of podcasts here in the world of psychedelics, and I'm excited to be able to contribute to this conversation, hopefully take us somewhere that your audience hasn't gone yet.
I know, we want to take a deep dive into the journey, into the psychedelics world, so I'm excited. Matt, you have a degree in psychology and neuroscience?
I do, I have a master's in psychology and neuroscience of mental health. with the emphasis on psychedelic medicine.
How did you get into psychedelics?
Halisha, I fell into it by accident. I had some friends invite me to a guided magic mushroom journey, and I wasn't a drug user at the time. It was way outside of my comfort zone. And in that first journey, I reconnected with my mom who had died when I was 22. She was just 49. I had kind of insight after insight into how I'm living my life.
I felt this incredible sense of safety and love in this journey, and then realized, oh my goodness, I don't feel this level of safety and love in my everyday life. And I left that experience just wanting to learn more. It's like, what is this? I went from not having any belief in, in a higher power and a sacred power to complete belief in six hours.
So I went back, did that master's program so I could understand the science behind this, but then also went and traveled around experiencing different psychedelics by different practitioners, by titans, shamans, MDs, PhDs, just trying to expand my consciousness and understand more about how this works.
You know, as you're speaking about the experience and I've heard other people discuss this experience and it always feels like it's almost like a near death experience, like someone that sees the light.
And it's transformed by the experience and then changes their life in some way.
I love that analogy. I mean, there's, there's been multiple times now where I've had the experience of what they say is dying before you die. Recently, I had a ceremony where I felt like I turned into dirt, into worm food is what I say.
And, and while the actual death part can be sad and emotional, the coming back to life, the breathing and the awareness of the breath and going, Oh, my goodness. How many trillions upon trillions upon trillions of accidents had to happen for me to be alive right now? For me to be aware of being alive right now?
For me to be able to enjoy this breath of life? It's just such a phenomenal experience and a reminder of just how lucky are we to be alive in this period of history where so many things are so right for so many people.
I'm so happy you're saying it because I do feel like we all forgot the miracle of life.
We're just walking around there like zombies trying to survive our day to day life, right? So like right now as we're speaking, I have a water crisis that's going on. There's a water break of some kind. Then I have an AC crisis, right? And right now it's really hard to remember that it is a miracle that I'm alive right now.
It is hard some days. And that's why I think we need those psychedelic journeys to remember.
It's interesting what you're talking about to me. So we have these moments of time when we use this tool. Psychedelics aren't a cure for anything. These are catalysts. These are moments of awareness, moments of awakening, moments of remembrance that we get the opportunity to experience from time to time.
But the practice is all those days in between. The practice. is, is how do we stay centered and present and focused enough so that when the water main breaks, we can deal with that in a different manner than before we had those awarenesses so that when life happens as it does, we can experience it for what it is.
It's this playground which we're operating in. It's the integration part of the psychedelic process that is so, so important and that some people just don't know. I didn't know how important it was. It's really where the work is. The work is, is after the psychedelic, all those other days.
So what is integration, actually?
Explain to our listeners, because that's kind of like that word that's used a lot. But
we typically say preparation and integration are kind of the two pieces that are oftentimes left out of a psychedelic journey. So preparation is helping to put yourself into as good of a place to be ready to experience this non ordinary state of consciousness.
So typically when people are preparing for a journey, there is mental preparation such as setting your intentions, gathering the names of people who are supportive to you so that afterwards you know who you can count on for help, cleaning your physical space so that when you're again finished the journey, you're coming back into a clean space.
Preparing the physical body. Oftentimes, depending again on the medicine, there might be a dieta, or you might eat cleaner foods, and refrain from alcohol and drugs for the period leading up, just so that your vessel is as pure as possible. Following the journey, it's the integration. It's, okay, so now I've seen these things, what do I do with this information?
We recommend that typically you give yourself a couple weeks before you make any major decisions, at least a couple weeks. and that you have someone to talk with. Now it can be a coach, it can be a therapist, it can be a community of like minded people that you can unpack these insights and that can help you process them.
So I have a book, and one of my books is called Beyond the Trip, and in that case there's four weeks of homework with an activity each week. There's a 30 day gratitude journal. Because in the integration process, you have about 30 days of neuroplasticity, extra neuroplasticity. So this is how do you train your mind, or how do I train my mind for the positive.
In a gratitude journal, a three good things exercise, those are all ways to do that. So those things in conjunction are all great things to do during integration. Do it, Hallease. I have a question. Tell me.
I mean, we all would love for all the journeys to be really good and uplifting and, you know, meet God or, you Meet our loved ones that may be past, but there is such a thing as a bad journey when people say there's no bad journeys per se, but the experience may not be as pleasant.
For example, in my personal experience, one of the journeys that I had was really unpleasant, not in a good way. I remembered some kind of sexual abuse. And the whole journey was all about that and about how miserable it felt and I have no recollection of it. So my brain, I do not remember any of this at all.
And in the journey, I was saying, I don't want to remember this, make this go away. I don't need this. I don't need this. And I had no afterglow. I didn't have the 30 day neuroplasticity. I just felt miserable and depressed after. And so I'm told that Penis Envy was a mushroom that, that I was received. I don't know much about the different kinds, but maybe you can speak to this experience that wasn't so pleasant for me.
Yeah,
it doesn't sound like it was pleasant, but let's, let's, I'm going to unpack a few things here and what you said, Alicia. What I heard you say is during this experience, you remembered a childhood trauma, a sexual trauma. Yeah. Mm hmm. That you don't have a conscious memory of outside of this medicine.
And during the induced state, you are saying to yourself, I don't want to be here, I want to get away from this. Mm hmm. Is that what you're saying? Yes. Okay. And during the induced state, did you ask for help? Was there someone there, a guide or a facilitator? Yes. Okay. And what did they do when you asked for help?
I feel like I blocked out most of that experience, so I'm not sure what was done. I'm assuming some kind of comfort. There were two guides present, so.
So, couple things. We all take the journeys that we take when we take them. So that journey was right for you exactly as you did it when you did it and the preparation work that we recommend We ask people if you see something you don't want to see to not try to resist it, but to ask it Okay, I don't like this.
But what are you here to teach me? I know we cannot go back in time So i'm talking about the next time you have an experience that's to explore with wild curiosity is the recommendation that I would have That bring to the table for that. Um, if you see the dragon in front of you dragon What are you here to teach me just to quickly connect with you on this alicia?
um I had some inappropriate sexual contact with a family member 10 years older than me when I was a young teenager. And this was something I could never ever talk about. I was mortified, embarrassed. It was deep in my, uh, deep inside of me. But if someone would make any kind of joke about this, like my ears would burn, I'd get a pit in my stomach.
And on one of these journeys, I was back in that room. And for me, I had kind of an opposite experience. I was able to, to basically see this person as a human in a way that I hadn't before, to not condone the behavior, but to understand the humanity. It was an uncomfortable experience, it was an emotional experience, but it was also for me a healing experience in that I was able, because I could understand the humanity, and I could understand that I wasn't the adult in the room, I could understand this wasn't my fault, and I could understand I don't need to carry shame, and then I can move forward.
And after carrying this thing for 30 some years, it was a big relief for me. So when we talk about kind of best practices around psychedelics, the part of it is, is make sure the person's really equipped to explore that with curiosity. If they're not, then to have a guide or facilitator there to really help them come out of that scene and move on to something else, if that's at all possible.
And it sounds like for you, it was just, it was just challenging period.
It was very challenging. I think what I didn't like about it was that. I never seen myself as a victim of anything. And so, this added this layer of, oh, I'm a victim of this. It was hard to accept that I was vulnerable. It was hard to accept that I was open to being hurt in that way.
And that at some point of my life, I was not safe. And that I didn't even remember that. I was angry at the person that did that. But I also knew that I'm gonna love everyone the same way anyway. That if a sickness caused someone to do something like this, then I was not going to hate them for that. But I was angry that I was a victim of something like this.
Because I didn't want to, I didn't, I don't want to remember about it. Because the, the feeling was so uncomfortable of being vulnerable and having something done to you that you don't want to, it done to you, that I was just, I think, angry at the whole situation, maybe even angry at myself, even though, of course, it's not something that I need to feel, right?
Because it's like, you can't prevent someone from hurting you in that way when you're vulnerable, when you're a child. But yet there's that level of almost like angry, being angry at yourself, or even remembering it. I, I guess I just buried it so deep. I wanted to keep it there. I didn't want to deal with it.
And even in this altered state of consciousness, I still had that strong urge to just keep it where it was. I don't need to know about it. It's not going to change my life if I know about it. Just keep it there. But somehow, I mean, I'm sure it's changing my life in some way, but I just, I don't know. You know, so when I got out of the altered state, I was just kind of like, what is this for?
What am I supposed to do about it? Because I can't do anything about it. It's in my past. So it's just felt kind of like I felt cheated out of the experience. I was, I was very excited to go and meet God again, uh, and be high on life again, you know, feel connected, feel one with the universe, feel before in, in the times before I felt like I could almost communicate with animals and I could I feel so interconnected with everything around me.
And then after this one, it was like, don't want to be there. Don't want to know about it. I don't need this. Just kind of angry, you know.
So then what happened? So, I mean, here you had this experience. You emerged. You were angry. You didn't want to be there. You wanted to put it back in its room. It's not back in its room.
Then what did you do? Did you talk with a therapist or a coach or someone to help unpack this? Did you? I'm talking
to you.
Okay. There we go. That's it.
I didn't want to talk about it. So here we are.
But it's here.
Yeah. But I mean, what are you going to do about it? It's like, I guess it's a part of your life.
I mean, what are you supposed to do? Just acknowledge that it's there, I guess. And, and, uh, have compassion for yourself that you went through something like this. And I guess, what else can I do with it? I don't know.
So, I mean, all those things you are doing with it. You, it sounds like you are, you are reflecting on it.
Sounds like you're like, okay, I need to have compassion for myself. You are recognizing that this happened in a period that you didn't have physical control to stop it from happening. And you are, it doesn't sound like you are carrying anger towards the person who did this. So, how are you feeling now about this?
Like, it's kind of pointless. Like, I remember about it now, but, uh, not remember still, I remember how it felt, but I remember only from that altered state of consciousness. I don't remember it from my life at all. But I also, I guess this would be potentially consistent with someone that may have had some sexual abuse.
I do not remember long stretches of my life. I just don't remember anything. Most of my life. things in my life. I don't remember them from childhood, especially. But even as an adult, I just don't remember a lot of stuff. So I guess that's a coping mechanism that that someone would have.
Yeah, I mean, it definitely could be a coping mechanism.
I mean, you strike me as an incredibly strong human, and I don't know you well enough to understand, like, how does this potentially impact your relationships today, your intimate relationships, your friend relationships, your relationships with whatever gender that was that did that. I just don't know you well enough.
Right. The medicine can be amazing in terms of bringing things up that we are carrying without realizing we're carrying. And then by working through it after, that's that integration piece, by working with a coach or a therapist or someone, maybe there's a way to move it out of the box and then put it back wherever it should be.
Because it is us, all these things that happen to us, we carry forward. I think Gabor Mate talks about trauma is not what happens to you, it's what happens inside of you. Because of what happens to you. Yeah. And I just don't know how this is manifesting in.
Well, maybe the only purpose that it had was for me to talk about it with you on the podcast.
So maybe if other people are dealing with it. We can
talk about, I love that. I mean, we can go, we can go there and we can talk about why are these medicines used? Let's talk about treatment resistant post traumatic stress disorder. Yes. So picture veterans, first responders, victims of sexual assault, people who have tried the different treatments.
pharmacological solutions and talk therapies, and it hasn't worked. I mean, for perspective, we've had over 30, 000 veterans take their lives since 9 11. That's four times the amount of veterans who have died in combat. So it's a, it's a serious challenge that we have as a country. So let's talk about post traumatic stress disorder, and specifically treatment resistant veterans.
post traumatic stress disorder. So to do this, visualize maybe a veteran, a first responder, a victim of sexual assault, who has tried everything. They've tried all the pharmacological solutions, they've tried talk therapy, and nothing works. They still have this, they're still living with PTSD. In a recent phase three clinical trials, they gave these people three sessions with MDMA, which is a heart opening psychedelic, and with therapy before and after.
70 ish percent of the people who went through that program left it no longer having a diagnosis of PTSD. The number is phenomenal. Wow. So when we think about that particular medicine's ability to turn off shame, blame, and guilt, and that particular medicine's ability to feel love for yourself and for others, and that particular medicine's ability to help people remember who they are, and forgive themselves and forgive the experience and move on.
It's, it's really phenomenal. And I love that we're in a time where this type of medicine, that should be re legalized here in America. And as soon as August of this year, so very exciting. And then we're seeing other, the other psychedelic we talk a lot about is psilocybin, which I know that we mentioned earlier about penis envy, one, one particular strain of, of, of psilocybin mushrooms.
But we're seeing amazing work being done with end of life care, with people who are experiencing depression and anxiety because they've been given a terminal diagnosis. Mm hmm. And while this medicine doesn't change the fact that they're going to die, what it does is it changes the way they live. and experience this last chapter of their lives.
And then what I'm seeing in the ceremonial space that complements the medical space is not just psilocybin for the person in the active state of dying, but psilocybin for their friends and the family and the people bearing witness to this. And that they can all have a different understanding of what is happening through this transitional process.
process of love life to death for somebody they love.
So you mentioned in the beginning, you were not comfortable with mushrooms at first. You come from a background that maybe that wasn't accepted or it was viewed as something negative. Same with me. I came from a home from Poland, drugs all across board.
They were considered bad, right? I don't even think some of these medicines should be considered drugs, but they are. Right. So it was like I had to hide it from my family. I couldn't tell them that I was doing drugs. doing this therapeutic journey with coaches. When I did that, I realized how really amazing the medicine is.
Like you said, you connect with God, you feel so connected to everything around you in a different way that you've ever felt. It doesn't seem to make you feel like you want to use it over and over and over again. In fact, it's kind of like a workout, like a hard workout, emotional workout.
So
it doesn't have that component to it where you maybe would get a different Addicted to it, but can you tell us from your experience and expertise and what you've learned, is it something that we could potentially get addicted to?
So psilocybin specifically, so we're talking about magic mushrooms for Yes. For again, those, those playing along at home, these medicines have been shown to be physiologically radically risk reduced. and not a drug of dependence, not a drug of addiction. It's interesting. In this country, Alicia, we had this Just Say No campaign and D.
A. R. E. drugs for 50 years that we all grew up in. So we were told, if we do drugs, this is our brain, and there's a frying pan, and an egg's gonna drop in, it's gonna, it's gonna destroy our brain, we're gonna get holes in it, we're gonna get addicted, all sorts of bad things, that these have no medicinal use, and they're highly addictive.
And the truth is completely the opposite end. There's a study out of Imperial College London, by a guy named Dr. David Nutt.
He sounds nuts. It is. It's a
fantastic name if you're gonna be in the mental health space. He said, let's forget how drugs are classified and just look at harm to self and harm to others.
And he took a bunch of drugs and he started researching them. On the far left hand side, the most dangerous drug for self and others was alcohol. It's a 72 on his scale. And you work your way down and there's heroin, there's tobacco. And all the way in the far right hand side of his scale is mushrooms.
It's a six. LSD is a 7, MDMA is a 9. So I bring this up to say that all drugs, all drugs have risks. There are a couple thousand people a year who die from acetaminophen overdoses around the world. Anything in the wrong dose and in the wrong intention can be dangerous. And when we compare the relative risk of these substances when used, again, with intention, with attention, and appropriate settings, and appropriate amounts.
And supervision.
And supervision is, is, is low, or lower. I bring that up, again, for people to make whatever decision is right for them. And then the other thing to bring up is not everybody. I have a book called Psychedelics for Everyone, and I don't mean everyone should take a psychedelic. What I mean is, whether it's for you, for someone you love, or just so you have the information, these things are good for society.
But, if you are schizophrenic, if you're in active manic state and bipolar, if you're taking certain prescription medicines, there are people who should not take them. psychedelics, and each one has its own things to be, pay attention to. There's places you can go, like spiritpharmacist. com, a guy named Dr.
Ben Malcolm, and he does health intakes, so he will look at your prescriptions, your supplements, your mental health, your physical health, and say to you, well, these are the risks we know, and these are the risks we don't know. and just give you that information so that you can make the right decision for you on whether you want to move forward with a ketamine program, or an underground program, or a church program, or a psychedelic tourism program.
And he has nothing to sell you besides the information, which I think all of us other players in this space, we have an inherent conflict of interest trying to fill the seats, keep the doctors busy, keep the medicine men busy, and so on. I like when people kind of go and get their own health intake. And then decide what they want to do.
Is that how your program works? Can folks sign up with you to be coached and sign up for a journey?
That's a great question. I'm part of multiple communities that do different things. So there's, there's a church community. We just did a, for instance, a retreat in Mexico. We worked with three different medicines and a community of people under the religious freedom, spiritual perspective.
I work with other communities here that are operating again under religious freedom. That we're not making medical claims. We are allowing people to do this work as a connection to their sacred. And we're doing things though, with. health intakes with informed consent, trying to, to make sure that people know what they're signing up for, and then having times for preparation, and then, again, four weeks of integration, community calls, those types of things.
And then I also do work with medical professionals to help them incorporate these ceremonial best practices into their protocols. So maybe that could look like, instead of being a one on one journey with a medical professional, it's a group effort. group experience instead of just a single group experience.
It's a community that comes back and does these community drop ins. It's doing the integration work in group versus just in solo. It's the music, it's the blankets, the comfort versus the traditional medical experience. It's interesting. There's so many doctors out there that believe this is just a biochemical reaction.
We're going to be able to give somebody the medicine, the ketamine, and send them on their way.
And
there's other doctors out there who believe it's a biochemical, psychosocial, spiritual process, and they're going to really go out of their way to prepare and integrate. And it's up to us as consumers to decide what do we want from our providers, ask the questions, find out what they offer, and then decide what do we want and what are we going to pay for.
Very cool. So everyone should read your book. That's what we can say. Psychedelics are not for everyone, but everyone should read your
book. I love that. I hope everybody does. Yes, please do. Or listen to it. Audible, the Audible version seems very popular.
Wonderful. So what are some main takeaways from the book or messages from the book?
Yeah, so you talked about bad trips and challenging trips earlier. What the research says is the best way to avoid a, quote, A true bad trip is to pay attention to three S's. Pay attention to source, Set and setting. So sources, where did your drugs come from? Do you know they're pure? If you're working in the medical framework, great, it's coming from a pharmacy.
But if you're working with a church or with an underground provider, asking them, how often do you do this work? Do you test your medicine? Just getting comfortable that they are using pure medicine is important. And some of them aren't willing to tell you what they're going to serve you. And maybe you're comfortable with that, but maybe you're not.
So knowing what is it that I'm taking, that's all about the source. The set is your mindset. So, again, do you have clear intentions? Did you agree to the rules of how you're going to interact with your guides? Are they going to touch you? Are they going to talk to you? Are they going to play music? What are the rules?
That's all part of your mindset. Do you know how long this is going to last and what it might feel like in your body? So you're giving an informed consent Yes, I do want to do this. Again, mindset. Setting is the physical environment. So do you have control? There's no neighbors, no dogs, no kids, no Amazon deliveries.
Are they providing music? Are you going silent? Do you bring your own music? Do you need blankets? Do you need an eye mask? Are there going to be 20 people in the room or 100 people in the room? Or 200? two people in the room. All of that is the physical environment. When we're in these non ordinary states, as you well know, Alisha, we are vulnerable.
So making sure that everybody there is somebody that I can trust is an important step for me as I think about where I do this work. So, um, yeah, for people who are really looking to, to make sure that the experience itself is positive, source set and setting, and then we talked about it earlier, having an integration plan.
Uh, either a coach or a therapist or a community that's going to work with you for some period of time following it to help unpack and resolve anything that's come up and put into action the things that have come up in the journey is, is super important.
I also was thinking recently about some people, their digestive system is.
impaired in some way. I have a very sensitive stomach. So the mushrooms, some of them seem not the best for your stomach. It doesn't seem like, is there psilocybin types of mushrooms that people with like a weak stomach should avoid?
That's a really good question. So there are some psilocybin for some people it causes nausea.
So how do you. Decrease the nausea is the question you're asking. One way to do it, so let's pretend you're working with a ground mushroom product versus just eating dried mushrooms. You can take that ground mushroom and put it into either lemon juice or orange juice and let it sit in that cup for a good 20 minutes.
And what that does is it starts the enzymes breaking down in the glass, and then when you drink it, it doesn't taste great, but not terrible, it then goes into your stomach and part of that process has been done already. The warning is just that that means the speed at which the mushroom takes effect will be faster.
And it'll be a little bit stronger and then it'll end a little bit sooner. Other people make it into a tea and find that to be helpful. So you can put some honey in the tea with the psilocybin and then that can be helpful. And then others put it with chocolate and people find that to be helpful. Dried mushrooms or eating the mushrooms just right on the stems and caps and such, it can be probably the most tough on the stomach.
And all that being said, In this space, there's no right or wrong way to do ceremony, and people do get sick from time to time, and that's, for any of us running these things or involved in these things, we've seen it all, and it's just not a big deal. If it has to come out, it has to come out.
So let's say someone has never used Any mushrooms, let's say they have some kind of trauma that maybe they've worked on for years and they made some progress with therapy, but maybe they feel a little stuck, so they want to explore psilocybin assisted therapy.
What would the preparation process look like or what should they do? Let's say they are listening to this podcast and they want to know like, What are my next steps? I want to do it. What do I do? Find my friendly neighborhood drug dealer? Like, what do I do? You know?
So, so we do have, we have, uh, Oregon, which you can certainly fly to Oregon and participate in one of the psilocybin centers there and have licensed medicinal psilocybin delivered to you.
So that's one way to do it. There are many, there is a state, Colorado would be another state that has decriminalized a number of psychedelics and they will have a medical model here shortly. And then there's a number of cities around the country that have decriminalized. psychedelics, which would be a little bit safer of a place to act, but what many people do is they go to things like, they'll look up psychedelic society near me.
And they'll see, they'll be meetup groups of people who get together and talk about all things related to consciousness expanding. So they can talk about ceremonial psychedelics, they might talk about medicinal psychedelics with these ketamine clinics, they might show movies or bring in authors, but there's just a community that's thinking a lot about this space.
So that's a good area to go and just get knowledge of what's available in your area and to ask people what do you think of this person, again, as a doctor or as a underground person? What do you think? What is their practice? What do you recommend? And get information. My book, Beyond the Trip, is really set up for this purpose.
person who is now, they found the way to the medicine and they want to prepare. It gives a bunch of activities up front to prepare for that journey. It already has in there a section where you can take your notes and write there after your journey, write things down. And then it has those 30 days of integration afterwards.
So I do recognizing I'm biased. I do recommend that journal. August 1st, I have another book coming out called The Veterans Guide to Psychedelics. And this will be a preparation and integration journal specifically for veterans that I'm doing in collaboration with Heroic Hearts Project. And 100 percent of the proceeds will go to Heroic Hearts Project.
So this group takes, this is a non profit, and they take veterans down to Central America and South America and work with them with ayahuasca. And now they've taken two cohorts out to Oregon and worked with them with psilocybin. It's a great organization. And again, I'm happy to be able to do this with them and have all the proceeds go to them.
And hopefully that version of this journal is effective for veterans.
Let me ask you this, because you did mention that, for example, schizophrenia or being in active manic state of bipolar disorder may preclude some. folks from being able to use psilocybin. Are there any physical conditions or anything else that if someone's listening and they have that condition, they would kind of know like, nope, that's a no go always?
Or is it all flexible and depends on the guide or the program you participate in?
Yeah, that's a really good question. So part of what we know is based on the research, and it's been hard to research psychedelic drugs for the past 50 years. And so when research kicked back off, the researchers have been careful about their populations.
So I'll use bipolar as an example. There's not a lot of research. on bipolar people with psilocybin. There are thousands of citizen scientists, as Dr. James Fadiman talks about them, that are talking about their experience in psychedelics on things like Reddit, but there's not a lot of academic research.
So that's an area where someone who has bipolar is going to have to really do some soul searching whether this is worth it for them. Part of this also gets complicated because it's based on your age. And I'll give an example. 22 year old person who's, has a schizophrenic parent. Well, they're still in that age where schizophrenia may come on.
And while they're not showing symptoms, it may not be worth it to use the psychedelic at this stage of life. But if they're, 50 with a schizophrenic family member, they're probably not going to induce a schizophrenia. I'm using those as just two examples of how this plays with age. There's other medicines that are more complicated than psilocybin.
So like MDMA or MDA, these heart openers, they're really stimulants. So they're going to increase blood pressure. They're going to increase heart rate. They are a little bit harder on the body. So then if you have unmanaged high blood pressure. If you have a cardiac condition, it's really not a great medicine for you.
If you're on an antidepressant, you really can't take MDMA. If you're on an antidepressant, you can take psilocybin, but, and here's the but, for about half of our population, on an antidepressant, they can take psilocybin, it works perfectly. The next 25%, they can take psilocybin, they just need to take a higher dose, and then it works.
And then there's about 25%, and we don't know why, that it just blunts the effects, and it doesn't work. So what we recommend for that is take a tester, take a microdose, a small amount. If you feel a reaction, that's fantastic, then you're, you, you are psilocybin active, and you can experience psilocybin.
Ketamine, you can take while you're on an antidepressant, so that's another option. But then, ayahuasca, you cannot. And so, again, each of these different medicines have their own profiles, and the psychedelics for everyone. book, we do talk about each of the different psychedelics and what does the research say, what are the conditions that you need to be aware of, and then you can make your own decision as terms of, okay, I want to experience psilocybin, but not iboga.
And you can make your decision that's right for you.
In your experience, have you ever met people that maybe had a journey and said, I'll never do this again?
I love that. I'm going to talk about my experience and we can talk about the research. So there's no doubt that there are people who come out of these psychedelic journeys and say, Oh my God, that was so hard, and I will never do that again.
And, oh my God, that was one of the top five things that's ever happened to me in my life. Mm hmm. So both those things can be true. They can say this was incredibly important and influential. And I don't need to do it again. So that's a perfectly beautiful response. There's research of people who've done this once in their life period, and 40 years later, 30 years later, they're still talking about it.
And they can still remember it. Again, these are powerful, powerful medicines.
Profound.
And it's not for everybody to do. There are some of us who, it's part of our spiritual practice, we work with these medicines at least once a quarter, typically more than that, but there's others that once or twice in their life is plenty.
Each of us can choose our own rhythm. On the medical side, it's a little bit different, so let's just, for a moment, I know you've done a whole episode on ketamine, but, for ketamine, typically people are going to do six doses in that first four weeks, and then they're going to do a true up or a dose every two weeks or month or two months depending for some period of time.
But typically people going to ketamine in the medical model are going there because of treatment resistant depression or anxiety, and it's a different purpose than people coming to a ceremonial psychedelic because they're wanting to connect with their sacred. It's a different motivation, it's a different, many times it's a different person.
Is it safe to be used once a quarter? Is it safe to use it more often for people that are really enjoying the experience?
Yeah, and I think, so again, this is going to vary medicine by medicine. So ketamine, again, our only legal option used off label in our 50 states, is also one of the four. You that has addictive potential.
Mm hmm.
It has in the recreational market gotten out of hand with people finding themselves addicted, causing bladder damage, doing some physical damage to their bodies. So it's something to be careful of. MDMA. Again, beautiful in a medicinal model, beautiful in a ceremonial. In the club scene, people have found themselves really liking that experience and doing it a lot.
The challenge with MDMA, the receptors that they work on, if you do it too often, you can burn those out, effectively, and not be able to repeat that experience. So it's something to be careful of. I think in the medical protocols, they talk about maybe four times a year. I know people who do it more than that.
And in a ceremonial space, but just again, something to be careful of psilocybin and LSD that you're really not getting addicted to those substances. The body actually builds up tolerance really quickly. We don't really want to. It is a challenging experience physically. And it's like, I don't really need to do it again right away.
We don't know. of any lethal dose, and people typically don't get addicted to that. Same with ayahuasca, the ayahuasqueros, the people who, the taitas, the shamans who serve ayahuasca drink it almost every night for years and years and years and years and years. They don't need to drink a lot, but they're drinking it.
When most of us go to an ayahuasca ceremony, it's maybe three nights in a row or three nights out of five nights we're doing the ceremony. And then your body's like, I'm done for a while.
Mm hmm.
Iboga or Ibogaine would be the synthetic version of that, similar. I mean, you're on a 24 hour journey. Yeah, your body doesn't want to do that very often.
What do you think about the synthetic stuff that's coming out versus growing it and doing it the natural way?
I love this question, Alicia, because it's such a conflict. I am so conflicted. Mm hmm. Part of what the medicine has taught me, so I'm going to speak from the first person, is that I am not separate and apart from nature.
I am nature. Mm hmm. So if I just take a moment right now and just picture my feet on the ground and just for a moment, realize that, okay, wait a minute, the earth is supporting me right now. And all this air I'm breathing is, in some ways, the same air you're breathing, Alicia. We are absolutely connected.
So that, when Albert Hoffman was making LSD out of ergot, he said, you know what? Ergot was a fungus. Ergot was available. I'm just synthesizing what was here. I'm making a new natural product, even though it's synthesized. So I think the ability, if we're going to have a medical model, the ability to have a very consistent product is important.
And we know as part of nature, we can synthesize these things down, we can create these consistent products, and we can deliver those. And in the medical model, in the scientific model, that's important. In the decriminalization model, where they're saying no adult should tell another adult that they can't put nature in their body.
In the decriminalization model, where they're saying, I don't want to pay for the medical, I want to grow my own mushrooms. It becomes about access. It becomes about preference. And I think that needs to be an and. We can have a medical model, and we can have a decriminalization model. And then when we get to the religious freedom model, it's kind of the same thing.
There are some people who believe that the growing of the substance is part of their spiritual practice. That is beautiful. There's other communities that say, We need to use MDMA or synthesized as part of our practice, and we need to buy it. Beautiful, then they should do that. Collectively, it's all an and to me.
We need all three of these groups to be able to succeed. We want all of this information above ground. We want the ceremonial leaders sharing their best practices with doctors and doctors with ceremonial leaders and everybody having access to the best information so that they can make the best decision for them and so that they can heal whatever it is that they want to heal or grow in whatever way they want to grow.
I love
that. That's perfect.
Thank you.
Is there anything that you would say to folks that may be addicted to opiates, heroin, alcohol? Yeah, I'm
so grateful that you asked that question because we forgot to talk about it earlier. Because it's counterintuitive. The idea of using a substance to work with a substance use disorder seems counterintuitive.
And yet, Bill W., the person who started Alcoholics Anonymous, wanted LSD to be part of his protocol for his 12 step program because he felt that the first was surrendering and recognizing there's a higher power, there's a sacred. It's one thing to be told that, it's another thing to believe it, to know it.
And that for him, LSD was instrumental, and he felt that LSD could help other people. So what we're seeing in different studies, we're seeing studies on smoking, we're seeing studies on alcohol, we're seeing studies on opioids. that these medicines can have a tremendous effect for people realizing, I don't need to use this.
I don't need to use these substances the way I've been using these substances. So we're seeing psilocybin being really effective for alcohol and for smoking. We're seeing ketamine being used, not quite to the same degree, but being used for that. We're seeing iboga or ibogaine for opioid disorders, in a way.
That's just phenomenal. I don't think there's anything close to what iboga is doing with opioids. Why does this work? What's happening is if we think about repetitive thinking patterns that we all have, and some of us experience it as depression, some of us experience it as anxiety, some of us have behavioral experiences, and for some that looks like a substance use challenge, for others it looks like workaholism, for others it looks like overeating or undereating, it can look like a lot of different things.
The psychedelic helps us change our pattern of thinking, where we can realize, Oh, wait a minute, I didn't remember. That I didn't have to think about this like that. Or I didn't think about this relationship in this context. And with that knowledge, that is not someone telling us, it's not academic, it's, it's knowing in our bones and in our hearts and in our bodies.
We can take that knowledge and move forward with our lives, which brings us into that 30 day period we were talking about with neuroplasticity. So now, maybe we've had an insight. I don't need to drink as much. I don't need to drink at all. Great. Now I have 30 days where my brain is extra plastic. How do I then continue to reinforce that behavior and really drive that home so that I don't slide back into whatever pattern I was doing?
And that's where again, having a coach, having a therapist, having a community, having an experienced guide to help us following these psychedelics, actualize these insights is so important.
That is beautiful. We have a segment called the Naked Truth segment, and it could be a quote, something that you want to highlight for listeners or anything else that comes to mind as we talked.
For me, I will share my naked truth. I'm just so happy you wrote the book. I think there's a lot of misconceptions still out there. I think it comes from that. era of say, just, just say no to drugs. And we lumped everything together. And now we're just sort of going along with that old program of treating everything in the same way.
And it's not all the same. I am just so happy that you're out there fighting the misconceptions and I think everyone should read your book.
I really appreciate that. That is a, that's, that's generous of you. That's sweet of you. Um, I think what I'd end with is this. If, if you're out there and you're still listening to this and it's been an hour, what are you listening for?
Is there permission that you're listening for? Is it because you're concerned about your own personal risks? What is it that's, that's stopping you from moving forward on this journey? And that's a, that you're listening to. And if there's any way that I can help in that journey, look me up online, reach out to me on Instagram or LinkedIn.
I'm happy to help. If you're taking an antidepressant and it's not working for you, it's not you failing the medicine, it's the medicine failing you. They don't work in the majority of people, you're not alone in that. And the fact that you didn't know that these alternatives existed is also not your fault.
So, you're here, it's an hour later, you've heard all these options, if I can be of service to you, I'd love to do that. If you're trying to figure out how to be of service to yourself, you know how to do it.
Wonderful. And how do people find you? Is there the best website to go to or?
Yeah, mattzieman. com is my site.
There's some videos. There's a free guide to microdosing. You can find out more about my books and book me to speak and all those kinds of things at mattzieman. com. really active on LinkedIn and Instagram, and just always happy to answer questions if I can help.
Wonderful. Thank you so much for being here today with us, even despite my water break, emergencies, and everything else.
Thank you so much for sharing all this wonderful information with our listeners, and we can't wait to talk to you again at some point, hopefully.
I would love that, Alicia. Thank you for having me on and for doing this type of work and in keeping bringing psychedelics up into your audience and into their purview.
Appreciate that.
Thank you, Matt. See you soon.
Thank you.
Bye.
