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We‘re Back!... and With Some Exciting New Changes. - Part2 | Ep #43
49 Plays3 years ago
In this episode, Josh and Seth lay the foundation for season two of Multifaceted Masculinity with a discussion surrounding the use of Psychedelic Plant Medicine. Their conversation leads from their own personal journeys and gives a new perspective to those who are not familiar with the use of Psychedelics to assist in mental health. As Mindset and Integration Coaches, they champion the necessity of Psychedelic use for their clients.
In this episode you'll learn:
- Why working with Psychedelics could save your life
- The history of Psychedelic Plant Medicines and the War on Drugs
- Psychedelics for assistance in approving Mental Health
- A journey of coming off of Antidepressants
- The Myths of Psychedelics and what Science is telling us is true
- What’s the Difference between Micro-dose and Macro-dose
“Psychedelics reverse some of the damage of depression, it’s opening up other pathways and literally expanding my mind, my consciousness, and helping me heal myself.” - Josh Cearbaugh
“One of the greatest reasons to ever use plant medicine is to increase your self-love, to fall back in love with ourselves, to have this level of self-love, so that we can begin to choose really good things for us in our life and the people around us see that.” - Seth Conner
LinksHost Name: Josh Cearbaugh
https://www.instagram.com/jcearbaugh/
https://facebook.com/joshcearbaugh
https://www.jumpstartyourlife.com
Host Name: Seth Conner
https://www.instagram.com/sethaconner/
https://www.facebook.com/iSethConner/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethaconner/
Companies, Products & Places Mentioned
Mushroom Doctor (psilocybin micro-dosing)
www.MushroomDoctor.co/shop
John Hopkins University (Depression/Smoking Cessation/Etc) (https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/research/psychedelics-research.html)
People Mentioned
Timothy Leary (Wiki page) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Leary)
Resources Mentioned
Default Mode Network (https://psychedelicstoday.com/2020/02/04/psychedelics-and-the-default-mode-network/)
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Seth Connor as Co-Host
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to part two of season two and if you not already listen to part one then i would highly highly recommend that you go back and do that just because. There's a lot of changes happening to the podcast and one of the biggest ones is i have brought on a co host seth connor who is a friend and a business partner.
00:00:22
Speaker
but last episode we dive into kind of the history of our relationship and how we did not like each other and why we did not like each other and then eventually how we became really close friends and business partners but we wanted to extend the conversation to what is coming in season two and that's really what we're going to be diving into with this episode is what you can expect and
Exploring Plant Medicine and Psychedelics
00:00:49
Speaker
I would say we spend a fair bit of time talking about plant medicine, psychedelics, going down that rabbit hole a little bit more than all of the topics we're going to be covering. So it is not exclusive to that, but it is definitely a big part of both of our journeys. And so because of that, we as you could tell in the conversation, we're pretty passionate about it.
00:01:12
Speaker
and we go down that rabbit hole together a little bit, just scratching the surface. So if you've not already, I would highly recommend that you listen to part one as well as if you are not already a subscriber to subscribe so that you don't miss future episodes because we have got some doozies in line for you. And so let's go ahead and dive into part two of the intro to season two.
Challenging Masculinity Stereotypes
00:01:38
Speaker
Men, we are not simple, chest-thumping, rock-smashing, fire-starting barbarians. We have depth. We intensely feel. We are scared, yet brave. We love to have fun. We're imperfect and make mistakes. We're compassionate and loving. We are multifaceted. Let's explore the reality of masculinity together.
00:02:06
Speaker
All right. Well, we are going to dive into some fun stuff and I'm not going to waste any time with today's episode. If you didn't listen to the last episode, part one, you definitely want to do that because it goes into some of Seth and I's background.
00:02:22
Speaker
uh what we learned from kind of our process and our journey and and really i guess southern away summarized 10 years of friendship in 30 minutes but um you know for the most part uh that's it's gonna fill you in on kind of what we're all about and and the background of
00:02:42
Speaker
why we're working together with this.
Understanding Psychedelics and Stigma
00:02:45
Speaker
This part here, part two, is going to be really laying a foundation for what we want to dive into together on season two. Now, I do want to start by saying it is still going to be multifaceted masculinity.
00:03:00
Speaker
We're not getting away from the core of the other episodes. So if you've enjoyed the podcast so far, I would encourage you to subscribe if you haven't already, but, um, we're still going to be diving into a lot of the topics that we had started to unpack in season one, what, you know, just navigating your inner world. Probably one of the biggest differences there's, well, there's two, I would say is, is one.
00:03:25
Speaker
is Seth is now on board as a co-host and he brings an immense amount of value and life experience and knowledge and flavor to the conversation and then the other is plant medicine and I would say even branching beyond plant medicine into some of the synthesized medicine as well
00:03:46
Speaker
Now, a lot of people call them drugs right now because of the legal status. And just as a disclaimer, we are not recommending that you do anything. We are not prescribing anything. We are not saying that what worked for us will work for you. We are merely giving some of our knowledge that we have gained from the last couple of years of working with plant medicine
00:04:10
Speaker
The benefits that we personally have experienced and some of the things that we've heard from other people that have chosen to kind of go down this path but Neither one of us are a doctor. We are far from that and with both with knowledge expertise and experience a lot of our experience is from kind of life experience and
00:04:31
Speaker
some would argue that there's a lot of value in that as well. And so diving into plant medicine, really, we want to talk first and foremost in just about psychedelics in general, because seems to be kind of more of a buzzword and trendy. It reminds me a lot of CBD five years ago. And, you know, obviously that has
00:04:57
Speaker
gained a lot of ground in the sense of both legal as well as the science around it and it's a little bit different with psychedelics because of the the war on drugs and things like that in my opinion but similar in the sense of more and more people are talking about it the stigma is being removed but now when you have that what you still have is a lot of unknowns
00:05:18
Speaker
You know, people that are curious, but somewhat afraid for whatever reasons, whether it's, you know, stories they've heard about their second cousin, Johnny, dropping acid and driving off a cliff or whatever it may be, uh, that kind of has them hesitant, but also curious.
Microdosing Psilocybin to Overcome Antidepressants
00:05:37
Speaker
So, within psychedelics, I think a good place to start is psilocybin because that is what I used, I microdosed with psilocybin to come off of all of my antidepressants. And, you know, there's microdosing as well as macrodosing, but just so that I'm not hogging the spotlight here, Seth, I guess just in general, plant medicine as a whole
00:06:06
Speaker
We're gonna get into the weeds of it, but what are your thoughts around just plant medicine and kind of the stigma or the societal acceptance in the last couple years?
00:06:16
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I was chomping at the bit to start talking about this in the last episode, just because I was reminded of having this conversation with my dad about four months ago, because just a quick background, for the last year and a half when my marriage ended, it had to do around psychedelics and my choice to begin working with plant medicine.
00:06:46
Speaker
For those of you that know me or know anything about my family, my dad is a four or five decade law enforcement officer. He has seen the really ugly side of the war on drugs,
00:07:01
Speaker
or drugs in America, and so I get his perspective. But he's also a very conservative Christian, and there's this stigma that goes along with an altered state of consciousness that scares people, because you can't control it. It's not something that is
00:07:20
Speaker
easily explained, everybody's experience with it is different. And so I think that's one of the big arguments is this whole altered states of consciousness that we can put a bad stigma on, especially when you begin to try to read between the lines of the Holy Scriptures, the Bible, you know, that people pull things out of there and go,
00:07:41
Speaker
You know, this is bad. This is wicked. This has its roots in pagan traditions and things like that. Which, real quick, is an interesting thing, and this could be a total, probably, podcast in and of itself, that I think we all tend to do that. Because what I have found is even in the last couple years of plant medicine, you start to look at the Bible
00:08:04
Speaker
and how plant medicine more than likely had a very significant role in the formation of the experiences that has since been removed. But even me saying that is speculative and now based on my own lens and my own experience,
00:08:21
Speaker
and you know almost not in the means of justifying but just looking at it with fresh eyes where you know people's other response because of their experiences are like well this is why psychedelics are expanding your consciousness is bad or evil you know right and so i think we all tend to do that and the more you can be open-minded just in life and and be slow to pick a side which
00:08:46
Speaker
I mean, that could be applicable to so many things in life right now. Yeah, I think it's easy to be polarized, not only in the Western society, but also just in the church as well, the Western societal church. It's just easier to be polarized to choose a side. But for those who have taken the opportunity to educate themselves, to open themselves up and
00:09:11
Speaker
take a moment to not judge something or be quick to rush a judgment on something, and they begin to educate themselves. They're able to begin looking at the Scriptures in a different way, and what they will find is that plant medicine was a normal part of every civilization thousands and thousands of years ago.
00:09:34
Speaker
And the problem is that it began to be removed or criticized because at some point organizations are formed and they can't control people when they are living in this place of freedom and liberty and freedom of consciousness that comes with the use of plant medicine. But on a scientific level, they have looked at the elements of even holy water that was used
00:10:03
Speaker
you know, back in biblical times, and there was trace amounts of cannabis or THC, there was trace amounts of DMT that came from the Acacia tree, which, you know, we won't... I don't want to get into the place of speculation, which might be fun at some point, but, you know, there's some fun things to speculate on in regards to, you know, the life of Jesus and the life of other superstars in the Bible.
00:10:31
Speaker
But when it comes to psychedelics, I think that there's been a renaissance lately. And the reason is we can again lean into science. Thank God that there's been some pioneers in the last 20 or 30 years that have been able to get permission to still work with psychedelics.
00:10:51
Speaker
for the purpose of healing people in the mental health category. So folks at the John Hopkins Institute or the Mayo Clinic or other prestigious institutions across the world have been studying the effects of psilocybin, MDMA, LSD, even LSD was really on the scene 60, 70 years ago before even psilocybin was. And we can get into that.
00:11:20
Speaker
LSD was on the list and helping so many people around the world that were dealing with mental health issues until it became public enemy number one when you get into the history of Timothy Leary, which a lot of people can maybe remember where he said,
00:11:40
Speaker
turn on, tune in, and
Potential of Plant Medicine for Veterans
00:11:42
Speaker
drop out. That was Timothy Leary. But he became public enemy number one, and it was just easy to make him a villain, and therefore making LSD a villain. But in regards to psychedelics, it has so many healing properties that that's why it's back in the mainstream now, is because there's so many people getting healed from it. And just to highlight one, since it's so dear to you and I, Josh,
00:12:07
Speaker
is veterans, veterans who have been let down by the VA, the Veterans Administration on the mental health side, because it's so easy just to throw pharmaceuticals at them and SSRIs and things for depression, antidepressants, things like that. But we've seen the figures showing that 22 veterans a day on average are committing suicide. This was last year's number.
00:12:36
Speaker
and now we're at 18, but that's a large number of veterans that are committing suicide. And the majority of them are actually on these antidepressants. And so now we're seeing droves of veterans moving in the plant medicine direction because one, it's not addictive. They don't get hooked on it physically or mentally. They might get addicted to the experience,
00:13:02
Speaker
But that in itself is not a chemical addiction. And that is something that is easily, can be broken, right? They can realize, okay, I'm addicted to the experience, I need to back away. But the healing benefits of it are highly outweigh all the rest, right? And I mean, I would even go as far as to say, as far as the difference between something that's addictive and the experience being addictive. I know a lot of,
00:13:31
Speaker
Christians who are addicted to conferences because why not not because of the conference but because of the experience and They go in and they get that emotional high or that spiritual high and then two weeks later their life's right back to where it was and
00:13:48
Speaker
Not to say that they don't get some kind of transformation and over time they can't find value and good in it, but I think that's just kind of an easy parallel of saying like it's people associate psychedelics with this negative all the negativity around it and so even if they say well how could it not be addictive if you are you know you're tripping and you're going to these other worlds and atmospheres and consciousness expanding like
00:14:15
Speaker
How is that not? And my kind of counter to that is, well, how is that any different than people that are addicted to conferences? And not even Christian conferences. I mean, you know, they're signed up for every other Tony Robbins conference because they need that, you know, that dopamine hit or whatever to boost their confidence. And I think what I would say is a lot of the science is coming out. What I love, especially about psilocybin,
00:14:40
Speaker
for me personally, because that's been such a big part of my own journey, is the science that's showing it's not, not only is it not addictive, the experience can be, but the science is showing it's actually healing my mind. And they're proving that and showing that, that it's reversing some of the damage of depression, it's compressing the blood flow to my default mode network and opening up other
00:15:06
Speaker
pathways in my mind and literally expanding my mind, my consciousness, and helping me heal myself. And like you said, as far as the VA is concerned, like I said in last episode, I'll always be grateful for the VA because I was on a lot of medications with them, which did keep me from killing myself. I would say that it did. Ultimately, obviously I'm here, so I didn't.
00:15:36
Speaker
Are we going to get into that, by the way? Are we going to get into you coming off of your medication? Yeah. I mean, so that's what I was going to say is like literally there was twice where I tried to come off of my antidepressants where, you know, I'm sure you've heard it before. I was like feeling good enough where I'm going
00:15:54
Speaker
you know, maybe I don't need these or I don't want to be reliant on these anymore. And each time I did, it was horrible. I mean, to start with, I had to go through it was four different anti just antidepressants. There's four different ones.
00:16:11
Speaker
that you know if you've ever had to take them before that takes anywhere from two to four weeks of taking them so you're taking this pill and nothing's changing so you still feel miserable even though you're taking this antidepressant because it has to change the chemical makeup in your brain to try to adjust for things and um and then on top of that
00:16:34
Speaker
I was having these negative side effects with the first few, so then I had to taper off of them. And just one, for example, is, I don't know if you've ever, if you stand up too fast and you kind of feel lightheaded, that feeling, I would feel that every three to five minutes, whether I was sitting or standing, as my brain was coming off of this antidepressant, and I felt like I was going batshit crazy.
Comparing Antidepressants and Plant Medicine
00:16:58
Speaker
I was on edge, and it was just horrible, right?
00:17:05
Speaker
All that to say, when I finally found one that worked, it worked well enough to kind of prop me up mentally, but I just kind of felt numb and I didn't feel like I could move. I say if life's a road and there's a ditch full of mud next to it, the antidepressants help me get out of the muddy ditch and just kind of sit next to the road, but not actually stand up and walk down the freaking thing.
00:17:27
Speaker
So it wasn't a, you were managing, you weren't, it wasn't a, you didn't feel like your wellbeing, it wasn't productive for you. It was just kind of like, I'm barely kind of, it's helping me get by a little bit. Yeah. And so, and you could argue like how much of that was the antidepressant, how much of that was the condition of my marriage, how much of that was diet and exercise, how much of that was past trauma, how much of that, like there's all these ingredients that make up our inner world, right?
00:17:57
Speaker
But I do know that when I tried to come off of them, each time I inevitably ended up getting back on them because I was contemplating suicide. And my pendulum swung so far. So I was depressed. The antidepressants got me not depressed enough to function. And then coming off of them, I dropped even lower than where I was before.
00:18:22
Speaker
And I remember having conversations with you of going, okay, I'm desperate enough to want to try this microdosing psilocybin to come off of my antidepressants. And I was also getting ready to sit in an ayahuasca ceremony, which, I mean, you can get into the details of the damage
00:18:43
Speaker
that that can do if you're on an antidepressant sitting with ayahuasca, you never want to do that. So I kind of had this end goal of like, okay, I'm scared shitless, but at the same time, no matter what I want, like I feel ayahuasca calling me and there were connections that were made and it happened very quickly. So in a matter of weeks, I had to be off of them. So I went ahead and microdosed psilocybin and I was kind of bracing for impact.
00:19:08
Speaker
of this, I'm gonna drop even further. And it was the strangest thing. I don't know if you remember. I mean, I definitely had days where I'm like, I kind of feel blah, right? But I didn't have the suicidal thoughts. I didn't have the, I had actually the opposite. I signed up for a yoga studio and I kind of felt like this, I found myself cleaning my house and actually doing more productive things in the sense of moving me in a healthier direction
00:19:38
Speaker
just naturally in response to the psilocybin. And so I used it to come off antidepressants, but it had so much more than just kind of helped me manage coming off antidepressants. It set me up for where I am today in a lot of ways. Yeah. And I think it's important that everybody knows how difficult it is to come off of an antidepressant. They always
00:20:02
Speaker
strongly suggest that you taper off slowly with the help of a professional which is because you can become suicidal or homicidal because what happens is when you take this medication, it raises your baseline.
00:20:20
Speaker
And you'll notice that you have to keep taking more or you have to adjust the medication to something else, as was the case for me, because I too was on medication for about a year, year and a half in California before we ended up leaving.
00:20:33
Speaker
And I hated it. It numbed me out emotionally. My libido was shot. Yeah, I was getting along with my wife, but at the same time, I was just kind of a shell of a man. And so when I came off of... You were a shell of a man with a limp dick, apparently. Yeah, exactly.
00:20:53
Speaker
That's a good way to put it, a shell of a man that just could not get it up, unfortunately. But it was not an existence worth having. Yeah, totally. My heart needed to be engaged. I remember watching movies where normally it would pull on my heartstrings and I would be emotional. And now I was like just shadow. It was just, you know, my heart was not there, which was sad because, you know, I've got,
00:21:23
Speaker
new kids running around the house and I want to be engaged with my heart with them, you know? So I remember when I was finally able to come off of them, it was done through, you know, I actually went to a clinic in Idaho, kind of like a clinic, but it was a way, it was a holistic approach to coming off medication, but the whole time I'm working my ass off
00:21:44
Speaker
around this ranch and eating really clean and doing coffee enemas. It distracted me enough that I didn't even realize I was coming off my medication. I didn't have the problems, but not everybody can do that. Hence your situation, that was not something you're able to do.
00:22:05
Speaker
When you were like, hey, I want to come off of this, we came up with that plan, you know, essentially, uh, to micro dose with psilocybin, um, stay connected. You and I stay connected, um, by talking on pretty much on a daily basis, which is key, you know, and anybody hearing this.
00:22:24
Speaker
If this is something that is of interest to you, it has to be done systematically just to keep you safe and those around you safe. Absolutely. You know, other things, like you said, yoga, meditation, getting exercise, getting those chemicals flowing in your body to helping this baseline begin to lower slowly so that you can come off the medication slowly with the help of plant medicine.
00:22:50
Speaker
I think that's really important. I really quickly just wanted to touch again on when we were talking about addiction earlier, is that people will say, oh, these are addictive substance. And we've already stated that they're not. They're actually using them to help people break their addictive habits. So a lot of evidence has shown that
00:23:13
Speaker
It has an 80% cessation rate for those who are addicted to smoking, which you can't find that anywhere else with anything else on the market to help break the cessation or to break the addiction to smoking. You can't find anything close to 80%, but they're showing evidence that says 80% cessation rate for smoking.
Plant Medicine's Success in Addiction Treatment
00:23:32
Speaker
I know me personally.
00:23:34
Speaker
I was never an alcoholic. I was never addicted to alcohol, but I would medicate with it to kind of ease the pain of where I was at with my marriage and life and business and stuff like that. When I did my first ayahuasca ceremony, I lost that need or that desire to medicate with alcohol. It was fascinating. So there's something going on there with building these new neural networks in the brain where we're choosing
00:24:03
Speaker
different ways of living. When we get those stressors, those triggers, those emotional flags throughout the day, we're able to now choose something else. We're not defaulting, like you said, the default mode network. We're not defaulting to those old ways of doing service, those choices, those reactions that we have always made.
00:24:22
Speaker
we're actually able to expand to the to other parts of our brain that says, hey, why don't we choose this instead? And if you do that long enough, that's where the neural pathway gets developed. Yeah. And I think that's a big that's an important point, which is and what I experienced, which was it's I still had to sign up for yoga. I still had to eat different
00:24:45
Speaker
And I still, if I don't get good sleep, totally want to go eat a pizza. It's not like it just is an end all, be all, cure all magic pill that just fixes everything. I still have to engage my free will to choose. What I found was that microdosing opened up my desire to want to choose.
00:25:09
Speaker
where when I was on the antidepressants, I didn't have that desire, right? Which everybody knows it's a double edged sword, right? When you're depressed, you don't want to eat healthy. When you don't want to eat healthy, you don't want to exercise. You don't want to exercise. You feel lethargic. Then you don't want to see the whole toilable syndrome, right? And for me, the antidepressants again helped prop me up, but working with the plant medicine,
00:25:35
Speaker
It gave me that kind of tipping point to engage my free will to choose something different. It was almost like in those moments where all I want to do is eat pizza, that's all I would ever do. And there was enough of a nudge of like, eat pizza or go to hot yoga. Oh man. But when I do hot yoga, I feel better.
00:25:58
Speaker
kind of having that internal dialogue, but when I'm having that internal dialogue with psilocybin running through my mind, it, I, for me, just for my own life, did a better job of convincing myself of the healthier choice and felt like a more viable option than to just kind of escape and check out.
00:26:17
Speaker
With that said, I still totally do the unhealthy periodically, but I do it far less. And I also, the less that I do it, the more that I notice the trade-off when I do it.
00:26:30
Speaker
And kind of like drinking alcohol, right? Like I similarly, I don't drink alcohol anymore. I don't care if anybody does. I've got zero qualms with it. But for me, there's just a trade off and you know, it affects my sleep and I feel kind of lethargic in the morning and I just don't have the pole for the quote unquote fun aspect of it for the trade off of what I know that I'm getting into.
00:26:52
Speaker
And i mean quite frankly i would rather just kind of take some mushrooms and kind of enjoy my myself for my evening if i'm just doing it for fun and do that rather than have alcohol so that that's just my own personal life but so i do have a question for you though seth and you know i i mean i know the answer but i think you're really good at articulating the differences
00:27:13
Speaker
What's the difference between micro dose and macro dose? Whether it's macro dose or hero dose or ceremonial dose, that stronger, higher amount of something that is psychedelic or plant medicine based versus something that is that smaller incorporated into your life side of things.
00:27:37
Speaker
So traditionally a macro dose or a hero dose, or sometimes people call it a ceremonial dose. Um, this normally is kind of defined as three to five grams of psilocybin mushrooms, uh, average, cause there's lots of different psychedelic mushrooms out there, but the ones that we normally work with or that say these, uh, institutions work with, uh, or institutes like John Hopkins,
00:28:05
Speaker
They'll work with like a psilocybe, cubensis, which is very popular, psychedelic mushroom. And they'll work from three to five grams. And this will occasion a good trip, a good psychedelic experience, something that's going to bring you into an altered state.
00:28:23
Speaker
And again, when I say this, we're not talking about completely losing your mind. You are not completely going somewhere that you can't come back from. I have found that with most psychedelics, you can control coming in and out of the experience. You can go as deep as you want. The mushrooms or the psychedelics just help you.
00:28:39
Speaker
go a little bit deeper depending on how much you take. So that's what they're working with in these studies, 3 to 5 grams, hero dose, and it's something that you are enough into an experience that you would not be able to say drive.
00:28:54
Speaker
or, you know, operate machinery. You are sitting on a couch or, you know, in a safe place, always a safe place. And again, we should get into set and setting at some point, but in a safe place and, you know, listening to music or something that is feeding you or allowing you to go deep inside yourself.
00:29:15
Speaker
Now the difference between that and say a micro dose is that a micro dose, you don't necessarily need to feel it. Like the micro dosing is something that you can take on a daily basis. You can still function, go to work. It's slowing down the blood flow to the default mode network like we mentioned earlier.
00:29:40
Speaker
allowing you to be more productive, have some more energy. But what I usually say to my clients when they're asking about microdosing and why to do it, I usually tell them, you're quieting the chatter in your mind, that critical chatter, that chatter that keeps you from being productive. It might derail your day. It's that those thoughts that come into your brain that just tell you you're not good enough, you don't have what it takes, you're not gonna be able to complete this.
00:30:10
Speaker
or even the emotions that follow those thoughts.
00:30:14
Speaker
Microdosing quiets that, those voices, quiets that chatter and allows for me to be productive throughout my day. And at the same time, create new neural pathways in the brain on a consistent basis, on a day-to-day basis. Whereas with a macro dose, I might only do that once a month, once every two months, right? So this is a more consistent way to work with the medicine, feed my brain or rewire my brain. And at the same time, get a lot done.
00:30:42
Speaker
and have just a general sense of well-being all the time. Yeah, and for context, the ceremonial dose or hero dose, he's saying three to five grams. So 3,000 to 5,000 milligrams of psilocybin, where a microdose is 50 milligrams or 100 milligrams, maybe 200, depending on who you are. So that's why you're not,
00:31:09
Speaker
necessarily experiencing anything. If some people are sensitive, they may kind of feel a little bit of- The flighty. Yeah, that's probably a good word to use. Slightly euphoric, whatever it may be. And so you're learning how to kind of gauge that for yourself and what works best for you. But microdosing and we can
00:31:33
Speaker
Again, get more into the rhythm and system and schedule that you can get, et cetera. But just in general, as a general rule of thumb, understanding the fact that you're taking so little, what you're doing is you're taking enough to make a difference in your mind, but not enough
00:31:54
Speaker
to necessarily disrupt or expand your consciousness or to go that deep within type thing where the macro dose you really are going deep I guess is the best way of saying
Microdosing vs. Macro Dosing
00:32:09
Speaker
it.
00:32:09
Speaker
micro dosing is a way that you can incorporate the plant medicine into your day to day life to really help you maximize what your day to day life looks like. Macro dosing or hero dosing is much more of that kind of deep, deep, deep spiritual
00:32:26
Speaker
It may be a different way of saying it. I don't know if this is the best way of saying it, but is you wouldn't want to take a vacation every day, right? That might be fun the first day or two days or a week or whatever, but eventually you have to move on to life where if you take a vacation once every few months or once a month, it's actually really good for you. You come back and you feel rested and relaxed and recharged.
00:32:51
Speaker
It's that kind of thing, very different, but it's that kind of a similar aspect when it comes to that higher dose where doing it every now and then can really enhance your life, but doing it too frequently is counterproductive because you want time to kind of process what you took away from that experience or
00:33:16
Speaker
To integrate it into your life and you know, that's where we do our a lot of our coaching is that integration component of you know, how do you take these deep revelations or Healing or whatever the the plant medicine may work with you through in those larger doses. Now, how do you walk that out practically? What does that look like to integrate that change or that revelation or that inspiration and
00:33:39
Speaker
into your life on a, on a really practical level. Yeah. And I like to, you know, when people start their journey and I mean their journey into plant medicine, I don't just mean their, their actual tripping experience, but when they start their journey, I try to paint a picture for them that looks a little bit like this. So why would you do psychedelics are on a macro level?
00:34:02
Speaker
you would do it because a lot of, well, I should say a lot of people experience what I would equate to 10 years or 20 years of therapy in a matter of, you know, six, seven, eight, nine hours, right? That's really appealing to a lot of people. Because they're taking a journey and they're coming out on the other side with answers to questions that would take decades to figure out in just regular talk therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy.
00:34:31
Speaker
But, like you just said, 20% of the whole process is the actual working with the medicine.
00:34:41
Speaker
It is the preparation that goes into those experiences and then the integration of, okay, now I've got all these answers. I've got all these messages and revelation that I received while taking the plant medicine. And again, I say you get those really from within you. Like I believe those answers are in your subconscious. It's in your DNA.
00:35:02
Speaker
and you're just accessing them because we have a gatekeeper that keeps us from getting into our subconscious, or at least our conscious getting into our subconscious. We have a gatekeeper and we're able to bypass that gatekeeper utilizing the plant medicine and finding the answers that are already within us. But now we've got all those messages. We have all those answers. How do we walk that out in our day-to-day life, in our relationships, in our business? So there's a process of integrating
00:35:29
Speaker
that information into our daily life and then walking it out implementing it implementing solutions into our business and into our relationships and that really the preparation and the integration afterwards is 80% in my opinion of this whole process. So anyway that just wants to use the medicine.
00:35:50
Speaker
for the first time, like I would say if you're new to this and you're just going to use it, you're setting yourself up for some challenges or, you know, I don't want to say failure because I don't believe that's the case, but you can maximize the efforts that you put into plant medicine by really taking it seriously, having a reference for it and preparing and then integrating it afterwards. Those that have been working with plant medicine for a while,
00:36:15
Speaker
They might want to use it just to sit at home and just spend some time with the plant medicine. It doesn't have to be so ceremonial every time.
Self-Love through Transformative Experiences
00:36:25
Speaker
But I do think that people that are starting the journey should start it the right way.
00:36:30
Speaker
Yeah, I remember one of the first times I did a macro dose or a hero's dose, I was laying on my bed and looking up at the ceiling and the ceiling was moving and there was visual elements of it, but in that moment, I'll never forget it, it felt like the first time I actually felt love for myself.
00:36:57
Speaker
like the emotion of love. And I just started weeping and I laid on my bed crying for probably 45 minutes going, I love myself. Oh God, I love myself. Holy shit, I love myself.
00:37:13
Speaker
whoa man man josh i love you like dude you are a good man i love you you know and i just kept going on and i got locked into this vein where uh so much whether self-hatred or doubt or all this kind of stuff that i defaulted to or carried for so long
00:37:33
Speaker
Now, you could say, okay, that's amazing. Going back to your 20, 80%. Now, what does it look like in your life to love yourself? But it opened up my ability to actually connect to that. And I still, a year, year and a half later, am working on the practical aspects of that. Like for me, loving myself is making sure I do hot yoga on a regular basis. Loving myself looks like making sure I'm connected, loving myself,
00:38:02
Speaker
you know, there's all loving yourself is so broad, but I, I can still feel even as we're talking right now, I can feel that emotion for myself that I just couldn't, it's like I couldn't access it. Yeah. And, and you, you're keying in on something very, very important in regards to the why question, why work with plant medicine. One of the
00:38:24
Speaker
greatest reasons to ever use plant medicine is to increase your self-love, is to, is to take the, because a lot of us deal with self-hatred. We're very critical of ourselves. There's a lot of people in our world and in our lives growing up and, and, you know, that are communicating thing devaluing statements to us. And we get to this point where
00:38:48
Speaker
We just don't really like ourselves very much and that's on a subconscious level. And so we won't take care of ourselves. We won't love ourselves. We will do the easy things in life because we don't think we're valuable enough.
00:38:59
Speaker
to live amazing lives and do amazing things. So the plant medicine, I think the whole purpose of it is for us to fall back in love with ourselves, to have this level of self-love so that we can begin to choose really good things for us in our life. And then the people around us see that and they begin to look at our example and they begin to want to love themselves more. And really we can't give away what we don't have. So if we're not loving ourselves really well,
00:39:27
Speaker
we're actually keeping from the world, we're keeping from our close relationships, love, greater love that they can receive from us, you know, because again, we can't give away what we don't have. So if we can learn to love ourselves really well, and I really think that that's what plant medicine helps us do and allows us in our healing to find that self-love.
00:39:48
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I just love in general. I actually had an experience just two weeks ago with MDMA where I took some MDMA and it was by myself. Obviously, it's synthetic, but I ended up sitting my ex-wife in front of me in the moment. She wasn't physically there.
00:40:11
Speaker
and I talked through our divorce and I talked through our relationship and so much and it's hard to put in words the love that I felt for her and for our history and our past and at the same time felt like I was able to let her go in a way that I
00:40:33
Speaker
couldn't really without having the conversation I had. I mean, we'd probably talked for like an hour, you know, um, or I should say I talked, you know, I just kind of verbal processed all these different things. And it, it just, it just opened up my heart and kind of lowered my guard or shut down my mind to the point where what I really feel was, was able to be present, you know, and there's all kinds of research coming out with MDMA assisted therapy and the benefits of that. And,
00:41:00
Speaker
et cetera, but I think so many of these things have been demonized over the years and fortunately, like you said, we're at a place where the science is coming forth again because the funding is coming back and so the science is coming back to show the benefits of all these different things.
Season Themes: Masculinity and Relationships
00:41:20
Speaker
And really what we want to do in season two is be talking about all of these, not just with our own life story, but also the things that we're learning. And I mean, this episode was going to be an overview of season two. But in case you did not notice, we are slightly passionate about plant medicine because we had an entire outline of like, this is what season two is going to look like. And we just rattled off plant medicine stories for 35 minutes.
00:41:48
Speaker
But we are, like I said in the beginning, we are going to be still maintaining kind of the multifaceted masculinity aspect, which is just as men, how do we navigate our inner world? What does that look like? What does it look like to be a healthy, strong man? And we both believe that plant medicine is an integral part of that, or it has been for us, we'll say. But that's not to say that there's still not
00:42:18
Speaker
questions and challenges and hurdles and, and unknowns within our own inner world. Um, maybe plant medicine helps illuminate some of that, but it's not like we're always on plant medicine 24 seven. And so we're still going to be talking about spirituality and talking about, um, here's a good one dating post divorce with kids. Yeah. That's fun.
00:42:42
Speaker
not really. I mean, it is, but it's also kind of messy. And how do you do that in a healthy way and communicating within relationships, you know, maintaining your strength, your inner King? What does it look like to have a healthy relationship with God and the universe and nature and
00:43:03
Speaker
you know, coffee enemas and like, you know, like we want to kind of open ourselves up with our life experiences. And as I've done with the previous episodes, you know, just talk honestly about what is healthy masculinity look like.
00:43:21
Speaker
What does it look like to get back to that multifaceted, that, that masculinity that has a strength, but also a tenderness, a fierceness, but also is willing to be vulnerable. Um, you know, how do you navigate all of that? And.
00:43:38
Speaker
I'm really excited, Seth, to dive into those with you and to really expand those conversations. Within plant medicine, we want to talk about, there's all kinds of things, whether it's, we were talking a lot about psilocybin, but there is MDMA, there's LSD, there's cacao, there's rapé or jape, depending on what part of the
00:44:02
Speaker
what country you're coming from talking about that. There are so many things that are accessible that are from this earth that we can use to really maximize who we are and as well as aspects of science as far as like biohacking and and we're going to get into all of that and so there's all kinds of things we want to talk about and dive into but really our heart is
00:44:26
Speaker
to extend this conversation into your world, to really stir conversations within your friend groups and your marriages and your dating relationships, whatever it may be, to help move forward all of us looking for, you know, what does it look like to be a healthy man, a healthy, well-rounded man who is strong and confident, but also isn't afraid of,
00:44:52
Speaker
He isn't afraid of embracing his strength, but also doesn't let that pendulum swing to the old school unhealthy bro who doesn't feel anything. Yeah. That was really good, man. That was a really good summary of what season two is going to look like. I'm like, where do we go from here?
00:45:12
Speaker
I know that you mentioned a few plant medicines, one that I really like, and I'll just start cherry picking on some of the things that you just said, and then I'm sure you wanna wrap this one up. But we mentioned psilocybin mushrooms, like you said, MDMA, LSD, these things are like hot words. I remember a few years ago when LSD kind of popped on my radar, when a good friend of ours mentioned it,
00:45:42
Speaker
and I had that same programming that I grew up with. Like I said, my parents were law enforcement and so I was the dare kid. I'm telling y'all, I had the best poster and I won the medal for best poster in dare. Look how far you've come. I know, right? I mean, my parents are so proud. But LSD was still a hot word at,
00:46:10
Speaker
And now it's because I took a risk, I stopped judging, I took a step back and I educated myself. I took an opportunity to educate myself and not just lean into the programming that I had for 35 years.
00:46:25
Speaker
I began to discover that the stigma of these things didn't necessarily need to be there anymore. And I know that they come from certain campaigns from the 60s and the 80s and what our parents had to grow up with or be a part of.
00:46:43
Speaker
when we were just little kids. And so I can understand why the programming is there, but the fear of having a bad trip, like just a stigma, like that's an easy one to talk about. But another plant medicine that I forgot to mention was just what they call Wachuma or some people know it as San Pedro, or if you're familiar with peyote, like these are all plants that indigenous peoples have been using for thousands upon thousands of years. So why is it that
00:47:13
Speaker
we stopped using them. Why is it that it's, you know, it's no longer okay to leverage the healing properties of these plants? And I think, I know we're going to get into more of that throughout our season and our episodes, but one thing that you did mention that I'm excited about is talking about spirituality, our Christianity, you know, more kind of like deconstructing that.
Seth's Personal Growth Journey
00:47:37
Speaker
What is God? What is universe? What is, you know,
00:47:43
Speaker
maybe who was Jesus, really, if we look at other aspects of who he was, and then again, into our emotions, because I know, as you know, this last week has been a very interesting week for me, where I was struggling very much with a romantic relationship with someone that I really cared about, and I began to identify through the help of Josh some very codependent behaviors
00:48:08
Speaker
that I didn't realize were there. And I recognized some trauma that was still lingering from the dissolution of my marriage, you know, and just how that whole situation went down. And so when we start talking about co-dependence, manipulation, control within relationships, being a victim and perceiving the world from a victim or from an empowered victim's perspective versus being a creator and taking back our power and not blaming people anymore,
00:48:38
Speaker
And what that looks like on a mindset level, but also what that does to our hearts so that we can go after those things that we really want from our lives and in our world and what we want for our kids as well. Like too much of us, too many times we give away our power and then we
00:48:53
Speaker
sit there and wonder why we suffer or why we can't get from A to D because we think it's somebody else or some other situation. And really there's a place where we take back our power and we stop blaming other people. We recognize that we were the problem and we get to change our world, we get to change our life. So I'm really excited to dig into that and relationship stuff.
00:49:19
Speaker
I just thought I'd add that. Yeah, and by interesting week, you mean absolutely shitty, I wanna hide in a cave and never come out again week. That's what it felt like. I could not tell my ass from a hole in the ground. I don't remember feeling that effed up emotionally in a very long time, but man, was it illuminating in education. Yeah, I was gonna say, on the other side of it, there's been a lot of really strong, powerful takeaways
00:49:47
Speaker
And that's I think like an interesting point maybe to end on is that's kind of what I was alluding to in the sense of we've both been working with plant medicine. You're getting ready to sit with ayahuasca again. And yet there are still these emotional things that came up in a relationship that you didn't necessarily realize that then we navigated together through connection and relationship of our own.
00:50:12
Speaker
And, and so that's what I mean by multifaceted masculinity. Like it's not just plant medicine as the end all be all cure all, right? There are still things happening in you that you need to be aware of or that you grow from or that you learn from. And a lot of that comes from connection either with yourself or with other people.
00:50:29
Speaker
Yeah, we have not arrived. I have not arrived. And I was going to say, speak for yourself. Josh has made it. He's showing me the way. He's showing me the path. But I, I do know like I, there's always going to be something to work on and I can't do it myself. I need the help of something or people. I definitely need the help of people, close people to me, as well as the help of plant medicine to accelerate me in this. Cause I don't want to wait around forever. I don't want to be 30 years down the road.
00:50:57
Speaker
just now figuring out something that I could be figuring out now. But all that just to say that, you know, it is something that needs to be looked upon with reverence and something not to take lightly. Yeah, it is. Absolutely.
00:51:12
Speaker
Absolutely. Well, I think that's going to do it for this episode. If anything that we've touched on has sparked your curiosity, or let me say has offended you, or maybe we've said some things that maybe were a hot word or a hot topic where you're like, oh yeah, I can't go there.
00:51:32
Speaker
I would encourage you slash challenge you to listen to the next handful of episodes. And maybe just as a great disclaimer and an ask from us is in the coming weeks, if you hear an episode that really triggers you or really offends you or is outside your current box,
00:51:53
Speaker
Please reach out to us or comment. We want to have those conversations. And like Seth said earlier, it's so much easier to just kind of pick a side and set up camp on that side. And I would just encourage you for your own benefit. It's not even for us or for the podcast or anything like that, just for your own benefit.
00:52:16
Speaker
If you hear something that may be outside your norm or outside your box to just hit pause in maybe your potential default response or reaction or what you've been taught is the right or wrong response to a certain topic.
00:52:31
Speaker
and just hit pause on that for yourself. And if maybe you have science or thoughts or Bible verses or whatever it may be that kind of are a counter to that, we want to hear from you in that. So however that is, whether it's sending an email, messaging on social media, commenting on this post, wherever you're leaving a review, any of those things, we're open to that feedback and
00:52:56
Speaker
and look forward to having those conversations because, like I said before, we want to stir on conversations within yourself, your own inner dialogue, within your peer group or your family or your relationships that are in your life, as well as with us. We have not arrived. We're not sitting on top of the mountain talking down to you. This is a conversation with each other as well as with you
00:53:19
Speaker
So extend that conversation beyond this podcast or in the episodes coming and and really in Give let this be an opportunity to give yourself a chance to go deeper than maybe you ever have before within yourself or within a certain topic and you may just be surprised at what you find on the other side of your offense and