00:05:22.360Like we're really in, in some ways, it feels like a different paradigm, even if we're still responding to many of the same kind of circumstances that the last 50, 150, 500 years have been navigating.
00:05:33.620So all that context to say that when I think about what a kind of destigmatized or safer or more holistic or more educated drug culture looks like, the first thing I'm thinking about is reconciling the simultaneous glamorization and I guess you could say like a grotesque place within society that drugs fall into.
00:05:58.820And there's a whole conversation we had here, maybe not today, about how we often treat sex and sexuality the same way in our culture, where it's like highly glamorized, but also seen as very grotesque, very stigmatized, but also very emphasized.
00:06:11.800And I think there's a lot of that energy with drugs and I would say altered states in general. I think maybe we see the most of this with alcohol culture because of that's kind of like the baseline I guess we sort of have in a lot of Western society because it's been so incorporated into our day to day social and cultural fabric.
00:06:30.760But I think that part of what I'm seeing and what I think is necessary is to pull back the association of drugs, drug use, substance use, and so on away from either the glamorized edge or the edge where it's treated as grotesque.
00:06:48.540I think that the taboo nature of these activities, these human activities of altering our states and participating in whether it's ritual or ceremonial systems or in a personal or celebratory situations or environments, in any of those cases, there's this sense that we need to attach shame or hide.
00:07:09.740um and in some ways there's an aspect of alcohol culture that that incorporates that like oh when
00:07:16.200you're inebriated you're suddenly less responsible for your behavior and obviously that's not
00:07:22.580accepted to an extreme but there is kind of this sort of psycho-emotional interpersonal free pass
00:07:28.800that we give or get sometimes that's part of this like hiding the behaviors even from ourselves
00:07:34.020hiding parts of ourselves from ourselves and i think that's where right now for better or worse
00:07:38.440drugs and altered states kind of fit in into our society. They're like, oh, they're the place where
00:07:42.280we can hide these things from ourselves or from each other. The irony obviously being that often
00:07:47.940these substances and altered states reveal to us, you know, what we're actually trying to hide the
00:07:52.460whole time. And I think that there's a little bit of a backfiring that happens. But yeah, just coming
00:07:56.940back to your original question, I guess I would say like the reconciling of the marginalized
00:08:02.120placement of these substances, behaviors, traditions, and so on in our society would be a starting
00:08:07.940point to just say, okay, this isn't going to be inside our circle. This is something we're going
00:08:13.740to be tracking. You know, there's a number of practices and tribes that when they have ceremony,
00:08:18.000they'll have some sort of sacred clown or kind of a diablito, like a character that plays the
00:08:23.560shadow, but that character isn't exiled. It's not permitted to participate. And I think that's kind
00:08:30.900of what I'm seeing on a big picture. Like how do we give those sides of ourselves permission to
00:08:35.380participate in our day-to-day environment or culture? And how does that allow us to repress
00:08:41.180less, have access to more, and thus be more honest with ourselves and each other?
00:13:56.280and actively supports behavior that tends to be harmful for the individual.
00:14:01.640And I think that that's really scary because when you open yourself up to the possibility
00:14:06.140of unblocking internal repressed selves or internal aspects that have dissociated or
00:14:14.760been forgotten or whatever to protect you, suddenly when you have access to those things
00:14:19.800without necessarily all of your coping mechanisms or the ways that your mind has blocked them
00:14:25.900not before, that puts people into a very vulnerable state. And I think part of the stigma or fear
00:14:32.580that I think is associated with altered states, whether it's getting too drunk or doing psychedelics
00:14:38.500or doing anything else, has to do with this fear of what's really in there. I'm sure you've heard,
00:14:43.960I hear all the time, people are like, oh, you know what? I'm afraid of my own mind. I'm afraid
00:14:47.980of what's in there. People don't even have the confidence or feel safe enough to go into the
00:14:53.400material that they know that they have. And I think that's for good reason, because they know
00:14:57.100that doing that makes them vulnerable, makes it hard for them to survive in a world that demands
00:15:01.840ongoing productivity and ongoing participation in a system. So it's a big catch 22, because on one
00:15:08.300hand, yes, it's exciting to know. And it's, I think, very inspiring, I think, in some cases,
00:15:14.140if not intimidating also, for people to know, oh, there's actually a way that we can safely
00:15:18.460traverse these realms inside of ourselves, these hidden parts, the parts that we've been taught to
00:15:23.380shame, to avoid, to repress, and so on, or done so out of necessity. And yet, I think as exciting
00:15:29.940as that might be conceptually, it's just practically very difficult. And I think that's
00:15:33.840where some of the more crunchy issues that we hear about in the drug policy field, especially
00:15:38.340in psychedelics, start to come up. What about corporatization? What about cost? What about
00:15:43.040how do we fit these modalities that increase our vulnerability, that increase our tenderness?
00:15:48.480Like, how can we safely bring those into a world that is so brutal to that tenderness?
00:15:53.680Like, that is a hard, hard thing to square.
00:15:56.240And I think that that, to me, brings in a responsibility of supporting the creation,
00:16:02.680you know, doula-ing, I guess you could say, the creation of a society that can hold that tenderness.
00:16:07.600But as I know you know, this is something that you talk a lot about on the show,
00:16:11.840like, that is challenging work, important work, but it's challenging work to do more than just,
00:16:16.160Oh, I'm going to fix something in my niche area that I have expertise and excitement in, but rather how do we create an environment broadly where when people go deep into themselves or they go deep out of themselves, however the modalities are, whatever the routes are, that they can do so safely.
00:16:32.000And that to me is like the channel from how do we talk about the shadow individual repression, psychedelic therapy, all that exciting stuff. And how does that extend to, okay, so what do we do about everything else that's going on? It's kind of daunting. It's kind of daunting, but it's hard for me to not tie those things together.
00:16:50.220Even though it's nice to have and important to have all these channels of hope and inspiration, I think part of the responsibility of tracking that possibility is, okay, well, what are we doing about the larger society that we're, for lack of a more gentle term, spitting people back out into? It's rough out there.
00:17:09.240Yeah, it is. And I think that we're all a lot more tender and fragile than we give ourselves space to be or others. And of course, colonial capitalism wants us to be desensitized and productive, you know, where we're not getting to feel our feelings.
00:17:34.340And so much I think about the Anthropocene extinction that we're dealing with, dominant
00:17:44.720culture doesn't really want us to be feeling grief all the time.
00:17:48.320Because if we felt grief, if we really felt what it is to lose so many of our kin, we
00:17:56.860might change, we might uprise, we might do a lot of things if we felt our feelings.
00:18:03.520And of course, not all of those things would be, would feel good either. So yeah, there's just,
00:18:10.660there's so much there that ties into our psychological states and what we feel like
00:18:18.960we have to repress to keep going in this culture. And yeah, the question of what would happen if we
00:18:25.780allowed ourselves to feel, to unravel, to rest, to pause. Dominic culture doesn't want us to pause.
00:18:33.040So it's really hard to give ourselves space to be in the realities of where we are.
00:18:40.280yeah and if I could just jump onto one thing that you just said about like what we're expected to do
00:18:46.480um and what what does it mean to feel things you know it's really hard like one of the things I
00:18:51.500think about when you say that and that I know is just up for a lot of people is how we navigate
00:18:55.320this conception of like sanity and madness and psychosis and neurosis and um how that shows up
00:19:02.440when it emerges in public I've just been reflecting a lot on that point you just made and like not
00:19:08.940only are we asked to repress grief and like the full feeling you know the full awareness of the
00:19:14.620feeling that we're experiencing right now but also if you were to feel all those things and
00:19:20.560then express them there's also this additional layer of stigma and a fear that kind of gets
00:19:26.120associated with that and i think about this a lot with the realm of psychedelics because
00:19:29.520there's a certain level where i think people want the kind of healing clearing uh extraction
00:19:37.920of the shadow, whatever process to be linear and clean and clear. And I think that, you know,
00:19:45.120going to the point earlier about people being afraid of what's in their minds, I think that
00:19:48.180people are afraid of feeling that extreme grief that you're describing. I think that people
00:19:52.660recognize that the enormity of the task of feeling into what's happening, what's experiencing around
00:20:00.480them is for lack of a, again, more generous term, like literally crazy making. Like, and I mean that
00:20:06.020both in a colloquial and a literal sense, it really turns our conception of the world upside
00:20:10.620down and it makes it harder to function. So I said to say that it's also challenging to
00:20:16.080over-separate or not associate the space that we need to feel our feelings in general with
00:20:23.780the space that is made with psychedelic substances in the right environment and what's possible there
00:20:30.080with what happens when people actually don't have control over their ability to feel their
00:20:34.240feelings or feel what's going on, whether or not their substance is involved. And I think that that
00:20:38.520is more of a spectrum than people want to acknowledge. And one of the ways that I've,
00:20:45.160and the team at MAPS and other people that I work with have tried to respond to this has been by
00:20:49.860saying the psychological crisis that people are dealing with on the street is not so different
00:20:57.520from other kinds of psychological crisis that people experience, whether they're under the
00:21:03.320of substances or otherwise. And so maybe we should consider how do we navigate this problem
00:21:08.300with people having crisis period, like regardless of the source, you know, that can look like a lot
00:21:13.180of things, unarmed crisis response or better education or better training or whatever. Like
00:21:17.500there's a lot of ways that we can kind of improve on the margins of that. But I just say that to
00:21:21.460say that there's a tie between this larger conversation we're having within the United
00:21:26.460States in particular about how do we navigate public crisis and how do we navigate the fact
00:21:32.500that people are getting less and less space to feel that in the comfort of their own homes if
00:21:36.720they have a home in the first place. So that's just, it's just hard because I think that even
00:21:41.000people who are resourced and sheltered are themselves barely holding it together. And
00:21:45.820then we're holding these wildly high standards of people who don't have those resources. So it's
00:21:50.560just, I just wanted to name that as something that's tying together what I see happening
00:21:54.100out in public and in the discourse and in media and da, da, da, and also simultaneously happening
00:21:59.600at the individual level about, you know, how do we navigate our healing journey, our move toward
00:22:04.260tenderness, our desire for society to protect us, all while, as you said earlier, kind of navigating
00:22:10.100the fact that we apparently still have to keep making money to survive, and so on.
00:22:15.300No, it is crazy making. I mean, that's part of what's so just terrible about the dominant culture
00:22:23.080is that it sets us up to be wounded and then it also makes us feel shame that we're wounded
00:22:34.080and then we're supposed to be unfazed and productive would we know too that that
00:22:42.580productivity is also in many ways feeding ecocide and so yeah that's crazy man truly i mean it is
00:22:51.960literally like it is insane that we are supposed to feel nothing about killing our home and
00:22:59.520ourselves and we should actually just want to keep going bigger and bigger but don't feel anything
00:23:04.460it's like wait what is going on here and it's used against us it's like um our feelings are
00:23:12.260weaponized against us and i mean there's so many other things to talk to you about but before we
00:23:18.100move on i do want to go back to comparing this with sexuality because i think that also is
00:23:25.300weaponized and again that has its own form of crazy making within our culture the repression
00:23:32.300but then the exploitation and just how you know all of us have experience with this
00:23:41.880meet with the media. And I could go on, but I want you to go on. So yeah, take us there.
00:23:49.920Yeah, no, I so the first thing I'll say is, I'm not an expert on sex and sexuality within society
00:23:56.240and culture. But I will speak a little bit to your question. Because, again, like I was saying
00:24:01.700earlier, like, I feel like it's hard to not see the parallels. And maybe one way to start the
00:24:08.040conversation or to continue and i could say would be to see sex and sexuality both in like an
00:24:15.520interpersonal relational sense as well as on like a personal level of exploring sensuality and power
00:24:21.340and substances drugs medicine however they're framed contextualized utilized and so on
00:24:27.740as technologies and as modalities that can both enhance and dull our already existing antenna,
00:24:40.740you could say. So if we have a capacity as humans for a certain level of consciousness,
00:24:46.480and I don't necessarily mean that here in the woo sense, although sometimes I do,
00:24:50.360But really in the sense of like our ability to track and navigate our world, to notice patterns, to learn, to develop wisdom based on knowledge, like all of those things.
00:25:04.060insofar as there are tools that help us do that and sex and drugs you know put bluntly are maybe
00:25:10.660two of those tools i can see how again going to that kind of glamorization grotesque dichotomy
00:25:19.120how the way that use of either can enhance society's ability to reduce input to repress
00:25:31.940thought to simplify, to allow for coping with the system are encouraged, while more kind of
00:25:41.280liberatory, expansive approaches tend to be undermined. And that's a pretty simplistic way
00:25:48.060to put it. Like, I do think that there's more nuance to that. And I don't quite think,
00:25:51.240I'm not necessarily at a place now where I'm like, all consciousness raising technology is banned0.96
00:25:58.300because the government wants us to be dumb.
00:26:00.600Like there's for sure a level of that that's going on,0.97
00:26:03.400but I do feel like even in a more kind of grounded sense,
00:26:07.040there is definitely kind of a convenience factor
00:28:01.580And I like to think that as so many things are, the truth is, you know, a spectrum and
00:28:06.440somewhere in the middle where we can actually bring back this seeking of pleasure of interpersonal
00:28:13.860joy and creativity and recreation, while also staying in touch with the responsibility of
00:28:20.600our consciousness, of our presence on the earth at this time. And I think that I try to avoid
00:28:25.900myself at least going too far in either direction. I am a raver. I love going to parties. I organize
00:28:32.120them. I love participating in celebratory events. And I think that we need to make sure that those
00:28:38.220behaviors, whether they're sexual, whether they're drug-related, whatever, maintain a certain level
00:28:43.300of protection and openness so we can be honest about the way that they show up with respect to
00:28:48.400power and interpersonal dynamics and all those things and also I'm resistant to so focusing on
00:28:55.700or emphasizing that like in the name of resistance that we actually lose our teeth that we lose our
00:29:01.500ability to stay in kind of uh the words the words that are coming up are like adversarial or militant
00:29:07.660but neither of those really capture what I'm trying to get at but we are actually holding a value set
00:29:12.140And I think this is something you also talk about a lot in this show is like there actually is a value set. It's not, you know, it's not totally morally relativistic that we're trying to support the earth here. Like if there is actually a direction that's attached to this.
00:29:29.000So I think that that's the part that can get lost again, going back to what you were saying earlier, can get lost in the commodification of recreational behavior, the commodification of interpersonal cultural experiences.
00:29:42.220Like I love raves and I love ceremonies for different reasons.
00:29:47.200And I can see how both of those environments are moving toward or have already moved toward commodification, not just because people are inauthentic, because they don't really believe in the things,
00:29:58.340But because people have to survive and every pressure that so many people are receiving from the indigenous people in the Amazon to people in, you know, major cities across the U.S., across the world and everywhere in between, like everyone has to figure out how do they survive under the current paradigm.
00:30:17.400And that pushes all of our best, you know, best intention behaviors toward a certain paradigm. And going back to your original question, I think that we see that with or attempt to see that with sexuality, with substance use.
00:30:28.840And then when you have an option to experience sex and sexuality or substance use outside of those paradigms, whether that looks like, you know, the large expanding conversation that's happening around consensual non-monogamy and polyamory, whether it's about the large expanding conversation that's happening around community psychedelic use, entheogens, personal engagement with the substances, reclaiming interrupted lineages, working with traditional practices, like when all of that stuff comes up, when it's all in the air and the ethos,
00:30:57.080I think that we do have both duty and opportunity to engage with the liberatory aspects of that while also tracking and being aware of the tendency of everything we do to be moving back toward, you know, that need to survive, that need to produce, that need to participate in the kind of ever-expanding consumption of things.
00:31:19.540Anyway, that got a little bit darker than I expected, but that is one of the ways that I think I can see that connection happening.
00:36:55.800It's similar to how I treat, I guess, like meat eating where, yes, like it's it can be edgy for people to know that there's ritual or kind of particular kinds of animal sacrifice.
00:37:07.020I'm thinking in particular, and I'm a Muslim and for Eid for our big celebration, sometimes we'll sacrifice a goat or a lamb.
00:37:14.120And that's done in a very intentional way. The animal is raised very carefully.
00:37:17.960That meat is distributed among the community, both for charity as well as for family and friends.
00:37:21.980And I'm like, I can see how someone would be concerned about that. And also, I'm putting that in the context of the frenzied consumer's ritual of mass scale meat production. I'm like, it's all relative here. At the very least, we can say this approach seems like it better aligns with my values, even if it's complicated.
00:37:44.540So I don't know, like going back to what I said earlier, the synthetic versus natural question comes up a lot. I do think it's a thing that people have to land at personally. And where I've landed myself is that like it really, it's really context specific. There's definitely synthetic drugs that even if they don't have as much of a like land based ecological impact do have other kinds of toxic impacts.
00:38:06.060One of the intense things about clandestine meth labs is that when they're dumped in places, they usually include a lot of toxic waste that aren't carefully dumped.
00:38:14.660And that's partially a function of prohibition also that there's nowhere for that to go.
00:38:18.060And that that does cause negative damage on the environment.
00:38:20.560I can say, you know, it's really important that we maintain the rights and protection and support for people who use the drugs and maybe need support in how they navigate that.
00:38:30.500You know, I can say that while also holding like, oh, there's a very real negative ecological impact that we should be tracking.
00:38:35.580It's the same thing with large marijuana grows. This is, I think, less of a problem now than it used to be. But, you know, large, ecologically damaging grows or other systems like those exist. And I think that, you know, we can't all know every detail about where everything we consume comes from. But to me, part of being a responsible consumer is just attempting to know that or getting as much of that information as possible. Again, obfuscated by the system, but it's a starting point, at least.
00:38:59.680so much there so i want to ask a question about trends around drug use and then understanding
00:39:06.720the risk and in columbia university's public health department they explained quote hallucinogen use
00:39:14.400has increased since 2015 overall and particularly among adults 26 and older while use decreased in
00:39:21.300adolescents aged 12 through 17 according to a new study by research at columbia university
00:39:27.360mailman school of public health and columbia university irving medical center an estimated
00:39:33.3605.5 million people in the u.s used hallucinogens in the past year in 2019 which represents an
00:39:40.800increase from 1.7 percent of the population age 12 years and over in 2002 to 2.2 percent in 2019
00:39:50.580Now, first of all, I, you know, I'm not even sure that these statistics reflect the reality
00:39:58.160of drug use, but I do want to ask, it seems like there is a growing, a growing use of
00:40:07.440hallucinogens and the reality is more people are being introduced to psychedelics and coming
00:42:33.660So there's, and of course, there's also the whole research angle.
00:42:37.000So there's a lot of different ways that these channels are opening.
00:42:39.460And I think to your question, different kinds of education are needed for different channels. But I do feel like it is the responsibility of those of us, you know, myself included, MAPS included, a lot of other orgs included, to insofar as all of the hype and research and excitement are increasing interest, whether or not people are able to access these substances in legal regulated settings, whether that's a clinical trial or a state level program or whatever, there is increased use.
00:43:08.100that increased use is occurring, whether we like it or not. And people can say all they want about
00:43:12.440wanting it to be in this context or that context. But at the end of the day, most people use
00:43:16.020psychedelics in illegal settings. And we still need to make sure that those people are getting
00:43:20.560proper services and getting properly taken care of and getting the right education and so on.
00:43:24.720So how does that happen? I mean, my dream world is one in which state governments are funding
00:48:55.160And that's why the source of those substances are the source of those behaviors.
00:48:57.380So I think that that's why I like the idea of moving toward a more localized economy when possible, because it also allows people to be in a more relational state with respect to what it is they're consuming.
00:49:09.840So much easier said than done. We are leagues away from that being possible. But I think that that is the general direction that we'd like to move in to avoid being in a situation where we continue to obfuscate, separate, and avoid the origins of what it is that we're engaging with.
00:50:59.060It's just one of the many constituents that play into creating health or wellness.
00:51:04.960And if we could really understand what kinds of healing we're craving and then see these psychedelic experiences as a step in the healing process, maybe we could also not look at these experiences as instant gratification.
00:51:22.980And if that's the case, we might also be able to respect the medicines more and not have so much biocultural appropriation that also comes from this way of trying to find healing.
00:51:37.740I feel like the two words that come up when you say all that are balance and humility. And, you know, thinking about one of the approaches that I've just taken personally that I've, you know, learned from many wonderful teachers and friends over the years is the desire to work toward and seek balance as a value, as opposed to like something that I think I understand.
00:52:01.420And I'm trying to impose, I think that to me, like it brings up this idea of balance and humility. There are factors outside of our knowledge and control. This is true of our ecological reality. This is true of our social, cultural, interpersonal realities. There's factors that we don't understand and they're outside of our control.
00:52:17.660And to me, I think that where I've landed with some of what you were just describing
00:52:22.020is humility to realize that my limited, sometimes puny human understanding and mind is not
00:52:28.880able to grasp what an ideal outcome would be.
00:52:33.300And this is like the constant reminder and experience on the micro level at work, on
00:52:36.960the macro level and social environments and situations where I'm just like, I actually,
00:52:41.400I don't actually know what the best outcome is most of the time.
00:52:44.940And what I do know is that an outcome that seeks or encourages balance among many factors is one that's more likely to be beneficial or to be sustainable in a way and generative in a way that I'd like to see.
00:53:04.160So where I've landed with that is the move is less prescriptive and persuasive, which is an edgy thing to feel in a realm, you know, as a lawyer and advocate, like an educator, it's been interesting to see within myself how deassociating, not dissociating, but reducing association with the narrative of knowing what is going on or what needs to happen has been quite confronting for my ego and my identity.
00:53:34.160but it's allowed me to be more in tune with this again humility and awareness that I don't actually
00:53:41.520know that most of the people that think or that are trying to sound like they know also don't
00:53:46.000actually know and what that at least does for me is put me in a place of more openness and
00:53:51.760spaciousness for what can emerge and then seeking that balance and equilibrium becomes its own value
00:53:57.620instead of trying to make sure that we're getting to balance because I have this weight over here
00:54:02.780on one edge. It's a very different approach for me personally, just as an advocate. And it's one
00:54:07.260that I'm still trying to understand how to hold in the political climate that we are in that
00:54:14.380requires so much aggressive advocacy and adversarial positioning. But yeah, I feel like
00:54:21.040that there is an opportunity that we have here to step back from our knowing and to, you know,
00:54:28.320it's kind of like the language shift from leading something to tending something or from
00:54:33.500encouraging something to being in service for something. There's subtle differences in kind
00:54:39.280of advocacy approaches, but I think are more in line because that combination allows us to get
00:54:45.540to your question, which is what is it that we are trying to heal in the first place? And there's any
00:54:51.440number of like things we can mention, whether it's like capitalism or patriarchy or racism,
00:54:56.920There's like things that we can point to and say, oh, we need to heal from that. And I think that those are also important processes that have to happen. And also, I don't think that the end all be all is to heal from harm.
00:55:09.920harm. I think that that is a means to an end of peace and balance and justice as opposed to its
00:55:17.640own end. And I think that, you know, it's hard to feel that in an environment, in a social political
00:55:22.940environment right now that demands so much clarity and demands so much direction, demands that we,
00:55:29.760you know, I don't love framing it this way, but it's a very like masculine adversarial
00:55:33.880positionality that we're expected to put into play as advocates or as people that are, you know,
00:55:39.920defenders of the water or the earth or of the people. Like there's this sense that if you're
00:55:45.160not doing that in this adversarial aggressive way, then you're going to get eaten alive by
00:55:48.900the system. And that's a lot to hold. And I don't advocate for people to like, um, weaponize their
00:55:54.540tenderness, you know, to be in a place where they have to fight or they have to, uh, concede
00:55:59.920to fight that they have to concede their own humanity or concede their own capacity
00:56:04.380to stay in the fight. But I don't, I can only see that there's, there's some level of, of
00:56:09.780balance and equilibrium needed between these extremes. And to me, that that's the healing
00:56:14.440arc. It's like moving away from those extremes, not in the interest of flattening everything,
00:56:19.980but in the interest of finding balance in those things, like the far ends of all the spectrums,
00:56:24.440kind of going back to the very beginning of this conversation, like there's a certain level of
00:56:28.080glamorization or grotesqueness that I think we can keep with shamanic practices with these like
00:56:34.980shadow uh ways of being these things that these forms and modalities that actually have been
00:56:40.220protected for good reason for a long time and i don't think it's like we don't have to suddenly
00:56:45.600say okay we're going to uncover it all everyone gets everything let's just reproduce the same kind
00:56:50.000of consumerist dynamic that we've got with everything else but we also don't need to kind
00:56:54.840of stay afraid and stay kind of unaware and separated from that aspect of ourselves um
00:57:00.980And to me, I guess balance is the short answer to all of that, but it has so many other pieces,