Sacred Medicines, Creativity, Evolution and the Paradigm Shift | Bioneers

before i start i have to say um that it's imperative to always put out one caveat when dealing with consciousness altering substances these are very potent substances they need to be treated with great respect they are not for everyone they are contraindicated for certain people and they are best done in a safe and supportive environment with experienced people on hand and they are still illegal nationally and internationally despite wonderful decriminalization efforts in a number of localities so i i feel compelled to to point all these things out before we start um so um to jump into the topic um as paul mentioned in the talk many of you i'm sure saw earlier we are really um in a moment of a sea change as as to how mainstream society is viewing drugs in general and psychedelics specifically and there are many aspects to this transformative moment but i want to quickly mention three of them um the first is that it's become painfully obvious to nearly everyone what a catastrophe the war on drugs has been what an enormous waste of resources and of human lives it's been incredibly structurally racist really hitting black and brown communities particularly hard and as symbolized by the congressional vote we saw yesterday the historic vote in congress to decriminalize cannabis this is obviously beginning to change we still have a long way to go but mercifully these attitudes are changing these are the drugs in general and getting away from punitive attitudes the second um factor which is a very different but a fascinating socio-cultural development is that we are seeing this enormous growth of new forms of sacred plant subcultures and underground around the world especially the ayahuasca subculture which is just taken off to extract incredible lengths globally and some people feel that that's a really positive thing that it's giving people access to healing methodologies and to self-exploration they didn't have before um there are issues though in these subcultures that are raised by them one is the thorny question of appropriation of indigenous traditions by non-indigenous people something we'll get into a little bit later on i suspect um there's the issue of over harvesting of some sacred plants potentially also another thorny issue and the fact that because this movement has grown so much many of the ceremony leaders are inexperienced um and unfortunately there have also been instances of abuse and sexual abuse in these middle years and that's a big discussion but it's not the one we're going to focus on today but i did want to at least mention this this aspect of the subcultures um the the third thing is the one that i think we're going to focus most on today which paul began to address in his talk earlier which is after a hiatus of many decades um there's been a resuscitation of scientific research on psychedelics um that has as paul showed there were 40 different institutions you know from johns hopkins and nyu to universities in the uk you know all over the place that are getting really tantalizing results about the cure the potential curative properties of some psychedelics to address really difficult um ailments such as ptsd and depression and end-of-life anxiety and that's really exciting i mean that's a lot of what we'll talk about today because um so many people suffer from these very hard to treat um conditions that said and i think this will be another gist of our conversation is the fact that you know with any big new development there are problems raised and i hate to be dialectically marxist about this but and uh one of the issues is the issue of destabilization where um because psychedelic were developed discovered nurtured by indigenous traditions for hundreds of years sometimes thousands of years in a context of reverence for the natural world in a in a cohesive cultural context to go from a reverent model to a sort of sanitized medicalized model if a medicalized model of psychedelic use becomes the only socially acceptable one that will be deeply tragic for some of us with a long-standing interest in these things and then more problematic again that paul began to mention this is the fact that venture capitalists are now pouring into this to this new field hoping to cash in on what they view as a potential growth industry within the pharmaceutical industry and you know there's a big problem of going from reverent to hyper capitalist commodification um so that's something that we have to be aware of so look the the genies out of the bottle the cats out of the bag pick your metaphor we're not going to be able to turn back the clock and this could be a very good thing because a lot of people could be helped but it does raise these thorny issues and there is no better group of people i can think of on planet earth to tackle some of these questions than the three folks we have with us today because they're very different coming from very different places but i would say that i don't know three more experienced uh more knowledgeable and more ethical people in this entire domain than than the three folks we have with us today so i'm going to rapidly introduce them um i'm not going to go into great detail because you can look up their bios online these are very accomplished people so there's a lot to read about all of them and we want to spend the time in conversation not in me reading bios but let me just say very quickly um well most of you know paul stamets and heard him earlier but let me just say paul is one of the great mycologists on planet earth he's a great mico entrepreneur microtechnologist and his interest in fungi goes far beyond psychedelic mushrooms he has created different compounds he's discovered species of fungi hitherto unknown to man and woman and he has um created amazing technologies to remediate toxins in the environment using fungi but since we're here discussing psychedelics paul is also probably the most knowledgeable person on the planet as a regard psilocybin so and this was also his idea this panel was convened by paul so we we have paul to thank for being here and for for picking these interlocutors so um the other person we have with us today another person is gujji cook gaji is a dear old friend and ally of bioneers going back decades she's a mohawk from aqua sasni the mohawk lands in what we white people call northern new york state and southern ontario and southern quebec along the saint lawrence river and gudgey is a legendary figure in the res in the revitalization of indigenous midwifery traditions she's also been a great fighter for indigenous women's health for decades and decades and a research researcher in that area she's also really helped revitalize a lot of indigenous cultures through giving a voice to elders in those communities and her work is broad and all-encompassing i can't do it here but we the reason we really wanted gucci here in this discussion is that she also has long-standing experience with the use of peyote which we'll see is somewhat of a cultural exception in the matters we're going to discuss here today but um so welcome gaji and last but definitely not least is francois and francoise is someone who also has decades of experience in research and study um and teaching about sacred plants she's done decades of field work with the mazatec in mexico um and she's a somatic therapist in the bay area in california and she's written a very interesting book i recommend highly called contact with medicine so this is a great crew we're going to begin with paul because hey this was his his uh his idea to get us here together and then we'll follow with grudgy and then francoise and then ideally we'll engage in some lively conversation so paul take it away and um here you go well thank you thank you uh very much jp you're so eloquent um yeah i i'm just going to do a short intro i'm going to show two very short films one four minute one one minute uh right now this is a worldwide revolution uh for a paradigm shift in consciousness a lot of us and the environmental and indigenous rights and civil rights movement it's been a long struggle for a lot of us the commonality that we all share is the importance of the ecosystem and the importance of the mother that's given us birth and we have to protect our ecosystems and we have to think downstream on the effect of future generations the narrative that has hit me hardest or best has been the concept of seven generations as a scientist now we can see that this concept is deeply intelligent the the wisdom of indigenous people espousing the concept of seven generations resonate now with us it's so well in terms of understanding climate change the loss of biodiversity the sixth greatest extinction event that we're experiencing currently zoonotic diseases coming from the deforestation and the factory farms um so it really is a call from the planet right now to to have more voices uh join in the course uh that can create solutions uh that influence us all we are no longer separated by borders uh virus in china a virus in africa virus in wisconsin uh can be spread all over the world and so it really underscores the importance of a commonality of our being so i want to just first show these two shorts um and then i'm going to speak just for about three to five minutes and then and pass the torch so um david if you would please queue up the four minute video we can watch that now that was very it's very difficult to get to wrap your head around i'm i'm dying the chances are that i'm not going to be around in a couple years i heard about a network in vancouver therapists who are treating patients with psilocybin patients with anxiety and deal who are dealing with life and death issues i thought that really sounds interesting to me and and there's no danger i'm there with two other people in the room and so it's something it's worth trying because i i need to be able to enjoy my life and all of a sudden everything was light and and beautiful and warm and i felt just this rush of warmth and love and and just peace come over me as as the lights came up i'm so fortunate that i had those connections that i heard about this [Music] network of therapists that are willing to risk their licenses to treat people with this drug that's not not legal and i think it's so wrong that people don't have access to this because people are in pain and dying and or ptsd or depression and which studies show psilocybin helps all of those things and why are we not allowing people to have this drug but we allow them to have other drugs that are so harmful we have given people the right to die and and i think that's great it's i don't know if i'll be brave enough to choose that option if the time comes um but it's there for people when they if they need it but what about living what do we do in between that part in the process of dying it's a long process sometimes so how are we going to help people through it do we want people to be living with the anxiety and fear or do we want to provide them a way to be able to deal deal with things that need to be dealt with in their life that are painful and hard but also to be able to experience the love and joy and peace that that this has provided to me and to other people that i've talked to this trip actually changed everything for me because now i'm able to live each day just with peace and joy and love every day and and not have this thing weighing on me i feel so much healthier and lighter and in a way even though i have this thing inside me that could kill me but like i said today i'm not gonna die i'm good and that's all that's all any of us have [Music] there's two things certain in life we are born and we die where did we come from where are we going with the suicide muslim experience you suddenly know that you're part of a giant oneness and it gives you context and consolation about your own mortality so i think it's critically important that at the end of your life you have a right to these substances who dares say that you do not when these have been used for thousands probably tens of thousands maybe millions of years and laws have been created to ostracize people to use them only in the past 50 years i mean it's it's it's not only academically naive it's immoral and i think that everyone has a right to how they're going to leave this life well i want to give a big uh thank you to uh peg from falling frog productions and for theracyl therocyl is a therapeutic soulsive movement um in canada that's been petitioning the federal government to give exemptions uh so people within their life have a right to these substances there's also in the united states the right to try movement very similar to be able to use off-label drugs you know at the end of your life for hopefully making uh your disease cycle um have a better outcome and i would argue the better outcome would be just reconciling with your own mortality so this movement is spreading all over the world and there is a pharmaceuticalization of psychedelics especially sulciman um and this is something that we must come to grips with now no matter what happens uh with the pharmaceutical interest in producing synthetic psilocybin um 99 of the people are going to use mushrooms this is that's just the way it is like mushrooms can be easily grown at home in your backyard um it's this it's there's they're going all over the world there's been decades of people honing their skills in this um and a lot of people a lot of people get them from their friends they're trusted friends and frankly going into a physician's office and meeting an austere looking professional that's a stranger to you is a pretty steep hurdle to overcome for a lot of people emotionally that being said the therapeutic use of psilocybin necessitates um having therapists um being very careful uh making sure um that these substances are reused used in a responsible way uh i i people who know me know i hate and i hate very few things but i hate the word shrooms you know to me it's just it just uh undercuts and just marginalizes these sacred mushrooms as being party drugs and i understand the coming of age and people wanting to experiment and change their consciousness you know andrew weil's book the natural mind was a huge influence on me um so it's natural for you want to change your consciousness but that being said you know let's all be adults about this these are very important substances now we have been doing a lot of research i had a dea license for many years i've discovered and named four new sulcivan active species as i mentioned before in my talk there's about 216 species in the genus philosophy that's the taxonomic group the genus and about 116 species are sulci and active about 25 species grow here in north america anywhere from texas to northern british columbia you know different species in those different ecosystems but the the sulci mushrooms have within them other compounds and in particular these are other tryptamines um psilocybin dephosphorylation to silicon and there's bail system neurobiocystin and norsilasin uh we've been doing research on neurogenesis with harvard medical school uh we've also been doing it with a company in uh that is specialized in anti-alzheimer drugs and we also are growing pluripotent stem cells you know in our own laboratories now um using these well-established protocols for measuring neurons and how they grow and we have found the entourage effect to be huge not and so these cells have analogs i mentioned they're legal they're not they but they don't get you high and so the fact that the entourage effect is showing neurogenesis way beyond any one of these by themselves and so when they're stacked together and you have them in a natural form and dried mushrooms you are getting an entourage benefit in neurogenesis that i think progressively will lead to increased intelligence uh increased creativity when you're creative you're happier when you're happier you're more creative i mean literally it's a kind of a this is a binary fork um and we know now that people from suicide mushrooms not only they were able to overcome their ptsd and depression etc but it changes their life in fact i told michael poland you know suicide mushrooms changed my mind and i think they they organically did they build new neurons for me that allowed me to articulate and become a more creative and peaceful uh person um and so i think these psilocybin mushrooms are einstein mushrooms and with the great tragedy of the commons is our elders with all this knowledge and experience how to act how not to act equally as important to lose this body intellect of knowledge at the end of their life not being able to pass these skills down to the next generation is a huge drop-off you know in our and our cultural wisdom and so i think these can create a paradigm shift in increasing the intelligence of our population reducing crime reducing disease and for us to face the inevitability of our of our our own death um i recently journeyed on on soul side mushrooms with a physician um i couldn't get off the floor it was uh but it i entered into what i described as one giant consciousness the unanimity of being is what we all share we are very provincial mentally with a limited amount of brain matter that we have and inter interpreting the enormity of the universe the enormity of reality these mushrooms and these substances give you a glimpse it's a door into a greater dimension and in these experiences i always hear the voices of all species of all beings calling out saying these are the times we need you most we need leaders as i think suicide muslims increase courage increase kindness and create increased empathy and these are leadership skills so i think we are time critical to have new leaders and i think most of us would agree we'd rather follow a leader that's kind and courageous and is looking after the interests of the commons and the people more so than just their own interests and so it is time for a paradigm shift i think these sacred medicines can can help us and all of us you know are on this planet together we are all indigenous to this planet first peoples and many regions of the world are literally first peoples they migrated and as they migrated they brought their ancestral knowledge with them now we have this plurality and bio and diversity of ethnicities and it's so important that we protect these threads of ancient knowledge so much knowledge has been threads that have been cut from disease war religion and we lose these elders we lose encyclopedias of knowledge the fact that we even have any indigenous uh knowledge that's resident today is is a triumph of survival indigenous peoples have faced you know weaponizable pandemics literally i speak on this and have spoken on it for decades whether intentionally or not the europeans brought diseases that were weapons against indigenous peoples you just can't argue against that but the fact that we do have this ancestral knowledge that exists today and the fact that we have the shared unity of being you know we all need to respect these sacred medicines and make sure that they're protected they're used responsibly they're also driven by fact-based medicine they're showing positive outcomes so we can overcome the hurdles of standardization uh that are necessary for a pharmac for products to be able to be prescribed by physicians etc so there's a lot of ways of looking at this but psilocybin mushrooms offer within them more components than just one molecule pharmaceuticals have been very very effective at treating diseases but the complexity of what we're facing now complex problems require complex solutions paul brother for the power of your voice your intellect and your sensitivity and thank you for inviting my comment in support of the fundamental principle that the endangered sacred medicine peyote should be reserved for indigenous use in this time of climate change and decreasing biological diversity in one telling of our mohawk creating story when the pregnant sky woman pulled on a beautiful yellow flower that grew at the base of the withering celestial tree that stood at the base of the sky world her action uprooted the tree as our creation story goes the pregnant sky woman fell into the hole left by the uprooted tree to fulfill her destiny to recreate the world in 1974 on a journey to learn indigenous midwifery i followed my mother-in-law beatrice holy dance long visitor who later became one of the leading 13 grandmothers and my well-known sister-in-law loretta afraid of bear cook her daughter both beloved oglala lakota water women my experiences with and learnings from in the lakota language the sacred medicine or goa in mohawk the big medicine and others who work to establish the american indian freedom of religion act of 1978 this act protects the freedom of native americans to exercise traditional religions and sacred ceremonial practices ensuring access to sacred sites in the peyote gardens possession and use of sacred objects in our accustomed manner we ritualize our life cycle and maintain cycles of sacred ceremonies necessary to support and maintain life in relationship with pejuta riding upon the wave of historic indigenous activist movements like the indian unity caravan of the 1960s the why roots of peace communications group out of the six nations confederacy the international indian treaty councils of the oce and the six nations hodonoshoni confederacy the grandfather medicine continues to connect indigenous community and family spirit across the hemisphere there are many protocols and responsibilities for carrying a prayer that first is bundled in a sacred tobacco tie and a kernel of white horn it's up to the sponsor of the healing ceremony held in specific family fireplaces like the half moon fireplace of my lakota relatives to determine who will sit among the circle in support of a prayer for a life from the gathering of the firewood it's splitting an arrangement upon the fireplace the attention and protocols of the cedar used in respect of the prayers being offered to the preparation of the sacred foods presented to the sacred fire and the people in the morning by the water woman who waters the people with spiritual support the proper words songs instruments procedures the love of the people there are so many essential elements that belong to the ceremonial commitment of the sacrament peyote it takes generations of knowledge and commitment these things and ways that come from our past are our responsibility to carry as indigenous people because they have value to our resilience and healing especially at this time of remembering and the renewal of our lives through truth respect and humbleness the prayer ceremony is very much like the process of birth itself as grandmother medicine opens our minds bodies and spirits in coping with the pains of life beatrice holy dance long visitor explained to me how the medicine first came to the people a pregnant woman was alone and lost in the desert separated from her people tired she lay on the earth and suffered in labor by herself until she heard a voice nearby take and eat of me a small cactus with no thorns spoke to her the medicine helped the woman birth her child the sacred medicine continues to teach and guide us from the fireplaces who take care of these ways in perceiving how sometimes others approach native culture our elders can help us to understand a teaching shared by ernie mohawk cataracus seneca longhouse elder describes the sacred tree of indigenous cultures that for a time was withering under the weight of colonization the roots are the ancestral teachings and ways of our communities and extended families the trunk of the tree is the history of indigenous people including the time of civilization regulations of the late 1800s into today when sacred ceremonies continue under the immense pressures of colonization the militarization of evangelical christianity and the ideology of progress the branches of the tree are the numerous social legal and economic issues and the struggle for the continuity of our lands jurisdiction spirituality languages and the reproduction of bodies and life ways at the top of the tree sits one little yellow flower that represents the light and the life of the tree sometimes people grasp at that yellow flower first see the whole tree the elder tells our allies our friends get to know us help us love the people then the yellow flower begins to shine donato thank you so thanks so much gaji and we'll get back to some of the themes you raise uh a bit later on um because i think it's important to drive home just how endangered um peyote is as a plant and why it's imperative um that it be preserved for the use of indigenous peoples and maybe what some alternatives are for non-indigenous folks i think a lot of people will be curious about that but francoise why don't we turn it over to you now so thank you for inviting paul and bioneers and nina and the whole team there it's wonderful being here finally i want to talk a little bit about my understanding and my practice of the sacred mushroom as it uh in the context of traditional use of the mesotec in which i've been involved for many years over over 30 now the practice of traditional use of mushroom is an entire cosmology animistic belief practices that go way beyond the use of plant medicine themselves which is very interesting for me and when i go to water the geminis where the tradition continues and we immerse ourselves in that mazette land what we are really uh communing with is not so much the mushroom or not only the mushroom but with the entire life of the village and life of the mountain and the landscape and the ecology and the rain and the ritual of offering the cocoa beans and the ritual of cleansing with kopal and putting the flowers on the altar and this is really what we are invited into when we are uh invited and respectfully participating in this ceremonies that happen to be of course with psilocybin mushrooms of different kinds depending on the season and what comes um so what i want to say is that in my dialogue with the mesotec they are not so worried about appropriation in fact they hope that if we use mushrooms we're going to use them with offerings we're going to use them with reuse them with an understanding and a learning from the their tradition from the way they talk to the mushroom for the way they pray and sing and let themselves be spoken through by the mushroom right when we are in in mushroom state we are saying their words um is the mushroom speaking through us and even further like paul was saying it's the earth speaking to us it's not even the mushroom themselves it's the earth itself my teacher used to say it doesn't matter what's in the plate she was very close to beatrice a long visitor holy dance and nathan blindman and alicius and all this wonderful lakota peyote traditional holders and they all said it doesn't really matter what's in the plate they were participating in each other's ceremony and saying it's the earth that heals us it's her power it's her wisdom it's her vibration that we commune with we go back to our roots like paul said of indigenous nature where are we from from this earth where were we born where our ancestors were born and in the mexican tradition the communing with ancestors is communing with the dead ones and communing with the other side of the veil the other side of of of this reality of incarnation into the place of of the people who have passed before us and how they are now our allies in this place where being in mushroom is being in life in death when time and space is irrelevant i feel like in this time and space you know when we are now in this renaissance and so sabine has become a wonderful ally for people at the end of lives that they're still is doing and other organizations are doing um we are invited to speak the voice of the traditional people to be messengers for them of course they are messengers themselves and a lot of my my hope is that the mazatec can uh you know come and speak to bioneers for the mesotec to speak their voice and to have their vibration their um their place in this world of psychedelic renaissance uh my my only hope as a humble servant of this of this mushroom is to really be a bridge to try to weave together um a traditional practice with uh what i consider my western approach of psychology and therapeutic space and what what how to create the safe space and this has been my work for many years to train psychedelic guides and to um to create an environment in which they can really understand not only the traditional aspect of the work but also the psychological dimension of what it means to provide such a powerful healing modality what's important to um to consider in this work of commercialization and industrialization and capitalism uh on the back of psilocybin especially these days is um the the principle of reciprocity what do we give back how do we turn back and say thank you how do we include and acknowledge the indigenous people who have held indeed this tradition for thousands of years and that's something very precious to me and very important in my values so i've been in conversation with kat harrison for example and other people in the field to see um she was also she has been very involved in the mazatec tradition for even longer than i was and so how to support what is it do we need to preserve and you know what she said language we need to help them preserve their language because the mazatec language is the language of the mushroom this is associated with the mushroom thousands of years of language and medicine cannot be gone you know cannot disappear so supporting the language the children preserving that language and that culture so there's actually a conversation um my daughter and i are talking about uh creating a fund with various mazdatech people who would decide how to utilize the fund to preserve their tradition in the in the goal of preserving tradition and supporting their health and education we can't keep this wave from arriving we can't keep this commercialization of psilocybin this is a big mega uh pharma big pharma coming i don't think originally the intention was bad to create some remedy to give people who are very much in suffering and i understand that the society right now is working with a certain scientific model in which pseudocybin synthesized psilocybin is the is the product and i am myself part of a research uh study in los angeles on covet related grief right now um with using psilocybin um so we're going to work with the pill but conversely i'm also involved in a retreat for parental grief in jamaica and i'm going next week in fact to jamaica to meet the jamaican physicians and we're going to work with mushrooms huh mushroom that grows there in jamaica so there are a lot of ways we can continue having an action a movement a voice working with oregon i'm supporting that team there and paul and i are working with what's happening in canada and also uh you know weaving our our scales together to create an environment where the consumption of mushroom and the treatment or the offering of mushroom for you know severe uh afflictions like grief and ptsd and uh anxiety and depression but also for expansion of consciousness in the spirit of solidarity and and conservation and preservation and support uh we need to find our indigenous roots communicate with indigenous people be their voice help them find their way of articulating their own powerful voice and create a solid presence in the world of sacred medicine even in the face of commercialization so we can continue to to speak our voice not go to war not create conflict but speak loud and clear what how how sacred those plans have been for us and for the future of the second generation thank you thanks so much um so there's a lot to chew on in what everyone said um so one of the things that comes to mind immediately from me hearing you all talk is that it seems to me that what we're trying to do is find our way to an ethical and the most productive than the most ethical relationship that human beings can have with these substances during this time of radical transformation as to how they're being viewed um and it seems to me a couple of things one is from gujji's talk it's pretty clear that we have to view these things case by case you know um situation by situation plant by plant and obviously i would put peyote in a separate category um because for one thing um it's it is so hard to grow peyote it takes so long to grow a small cactus and it really is an endangered species and it would really be adding insult to injury to indigenous traditions for you know um for white people to begin to or for non-indigenous people to to um to to use it so i think but then the question becomes you know there is going to be large-scale use of psychedelics and so what are the most ethical forms that that can take and you raise that um issue that you said something very optimistic which is that they can't be desacralized or desold because the substances themselves contain um soul in a sense if i understood what you were saying um but i think it's going to be a case by case you know um uh you know company by company initiative by initiative research project by research project and we're all going to have to be very vigilant and um you know and see what we can do but um it's paul do you have any thoughts on on that of what the at the moment the most ethical and constructive approaches can be i think there's a there's a there's three three clear paths here and they're they're quite different um i personally want to advocate that all wild peyote um be preserved and held sacred and protected for indigenous people i just think that at this time with the ecosystems uh being so stressed and the peyote hunt being so important for indigenous for first nations that that resource needs to be protected and i i call out to all all people uh who are not in this indigenous tradition to help protect peyote in the wild it is indeed very very difficult to grow and the wild harvest is so central to the first nations long-standing uh traditions with sulci but mushrooms it's really different um they're circumpolar they grow all over the world they've been used by dozens of cultures that we know of many more that we don't know of and so i think they're kind of the bridge that unifies everyone together we can rejuvenate them we can grow them they because of their sacrifice they grow in decomposing material once you get them in the culture you can protect them that also is not saying that mycodiversity is not important indeed microdiversity is very important uh but the most commonly used sulfide mushroom in the world is philosophy cubensis it's uh not in any danger of extinction there's not even a threatened species it's very easy to cultivate so i think that one is unambiguously uh the one i think that joins all of us together now ayahuasca is complicated because i went to cusco i went to peru and i heard but i could not believe until i saw it neon signs flashing for uh ayahuasca ceremonies massive commercialization um basically it's like tour groups uh to go and take and take ayahuasca um now on the other side of that equation as all these people have benefited from ayahuasca who said it has changed and helped their lives i'm not discounting that i'm not you know trying to say that's not important uh but i have great reservations about the commercialization of ayahuasca um and cultural appropriation you know is also part of that part of that narrative soulside muslims don't have that so i think supporting the suicide mushroom movement is uh builds a bridge of commonality um it is they're healing they achieve what these substances really give best benefit to so many people so i would just this time of rapid uh ex expanding the community of people using psychedelics i think suicide mushrooms is much more much less controversial much more appropriate for multicultural use um has any uh any thoughts on that on the commercialization um what the best approach is for um i agree with paul i agree with voluntarily i mean you know uh mushrooms are easy to grow uh they come and go they're fast uh they're potent they're unifying they're um you know people who do puberty do not necessarily uh find themselves inclined to use mushrooms so because it's a different experience i've i've tried i've been part of some peyote ceremonies and watchuma ceremonies and the mescaline containing cactuses are very different in nature as an experience than the mushroom is so for some people might be uh an issue you know of a preference of experience so i can see that as a as a point of of of discussion huh and and being uh respectful to the experience that they seek into the the miscarriage containing uh cactuses so um gaji one thing i would ask you is that um what do you think about um you know people using synthetic mescaline right um as a you know for non-indigenous people as a substitute for the ex not a substitute but as um an experience um or um the wachuma tradition is little different because it's a much faster growing cactus and i don't know people in the andes a lot of indigenous people are seem happy to share it because it's a different you know of course they're always indigenous people are not one unified voice they're like all the rest of us there are many different voices within the communities but um but what do you think gaji about you know if if we all agree that the peyote in the wild should absolutely be protected and reserved for indigenous use what do you think about things like huachuma and things like synthetic mescaline for the rest of us there are other medicines palo santo other medicines throughout the hemisphere that get shared across alliances built in the kinds of reciprocity when it comes nation to nation level um i think that people are essentially free to uh explore uh but you can scare yourself if done outside of the cultural context that these medicines make themselves apparent make themselves known they build a relationship with human beings as much as human beings build a relationship with them and i i understand that we're in a time in our human experience where we need to restore and build bridges back to mother earth the earth mother cries for her children to understand the nature of reality and and are umbilical towards to the cosmos so i i i encourage people to strengthen their spirits at this time thank you um so i'm i think um i want to turn to a few audience questions that are coming in if that's all right with you guys um and um several people have asked um uh about how mushrooms might specifically aid in end-of-life anxiety which was uh addressed in that video um and also how to ethically grow mushrooms people are asking is there a way that they could be you know people are probably thinking of psilocybin crops with fertilizer and stuff so uh paul maybe you could address uh those two questions you know um well i'd like to defer to francois uh on the end of life the anxiety and then i'll then i'll pick up after her if i could like i was saying earlier the experience of mushroom is uh connecting us with a bigger dimension with a bigger space and a bigger state inside that has to do with um eternity with soul with what remains alive after we die you know what continues to exist on the level of essence and um it also brings us in the moment in what is present here now what is the love that surrounds us and the love that we feel within us and that connection with love as a as an essential human quality and experience is really soothing and and and healing and liberating really from the anxiety and the sadness and the grief that can be present at the end of life um i took people to mexico who were dying and eventually passed away um for the same reason of exploring the at the end of their life and and re and releasing the uh the stress and the anxiety that they had uh that they were experiencing and uh the experience was very much like what this woman described in your in the little clip that you showed paul a sense of a sense of beauty and a sense of oneness and a sense of love and and light and uh and freedom from uh feeling the the earthly bind and bonds that sometimes can bring people to a sense of of a fear of leaving this this earthly plane so uh it's a beautiful experience it's very potent it's uh i totally agree with you but it should be absolutely a life like a a a freedom a life of freedom of choice for life and and how to engage with them so paul why don't you quickly address that issue of how to to ethical growing and if there's any risk of uh you know um grieving people monocropping unless i've been on a large scale well i mean i think we need to address um whether the mushrooms are cultivating us we are cultivating the mushrooms so many of these sultain mushrooms are are debris grow on debris fields and humans are the greatest walking catastrophe i know creating debris fields on the planet and so many of these soulside mushrooms are chasing after us and uh one one particularly species of philosophy scion essence here in the northwest uh in oregon washington british columbia i guess i guess i made about every fourth truckload of wood chips from alder will naturally have psulcyben mushrooms in them specifically this species which is known as slosami cyanescence is a very potent sulfide mushroom up to two percent sulci benzosine and so it seems to be it perhaps there's an end to fight growing inside of the trees even though we've never found it um out in the wild per se but when those wood chips are scattered as beauty bark around for landscaping they come up in profusion and this really was sparked the suicide mushroom movement in the west coast of north america is that when they started using wood chips for landscaping these suicide mushrooms literally came out of the woodwork so to speak um and mycologists were blindsided mycologists who studied them for 40 50 years had never seen these things before so but the ethical cultivation of them in the landscape using natural weather cycles i mean how much do you really need for your own personal use not that much but when you talk about growing them commercially or supplying a commercial market there are really big concerns many times there's not enough air exchange you have molds and bacteria growing on them some people have adverse reactions like eating spoiled seafood um they dry them down so the bacteria are still there and so they can produce endotoxins which can be very very uh dangerous for you so if we are going to have suicide mushrooms available clinically or by prescription uh or for therapeutic use they have to follow basically uh gap good agricultural practices which are in place specifically to prevent contamination so my biggest concern about cultivation is of course the use of synthetic chemicals it should be always it has to be certified organic it's antithetical to the entire mushroom spirit to grow them in a non a non-organic fashion but it's really important that we have standards um that to make sure that the mushrooms are being consumed are safe and that by far is the biggest problem i think with the underground movements quote unquote is the fact there aren't quality controls it's somewhat self-policing because you're not going to buy muslims from somebody who gave you something that made you sick but nevertheless you don't want to be the first person you know in that experience um so i think there are some quality control issues that need to be addressed uh growing these in your own backyard for your own personal purposes you know one thing that's very common with us psychonauts or micronauts is we don't do them very frequently and we we do a high dose of sulci we go that's it for a long time so you really don't need a lot for yourself if you're going up in your backyard so i think the commercialization of of growing these uh for therapeutic purposes has to be under controlled circumstances where there are checks and controls great thanks um and gucci a question i think that um would be best addressed by you is some people are asking um you know i guess this is an allyship question of what non-indigenous people can do to help protect those traditions um you know the peyote tradition and other cultural traditions what is what is the best way that that people can can help if if help is needed uh just the alliances of different organizations in support of indigenous political movements protection of the ecosystems where the peyote grows in the peyote gardens of texas the training of authorities um the the police who are policing the roads for the programs who the gardens to gather for the different family fireplaces um just the the tone of this generation where all of a sudden there's a huge explosion of attention to the natural to the medicines and to all of um the critical components of maintaining life uh the earth herself uh the human beings and all our relatives within that and i think the consciousness that's engendered at the bioneers work is is really what's necessary for the protection of of of these different themes we've expressed this evening thanks so much good thanks for the plug for bioneers too um uh so um another question that's come up um a few questions i'll link together paul and josuaz is about um people of course now hearing about this they want to know where can they get psychedelic therapy you know where is it available um i mean this is quite a borderline area because places like cis are teaching psychedelic therapy meanwhile it's still illegal nationally so we're in a very gray area moment um so people are asking about that and about the best ways to grow mushrooms and of course paul you know you can't give a a workshop on on how to grow mushrooms here you were a great pioneer many decades ago um in that in that domain but maybe just um i guess people can go online right and find you know resources but anyway to quickly address a where can people perhaps follow leads to get therapy and what are the best ways to learn about growing them oneself so as of now the only places where the consumers consumption of mushroom is actually legal and accessible is the netherlands and jamaica so these are the this is where in mexico in certain environment the legalization of mushroom in oregon opens a door in two years from now for people to have access to uh facilitation uh of mushroom experiences with guides that will be trained and licensed by the state of oregon to um to this to distribute dispense and and provide experiences to anyone coming to oregon with the hope of of having a psychedelic experience um like paul was mentioning and i totally agree and this is part of my goal is to train psychedelic guides and as i've done already and to um and to uh to create environments where necessarily although it can very much be oriented towards a treatment right if someone is really depressed or has some grief or something but because it can also be an experience of exploring consciousness and so in oregon all these different avenues will be available in a couple of years and i imagine that other states will be following um the example or looking at oregon how they are rolling out this initiative to see how it works and and what are the the the pro and content how to adjust so it's a very um good situation and then of course there's canada right of course there's canada uh with certain exemption in certain situations and um so there will be hopefully um environments there that will be accessible to people wanting us psychedelic experience with suicide not necessarily with the end of life we'll see how that expands right there is still another organization will show the way for that so in other words opportunities are opening up but it's still in transformation and it's still a recent merging field so if you could quickly just talk about the growing just for those folks who want to know about that what your best best advice is for them to get information um well there's lots of books out there that have good information how to cultivate but i think you know i think law enforcement really looks at an intention if you are intending to make a lot of money by dosing people with sulcivan uh without the guardrails of a therapist or a medical community um i think you're you're really pushing the envelope you're likely to be in trouble so people should be very careful about that if you're trying to monetize this for personal gain to make money using the excuse or the you know pretending or even intentionally uh part of that is you're trying to give people help but you're trying to also make money and capitalize on it then i think it's it becomes a difficult argument to convince uh that you're actually just doing it for the good of the people um so i think the training of therapists the training of physicians is a very very clear path an illegal and legally defensible path and it would not be uh high up on law enforcement's priority list compared to somebody who's uh selling a bunch of suicide mushrooms at raves and trying to make money you know hand over fist i think the intention of the individual participating at this this new stage will greatly influence whether the government and law enforcement's going to crack down they don't want to have a bad case you know so if you are involved in truly helping people with ptsd veterans et cetera other traumatized individuals then i think that um you know that's that's a much safer route but please be careful consult with medical professionals create records of correspondence of what your intentions are you know create your data sets so you are supporting your true intentions um and if you know people are going into this in a big commercial thing i said it's my previous talk i pay a lot of taxes folks i think you know the fact that people are making a lot of money and not paying their fair share you know for helping people on welfare and unemployment and post office and highways all that stuff you know let's not let's not be uh naive about this people are making money and they're not paying their fair share so i think it's important they step up their plate and help the commons i'm glad to see that psychedelics and civic responsibility go hand in hand uh this feels like a savings course along with a uh um um so one one of the other uh questions people have is um you mentioned micro dosing at one point paul um um but you've also discussed the heroic dosages and uh so some people are interested in uh what are uh what are the you know what are the advantages or the uses of micro dosing vis-a-vis a full-blown experience and um and not just with psilocybin but i guess we have not discussed at all things like lsd which i think has been outside of the parameters of this conversation but some people have asked about we can't address everything and we only have a couple of minutes left but maybe this question of micro dosing um do you is that in a separate category of usefulness than the kind of things we've been talking about for end of life anxiety and ptsd well we're we're navigating based on on the science this is fact-based medicine um again there's an app microdose dot me we're doing a massive meta studies without supplying the information to others that want to do clinical studies others they want to do clinical studies but many of us are beginning to subscribe to the theory not a hypothesis that after a major dose a heroic experience a therapeutic dose then microdosing subsequently made the same neurological pathways that led to a breakthrough of treatment and overcoming ptsd those neurological pathways pathways are resonant you have a neurological memory and by micro dosing then you're able to restimulate those pathways so they become resident so we think microdosing in the long term may have really great benefits uh where you don't need to be under a clinical hospital environment with tremendous support from the medical community as a microdosing might be liberation mycology that helps you to go beyond be working with a therapist because you've in a sense have been trained you've been there done that and now microdosing i think neurologically brings back these neurological pathways that become resident for your mental well-being i've heard of radical mycology but liberation mycology is a new one on me i'm going to have to remember that um well i think with it we are getting we've gotten pretty much to the end of our time here and i really just wanted to thank you all thank you francoise and paul this was a great conversation of course for every point raised we could have had a a two-day you know uh workshop and so um hopefully this will be just the the beginning the instigation of further conversations but it's really been a lot of fun and uh and uh very informative and um yeah let's do it again sometime in some other context so um thank you next time oh and um just for those people um listening in the audience if you're interested in any of the participatory sessions uh coming afterwards i think there's still ways to sign up for those um check on one of the buttons on somewhere up here and uh you know otherwise for the rest of us we're going to sign out all right goodbye thank you you

Channel: Bioneers

Views: 102,086

Keywords: bioneers, collective heritage institute, environmentalism, indigenous knowledge, activism, movements, educational, bioneer, CHI, psychedelics, Françoise Bourzat, Paul Stamets, J.P. Harpignies, Katsi Cook, botanical medicine

Id: qeVpuYdnQlg

Length: 65min 37sec (3937 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 09 2021