Why This Psychedelic "Molecule" Can Completely Change You

Mushrooms kind of go like this. Well, with MAOI it's like a plateau. You go straight up and it's long and then it just drops off. After going through your own healing journey with psychedelics, walk us through what was going on in your life that made you want to really be an advocate for this. My mom died of cancer, became an alcoholic, and had no interest in being part of life. And then the famous Johns Hopkins study came across my feed, where they took a bunch of veterans and gave them mushrooms, and it showed 70% success rate in reducing depression symptoms. suicidality, etc. So I'm like, man, I need to do this. I got almost 1 pound of mushrooms out of the first row I did, so I told my wife, I'm gonna take these mushrooms and see what happens. Yeah, you've gone deep, you've unlocked it probably more than people that have just done regular mushroom ceremonies. If you go into, let's say an IBgan experience, and you don't have the lineage, it completely can reset the root structure of your energy body, just like building cabinets. If the first one is off by 0.5 inch, it's gonna be off by 6 or 8 inches by the time you're done. There was a veteran that Worked with, he had been in a blast. Every time he moved, you could see that he was in pain. So I took him on a hike, gave him these microdoses. Within 15 minutes, he was like jumping up and down, he's like, oh my God, I've never felt like this. His body was like pain-free.

What are some of your in-person programs as well? We've built systems that people can come in and do like their own self-guided 30-day protocol. We've got a retreat coming up in October. It's all about working with 5MEO, asylum with oxen mushrooms, and then with DMT. What is the controversy? They had taken our mushrooms and Benjamin Moore, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Absolutely, man. It's a pleasure. Thank you for being here. So you have gone from being a staff sergeant in the army. To now working with over 1000 people and after going through your own healing journey with psychedelics, now being a massive proponent of that and giving that to thousands of people, walk us through what was going on in your life that made you want to take this full time and really be an advocate for this. Yeah, well, yeah, thank you for having me. Thanks for the question. Um, so initially I was just on my own mushroom journey, you know, I, I came home from deployment in 2013 and a friend of mine. He was, uh, I'll say like a rad, sort of expanded fellow, so to speak, and he deployed with me and he's like, Hey, could I, could I, could I live with you after we get home? And I was like, Sure, you can be my roomie. So we got home from deployment and maybe a week after we redeployed, he came to me with a film canister and he's like, Hey, you want, you want to take some mushrooms with me? And I thought to myself, like, I trust you. Sure, absolutely. So I took these mushrooms and Um, within 30 minutes, I was like, oh, wow, like this is amazing. I just felt so, so much like relief in the body. And then he put on, uh, these, he had these painter's masks that he had spray painted black, and he put on Peltor Earpro, which are like super high quality Earro that block everything out.

Um, and put these eye masks on me and I put earbuds in and he put on, uh, the track from Inception called Time and on, on YouTube, um, it's Hans Zimmer. I don't know, it's got like, it's very, it's, it's elongated. It's so interesting. And if you go on YouTube, you can find a 10-hour loop of it. So he put it on for me on this loop, and he's like, see how long you can stay in this space. And so I'm laying in my living room and I remember like having my whole body was erupting like a full body orgasm, like whoa, like this, this massive wave of experience as the music was playing, and, you know, after I, I couldn't, I had enough. I came out and I'm like, man, I felt like I was in there for like maybe 1 hour, 1 hour and a half, he's like, it's like 10 minutes, like seriously, and so, um. But nothing, nothing really came of that. It was just an experience. And I went on with my army career and about 202017, I got orders to be a recruiter. So I had to leave operational army and come down to Houston to be a recruiter. And in Houston, but the year before I got there, there had been 10 suicides in, in recruit in, in their recruiter, um, uh, AO. The recruiters themselves, recruiters themselves kill themselves. Yeah, exactly. I didn't, you know, I didn't have to have any thought about it. I'm just like, wow, this place must be terrible. So, um, I started as I was there a few months in, I just started feeling like disconnected from life and all the things that I had done in my life, the losses, like my mom died when I was like 26 of cancer, and immediately after that I ran off and joined the army. I'm like, I became an alcoholic. I'm like, I got to save my life. I'm going to kill myself this way. So I'm going to join the army. And that's what took me on my army path. And I realized that.

I wasn't, hadn't dealt with all these things, but I didn't really think of it that way. At that time, I was just stuck in my house. Like my kids would play. I had no interest in being part of life. It was just this weird cloud that was over me. And then Lo and behold, the, uh, the famous Johns Hopkins study came across my feed, where it's like, John Hopkins did a study in 2016 where they took a bunch of veterans and gave them mushrooms, and it showed after even five years, 70% success rate in reducing depression symptoms, suicidality. Etc. So I'm like, man, I need to do this. So I called my friends back home, the ones I had before I joined the army. I'm like, can you give me mushrooms? And they're like, nope, they all they did was sell wheat. So I was like, I had to do it on my own. And so I went off and started researching how to grow mushrooms and found all these different resources and ordered all the supplies to my house and started growing mushrooms. And I didn't realize that you don't grow just one. Uh, one session or one sitting of mushrooms, like a tub can produce like a 1 pound of mushrooms, so they just kept coming and each tub will go again, go again and again and again, exactly. And, and so, you know, I got, I got almost 1 pound of mushrooms out of the first grow, I did and I, you know, I didn't have anywhere to, to give them. I didn't have anyone to give them to, so I said, I'm just going to take them myself. So, so I told my wife, there was, I told my wife to, you know, lock herself in the room with the kids. I'm going to be downstairs. I'm going to take these mushrooms and see what happens.

And so, quick question, did you know anything about dosing at the time, or you're just like, I'm going to take a handful of mushrooms and guesstimate how much I'm taking? Oh, I took the first, the first, the first time I took a couple grams, you know, I waited it out, um, because I had read the, or someone shared with me the McKenna talking about 5 g as being a hero dose. And so I took 2 g. I'm like, OK, let's see what happens. And nothing major happened. I just felt really good. Um, but the next, you know, a couple weeks later, I was like, I'm gonna go all in. So 5 g, you know, I made it all up, and then I, you know, I had my wife lock the lock the kids and her in the room, watch a movie, and I'm down there. And I can remember feeling a sense of relief, like all the, you know, the friends I had that had died, my mom, she like was standing over me telling me how much, how proud she was of me and how much, how, how much I meant to the world, and I felt this like sense of forgiveness. And it was so, it was just, it was so real. And You know, afterwards I came to the next morning I slept down downstairs. My wife comes down, she's like, you were talking to yourself in all these different voices and all these different tones, and sometimes you were saying things I couldn't understand, but I guess she was upstairs just holding space. And so, you know, that it dawned on me that all these identities that I had or these relationships were inside of me, even though they're out here too, like there's an objective reality, they're all really also projected within myself.

And so I just got super curious about the feeling, and then, you know, feeling proud of what I was doing. So I was like, I'm going to keep, keep going. And so every month, at least, I would do a big hero dose, and then it accelerated to like every 2 weeks, and my wife's like, man, you're getting out of control, you know, and, uh, you know, fast forward about a year-ish in, I was like, this is enough. I got, I need to tell other people. Like I would be in my backyard screaming. About how this is the cure. This is the cure. I'm like seeing all this suffering going on. I'm like, this is a cure. This is a cure for everything. And so, um, I knew I couldn't be a fanatic on the corner standing on a, a milk crate with a Bible in my hand saying, hey, you know, Jesus is the way, mushrooms are the way. What, what made you know it was the cure? It's just some innate like intuition. It was, it was something speaking through me. Very, it was very, uh, It's just like, like God spoke through me. There was, there was not, it was not another being. And it's actually interesting you bring that up because, you know, oftentimes in consciousness, At least I do. There's, there's, there's many voices that kind of pick my interest, like, hey, you know, reminding me of things. I don't know if you guys have voices in your head, but I do. And this, they were all gone. It was just one. It was just one inspiration. It's like, this is what you need to do. And so I, I decided one night I took a bunch of mushrooms and I was up all night on the phone with my, the buddy who I deployed with and shared mushrooms with me.

And I decided I went online. I'm like, I'm buying a ticket to Mexico. I went online and bought a ticket to Mexico. I don't know why I did it. Initially, it was just like to go on an adventure to to check out these ancient temples and the the symbology that I was seeing in these experiences. I was like, man, it's all over, all over these pyramids. Like I've seen it in my mind. And the moment I did that, uh, a conference popped up that was a psychedelic conference in Arlington. I was like, man, I need to go there. So I went to this conference and there was a veteran there that was a keynote speaker. And the night before, I said I, I was a little shy about psychedelics because I was still serving in the army. I was still active duty and doing psychedelics at the same time. And I was like, uh, I was a little shy and a little nervous. I took a bunch of mushrooms the night before because typically, you know, you take mushrooms at night, the next day, so I can talk to that post mushroom glow. Oh yeah, yeah. So, so I went out and I talked to him, and after 15 minutes, he's like, you need to come meet my, my friend. And so the next weekend we went down to Austin, which is where we are here, and I met, um, my, my good friend now Ian Ben Weis, who had, who was a Black Hawk pilot. He flew in Operation Just Cause.

And he had taken veterans in 2016 to Peru to, uh, to facilitate, uh, well, he didn't facilitate it, but to facilitate the trip to sit with Ayahuasca and shoot a documentary called Soldiers of the Vine. And so I saw the documentary and I met him and the moment we got together, I'm like, I, I've got energy. I want to, I've got a way. I've got a will. Let's fucking go. And so we started, you know, working together, trying to figure out how to bring healing to veterans. And, you know, obviously I was still active and conveniently enough, COVID happened just around this time. So they shut down showing up in person to recruiting, to recruiters, uh, not school, but to recruiting duty. It was all virtual. So like every weekend or other weekend, I would come to Austin and meet with him and figure out more ways that we could plan to solve the problem of suicidality and depression. And so, let's see, man, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm curious. Doing a hero's dose and then just having your kids and wife upstairs, that's brave as fuck. Because you gotta hold, I mean, she's holding space, but she's more protecting the kids and keeping you away from them. What was that like? What was the first experience with the 5 g other than what you talked about? Like, can you walk through a little more detail? And then also as you kept doing it.

How did those experiences evolve over time? I'm curious. Yeah, thanks for asking. So, um, I, I can remember there was this sense of, well, as, as the experiences evolved, uh, the, the idea of all this suffering on earth sort of started to evaporate. And I remember the first time I went really deep, I ended up going upstairs a few times and just like, Just checking on things and listening. It's like, OK, are they safe? Good. Because the biggest thing for me being a father is like my kids' safety. So I'll be like, go upstairs. I'm like, ah, they're safe. OK, we'll go back downstairs. I did that a few times and I, I can remember that distinctly. And then there was a, there was an, uh, uh, a time where I can remember things started to, uh, Um, I don't say become erased, but like there there was no life on earth. And actually this, this, this one experience when I really was trying to go deep as I could go, I mixed Syrian roux with mushrooms and I found this thing they called syahuasca. And like, you know, what's this? And someone in the Netherlands was doing this where they were, um, cooking down Syrian roux seeds.

And, uh, and then drinking the tea and then eating mushrooms because syrin syrian rouse is a monoun oxidase inhibitor. And so what it does is it potentiates the experience because you have monounoxidase in your gut and it breaks down tyramine, which is a toxin. And also it binds to certain tryptamines to reduce their ability to affect your body because overdose of tryptamines can cause serotonin syndrome, right? So your body keeps things in balance. Well, this person was doing this successfully. He'd done it for a while, so I was like, I'm going to try this. And I can remember what my process would be, would be, take the mushrooms. It takes about 30 minutes to kick in. So I take the mushrooms and I would like light a candle, you know, set the music, turn on some, some of my like up lights, and then get comfortable on my couch. Well, So I took the, I did the same process, except I had taken the MAOI before, and I took the mushrooms through uh VIT and within 5 minutes, I'm tripping. I'm like, things are coming on. I'm like, oh fuck, I can't see. And I don't know if you've you've taken mushrooms. I'm I'm assuming.

I, you can't really read when you're in a trip. Like letters become symbols and they're like all different cattywampus shaped weird. And so I'm like grabbing my phone. I'm like, oh fuck, I gotta put on a playlist. Like I don't know. I'm in it already. I'm like, Siri, please help us put on a playlist. Yeah, well, this, this is before I had iPhone, um, but I wish that existed then. Yeah, so I, uh, wait, so the, it's, so it's MAO inhibitor. I, I understand that for like. Ayahuasca, but I don't understand what mushrooms. Well, because your, your gut's still breaking down some of the, so it's just allowing it to kick in faster, kick in faster and kind of like a, it potentiates it by like 2 to 3x, kind of like using citric acid or, um, no, citric acid, citric acid predigests before it gets in there. So that predigests it. OK, so then the difference is this, so you're still, so the So let's, we'll go into some of the chemistry. So mushrooms, so silicin is 4HO DMT. OK. So DMT, if you take DMT, like you, you know, you smoke DMT, see the elves, or they say the elves, I don't see elves, but Um, I don't either. Yeah, but you, you get this psychedelic experience. Well, that is, no, just, just DMT, OK. That is the, that is the psychedelic molecule, and then mushrooms have 4HO DMT. So it says essentially DMT with the hydroxy group at the 4th position. And so monomine oxidase, if you just eat DMT, your monoine oxidase comes in and it breaks the molecule in half, and it, it, it makes it unavailable. Well, with the 4.

The hydroxy group there, the monoamine oxidase cannot come in and cleave it because the molecule essentially closes and blocks it from breaking it in half. And so when you take a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, so that's still trying to do that. And sometimes it may be successful when it's in your gut, but if you take an inhibitor, it's not there at all. So then you're getting all the medicine that's in the, that's in the mushrooms because it's really only a few milligrams that you need to get to to an experience. And so, yeah, it's like, holy shit. So I'm like, I'm trying to do my playlist like fuck it, there's not gonna be any music for this one. I just, I, I, I lay down on the couch, and all I remember is like sort of deresolution deresoluting, like becoming nothing, and then I can remember laying there, I'm like, oh, I gotta pee. I can't move though. I'm stuck. And I was like, well, fuck it, I'm just gonna piss my pants. So yeah, what are you gonna do? So I just pissed my pants. In my experience, I'm just like, uh, I've had this sense of relief, and I bet that felt amazing though. I think it's the most liberating feeling you could ever do is to pee your pants. Like there's no shit.

You let go of shame. You let go of the piss because it's like to me it's like takes you all the way back to being a baby. You're just like, they don't give a fuck, healing the inner child. No, it's like just piss your pants. I just want to get comfortable. I'm comfortable. Yeah, yeah, so, um, and at the same time, I started, I felt like I was going blind. So I had my eyes were open and I would turn my head and the, the wall that I was looking at was the only image that I could see, and it came with me. So if I turned my head around, the, the, the TV, the corner of the TV and the plant that was in the corner was stayed in my vision. And that was there and I couldn't see anything else no matter where I turned my head and I started freaking out. I'm like, oh fuck, I'm blind. I was like, fuck, fuck, fuck, I've gone too far. Yeah, I'm like, OK, I need to call my first sergeant when this is over and tell him I'm blind. And I was like, Oh my God, what's he gonna do? He's gonna smoke me. He's gonna fucking, right? I'm, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get a counseling. I'm like, wait a minute, I'm blind. Like, why do I care? What? I'm like, if I'm blind, like who gives a, who cares what people say? Like who cares? There's no punishment beyond this. Like this is the worst thing I could imagine happening to myself.

And so that was such a level of catharsis because I, I, I, there was a point where I was like, I gave up. I was like, whatever. Like, I guess this is it. I guess this is it. And I came to, you know, 1.5, 2 hours later, I came back into my body. I was still, you know, obviously feeling the medicine, but I realized I had not pissed my pants. It was all, it was all here. It was all like a sense, it was like all a sense of resistance in myself that needed to get purged. And the same thing, like I, I started to be able to see again, which was really, really rewarding. Like this like level of, I think it's just like level of gratitude that came, especially when you accepted it, right? Yeah, yeah, I was like, OK, fuck it, right? Because, you know, now what I've learned on this path, all this, all this way. Gone is that there's a level of resistance that people have. And when you can accept certain aspects of you in your life, the whole world opens up to you. But when we resist, things become limited, because resistance creates like judgment, like, oh, I can't do this because of this. Like it's all these contrast and comparisons. And so I realized like, oh my God, like the world can open to me if I just like surrendered into it. And Yeah, and obviously that made me continue to continue to be more and more curious. And this is obviously what led me to, to, to, to continue on this journey with help, help, you know, helping people and getting them relief.

How do you apply the letting go of resistance just like in daily life? Like, is that applied to just letting go of, of identifying thoughts and letting them go? Like when you're teaching that to people? Yeah, it's meaning, it's meaning making, right? They, they always tell you, we are meaning making machines. That's to me is a hypnosis. They're telling you that to get you out of super position, because if you're, if you're God, let's imagine you're God. Does God need a meaning to make something, to do something? I'm doing this because of this. No, I don't believe that. I believe that if you're in super position, which means you're created, you're connected to source, the source of all things, you don't need a meaning to do it. You do it because it feels good. Like that's the meaning, the feeling. And then when we can connect like our, our spiritual self to our, our physical expression of feeling, there isn't, doesn't have to be any ancillary reason. Now, of course, cause and effect is a real thing, right? When we understand that, we can understand how we affect reality and what may happen because of that.

Um, yet there is, you know, I, I, I have these different approaches to my own, my own concepts of life and how to interact with reality. And one of those is Zen, you know, some Zen teachings, which is, you know, the, the, the art of unattachment and not being attached to the outcome. Oftentimes you go to somewhere and you're like, OK, I have to do this because I hope to get this outcome. But what if you can approach the, the event without an idea of an outcome? What if it's just doing it because you said you want to do it, and then you do it at the best of your ability, no matter what the outcome is. Because if you don't have an outcome, you're not actually manipulating the reality, you're actually just investing into it. And then whatever comes, comes, and then you can actually get a real true measurement of your efforts. And then know if it worked or it didn't work. And if it didn't work, you're like, OK, I, I can adjust this. I can adjust this approach, or I can uh make some, you know, make some changes to improve how I showed up or whatever it may be. You know, and this is obviously I'm applying this as a general approach, but it's very helpful to sort of distill back, back, back to, uh, like a governing principle of, of life.

I love that. Did you ever go to Mexico and check out the routes? Yeah. Tell me what you discovered. Wow. So, uh, so COVID happened, right? I went to Mexico in February of 2020. And it was beautiful. Like we went to, um, some of the, the more dis say disconnected, but like non-touristy pyramids. And I can remember being down there. We climbed to the top of one, smoked a joint, and like I was like, oh, this is the high, this is the highlight of my life. Like I could, I've just felt so connected to the earth. And it was called, um, This, uh, I can't remember the Mexican name for it, but it's basically like the black black panther, black jaguar temple, and, um, do you know what part of Mexico it was, it's south of Blacar, which is, or Bacalar, excuse me, um, and I can, I can show you on a map after this, um, so you you have an idea. It's really cool. And, um, while being there, uh, I, I sat in Ayahuasca. We took, I did some jungle ayahuasca, took us out by the beach, and Um, it was like a pop-up. They picked people up from hotels like, Oh, come sit with ayahuasca. And it was interesting because this is the first time I had ever drank ayahuasca. And, um, you know, I drink a cup, and this is after my mushroom series, and I've done it a lot.

You've studied mushrooms. You have a pretty deep understanding, more than I like. Yeah, you've gone deep, especially allowing the what, 4HO DMT. That's, you've unlocked it probably more than people that have just done regular mushroom ceremonies. Yeah, I think so. Um, I, I mean, it's an invitation for others to try it. That's why I want to tell them, do it. I'm into it. It's safe. I want to try it. It's safe. It's just, I mean, I'll go a little mushrooms kind of go like this, like a, like a, like you go up a hill. Well, with MAO Y, it's like, like a plateau. You go straight up and it's long and then it just drops off. It almost sounds like I've never done 5 MEO, but in some ways push you up and you're at this state. Quickly and fast, yeah, we'll get into 5 MEO because that's, that's the, that's the, I don't call it the parent molecule, but they call it the god molecule, um, the, uh, so with ayahuasca, after I drank my first cup, I'm like, oh, this is very familiar, like, oh, I feel really good, and I'm like asking the, the ayahuasca. I'm like, you know, he's like, if you want another cup, let me know. I'm like.

Like, I'm like raising my hands like I'm 3 cups in. He's like, he's like, no moss, no moss. And I can remember a friend of mine who had never, very minimal, it takes a little longer to creep in. It does, and it, it has the MAOI built in, um, but it also tapers off much more quickly, you know, it's like. Maybe like 60 minutes or 120 minutes per cup. That's why you, you know, you keep redosing in ceremony. Um, but my friend, my friend was like rolling around. So I'm just like, I walk over, I'm like, I'm gonna hold space for you for him. As I'm in my journey. I'm like, OK, this is, is beautiful because he had, he was suffering a lot. And, and he hadn't done very little psychedelic use. Yeah, really kind of clean the channel of you've worked through a lot of stuff. Yeah. And that was the, that was really the moment where I knew. When I was holding space for him, I knew like that part of my purpose was to actually be holding space, facilitating. Journeys for people because of my audacity to go in by myself, you know, I didn't, I didn't learn this from anybody. I learned it from the medicine. Yeah, that's amazing. So this was an inspiration period for you when you held space for him. Is this when things started to turn in your head? I, I, yes, this is, I start, I realized that it wasn't necessarily a power, but it was something that it, it just felt in alignment. I was like, oh, this feels, feels you realize that you're a natural healer and you want to do it, I think so, yeah.

Also I've done the work. Yeah, like, I think, you know. Individuals in the Amazon jungle, like they need to do the medicine over and over again, clear their own channel, work through their own stuff, explore the different spaces. So it sounds like you've been doing that, right? Then you're like, all right, I'm on cup 4. And that's probably why the, you know, curandero or whatever was kind of like. You know, most people haven't done anything, so he's like, you're gonna fucking shit your brains out if you, you're gonna lose your mind. And then he's probably like, oh, he's actually, he's, he's been doing his shit. Like he could hold the energy, right? Yeah, that's what it's all about. And you've gotten rid of those voices like you said. You're like in the one, so you're not, because I think that's what happens is people go right to Ayahuasca and it's so much so fast. And they haven't even addressed anything. It's like opening a, a garage you've been filling with shit for your whole life, and it's like, oh my God, right? Where you're like, I've been organizing and rebuilding and cleaning. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it, it led me to that inspiration and then.

At the same time, I'm like, this is the place. So this is the place where I'm going to build a sanctuary for veterans. And I got, I'm like I gotta figure this out. So I, I went around town and found a realtor that understood international land, uh, like foreigners coming and buying land or acquiring land in Mexico, and I started working with her. And when I came back, Ian and I, uh, started building out a plan around how to, um, Organize the retreats. So like created, we created a whole business model around revenue, revenue streams, etc. And every, every 90 days we went back to Mexico, and this is when shit was shut down. Like COVID was like, No traveling unless it's a vital business need. And I'm like, OK, I'm traveling for business. So I would go to, you know, go to customs, you know, it'd be business. And I was still, I was still on active duty at this time, and I was sort of, you know, I don't want, maybe it's not good to admit this, but, you know, it's good. I was, I was, I was like, hey, Far, you know, checking in. Cool, I'm good. I didn't say anything like I was just in Mexico. And um, You know, it, it, it led me to the state of, of, OK, we're ready to do this. We had a partnership with a najito. So if you're familiar with any with ajitos in Mexico, they are, um, recognized lineages of, of Mayan ancestry that the Mexican government has, um, has sort of enshrined and given them land and protections. Well, they gave them the ability to sell or lease their land to foreigners if they so choose.

So we had a relationship with one, and what my intention was to lease the land from them, not to buy it. I'm like, this is your land. We just want to be able to bring veterans down here and help them heal. And so, um, towards the end of 2020, COVID just squeezed everything. Like they, they basically made you had to quarantine for 14 days before you could come back into the states and like, we can't, like, we can't do that. Um, we ran one test retreat where we brought 8 veterans down, served them 5MEO and, and, and other medicines, and it just was a challenge traveling, just. Not, not conducive to healing. It creates more stress, right? So, um, back to the drawing board. So he came back to the states and at the time, um, he was a, um, uh, advisor to the ion Within, which is a, if you've seen them on the news at all, they are the foremost, uh, healing. Modality retreat for veterans and they use IBgaine and and and 5MEO as a retreat modality to help them shed addictions to opiates and Um, connects to their story and then the 5MEO sort of ties it all together and then they cap it with the 5MEO at the end.

They cap it and I want, yeah, I, I don't want to minimize it as like an afterthought or a capping. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you why because there's a lot of talk right now about that it being like a quote unquote afterthought. Um, it's a vital part of the experience and actually the protocol is created by Joseph Barsuglia, so he's like the foremost expert in IBga. And, um, you know, a friend and well respected person in the psychedelic expansion, this expansion of psychedelics. And, and so, um, we decided that we were going to start a church in, in the states. Like they had, we had, we had a friend who had understood the laws and realized like what, um, you know, what was allowed and not allowed and how we could approach bringing this type of healing to veterans here in the states. And so we created a church. The first church was Uh, the parent church was the Church of the Sacred Synthesis, which is what we're operating today. And then the first DBA was the veteran Healing Church. And so in that way, we were using the veteran Healing Church to facilitate retreats and ceremonies for veterans, uh, to reconnect with themselves and, and reconnect with God, you know, the God within. And, um, you know, we did that for just, just about a year and then my, my, my, my friend and, and Uh, pseudo mentor, you know, he didn't really take the title, but I was just watching and mirroring him, um, who was, who was serving buffo to, to veterans.

Uh, and I was coming regularly to, to understand how it all worked. Um, he discovered a, um, a, a trail of breadcrumbs that was left by Alexander Shulgin. So if you know who that is, you know, the most, the godfather, he's the godfather of, uh, a modern, I want to say modern psychedelics, but, um, MDMA, you know, he, he didn't invent it, but he, he made it. Uh, he, he's researched it, made it accessible, uh, and, and helped to understand what it was. He was actually a DuPont chemist, and he invented. He invented something for them and they gave him the free range of a lab, and he just sat sat in there and developed psychedelics and wrote all these, all these amazing, you know, a couple of amazing books talking about psychedelics. And, um, he said that if you put 5MEO into the substrate of mushrooms, you'll get something called sylomethoxin, which is, uh, a compound that, that had been synthesized once in 1965, and then, and then left. And I'll give you an interesting fact about 1965. Um, that's when they discovered DMT, smokable DMT in the brain. And then that's the same year that it became a Schedule One drug. So, interesting, right? So, so all these like correlations with, you know, control, etc. Um, and so I had been working with him with 5MEO for about a year before this happened. And, you know, the 5MEO story goes that, uh, I, I started witnessing it.

It's, it's use and effects in people and seeing the, the, the almost like 180 shift in their perspectives. Like, I would go and shadow him, just watch how, how people, people would, uh, appear, and they'd be like super stressed, couldn't look you in the eyes when they talk, like very, you know, look, making sure they keep an eye on the door, etc. because, you know, anxious. Anxious, right? Like in high up tempo veterans, that's just part of their, their, their persona vigilance. Right? Exactly. So, and I watched them in literally a 30 minute or 1 hour session. They can now make eye contact. We can have a conversation without it being, you know, going into some sort of risk analysis. I was like, whoa, like this shit's awesome. O loop. Yeah, Ota loop everything. Yeah, so, so one day I, I show up at his place and he's like, hey, do you want to try buffo? He's like, are you ready? I'm like, fuck yeah. I'm like, I'm a guest for everything. I'm like, I'm a guest for everything. And so, you know, we set up a spot in, in the living room of what what what is now known as the mothership. And, um, you know, he brought the pipes out and he served me, uh, I don't know, I didn't, I don't know the weight, but he knew what was going on. So he served me the first round, and I can remember I was sitting there and every cell of my body turned into an eyeball.

It was, it was the most unbelievable experience. Like I could see everything from every angle, and I can almost see the whole universe from all of my, all my skin. I'm like, oh my God, I can see everything. I can see it all. I understand everything. And it felt, it just was, it was like, this is like the greatest wonder I've ever, I've ever known. And, you know, of course, he's like, yeah, you want to keep going? I said, oh, yeah. Oh yeah. There's, there's no knowing how many more eyeballs can I get? Let's go. Can I just be one eyeball? Well, we'll get to that. So, um, so, so he gives me, he, he gives me more medicine, and I, I completely dissolved, like, And I turn into an orb of like pearlescent light. And it was, it was as if I was sort of like here and the orb was all around me, and the, and the universe was out in the distance. It was just vastness. And I was this orb and the energy was coming from me and going everywhere all at once. And I was just like, Oh, OK. I, I get it. I get it now. And there was nothing else. There was no story there. There was no, there was no like, uh, fractals. It was just that massive experience. And then I started to distill back into my body and, and the orb started turning into colors and then it started to sort of morph and mutate.

And then the next thing I know, I was like, like trying to like figure out like how to get, get, you know, come back into myself, and I had stood up apparently and like walked across the living room and fell down, but, you know, gracefully because I was caught by him and like placed on the mattress and um. He said that he said the last thing I said was, I'm dying, mommy. I'm like, I kid you not, my mom had, my mom had been dead for several years at this point, and, but I was like, OK, I get it. Like I, I felt that feeling, and it was very, it's really weird because that actually took me back to one of the experiences that I had with mushrooms, where I, where I was dying. I remember, I remember laying on the, on the ground going, I'm dying. I don't want to be, I don't want to be found this way. Mommy, please come help me. Mommy, please come help me. Like, it was like this little boy in me that was still there. And so it was really, it was really interesting. And I thought I just was taking notes of what was going on. I was trying not to attach to it. I was just like, OK, this is just an interesting manifestation of, of where I was in my own consciousness. And, you know, from that moment on, I was like, I was like, OK, I like, I like 5MEO. I like this. But it wasn't this, it's not like the same as an experiential thing where you get visions. And, you know, I started to learn this over time after working with it, you know, I wanted to develop a relationship with it. So I took some with me, of course, and and and and did my own experiments as I, as I, as I had done before. And I started to learn that 5MEO wasn't a psychedelic.

It wasn't a similarly situated psychedelic like mushrooms or mescaline or ayahuasca or even like NNDMT. No, not at all, right? Even though it's, it's actually it's 5MEO NNDMT is what the, like, you know, and you can break down the whole molecular formulation. Um, it's just the only difference is there's a methoxy group at the 5th position in the molecule, and I have it on my shirt. I can show you guys at some point. Um, but, uh, that's the only difference as far as what the molecule is made out of. But the experience is completely different and Through time, what I learned was that it's essentially shutting down the, the identity of the self, the way we identify with ourselves in reality, and it erodes and eventually with a high enough dose, it completely dissolves the barrier between the self and other, right? Creates that idea of unity and oneness, and which is something that most people are really seeking in their life, right? We have, we grew up as kids and we're we're connected, we're plugged in. And through our conditioning, we're taught that we're separate, that we're different, that we're unique, and we are unique. We are, but deep, deep, deep, deep down inside, we're really the same, you know, we, we're If you look at everyone, you look at animals, 2 noses, 2 eyes, a mouth, like.

The, the, the, the, the similarities are stark, right? It's like, wow, this is massive. And so, I started feeling like there, there's part of our system that is creating this ego identity of ourselves. And then the other systems like our sensory experience. And through my learning and my own experimentation, and I learned that um when you, when you work with 5MEO, it just sort of really relaxes you. It really just Puts you in a state of surrender. It's almost like forcing you there, like, like the white flag. And that's a, that's a thing that a lot of veterans especially are afraid to do. Like, I don't want to give up. It's like you're not giving up. It's like not quitting life, but there's something in the nervous systems like, I have to achieve, I have to win, I have to save, I have to do some mission. I feel like the word surrender has a connotation, especially with like the military community to say, oh, you need to surrender. They're like, I'll never fucking surrender. Exactly. Exactly. We probably need a new word for them. Yeah, so that's the, well, that it's funny because that's, it's literally the word that I recommend people use when they go into ceremony because it's that, because it creates that feeling of like, I don't want to say that, right? And the challenge here is that doing the uncomfortable and doing the Uh, let's say that what you, you used to judge is really where the growth is, you know, it's just like working out. You're not gonna get strong by, by not lifting weights.

You can keep doing the same workout over and over again, right? Yeah, so, um, yeah, now the science is showing, so 5MEO, it, it, it stimulates the vagus nerve, and the vagus nerve, when you stimulate the vagus nerve, it's like when you're going to sleep. It puts you into rest digest cycle. So it helps move, if you have food in you, it helps move that food and then rest your body and put you into actual actual physiological healing process. And then the, the, the other psychedelics work in your serotonin 2A receptor, classic. And I mean, there's, there's some, some, some other receptors that are very, very minimally affected, but typically, as far as the most impact, it's in those two receptors. And the serotonin 2A receptor is the one that's responsible for your sensory experience. So light, sound, all the different textures are going through that receptor, and then the other receptor is sort of recording that information. And so if that receptor is, is super high vigilance, it's recording that information as threats, as all these different risk factors. But if it's chill, all this stuff can be, can just come in as it's supposed to be, just like it's just information.

And this is why we get synesthesia. We take mushrooms, right? Uh, mixture of your senses because that receptor is becoming, you know, it's turning on and it's overactive. So it's just like, it's firing in all on all cylinders. You're like, oh shit, like this is interesting. And I think that's where like sort of the DMT visions come from. And, um, you know, I had a really fun experiment over the last couple of days with DMT and then I did the laser experiment, which is interesting. I can get into that too, um. But, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's quite, it's quite fascinating to see sort of how these systems work, and it's just that we're just human beings. But these, these, these elements are all over the world, you know, the, the 5 amio is only in one place on Earth. It's just in the Sonoran Desert, naturally in a toad. Now there, there, there is trace amounts in plants and, uh, Chalipango, which is one of the ayahuasca vines in Colombia, um, not a vine, excuse me, and one of the trees that they use for for ayahuasca, it has 5 MO in it. And then in um which which plant again chalipanga chalibunga yeah is that just in the Amazon or a certain part it's a tree, yeah, yeah, yeah and it's, it's got DMT and 5 amiO DMT and also lesser alkaloids in it that are yeah, yeah, it's not just so typically with ayahuasca you get like chakruna and ayahuasca vine and the Baosterus capy vine they put those together.

Um, and then there is, uh, there's other, there's other formulations where you'll take the the vine with mimosa hostilis, which is another tree, and they use the root bark, and then, yeah, you have the chalipanga, which is, um, a mixture of that, and it's just all these other, these are plants, like literally these plants have the same things that we can use in our body. And you know, now the science is showing that we make this stuff endogenously anyway. It's super interesting. You know your shit. Like he really knows his shit. Yeah, I wish I, I'm like thinking in my head, I need to start writing these things on the board so I can remember them, just like all the terms, because there's so many terms we come across all the time. It's just like, it's, it's, you can tell you're very well studied and you know your shit because there's a lot of people in the space that they don't know what they're talking about. Yeah. You know, people, people just want to, you know, they want, they want to say, say what they think they know, but I don't know if I know this. I know that I've experienced and I've studied it, you know. So are you saying 5MEO doesn't really trigger that 2A receptor at all.

That's why, you know, so, so what does it hit exactly like receptor-wise? The 1A, so the serotonin 1A receptor, and that's, so if you work with 5. and you haven't yet, but when you do eventually you'll, you'll understand the nuance between the molecules. So when you work with DMT you or mushrooms, you're going to get like a asymmetrical fractals, essentially, like varied geometry shapes, you know, sometimes it would feel like maybe like a kaleidoscope or things are like swirling. I get that sort of like blooming effect. And with 5MEO it is a, it's first physical. So it's a somatic medicine. It actually reprograms your cells and I'll go some deeper and deeper science. So 5MEO actually penetrates the cell wall and it goes intercellular. So it also goes inside the cell and repairs the sigma 1 receptor, which is and then also repairs the mitochondria. Can you talk a little bit about the sigma one? I've, I've tried to study this and explain it, but I feel like you could do a really good job because this also gets triggered in IBgan as well. Yeah, so it's, it's just sort of like a, it puts the cell back in homeostasis, and this is something that we can't repair. So like, um, serotonin does not penetrate the cell.

Right? It stays on the outside of the cell and it actually binds to the receptor. So this goes in and it, it, it puts the cell into homeostasis. And beyond that, it goes and repairs the mitochondria. And so the mitochondria, you know, they say like, if you heal yourself, you heal 7 generations behind you and in front of you, you know. I don't know, but I know that if you heal yourself now, you heal all the other generations, right, because you're here present. All the other things in the past, they show up here and present in yourself. So, and you only inherit the mitochondria from your mother. So it's a feminine part of your, your, your cell. Yes, yes. So it's interesting because like in the sperm, the sperm, the mitochondria, you have mitochondria in the sperm and the egg, but the mitochondria in the sperm dissolves, and then you, you only take on, excuse me, you only take on the mitochondria from your, from the mother. So yeah, so it repairs that lineage essentially and Uh, puts it back into homeostasis. So you have the, you know, if you imagine like a cell kind of have a, has a wobble, sometimes maybe it, it multiplies or duplicates in a way that's not conducive. So your body eats it through autophagy. It just breaks it down and gets rid of it. But what if your cells could, could, could, um, replicate in homeostasis, in balance. And so they're showing this with mushrooms, especially. Mushrooms also penetrate the cell wall, um, or psilocybin, psiloin, and it, it's doubled the cell, cell life in rats.

It's like, what if we can use these to extend our own lifespan, which I believe we can. This is why a lot of this is suppressed because it will heal us. Did you notice after you did 5MEO or continue to, the different feeling in your physical body? Yes, like much more sensitive. So, um, when, when working with it, it sort of opens you up to your sensory experience because again, You have all this stuff that's stored, your ego, as they call it, your default mode network has stored all this information and creates a prediction model. So you live life, and you, you're like, OK, you're driving through traffic and you, you can sort of predict the light sequences or predict all this stuff, because that's stored in your memory and your default mode network has stored that. So then also it's predictions around like certain people with certain glasses maybe behave a certain way and you've experienced it that way. So you record that information in that way. Um, and, and when you go in there and overstimulate that receptor, it resets it. So then you're able to now experience life with an agnostic perspective, without judgments, without meaning, without all these other things, and So you can actually sense everything without blockages or without diverting the meaning from the experience. And so, you know, we often would go after 5MEO ceremony, we always serve like fruits, like astringent, sweet, other varied flavors, because people are over.

Overstimulated with their with their eating. So candy, you know, uh uh synthetic artificial flavorings, it overstimulates your taste buds and actually makes you crave more of it because you have to continue to pour more in to get the same level of flavor. Well, now, if you reset that, you eat a pineapple, it's like the sweetest thing you've ever tasted. You eat a grape, it's like holy shit, this is amazing. So it's, it's sort of that, that system that that balances those, uh, those, those effects that are coming in from your other receptors. Do you think 5MAO does The best, I don't know how to say the best job, but the quickest job of resetting this part of one's sensitivity to the world, yes. And the second question is, when you have veterans come to you, do you immediately go to something like 5MEO, or do you assess somebody? Well, now typically they're sent to me for that reason, you know, so if I'm, if I'm, I work, I work in connection with, with other, other operations, and they'll send me people like, uh, uh, as a, as referrals. So there's a reason why that they're sending them to me.

And that's the, that's like a specialist doctor, like a specialist, exactly. So, um, but I'm, I'm never going like, OK, come in, let's sit with 5MEO. Like there's a process involved, you know, uh, it's, it's somatic reprogramming. So we we're trying to reset the, the physical form of the body in a state where it can actually receive the medicine. And then they can go forward in their life and not feel like they've just been altered and they don't know what to do with it, you know, so, of course, I'm sure you've seen it in this on the well and wellness communities like breathwork, contrast therapy, um, you know, um, Cynthia, my partner does kunalini yoga, which You know, it's not the yoga in the classic sense, it's movement mixed with pranayama or breath. So it, it, it helps to start to tune up the body before we even go into the 5MEO experience. So, when you go to when you go into a psychedelic journey, oftentimes you're going to go through these like levels of, say, memory. And you know, I, I, I still go through some of them when I'm ascending into the space where it'll be like the the most recent thing I've experienced that was, you know, jarring. It's, it's just a flash of a memory as I'm going through. And so what if what we can do is get people in that state of, of, of active participation in their life, it actually becomes their first memory. They're like, oh yeah, breathwork. Oh yeah, movement.

And it's part of their journey. So that really roots that in even deeper. And then immediately following, same, going back into physical like somatic reprogramming to really drive that transformation home into the body, because it's not what we think, we have this idea, and that's, this is what psychology has done to us. We have a brain and a body. You know, we got to, you know, do the brain, like all this psychoanalysis, psycho-spiritual, like it's all one thing. It's all the body. The body lives to keep us alive and the brain is this massive sensor that is processing information, but it's all part of the body. So it's like remembering that it's all coupled, it's all together. So when people, so what kind of people are sent specifically to you that is appropriate for 5MEO versus like not? Yeah, great question. So especially recently, so individuals who there are countless IBGin clinics now that have been being stood up that are not offering buffo or 5MEO at the end of their Or to to close up their ceremony. And there's actually what I would call a lot of misinformation around how, uh, 5MEO, what they call it an afterthought to IB Gin. And, uh, the problem with that thinking is that they're not understanding the energetics of these experiences. And the person that brought this forward or the couple of people, so Martin at Mission Within and Joseph Barsuglia, who's the foremost expert in IBain and created this protocol for a reason.

Because if you go into, let's say an I began experience, and you don't have the lineage, so a boga is an ancient tradition, right? And there's a lineage that comes with it, and it's, it's what we call a root medicine. So it completely can reset the root structure of your energy body or your, your chakras, right? And just like building cabinets, if the first one is off by a uh a 0.5 inch, it's going to be off by 6 or 8 inches by the time you're done, right? Same thing here. You start here. If this one's off, And you start building on top of it and opening up your channels, you're going to be in some sort of disarray, and it's not going to be, it's just not going to be pleasant. So, um, that, that lineage essentially builds the system into that place where it's in alignment, and it's drumming, it's singing, it's moving, it's somatic, it's all these different processes to get that medicine to root in in a balanced way. Well, we don't have that. In the Western world, and especially with the use of these to treat addiction and other neurosis, uh, we, we, we as Americans seem to have this idea just like pharmaceuticals, like we're going to give this drug and it's going to fix these problems. Like, no, it opens the channel, the body, the problems are fixed by practice, by reprogramming the physical habits and all the things that we do on a daily basis. Well, What, what 5MEO does with ibogaine is it closes the loop. So, iBgaine opens and, and resets this root structure, and, uh, the god molecule as they call it, or 5MEO is what they call a crown medicine. And so, it's like, uh, the medicine of understanding, right? It's beyond the the dual aspect. So what it essentially does, if you can think of like a, a line of energy coming from your root, and it, when you open this, instead of having to go through all these different Areas and maybe not be stabilized. It just connects the whole channel into alignment, because you go into a state of understanding from the root. And so now we have tons of people that are being referred to me that have gone through these, I began experiences with these pop-up.

And some of them are big, but I'll still call them pop-up because they've only been around like a year. um, IBgaine clinics, and they're destabilized because they've just sat with IBgaine and they're, they're, they're, they're like, I don't know what to do with my life. Like I, I can't feel any emotions. I'm, I, I feel like shit, you know. And I just worked with a couple the other day. It's funny. So I did, I began at Beyond. They've been there for 8 years and they used to do it. And my friend who went, they would do it at the end, but for some reason they stopped. They stopped. But there was a couple of people there that like you could book and kind of go outside and do it, and I never did it. And I was telling Tony the other day because I was like, You know, there's ups and downs. I'm like, today is like the 90th day, right? And I'm like, I feel fundamentally hardware different, like definitely is that like root, but I don't feel like I give a shit about anything. Like I, and, and that's what my friend too, she like went to the same place like 23 months before. She's been studying. She like went with a tribe and she's been serving 5 AmEO and she's said the same thing. You, you need to like close the loop. And that's what I've been, I've been giving it time and I'm like, OK, I think I need to do this because yeah, it feels like.

Yeah, I need to get popped open. Yeah, I'm so curious what you were thinking when he was saying that. Like, does that feel resonant? Totally. And I was, and that's what I was like texting him. I was like. We should go fucking do. Like I was thinking about it for a while. I just wanted to give it time before I really like assessed. And I'm like, OK, it's been 90 days, and there's been ups and downs, and I feel that root fundamental shift. But it doesn't, it's not like when I've done ayahuasca or mushrooms, that creative opening. Yeah, I just, it feels like I'm just observing everything still. And I imagine if I keep going, maybe, but I like the, I like thinking about, I don't know why I've never thought about this, different psychedelics, when it, when you're like correlating them to specific chakra or energetic channels. That makes, that makes it so much easier to explain. Many different psychedelics, because I was trying to explain this to my sister. I was like, when I do ayahuasca, I feel like my heart, my connection is open. It's like the upper channel chakras almost like from heart to solar plex. And then, yeah, that makes sense. DMT being the spirit molecule, it's the fucking crown open, right? Where I don't know if ayahuasca quite gets to that. And then ibogaine is for sure the root root. And then that's the thing. There's like what, 32, 33 alkaloids. So you're only doing One, so what are you really missing with not doing all of them together? So you're getting like, uh, only like an element of the complete medicine, right? Yeah, that, that, that speaks to the uh what, what I, what I take is like the Puritan aspect, you know, I mean, maybe that's sort of still what's governing some of the Western world. It's like this Puritanism where we have to divide everything out to its, you know, pure, pure form, and what does that do?

And it creates a lot more other challenges. It can fix this one aspect, but then there's other tertiary issues that they have to medicate for, right? That's what all the pharmaceutical approaches. And, you know, it's Um, you know, I guess that that sort of speaks to how we've west right now we're westernizing psychedelics, right? The only real conversations that are being had at scale are the therapeutic potential, like depression, anxiety, like all these things, which they do that, they do that, but, but what What creates a little resistance in me is that if we continue to go only down that road, we're going to have more pharmaceuticals on our hands, and we're going to continue to criminalize people who want to expand their consciousness, who want to do this at home, and yes, they do feel those things again, but if we're we're looking at it, I think from the, from the wrong lens because all the problems or the challenges that we have aren't because we're, we have an addiction. The addiction's root cause is disconnection.

It's shame. It's, it's things that we haven't been able to digest. And when we do that, we disconnect ourselves from superposition, from our Creator, and we have to go into judgment and comparison, and that creates all these different ailments that come from that have to be treated by these things. And so, You know, I, I think we need to step back here in the, in the psychedelic evolution and realize that there's much more to the story. And this is why, you know, I run a psychedelic church, uh, and it's not to like circumvent the government, it's because I truly use these to connect to God, to God consciousness, and many, many people do the same thing. And that to me, at least at this juncture, is the only way that we will have access to, to these without having to have a prescription. Or pay $10,000 or $20,000. What do you think so? I've been getting more and more. I don't know, on the fence. At first I was kind of excited, you know, hearing about, you know, Atai, Beckley, and these other companies is, you know, they've been working on this stuff since.

We were in Seattle 67 years ago. I remember like MindMed eventually, you know, they were working on different stuff, but all of these things are slight analogs, right? Or like they're slightly tweaked. And I'm like, I don't know how I feel about that, right? Because now, You're, are you taking, like, The magic that's actually in the plant, are you Getting rid of it. Like, you know, even you can take DMT and smoke it and you can go to an interesting place, but I still think smoking DMT is way different than taking ayahuasca because the mixture of all the different plant like pieces that you just don't even know creates a way different spirit, like spirit connected Mother Nature, just a completely different experience, right? Where smoking DMT is a very just VR experience in some ways, right? And so you're like, are you gonna Give people this false happiness, like just you're just flooding their brain or kind of hitting a receptor, but Like you're saying, you're never actually addressing The connectivity and then you're kind of like, oh, every 3 months I just fucking take this 5MEO synthetic or whatever and I get high, but it's almost like am I just doing like a Men in Black like blanking my brain like I feel happy again, right? I don't know, it's But then in some ways, they're kind of like, fuck it, send it. Let's get as messy as we can. It's better than just withholding everything. Just fucking push it all out there, right? Because at least Maybe more people do that and they're like, that's bullshit. Let's go to the original thing.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I think that's like AI. It's like, it's definitely. It's just it's like, it's just, it's blown open. Well, and the thing with these plants are they've been here since before human beings, you know, arguably like the synthetics haven't, but they're intelligent. They're very intelligent, and they show up wherever we, wherever we harvest cattle, you know, like there's a wonder why this is part of, you know, what they believe is part of Soma in India and why are they worshiping cattle. They're giving them, uh, they're giving them mushrooms. Yeah, they, they poop magic. They poop magic. See, this is why I'm not too worried because mushrooms don't give a fuck about anything. They'll go, you can't like, it's not like the Sonoran toad frog where you could like decimate it and it's gone, right? Or the boga plant, like you could, you know, mushrooms will never stop. you can't stop. You can't stop them. So therefore, and then you take mushrooms, they'll give you the information. I feel like mushrooms are really I didn't think this before, but they are like the, they are like the, the super, the super psychedelic because they're probably the ones that told everybody where the fuck all these different things were. They're the ones, they're the little orchestrators of being like, yeah, they were the most accessible, probably first psychedelic that any human was taking, and they're like, great, let me guide you to all these other places here. This is how you make ayahuasca.

Have you've seen the, have you seen the fresco in Algeria on the caves? So there's, there's a fresco that was. You know, between 10 and 13,000 BC, uh, painted on the cave walls of the mushroom shaman. You know, he's in a bee suit, he's got mushrooms all over him. And then there's a, there's, there's, there's, uh, paintings of people holding mushrooms and lines being drawn into these little creatures' heads. And so, what they say that's the oldest, uh, iconography of, uh, psychedelic use. And, um, that is, uh, along the Mediterranean. Like the, I don't know what they would call it, like just the north, north part of Africa, and they think that, that they may have migrated into Egypt. So that was what perhaps seeded this, uh, expanding, um, the civilization and psychedelics were a huge component of that. And so, yeah, I, I, I, I truly believe it, and I, I can remember with mushrooms, the experience of there being nothing but plants on earth. And the mushrooms showed me all this, and, you know, I, I, I, I, I learned to trust the mushrooms, and, you know, Terrence McKenna says it best. I trust plants, not gurus, you know, mushrooms not really a plant, but it's in that, it's in the non, non-human, um, uh, kingdom.

And so that there's so much wisdom that comes through with mushrooms and plants have been around like they've gone through. I was watching this video on YouTube the other day. It was talking about. If you took the entire history of the world, basically, and you put it from January all the way like just one full calendar year calendar year and it was basically dinosaurs would have started on the last month of like the second week and then everything that's happened up from there till then there where there's all these other periods of mammals going way back and plants in different environments have been around basically that whole time. And that wisdom for sure, probably the fun guy too, have been from the very beginning. Yeah, the, um, it's quite interesting when you start to, to look at the actual like, the expound on the, the life of Earth. And, you know, that obviously now they're finding things that are way older than we think, like 600,000 year old, um, what is it called? I can't remember what it was, but the 600,000 year old house, like components from a house.

And we didn't, they didn't think we built houses before 10,000 years ago. No, they keep, it keeps fucking up the timelines more and more and more misinformation left and right. Yeah, I was even watching one. Rogan had this one gal on the other day where basically like, uh, you know, Angkor Wat and some of these other places in like India, these insanely carved, you can't explain, and they date them because the king put his name on it. But then when you look at it, it's completely. Just like he graffitied it. So they're actually way, way, way, way, way older. So the thought is they actually just came upon him and was like, we fucking built this, and they just like were going around and putting their names on stuff. Yeah, it's just like, like Teotihuacan, right? And the Aztecs were famous for that, but they, they found that place in Mexico, and they believe that they don't even know how old it is or who built it. It was like some sort of, you know, there's a cataclysm that was, you know, thousands of years ago that happened and, you know, that people migrated and then they built these giant temples.

And it's, it's fascinating. And, you know, I guess there's a movie now that's Steven Spielberg, was it Disclosure Day. Yeah, I think we're we're we're getting there. We're getting there. And and so, you know, I think that all this leads me to the, what, what they're believing now is the, the dawn of mushrooms, you know, psychedelic mushrooms was about 60 million years ago. And they think they perhaps came in on the impact that killed the dinosaurs. And so we know that mushroom spores are the only thing that can survive the vacuum of space indefinitely. Yeah, so they used to think those little, um, um, what is it the bears called tardigrades, yeah, tardigrade. They used to think tardigrades could survive, but they can only survive like a few days. But spores can survive for as long as forever. And so that, you know, panspermia is a really valid idea that things came on different comets and, and, and, and impacts that affected our reality. And so. Maybe we need to start spending, sending a bunch of spores to Mars and the moon. That's what Elon, I think that's what we're talking.

Well, they, they were doing that. They were, they were talking about, they, they had a contest actually. Elon did about grow, how to grow mushroom-based, uh, homes in on Mars. So you could because you could just take some spores. And then mix it with the soil there and water and then grow essentially walls with the mycelium. The mycelium is, you know, it's, it's very versatile. What I'm curious of is like, because it totally does make sense if spores had come on the rocket that killed, not the rocket, the rocket, whatever, a rocket made out of rocks, um, but. Like mushrooms and fungus were the thing that were able to break down trees because trees have lignin and before any fungus they would just fall over and just pile up and then that's ultimately what became like oil because like mushrooms started breaking that shit down and then compressing it. But I would imagine that trees are being broken down long before dinosaurs. Oh yeah, yeah, there was, there's some fungi here, but there, so if you look around, but not like psilocybin or psychedelic muss, exactly. So if you look around the impact, there is an extremely high amount of mushroom.

Psilocybin producing mushrooms in the whole region. So Florida, Texas, all the way down to Mexico and all the way into the Yucatan, psychedelic mushrooms like that's, which is where the meteor hit, which is then extra fascinating because that means that fungus is all over space because that means it was here on Earth and it was out in space. That's why they call it aliens, right? Like it's the first true extraterrestrial life is totally the fungi, but then we also split off from fungi, so yeah, we're, who knows, yeah, we're baby, I mean, we're 50% bananas. We, I do, it's funny. I was about to say that like an hour ago in this podcast. When we're talking about like, we're connected to everything, yeah, we're 50% banana DNA genetic. It's like our genetic expression. I think that's, you know, or the what they call epigenetics, right? How the genes are expressed. But yeah, the DNA itself is like we're we're like, that's why, you know, we're everything. It's and having the realization that we're everything is so empowering. Like, yeah, fuck yeah. Like we're not separate. We're just like, oh, we're we're, we're, we're, we're, we're part of all this stuff. And another interesting aspect and going, you know, going back to consciousness.

Is that, you know, as we, especially working with 5MEO, the, the separation between the self and all this other stuff starts to dissolve. And you realize that everything that's happening, even though there's a camera and lights and all this, it's inside me. It's inside you, right? Because you, you're not actually seeing anything. Your eyes aren't a, a window. They are a sensor that's sensing photons, and it's converting it to an electrical chemical signal that's going into your brain. Your brain's actually animating this. And then you're experiencing it within, you know, what do they think, 44 nanoseconds or something. It's a really fast process, but it's all inside of us. And so, In the inverse that that we can actually project reality. And there's all these, you know, these, say like futurist healers that are, you know, starting to create this, these ideas around like creating projections. So then you can actually live in a life, uh, and grow your wealth or grow your connection or abundance in ways that aren't available if you just live in objective reality. So, yeah, it's it's, it's quite interesting as we sort of go down these these planes of understanding of how we can use this system to advance ourselves.

How does your church work? Oh, great question. So, um, yeah, we are, we have a, uh, uh, that's, we go to the beginning. So the, the church, the Church of Sacred Synthesis, um, is a, a nonprofit, you know, we filed, all, all legit filed with the government and We have a school community where we have people that can interface. Uh, we have programming and all sorts of ways to, to, to gather, and then we do, uh, virtual ceremonies once a month, utilizing 5MEO DMT in a low, we call it low 5 light wand or jaguar light wand, and it's essentially home use of 5MEO and it's not meant for a deep dive. Although you can titrate yourself up just like DMT if you have a DMT vape, you can go all the way. Um, it's not really meant for that. It's meant for, um, somatic reprogramming, right? And so people can join our church, uh, through the website or through school and become part of our community and have access to these different tools and then the teachings that come along with them to create safety. Um, if people are interested and they're listening, how does one do that?

Uh, so the sacred synthesis.com, they go to the website and it's all, we're all, you know, we're all in the, in the clear, clear market, I guess, or clear, clear net as you call it, and they just kind of fill out a form and kind of go from there, yeah, they'll just, they're just like, you know, fill out some affirmations around like, OK, you know, I affirm that I would use this stuff for spiritual use, and, you know, and we were saying like we're not healing your. Trauma, you're not healing your depression, and we're helping to connect you to your sense of your sense of purpose or God and you know we're, we're, this is a supportive community and you know, I, I think I said in the beginning we have like 7000 members, uh, not all of them are on school, yeah, not all over the world, all over the world, yeah. And so we have many members international. We can't, we can't help them get Sacrament, but in many other places what we have isn't scheduled like Canada. We have lots of members in Canada, Mexico, like 5MO is not scheduled there, so people can open, use it openly there. Um, in the US, you know, to, to utilize it, you've got to be a member of a church and, uh, to safely, and so, you know, we have that, and, um, you know, we, we want people to approach these with reverence and with, with, with curiosity, but also safely. And, you know, I understand.

You know, they, they, there's, there's a, there's people that will say like this is the, we call it the Mount Everest of psychedelics, right? Because it is, it's very potent and it can turn you off, but so can DMT. Let's just remember, you take a big hit of DMT, you're off. You're not here. You are, you pop through, you're in another dimension experiencing, you know, some, some actual beauty and So I developed a protocol called, uh, I call the temple session. So it's a 5 MEO first. It's like a sort of like an 1 or 2 hour session, depending on how you work it. But you do, do a short, uh, like 30 minutes with 5 MEO, uh, the light wands that we have, um, to get your, your nervous system into balance and harmony and opening. And so, With mushrooms, with psychedelics, with classics like even DMT, you're going to interpret it through your understanding of reality. That is why some people see clowns or reptilians, because it's, it's, it's, it's still, you're still in duality. So it's still, in my experience, it's still filtering through some part of your consciousness and some part of the way you're interpreting reality. So there's a, there's a lens there. But if I, I've experimented with clearing that filter, so if you reset that system, Uh, with 5MEO, like, go back, go into balance, perhaps we can connect to like the objective reality, like whatever the balance is. And so, uh, the, so I, I, I did this, um, uh, the laser experiment, I'll, I'll go a little into that. Uh, a couple of days ago, I did one round of it. Last night, I did another one. And, uh, I sat on the wall and I'm like looking in the laser, and I'm, I'm, I'm hitting the DMT pen.

And I, I can see from the, like in the distance, it was first just the texture of the wall, then it started going deeper, deeper, deeper. And then I see these goddesses, and they're like Hindu goddesses, and there's this energy going into their body, and they're moving their arms and sort of like distributing energy around the universe. I'm like, oh man, this is, but it was all red. And then something in me is like keep going. So I kept going and then color started to come in and I had to lay down. Like I can't, I can't sit up here and stare in this wall anymore. So I laid down, went to the experience, and it was just these beautiful, like, uh, vibrant goddesses that were channeling energy. And, um, you know, I asked, I asked, I asked him like, OK, should I do this again? And I was told no. I'm like, OK, I'm done. So, you know, I, I, I, I put it down and I had my little after chat with, with, with Cynthia and Um, you know, she's a very connected being, so she would help me sort of interpret, you know, what I was seeing. And, um, you know, it was, it was great, a beautiful experience. And fast forward two days later, I come, I come here last night, I get my hotel room.

And uh we have been developing these 30 minute light wand meditations. So they're um an intentional 30 minute session that is guided with, um, you know, either Cynthia or myself guides the opening and the closing, and then it is the the the sound in the in the middle, which guides the experience is a different chakra. So this is a root, this is a root one. So it's like, It's like sounds like the, the, the gears of the earth spinning. And so I went into this experience and then immediately following, I got my DMT, I got my lasers, and I stuck them on the wall, and I went in and my intention was to see beyond the goddesses, because I realized goddesses. It's still duality is an interpretation, interpretation, right? So I'm like, what's beyond that? I'm like, I'm like, OK, I'd like to see what's beyond that. So I go in, I start, I start, um, ripping the, the, the, the cart, and all of a sudden, like, it's, I start seeing like lines of energy flowing. And, and once again though, I get to this point where I'm like, I can't sit here and stare at this wall anymore. It's red. I want to see all the colors. Like, I don't know if it's like some part of my ego. Like, I just want to see all the colors. I don't want to see everything in red. So I, I just take a big rip and wrap myself like a burrito in a blanket because the dark, so just so you, so you know, I'm sure you do, but it's light sensitive. So it, because it's stimulating your, through your, we call it a third eye, but it's stimulating through your visual cortex. So that's what's feeding your brain, DMT.

And so I'm like, OK, I need to go dark. So I go wrap myself in like a burrito, and all of a sudden I see these lines. I'm interpreting it as energy, but they were like, sort of like paths of energy flowing, and then it would hit an invisible wall. It was all black around them and go perfectly square and go up. And on there were tiles, and some of the tiles had like sym symbol, and then one would have like a face. And then it would be all these different, and sometimes it would morph, like when I would look, when I would, when I would look at it, it would morph. It wouldn't stay the same. And it was just like, Flowing around the universe, it seemed to me. I'm like, oh, fuck, like this is what I asked for. I'm like, this is the energy. This is what's going on. And, um, you know, I, I did that for a couple of rounds. I'm like, OK, this is absolutely fascinating. You know, I love, I love the I love the DMT world. It's, it's, it's, it's quite interesting. Um, so, you know, that's a long way of saying that like this is, this is sort of the purpose to me behind the church. It's not to fix, it's to explore and to expand.

And uh I, I want to encourage people to do that, and, and feel safe doing that. There's a reason why these things, they, you know, you can look at all the risk charts, uh, Psilocybin, DMT, ayahuasca, 5MEO lower risk than coffee physiologically, you know, uh, psycho-spiritually, mentally, emotionally, no, it's probably higher risk because the risk is destabilizing the idea of ourselves and becoming greater than we are. And the system out there wants to keep us down. And, uh, so I think it's important for us all to realize that we've evolved in a, in a system that has been oppressed. Um, through thousands of years of, uh, uh, we'll say like excision of priestesses and true healers and plant medicines and, and ancient lineages to preach, uh, service to the one true king, Jesus Christ, you know, not that anything wrong with Jesus. He is an archetype. You can become like Jesus, but you're not supposed to drop down and kiss his feet, right? You, you're supposed to live in the image if that's what is an alignment. And I think the, you know, the, it's interesting because like you're thinking about like the Romans, Roman Catholic Church, they're the ones that crucified him. But yeah, we worship, they're the big power of the world and sort of govern all these things. So they don't, that system has been perpetuated, Babylon, whatever you want to call it in our society.

So they don't want us to have this type of freedom. They don't want us to have this type of exploration. They want us to use it to fix our depression that they're giving us from their oppression. You know, Yeah, just feel good enough to come back. Yeah, exactly, and hang out. What are some of your in-person events or like, do you do you do in person and you do do programs as well. Like what are some of those programs? Yeah, so, so we, we do, well, we have like, like. programming where we've built systems that people can come in and do like their own self-guided 30-day protocols where we've built all the educational content around it. So they can utilize the the sacraments and work with them in a way that is conducive to their expansion. And then we have like Inside the community, we have support threads where people can, you know, talk about what's going on, what's coming up for them, and we're always available. So we're in there chatting with people. Uh, we do calls once a month for like actual, uh, conversational integration, but people can get 24/7 support on these, on these channels.

Um, we also offer right now, we've got a retreat coming up in October, and it's actually a nine-week container, which is, you know, it's all about exploration, you know, working with 5MEO, working with asylum with oxen mushrooms, which are the 5MEO, um, fed mushrooms, and then with DMT. So to create a visionary experience. And, you know, all these again, they are encompassed by programming, not just using, um, not, you know, not that there's anything wrong with using psychedelics and going to a rave or a music festival for no other reason than to be in celebration. Um, there's also intention behind some of this stuff as well. Um, and then we do a monthly, uh, virtual meditations or ceremonies where every month, we, we go online. And we host people that that join our call and like like last month we had like maybe 43 people attended. And they're all, you know, cameras on if they want or off, and we, we stream a full 2 hour service where we are, um, doing Kundalini, uh, Cynthia leads Kunalini yoga, I lead breathwork, and then we put people into a, um, a meditation part where they're administering their own 5MEO for themselves, and we just give them prompts and cues on when to dose the medicine and how long to dose it for through, through my understandings of the, the, the, the curve.

Of, um, uh, how it impacts the body, and then we go for, again for two hours and we close it out with a little bit of uh affirmations, and then the next day is integration, where people can join us on, on, on call, and we talk about everything that's come forward for them. Yeah, that's super red. Yeah, it's well organized, well thought out. Yeah, I really, yeah, it's great. Try to make change, you know, and I, I, I learned through doing this work 1 to 1, you know, like I said, I've, I've really treated over 1000 people in group and individual settings. It's just not enough impact. Like my mind's like, how can I impact more people? I, I want to, I want to fucking fix. I want to fix the disconnection. I want to help show people that they have the power, you know, that they have the skills within them. Socrates says it, it's all within us. We just need to remove the layers between ourselves and the wisdom and allow it to to to permeate reality. And That's what I, that's, that's, that's what I'd like to, to, to offer. And that's to me the, the biggest, fastest way that I can make impact in other people's lives is, is to go virtual and in person and help people, help people empower themselves because I, they're going to empower other people. I'm like, yeah, I can do this. It doesn't have to come through us. Just please learn. Please go through the experience and teach someone else. And it can be from, from, from your lens. It doesn't matter. You know, I'm just wanting to activate.

Do you have more team members working with you or is it just you and Cynthia? Yeah, we have, um, yeah, I have got, uh, we have a, we have a personal assistant. And uh which she helps a lot with our organization. I'm terribly organized. I'm not organized at all because I'm just like. You know, I have, I seemingly wanted to undo the military programming, which is very square. And I was awesome. I was a great soldier, very organized, and my psychedelic journey, I'm just like, whatever, like, I like fuck it all it all, fuck it all. Um, I mean, I guess I'm I'm, I'm I'm being a little negative. I'm, I'm pretty organized, but she just helps us to be more present with what we're trying to offer and not be in so much of the minutia. Um, and then we have someone else that helps us manage the, the, the, the, the books and operations, but other than that, it's just, it's just us. What's the next step in the vision for the church? Um, so we have in person right now is, uh, we're we're going to start building out more of our in-person retreats and doing more, um, yeah, more intentional gatherings. We did actually.

In 2023, which I want to launch again, we did a music, we call it music festival. It wasn't really a music festival. It's more like a, I'll call it wisdom festival. So where it was, it's called Inheogenesis, and it was here in Austin. We had 350 people show up, and the idea was it came, this idea came through a vision while I was on a flight to Vegas to meet with someone that was going to help us with the, with the building the church out in 2022, um. It was the idea was to bring everyone together, teach them, uh, different lineages of, uh, of, of working with medicines, but also like energetic practices, activation practices, and then, uh, crystallize it all together with dancing and celebration. And we did it. We did it in 2023 and, and throughout that that experience, we served. Uh, 350 people, mushrooms together in that experience. Yeah, it's it's still sylumethox and mushrooms, which These mushrooms, uh, don't produce the same physiological effects as psilocybin, um, a lot, a lot less or almost no visuals. It's more embodied, more feeling. And, um, at about 1 g, it's almost like MDMA.

So very, very nice. Yeah, so we, I've actually in a lot of instances replaced MDMA with these like in music festivals because, you know, rash. Can we talk about that for a second? So silent siloxin. So it's 5 MDO TMT infused into the substrate of the mushrooms as it's growing. Yes. So, so the, so the substrate, you know, you obviously, you, you spawn the, the spores into grain. And so then the grain goes into your, your substrate if you're going to bulk in a tub, right? And so the, the, the substrate is hydrated with water. So this water is, is, is doped with 5 amio DMT. And so, they essentially take up the water and it becomes a mineral. And so, because mushrooms are eating, uh, anything that has in the tryptophan line. And they've done this, you know, Joe Congatz did this in the 80s, where he fed mushrooms DET, which is a synthetic compound, and they took up the DET and made 4 H O D ET and diethyltryptamine. So it's just like an a serotonin analog. And so we took the same principles and applied it here.

And put 5MEO, which is in the tryptophan line of molecules and uh in the substrate, and it takes it into and uh alchemizes it and makes it a useful compound. And so, Yeah, when you take like a microdose of this, there's nothing, there's nothing at all. I mean, microdose is supposed to be sub perceptual anyway, but for me, uh, sometimes a microdose, I'm like, oh, I'm feeling like the walls start moving a little. There's, there's waves, like mushrooms are a little, you know, they're a little finicky. They're like, they'll do what they want to, yeah, you can take the same. Amount of a microdose one day and the next day and feel a completely different amount of waviness. Exactly. So it's true with sometimes a cup of coffee. Like sometimes coffee like doesn't really hit and you're like, fuck, today it's strong, right? Even though it's the same two shots, depends on what's going on in here in your body. Yeah, it goes back to that. So with these, there's less or no. Uh, visual projection at all. Like, I don't get the synesthesia. There's nothing breathing, no body load. No, it's, it's, it's more enlightening and more connected. So we use this kind of clear. Yeah, so, so we started a few years ago something in Austin called hykrodosing. So we have a had a big veteran group every Friday we would gather. Everyone would take a microdose of salmethoxin and we'd go hike. That's dope and hycrodosing, hyrodosing. I like that.

And then we've done it with mushrooms too, and sometimes it's like, with mushrooms though, for me at least, I go into processing. Like sometimes there's just like it's information coming. Yeah, you're going through everything. You're going through all the little memory banks and booklets and da da da. So with this, it's no processing. It's just like it thins or dissolves that separation because it's got 5MEO in it. So it's working in that system. So it's sort of, to me when I'm on hikes, I'm like, I can see like the plants are more vivid. I can see like, you know, small little things become fascinating, like the way roots are growing. It's just, it's, it's very interesting. It's like what you experience. At the tail end of mushrooms. Once you finally process and you're finally present, you're like, fuck, I finally went through all that shit. Now I'm like at the good part, right? Yeah, yeah. So, um, so that, that, so that, and then when you, when you dose it subsequently with regular mushrooms, uh, there's a tolerance, right? So if you take mushrooms today, take 1 g, you're going to feel it. Tomorrow you take 1 g, and you'd be like, barely feel it.

Because it, it, it, it desensitizes the receptor, it builds a tolerance. Well, with this, you can actually stack it. So throughout the day, you can even take more and it will intensify the experience. And the next day you can take it again, and you'll still have an experience. Exactly. Because the way the 5MEO is metabolized is different than regular, you know, uh, regular DMT or or or silicin. So this is a biotech I, I, I like. This is, this is a good this is the biotech of taking actual different substances and just blending them, you know, creating like a plum quat instead of a bioengineered. Vitamin C, you know what I mean? Nature, nature's going to make something, it's make it useful or it's not going to work, you know, and so, but it's, so it, it seems to have made something useful, and I, I can appreciate that that use. This is why it's been so hard to synthesize. So they did. So Mark Julia made it in, in France in 1965, sylumeth oxen, and that's it. He's like, oh, it was written that it, it, it degraded rapidly. It turned black.

And it's no different than psiloin, because silicin degrades very rapidly. That's why we have psilocybin, which is the prodrug. Prodrug essentially is, it's a phosphate group that's attached to the molecule, which actually preserves it from um oxidation. And oxidation is in the air, it's in the water. Um, and then, so, so this is the same. It, the, the mushroom is the only way that that anyone's been able to create it. At least as of now. And so who did you say created it? What was Alex Shulgin involved in that? Alexander Shulgin. No. So in 200, I believe 2006 or 2007, he was, uh, ask Alexander Shulgin or ask Shulgin website where people would ask him questions about chemistry. And he had mentioned in there someone asked about that or something like it, and he had mentioned that. Um, he would give even odds that if you put 5 MODMT on a cow patty that was impregnated with mushroom spores that you would get sylumeth oxen. And this was after, so he had been raided by the FBI years before this, and he had stopped. He stopped recording, writing, anything about psychedelics. And so, you know, what we believe is that because of that, you know, because of that shroud.

Out of fear that was in his life because of the government, he wasn't actually writing about things. So he was leaving, you know, breadcrumbs. And you know, there's, there's rumors that he was, he was messing with this in this way before that. And so someone asked, I'm like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So we just, you know, we went with that. That's cool. Now, is that a part of your church? Solemn Foxon? Yes, yeah, that, so that is, that is what, what we evolved from when we, when we, we were at the veteran Healing Church initially. I think we went all these different directions, but we were the veteran healing church, and then, um, my, my, my, my, my friend and, um, fellow, uh, co-founder of the church, uh, discovered that, that trail and had his mushroom grower at 5MEO, which we were using ad nauseam to the substrate. And then I went over to his house one day, he's like, hey, you want to take some mushrooms that were dope with 5MEO? I was like, absolutely bears in the woods 100%. So, so, so I took them. I'm like, oh yeah, these are super, super unique. This is not psilocybin at all. And, um, yeah, our other veteran friend who a Marine Corps veteran showed up and we gave him some as well. And he's like, Oh yeah, these are unique. So we dosed it for 5 days, like complete dieta cut cut everything out for 5 days. We dosed them different, different amounts, and these ended up being.

It was just, it was so different. Like I was clear, connected. It wasn't, there wasn't a lot of story coming through. It was just like being present. And, um, so the, the following weekend, actually, there was a veteran that I had worked with, um, when I served Buffo, and he had been in a blast and he had shrapnel all down his right side, like, and he was a constant pain, you know, every time he moved, you could see that he was in pain, because it's something would move inside of him and they couldn't remove it. So he was just like, uh, like always. So I took him on a hike, gave him these microdoses, and, um, within 15 minutes, he was like jumping up and down. He's like, oh my God, I've never felt like this. His body was like pain-free. And to me, I'm like, I thought to myself, myself, like, this is awesome. Like I need to tell other people. So I, I brought Ian out on the hike. I said, you got to see this, what, you know, see, see how this goes. And so we all went on a hike again, he's like experiencing all this like catharsis and feeling good in his body, and by the end of the hike, we're like, hey, do you want to be the first member of our church? We were like talking, creating this church as we're walking.

And we're like, oh, we got to make a church around this, like Church of Silent with Oxen is what we called it. And you can research it. There's a lot of controversy. That's why we're in this big lawsuit right now. Um, like we're gonna make a church around it because it's helping him and we need to protect it so we can help other people like him reconnect to themselves and, you know, shed this, this, this, all these, this pain body. And so he said yes, he was the first member because it takes, it really takes 2 people to launch a church, but really need 3 because you need someone who wants to be, would like to be a member, right? And so he's like, absolutely. So, you know, he was the first member. And, um, you know, from there, we just went down that, that rabbit hole of figuring out how to mass produce this and get it to people in, in, in a way that made sense. And we, you know, we went down, we went down that that was part of entheogenesis and entheogenesis was going to be our It's like our coming out church celebration, where we're going to have all this, all these different things together. And, you know, back even back then, I thought it was so important to connect teachings with these types of, of medicines and not because there needs to be a dogma, but just gives people the option to understand like what's happening and how to, how to work within themselves.

Definitely. What is the, what is the controversy? So in, so in 20, so let's see. Um, 3 days, 2 days before Theogenesis, you know, we had been marketing this event all over the place. It's 2023, 2023, yeah, two days before the before the event, there was a, um, a pre-print that was, that was created by, uh, Alexander Sherwood at UOA Institute that it was called Fungi Fiction, and basically they had taken our mushrooms and run them through a machine and not found anything but psilicin and psilocybin. And this was, I say a low resolution, um, mass spectrometer. So there's different, different resolutions where you can see, um, how, how much of something is in whatever you're measuring. And so this in the, in the, in the realm of, of, of machines is a lower resolution machine, but it didn't stop them from writing an article and publishing it two days before our event that we had been sharing and um really excited about. And, you know, we believe this was in, um, And collusion with some other bad actors who had been writing me personally, going back here in my mind, like on LinkedIn after we launched this, they're like, oh, yeah, I was messing with this. Like all these people were telling me that they were messing with this first, that I need to stop. I have a patent around it, like, all these interesting stuff. It was all untrue. But I'm like, I'm not fucking stopping. Like, I don't know who you think I am, but I don't think you did your homework, you know, and, um, So we just kept going, but, you know, Usona is a large, large company. And so, you know, we, we, we, we did the celebration, and then afterward, you know, we, we started to figure out how we could actually prove it out to, to, to fight against what they had said. And then subsequently they, you know, what we believe is, what was their purpose in trying to prove that it wasn't, well, so.

Um, Ian is an IP attorney. And so he explained to me, and it makes a lot of sense that companies, they want to create a moat around their, their IP. So essentially it's called, um, Man, I don't remember the name of the legal term, but basically they want to create other compounds that are similar and protect their main compound, right? And so UOA is researching to bring forward psilocybin, and actually researching 5MEO as well. And so, In the initial preprint, and this is a pre-print, this is not actual peer-reviewed. This is, any scientist can type, type this up, and at the very end, it says this was editorialized by chat GPT. It was literally, it was literally like proofread and edited and everything by AI. And so, at the end, it said there's no financial interest. UOA has no financial interest in this. And then, uh, a month later, a new version was uploaded that said UOA has financial interest.

In psilocybin research and other things. And so, but no one knows that one because they strategically, they only read the first one. So they strategically released the second one that was a corrected version, but nobody read it because the first one had already made waves. And so, yeah, so we, we In subsequent months, there was this, this, this organization, which I don't want to name them because I don't want to give them any, any airtime. Um, but they are essentially a, a really terrible, um, I don't even, they're not even journalists, but, uh, a lot of veterans and a lot of other psychedelic organizations, they, they're supposedly the ones that credited with the map's downfall, um, with their getting their stuff approved because they were just, They're just haters. They're just haters. And they, they wrote several articles about us, like personal stuff. And so we, we, we filed a lawsuit against them and Usona and other people for slander and, uh, being dishonest. I don't understand how they can try to create IP just around psilocybin.

Just because they're studying analogs, so they, so they created, so what do they care? Just like anybody who's doing anything, it's like you're not even, you just have a church. It's not like you're gonna become some billion dollar fucking pharma. Well, they, they someone knows something. Someone knows. Something. So they have a compound called, so sillomethoxin is 5MEO or 4HO5MEODMT. OK, it's 4 hydroxylated 5MEODMT. They created a compound called 4HO5MEDMT. So instead of the 5 MEO it's a 5ME. So it's instead of a methoxy group, it's a methyl group. That's the only difference. So if you look at, if you looked at like a layperson, you couldn't tell a difference. It's a, it's a, it's a tiny, tiny variation in the molecule. It's like what they used to do with ephedra, right? Yeah, start, start to start to change it. They're just. Trying to get rid of anything that's remotely closed closed so then they can dominate the market so they can dominate exactly. And so now you're taking away profits, kind of like the Amazon strategy. Well, and, and so someone destroy everybody except Amazon. So someone must have got to them because, you know, my, and it still is my.

You know, you don't want to always, you don't want to tell about, tell all the stuff before it's baked, but like my, my idea and this part of the idea behind the church is to get medicine to the people, not through a prescription model, but just to get it to them in an equitable, affordable way that is, uh, approachable to people and So that was what a monster this guy. That's, that's what Solomon ox represented to us. So we were like trying our, our damnedest, and we, we were getting, we were doing testing with all the different mushrooms we were using, and we had got where the psilicin, it started out at 0.08, so whatever the number was, and it got down to 0.01. In the mushroom. So like we got it lower, but the instrument they used is in, and of course if you're measuring something, you can always not find it. Like I cannot find water in this if I don't want to look for it, right? And so, We went on this, like, you know, you know, God bless Ian and his audacity to not quit, went on this multi-year, uh, search to find someone that was qualified to actually measure our stuff. And we've got, we went to universities, and we went to the USF University of South Florida, and, uh, our, we hired a scientist, a literal chemist to work for us, to help us develop the science so we can actually prove what we're doing.

And it was interesting because we hired a scientist and they're like, Charlatan Church, hire scientists to prove what's in their shit. I'm like, what the fuck? Like, how is that? It's just like, it's, it's, but they live in the Maya, they live in the illusion of their own story. So I'm like, OK, whatever, like they're just doing their thing. Um, so they found it, we measured it at USF immediately within minutes, Alexander Sherwood. A fewsona calls USF and starts, you know, starts berating them, and they threatened to fire the scientist if he helps support us, because they're all in bed with whatever the financial flow is to do research. So all these companies are in bed with universities. So, so once again, we're like, OK, let's figure this out again. And so we went on, kept, kept searching, kept searching, and then, uh, we got, we got hooked up with through, um, through our mutual connection with the US, uh, University of Alabama. So, uh, Beth Gardner, who is the, she was the chief of the forensic review, like the most respected forensic scientist, um, on the, I'll say on the planet, but at least in the United States, um, she, she basically dismantled the entire paper they had written and talked about all the different nuanced problems with it and how it didn't make any sense and how they didn't do any science really. Um, and then through her connection, Um, we were introduced to Jesse Hines, and Jesse Hines owns an independent laboratory with super high resolution machines and actually the, the know-how to operate them. He built, he's built laboratories for other universities and places that are very respected. And so he took our, our mushrooms and put them in his machines and found it. He's like, I found it really easily. He's like, I'm not, he's like, I'm surprised that other people haven't found this yet. And he measured it 12, now, now 13 different times.

And then he actually put it in the same machine that Usona used and found it. He said, so, he's like, something's off here. He's like, of course, what you could say is, it could be some other molecule with the same weight that I'm measuring, but then what he does is called fragmentation pattern. So you blow the molecule apart, and there's still certain parts of it that stay connected. And you can measure those in individual individual components and add up the different weights. And certain molecules, they have to, they, they, they, they, they blow apart in certain ways. And so he's blown these apart and has all these different fragments for different tryptamines and found that even even when you explode it, it's still there because of the way it's connected together, the skeleton would only represent this specific molecule. You know, I don't want to go into all these different weights because it's very, very scientific, but, um, yeah, he, he, he, he was saying it's hard to believe that no one's found it. So, obviously, you can intentionally not find things, especially if you're a a competitor. You can tell how much you care because If I was presented that situation, I may have given up. Like, because that's a lot of effort to go to protect your people. And so that just really shows me how much you care, like how, how deeply important it is. And it also tells me how we need more military guys in this space.

Because I don't think, uh, unless you have the resilience and the fortitude to keep pushing, you could easily just get, yeah, you have the government coming at you, right, and these big corporations that are actually more scary than government and you gotta continue to move forward, right? So, you know, thank you for what you're doing. Yeah, oh, thank you for that. Yeah, it's We're trying to help people. Well, I can tell that's it. We can tell it comes through. And if you sit, if you sit with somebody for an hour or two, you can tell if someone's full of shit or not, and you're dead like you're the real deal. So it's, it's tough because I tell myself sometimes I'm just like, and when, when a challenge arises, I'm like, man. But this is why we do this podcast is like can't stop. No one, you know, I don't hear any podcasts where people are talking about these interesting things and, you know, you have the like mainstream people rotating through podcasts, but it's like. Most of them are just selling bullshit, right? And it's like, there's people doing way more interesting things that are really moving the needle that no one knows about, right? And that's why, you know, the more we can share this kind of stuff and hopefully you get even more podcasts and whatnot.

We get people to, you know, help. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I definitely want to continue to inform. That's for sure. Last time, where can people check your stuff out, support, maybe join the church or just read more about the church? Yeah, the sacred synthesis.com, um, or school, S K 00 L.com/the sacred synthesis. Cool. And you know, that's the fastest way to get any information, um, connect with me, any, any, anything they want to know, you know, we're open book. There's nothing, nothing being hidden, so. Awesome, man. This has been amazing, man. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and all the research that you've done. It definitely comes through and, and your confidence and conviction in the way you want to help people. It's, it's inspiring, really. Thank you so much for having me. It was really great to have a conversation with you to come on a hike. Yeah, we got to come on a hiker dose. Absolutely. I'll I'll connect you in a signal group and yeah, we'd love to have you. We'd love to. Yeah, awesome. Thank you, brother. Yeah, thank you. Thanks.