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Transcript
Welcome back, happy holidays and Merry Christmas to everyone. I've had numerous listeners that reached out to me in the past couple months requesting more footage or episodes about my own experiences since, as everyone knows, I love upholding a space to help dissect and synthesize the worldclass performers and thinkers that I have on the show about their respective experiences, and I love learning from others. With that being said, I have a Christmas present for everyone.
I was recently interviewed on one of the top mental health podcasts in the United States called the Millennial Mental Health Channel. I talked in depthly about my own sexual trauma, why I believe in the power and the potential of psychedelic therapy, the research behind it, because the evidence and research is extremely robust since the 1960s. And what do people mean? So called accelerated healing.
I unpack all these topics relating to my own healing journey and this is actually the first time I openly and publicly disclosed about my own sexual trauma with the world. So this is a deeply, deeply meaningful episode to me personally, and I believe it is a much needed conversation. And I've already had listeners reach out from that episode and inspire me to share this on my own podcast.
And why I really believe psychedelic is a game changer and it's going to radically change the healing landscape for so many that's been battling and been plagued by different mental health and emotional health challenges. With that being said, this week is Christmas or holiday seasons for many and is filled with joyous moments, quality family time, and a lot of fu coma that's going to inevitably happen, which is great. At the same time, not all of us have families or loved ones we get to spend this holiday and Christmas seasons with.
To those, I want to say that you are not alone and you have others who are supporting you and cheering you on from afar. Please enjoy this week's special episode that I did with Millennial Mental Health Channel. Let's get this started.
Discover More podcast is for introspective thinkers with growth mindsets seeking authentic lifestorms. As a therapist, Benoit Kim highlights the magical relationship between healing and the optimal human experience of what we call life. Here is your mental health being a top priority today and every single day.
Let's get this started. Hello and welcome back to MMHC. This is episode 80 88, number 80.
We are super excited for today. We have an excellent topic. We have an excellent guest who goes by the name Benoit Kim.
He is a former policymaker turned therapist, a US. Army veteran, and the host of the podcast Discover More. Eddie and I just collaborated with Benoit and we had a great episode.
We had such a fun time. So please go and check out the episode that we did with Benoit and all the other episodes that he has on the Discover More podcast. His show was featured on Top Apple Podcast 200 chart twice in 2022 and recently became a top 2% globally ranked podcast.
He studied at UPenn to become a policymaker. Then, while on a near deployment in Korea, he had his first episode of depression, which sparked a personal and career change. He intends on becoming a psychedelic assisted psychotherapist in the future.
And when he told me about this, I knew immediately that's what we were going to be talking about on our podcast because I just love the topic of psychedelics. So everyone, and by everyone, I mean Eddie, please help me in welcoming Benoit Kim to the show. Benoit, welcome.
Thank you. Thank you. Really excited to pack 6 hours worth of bread and butter about psychedelics in 45 minutes.
So if there's any group of guys that can do it, I think it's us. I do want to make one comment before we start, and it has nothing to add to the show. Maybe a little bit earlier today when I was at work, we had, like, a staff meeting that we do, like, every couple of weeks.
And while I went to the staff meeting, one of the teachers came up and he looked at the counseling center staff, the counselors, and myself. He goes, I want to sit with the mushrooms over here. And I'm just like, what the hell does that even mean? And he looked at me, he's like, Get it? The fun guys.
All right, so it kind of relates. Not really. Just wanted to share that.
Let's get into it. And on that note, so, Benoit, kick us off. Tell us a little bit how you got introduced to the topic of psychedelics and why you're so interested in becoming a psychedelic assisted therapist.
Yeah, we're starting with the most probably important experience I've had in my 20s. So I share this in part because there is a difference between being traumatized and having a traumatic experience. And a quick trigger warning is involved sexual trauma during my college years.
I'm happy to share it now because I was able to work through this really difficult and vulnerable period of my life through the magical power of psychedelic assisted therapy, or psilocybin. So I entered this vindictive path because I was a Christian. I'm still am a Christian, and I was part of Greek life, and I didn't want to necessarily save my marriage for my partner, per se, at the time, in my early 20s.
But I knew I wanted to be hyper intentional with who I give my virginity or who I partake with. And this person, unfortunately, took advantage of me one time, and I woke up with the trauma on the other side. And that sort of catalyzed a series of events and behaviors I'm not very proud of.
I felt like I was a victim of my circumstances. I feel like she and the world did us dirty. And of course, sexual trauma is more common and pervasive among women.
At the same time about one in eight men get sexually assaulted and it's not something that's commonly talked about. So I'm happy to use my own personal experience to highlight the efficacy and the amazing capacity that psychedelic medicine do have in today. So that vindictive path lasted about until when I was in my mid twenty s and nothing helped.
Therapy didn't help, introspection didn't help, journaling didn't help. Until I came across this healer who agreed to do a facilitated psychedelic therapy experience. And I just put this as a context.
Before this eight hour session I hated this person and I became this version of myself that I'm not very proud of. Within 8 hours the next morning I had this profound reframe and this thought that I wonder how she's doing, maybe I should reach out and tell her that I forgive you. And I didn't follow through it because I forgot her last name and it was too much hard work.
But I wanted to forgive her, not for the sake of herself, but I wanted to give myself the permission to move on and leave this behind me. Not overcoming it, but moving through it. And through that I realized psychedelics and magic mushrooms cannot just be for party drugs and OOH.
Seeing all these colorways, it has to be something much more deeper than this. And I came across John Hopkins maps's, Research and psychedelics. They completed their third FDA trial recently and I realized, wow, this is a brand new world, how come the people in the world isn't talking about this? And that led me to my catalyst decision to become a therapist myself.
Also to leverage the amazing efficacy that psychedelics could bring to all those who need this help desperately. Damn. Been well seriously, we're not going to move forward yet.
I just want to say thank you. That's super tough to talk about. I mean, you get it, we all get it.
As mental health professionals, I never ask, and not that you're a client at all, but I never ask clients to, I just tell them whatever you feel comfortable sharing. So for you to share that with us, with our listeners, I hope our listeners, and I know they will, and I know they'll appreciate just how difficult that is to share that. So thank you so much.
Seriously, that we appreciate it a ton. Yeah, thank you. I really feel like it's an important topic that's not discussed enough, even though the stigma around mental health has resided a lot.
And it's cool that Gen Z especially and us being millennials really vanguarded that movement. But I came across an article about four weeks ago that says still about 50% of Americans view seeking therapy as being weak. So I think there's a lot more work to be done.
So I'm honored that you two are willing to host me with this experiences to really spread some hope that there is hope and there is help as long as you're willing to go through the discomfort and bear with the experience and the journey. Well, when you were given the stat, I thought you were going to say like 50% of Americans are still against psilocybin. Because I can see that, I could definitely see that as being the number.
It might actually be higher, it might be lower, I don't know. But given that idea and that thought, what is one of the biggest misconceptions that you've seen about psychedelic therapy? How do you address it? There's a fight basically going on, right, with psilocybin assisted treatment of like I was just reading an article before like getting ready for today of like, Oregon. We've talked about this like two years ago.
They passed where psilocybin assisted treatment could be legal in the state. Not much has really been put in place for it to start happening. Right.
It's been two years already and now it might be in jeopardy. I don't even know where it's at. And it's like there's almost like a fight and a push to educate people to be like, you're right, it's not just about the funny colors and the seeing sounds kind of thing and just tripping, just a trip.
It's a legitimate treatment that has a lot of backing to it. So how do we combat these misconceptions? What are you hearing? How do we address it? Yeah, I think Justin talked about this on our episode together, that a lot of people and healthcare professionals in the general public believe that's unfad, it's a temporary trend that's going to fade. That's not true.
A lot of evidence has been established. Not going to go too much into it since Justin already talked about it before. But I think the biggest misconception is that they view the molecule of psychedelics as the miracle compound that's end all, be all.
What I mean by this, a lot of people view like, therapy as, oh, if I see a therapist, all my problems will disappear and my life will be upgraded automatically overnight. That's not the case because integration is what make therapy work. And as we talked about, therapy is simply an avenue to self explore, self uncover, and to think about how we can learn ways to get unstuck from being stuck, whatever that stuck means.
Likewise, psychedelics is just a bridge. It's an avenue to get to where you want to go, but it's not the destination, it's a journey. What I mean by that is you have to work with the facilitator, a healer or a licensed therapist to guide you through the experienced, to guide you through the profound insights that emerged throughout this trip.
And then based on the uncovered insights through the facilitations by an expert, then you have to integrate and think about how that applies to your everyday life. Otherwise you have the best 8 hours of your life through colorways insights, hallucinations and then you just go back to your daily routine like nothing happens. You're going to refer to your baseline of normacy and that's just a waste of like $60 and 8 hours of color waste, right? There is rules, there is instructions, there is guidelines that you have to follow and I don't think a lot of people see that.
You're absolutely like it's not just a magic pill or whatever. You don't just take it and you're good to go. It is a legitimate treatment that is intentional.
Probably the main word that goes along with it is a guided trip. To echo what Benoit said, so many people think like, oh yeah, you just do a bunch of mushrooms and go off into the woods and have a spiritual awakening. But no, you are with someone, you are with a guide and it is a structured thing.
And I think the Johns Hopkins people have been the biggest proponents of creating those flight instructions to make sure that the trips have the least amount of complications as possible. I do have a quote from the actual flight instructions from Bill Richards and this is something that the guide is actually supposed to tell the participant. So this is an actual quote from the actual flight instructions, but it says you may experience a deep and transcendental experience.
You may have feelings of the loss of oneself, experience a sensation of rebirth or even death. You may experience a feeling that you have ceased to exist as an individual and are connected to the world or the universe. If you experience the sensation of dying, melting, dissolving, exploding, going crazy, et cetera, go ahead, experience the experience.
Remember that the death and transcendence of your ego or your everyday self is always followed by rebirth and return to the normative world of space and time. Safest way to return to normal is to entrust self unconditionally to the emerging experience. So I love that part.
I think that's just the perfect quote. To summarize what the flight instructions and what the guide is supposed to be. I think to have a question for Benoit, you said that your trip and your guided trip lasted about 8 hours.
Go through the details a little bit more with me. What did you notice, what was going on in your mind? What thoughts did you have? What did you find particularly healing about the experience? So there is a lot of intricacies there, right? But generally speaking, MDMA lasts a little bit shorter than Psilocybin depending on the settings and the control dosage. Of course there are risk factors, so please consult with your physicians to make sure you're even eligible to partake in this healing modality because it works, but it's not for everyone.
How it works is I come up, I have a lot of recreational experiences, wink wink, if you know what I mean. So my threshold in the capacity for psychedelics were higher than the average consumer, so to speak. So I took about a gram, 1.5
grams, which is about ten times the normal micro dosage. The recommended dosage is usually 25 milligrams or ten milligrams, depending on how new the person is. And we set the intention and I submit a playlist that I want to listen to throughout the experience because music and every little thing matters for those six to eight hour period.
And we agree upon an intention, we agreed upon the playlist and we did like a pseudo flight instructions. The guided person just told me that, hey, here are some of the things to look out for. You may feel like you're not in control.
Your reality might shatter. You might see some unexplainable things. You might have trains of insights 50,000 miles every minute that comes at you.
You may forget how to speak. You may forget the most basic motor skills under the influence. So I had a very healthy expectations to go into it because I've done it before but never guided.
And I think it reminds me of when I did it recreationally. I almost have to just survive if I had an Eric Bad trip or if it was overwhelming through the lights and just overstimulation. But having a person, it's like a grounding pillar.
This person will literally walk you through and talk you through the entire experience. That's why it's not the cheapest, because you're paying for 8 hours of hard labor and love for them to sit through your experiences together at the same time anytime you feel panicked or you feel like the world is out of control, because that's what it feels like at times. It's a reality shattering moment.
And ego death happens because of that. Often. The best thing that I heard from him is that Benoit remember that you are in control in terms of how you want to feel.
And all of these are happening inside of your mind at the same time. Paradoxically, you're not in control. You have to let go and accept and feel the feelings and experience the experience as the flight instructions quote you said.
And that was a game changer when I realized, oh, I can't control how this goes, so might as well surrender and let go and see what happens on the other side. And I think that's what really clicked and helps for me. This is so deep and existential.
I'm like, damn, I don't know if I'm ready for all this. It almost feels like this experience, the experience or the feelings and all that is like principles of act and stuff. So that's like acceptance and commitment therapy.
That's cool. I appreciate you sharing that, this real story that's so like and I don't even want to say the word like trippy because I almost feel like that lessens the importance or the legitimacy of a Psilocybin or Psilocybin assisted treatment. But it just feels so like, yeah, like existential.
That's cool. It is absolutely existential in a lot of different ways. And one of the ways that I've heard it described as is it allows you to make so much more progress in therapy, so much faster, and it allows you to see so much more.
And to be honest, in our world these days we're all about instant, we're all about instant gratification. And therapy takes time and a lot of people don't want to dedicate an hour a week for 1520 weeks to do a full course of therapy. And that's one of the reasons why psychedelic therapy is so enticing is because it is so much faster than what we have right now.
And in a lot of ways from the data that we have so far, it's a lot more potent, it's a lot better of a treatment to kind of give you a comparison of the typical treatments that we have in mental health. So typically we use effect sizes when talking about how good treatments are at making an effect or causing an effect. Usually the range is mild, effect is like a zero three, moderate is around a zero five.
And a high effect size is around zero eight. To give you an idea, SSRIs are typical antidepressant medications, is like a zero three. So the actual effect on reducing depression, reducing anxiety is mild at best.
ECT, which is our absolute best treatment that we have. Most studied treatment for depression, effect size is a 0.8. So it's a high effect size.
We know it works. But I looked at a meta analysis from 2021 from Luoma et al. That found that the effect size of psychedelic therapy was around 1.2,
so even significantly higher than ECT. So that's one of the things that's so exciting about psychedelic therapy is that not only is it fast, you only need it once or at least one dose at a time for months at a time. And it has the potential to be way better than anything we have right now.
So I want to turn it over to Ben WA and ask him about what are your thoughts in terms of why is this such a groundbreaking therapy and why are you such a big believer in it in your own personal reasons? Yeah, so that's a great question, but before I answer that, I want to lean into the accelerator analogy you talked about. I think the way I think about this is a lot of people do view psychedelics as shortcuts. The reason why lottery is a thing or powerball is a thing, because there's always enough people that want shortcuts to success or instant fame or money.
But the reality is if you guys know anyone that's an accelerator program for coding or any professional development, accelerator programs are intense AF, it requires a lot more work, a lot more stress, a lot more hours, it's a lot more rigorous and intensive versus a regular program. That's how I want to reframe and ask the listeners to view psychedelics through. Yes, it does accelerate the healing at a rapid pace.
At the same time it requires increasingly and significantly more effort to integrate the set insights. And I just want to start with that very quickly. Yeah, but I think that ties into my answer, right? That's how I view psychedelics and that's why I believe in the Avenue so much, but without being too nerdy, get nerdy with it, it's okay.
So one of the contributing mechanisms for psychedelics, these are a lot of speculations and theories and people write theories and people are flawed, so theories are flawed. Just to put it out there. But one of the mechanism behind PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder is actually ontological shock.
Ontology is a study of reality, our perceptions, reality, and a lot of ontological shock happens in PTSD which makes them their reality breaks through a very traumatic experience like deployment or otherwise, and they're unable to resume to their own reality based on the experience. So that's all. PTSD happens on a very general broad stroke, same mechanism of ontological.
Shock happens and occurs during a psychedelic experience. That's what allows a breakthrough in accelerated pace. But remember what I said earlier? It's accelerated.
Because your worlds and your reality is being shattered and destroyed in 100 full speed versus you go through three years of therapy or 15 to 20 weeks of therapy. And for that, a year or a year and a half, your reality gets shattered, broken, adjusted, updated. And now you can go back to your life as an improved version of yourself.
So you're shrinking that into eight hour to two to four sessions. Imagine the impact. And I hope that answers the questions somewhat directly.
Hell yeah. That was dope my good. You made a fan out of Eddie? Yeah.
Holy shit. Like your analogy. Damn, this is like perfect if I can understand it.
There's a lot of people that are now understanding it, so this is awesome. Hell yeah. Benoit, do not ask if that answered the question.
It definitely did. I really love the Avenue of psychedelics and anytime I come across friends or fellow because my partner is a physician, so I'm friends with most people at Kaiser in La. And every time you with them, we just geek out and I literally talked to them for like an hour and a half about psychedelics and then I was like, wait, why didn't you call me off? We'll be here for the next 4 hours, until midnight on a Tuesday and we have to wake up at five.
But I really believe in the avenue because I've experienced it, I know countless people have experienced it and the research supports it. Of course, we're not just data, we're more than data, we're more than the sum of its parts. At the same time, it really works for those who are eligible based on the health criteria like I talked about.
Yeah. One thing that I'm thinking about as you're sharing all this is how much treatments, therapy, people getting help. It's so numbers based, I guess, or people won't believe it unless there's the objective data.
But I feel like this, I guess, like therapy in general. But so much of what you're sharing today, it has the numbers, it has the objective data, but it also has this subjective anecdotal piece that I think is super impactful and that I think people being able to hear that part on top of the numbers makes it like almost a no brainer for some people. Like, yeah, why wouldn't we want to support this? Why would we not think that this is helpful? Look at the numbers and listen to what Benoit is saying.
Like this sounds amazing. So I just think it's a really cool intersection of the objective subjective data anecdotal pieces that Justin, he is the numbers guy, I'm the anecdotal guy. So now you're just like throwing us together and putting it in a way that's so easily digestible.
So I just wanted to acknowledge that I think that's pretty cool. Stats and facts, right? Yes, and it's so true. So much of the medical world, the data's got to be flawless, there's got to be multiple studies, it's got to be recreated, which is important.
We need that evidence based medicine. But one of the biggest criticisms of psychedelic therapy that you heard all the time and luckily it seems to be going away now that more and more data is coming out. But the main criticism always tended to be, well, there's no controls.
There's no controls in these trials. It's really hard to create a control group in a trial with psychedelics because if you take a psychedelic, you tend to know and if you don't get the psychedelic, you tend to know that you didn't get it. So it's really hard to control.
But either way they were seeing that the people who took the psychedelics had this huge effect on depression, anxiety, substance use. And in my mind it's like it doesn't really matter if there's a control or not because the perception to those people was that there was a huge change and it did end up being lasting change in a lot of those people as well. So I don't think that criticism really holds up.
But that was what people were really clinging to for the longest time. Yeah, and like, the psychedelics is a very versatile compound, right? Like SSRIs doesn't really work with anxiety, it works somewhat with depressions. Although 30 to an hour of rigorous workout or running produces amount of similar serotonin release as SSRI does.
Why I share that because a lot of artists could micro dose too, for creativity's sake and emerging phenomenon and established evidence with psychedelic phenomenon is creativity or increasing of creativity that's been studied and documented. So that's real. The second thing is it creates a neural reset, like helps in neuroplasticity.
It makes your brain more malleable because as we get older, we're like a CPU machine, kind of slows down a little bit, we get blue screens of death. Sometimes if you didn't get enough sleep, you're just a malfunctioning left and right. And I do psychedelic psilocybin at least once a year.
I'll be doing in December soon I will do a controllable dosage. And what it does is, yes, it helps with the intention and yes, it helps with the healing and yes, it's a cool, amazing experience with a lot of colorways and a lot of cool insights and things like that. And it helps releases some of the neurotoxins that's in your brain.
And I'm sure Justin could talk more about that too, because a lot of these substances or behaviors or things we consume leave some residues of toxins in our brains over time. And it's not that big of a deal if you get your sleep well because in your sleep, obviously your neurons are working hard to clean those and release those as toxins. But if you have poor sleep habit and your CPU is malfunctioning and you're having blue screens of death often and you can't quite get your sleeping hygienes or your behaviors together yet due to different circumstances because life is tough.
For sure. You can use this as, like an air, quote accelerated way to instantly release and reset your neurotoxicity level with one session. And I do that religiously.
And the effect of this is also documented well in evidence and literature as well. In the world of science, in the world of mental health, there is a lot of really good data. Most of what we're talking about is macro dosing.
So using a high enough dose that you feel the effects of the psychedelics. There is less actual studies and data on the effects of micro dosing, but there are lots of good subjective stories of people saying that it has helped significantly with creativity. As far as I know, just because I know.
Benoit, you're always up on the data. Are there more studies coming out about micro dosing and the benefits of it more than before, but not really. It's similar to how do you prove how potent and edible is now with being more legalized.
There's more regulations and guidelines and they're able to scale it by regulating it. But micro dose, we're not quite there yet because you guys remember when marijuana was first legalized or decriminalized in certain states, a lot of people are going to hospitals because their edibles were way too potent for them to handle. So I think that's an issue that we still have to work through.
But there is incredible wealth of documented anecdotal evidence and some scientific evidence suggests that micro dose still works to a lighter extent. And this just hit me, but my brain is firing because this is my jam. I love fire away.
The best analogy. I heard this from Mind Valley by the. Founder vision.
It's a great educational format. Mind Valley, he talks about using the analogy of operating system for our brains. Like how often do we upgrade the operating systems of our MacBooks or Microsoft or whatever? You have to even with your phones, you have to upgrade, even though I just upgraded my phone and the battery is killing me, but that's a different story.
But you have to update it constantly. Right, that makes sense. We're like, oh, okay, we get that we're millennials, we understand, but how often do we upgrade our operating system? Whether that's our worldview, that's our perceptions, whether it's our rigidity, our flexibilities, our ability to be receptive towards the information, our operating system is not that great, let's be honest for most of us.
A lot of us can't even shower twice a day and brush our teeth properly, let alone operating our internal world map. And I think psychedelics on a micro dose level is a great way to incrementally and on a very tiny level and a very safe level to upgrade your operating systems little bit by little bit. But if you have enough comfortability and experience, obviously larger doses can go from Windows 95 to like, I'm a MacBook user, so I don't know what the newest addition to Microsoft is, but I think it's Windows Eleven.
I don't know. I have a PC at work. I think it's eleven, I don't know.
Stop counting. You made an excellent point there about rigidity and for some reason it's fascinating to me that humans can get so rigid in their thinking. And I think it's a product of biology, it's a product of society, it's what we're taught.
But so many people get so rigid and especially rigid in their egos to the point where people will defend themselves to try and protect their ego and they'll prevent themselves from changing or making changes or noticing things that they have to change in their life because their ego can't accept that they were wrong. That's one of the proposed mechanisms of how psychedelics actually work is that it disrupts your default mode network so that you have to refigure out how to fix things. And like you said, your reality shatters, your ego shatters.
And then you have to put yourself back together again in an objective way. And when you put yourself back together again intentionally, you can put yourself back together again in a way that you like in a way that fixes some of those things. That your ego was stopping you, your ego was making you too rigid to look at yourself honestly.
Brilliantly said. And actually brings up another analogy that just popped up. I swear I didn't micro dose before this interview.
This is just me. Wouldn't judge you if you did. Completely fair if you did that's.
Okay, yeah, this is just me on a typical Wednesday night just by being with friends. But does everyone remember the paper straw thing that kind of pulls in your fingers together. Little finger traps? Yeah, the finger traps, right.
So what happens when you pull away from each other? It gets tighter and tighter and you're stuck. That's all I have, your rigidity. A lot of people want to double down on their warview because they feel safe and comfortable, but that's what they're doing.
They're pulling their fingers apart, and it's actually getting tighter and tighter and tighter. The only way to unstuck that is you actually bring your fingers back together, aka surrendering and letting go, or at least taking a step back. But I think a lot of people do struggle with that because of biology, as you said, and because of environments and because of their upbringing.
And I mean, who doesn't want to feel comfortable? I don't want to deal with pain. I don't want to talk about my trauma. I don't want to see a therapist as a man, as Justin talked about in the show, but I want to get unstuck and I want to optimize, and I want to improve my well being so that I can show up better for everyone that I love.
Because I have to be 100% to be the 100% that my loved one needs, especially now that I'm engaged, my fiancee needs me, you know what I'm saying? So that's how I view healing. And that's the reason why I really believe in psychedelics and why we need to do the work, whatever that work means, however painful that work could be. We have to do the work to the best of a responsibility, tying into how self, compassionate, and gracious Eddie's central messages are to the best of your ability.
Do the work, and you'll be surprised by the magic that awaits on the other side. I'm a firm believer of that statement. Did we talk about do we shout out Benoit for getting engaged recently? I don't know if we did, so we're going to take a second to do it.
So shout out, Benoit and his fiance were engaged recently. I like how you stuck that in there so we have to acknowledge it. I really like what you said, and I'm trying to take it back and connect it to the teens.
Justin and I work primarily with teens, and I see it at the school that I'm at or in other settings that I've been in where there is that. Well, I don't want to put myself out there, or I don't want to do something that's different because I just don't want to mess up or I don't want to. When it comes to the topic of making friends and even myself and other people, you get really comfortable with your friend.
And I don't mean to say that I need to move away from my friends, I love my friends, but it's just like when you're younger, you get that you're comfortable with who you're with, and you don't really want to change because you think it'll be really uncomfortable. And then when it's like, okay, how do I make friends again? I don't know. It's been a long time.
Like, I've had the same friends since elementary, middle school, and then the suggestions of like, oh, join a club, do a sport, talk to someone at lunch is like, hell no, that's uncomfortable as fuck. Why would I want to do that to myself? Why would I put myself in that situation? But yeah, I think you're absolutely right. The rigidity and staying the same is that tightness of the finger trap really having a grip on us.
And it's not until we almost not give up, but not until we're open to a new experience or trying something different or new information where we can be freed of this rigidity. Yeah, it doesn't quite fit, but I'm going to try to make it fit super quickly. Where do you guys remember the memes when we were in early college, maybe like five to eight years ago, about when people are like, oh, it's a lot of women.
Of course this is a joke on a meme, but a lot of women are like, oh, I don't have a lot of high expectations for a man. They just have to be rich, handsome, successful and loving. I was like, Hold on a minute.
So which one is it? You have no expectations or you want a perfect guy in a white shining armor to show up on a horse? You can only pick one. And that's kind of what I sense from what you said, Eddie, where you have to pick a side because life's about trade offs often compromise. Boom, done.
I think, Eddie, you're so right. People don't want to be uncomfortable, and that's a natural human reaction. And I loved that Benoit used the finger trap analogy because I say that to kids all the time, especially my kids who are admitted to the hospital, and they're just like, they're so angry and they want to get out.
And I'm just like, the best way to get out is to just give in, work with your therapist, try and learn as much as you can, try and better yourself as much as you can, because the more you fight it, the more you resist it, the more it clamps down on you. So I'd love to hear and you use that same analogy, but I think that's kind of going back to misconceptions as to why people don't want to be open to psychedelics, that people don't want to be uncomfortable and the idea of doing something different, the idea of being out of control, the idea of your entire reality melting in front of you is uncomfortable. Absolutely.
But that creates so much healing and creates such an area where you are open to more healing. And the data from a lot of the studies on the guided trips that say if you have the right mindset and the right physical setting. And if you have a guide, the rate of a bad trip is actually pretty minimal.
I can't remember the exact number off the top of my head, but it's somewhere around 1%. It's pretty small. And even if you do have a bad trip, I just read an article on this, it was like something like over 50% of people still found that to be an incredibly eye opening and important experience in their life as well.
So being open to something uncomfortable sometimes is what you have to do to make the change that you need in your life. This might be a controversial statement, and if you guys receive any hate and the heat redirect them to my way, I'll receive all the heat from this. From what I'm about to say, I don't think that bad trip is a thing.
Like, colloquially, yes, you have a bad air quote trip where it's not what you expected. The shattering reality was too hard because it's very dramatic. Not to sound dramatic, but it's very dramatic and because of their urge to retain their control of this unknown experience, which is funny to even say it out loud, that's when this bad trip happens, because they can't integrate.
What is this experience? Where are these colors? Where are these shapes in the sky? I can see another world when I close my eyes. None of this makes sense. Someone helped me, and they want to double down on their control.
But the more you try to control of the unknown, unknown really kicks you in the ass. Many folds. So I feel like even with bad trips, I think it's more about the trips that were unpleasant to your expectations versus having an actual bad trip, per se.
But I really stand by that because I've had numerous air quote bad trips. But when I journal about it, when I did some Google University research of what does this mean? What did I just experience? I can usually take something away and integrate it to my life. And then I was like, wow, that was incredible.
I don't know what the fuck that was, but I want to do it again. And gradually, over time, you build the level. And in my case, I built up enough courage and comfortability and exposure to have my life changing, truly and healing journey that I had through my psychedelic experience.
I'm thinking of this is stupid. I'm thinking of the great start. What's the line? I got it.
Hold on. It's like, don't be sad because it's over. Be happy that it happened.
Or something very loosely is like, similar and related of like, yeah, it happened. You still had the experience, and you still have the opportunity to make changes and come back from it. And that experience can still shape you in a quote unquote positive way or a different way that may work out better for you.
So kind of close, kind of not close. I see some head nodding so I'm going to take that. I like it.
Great buy in, great buy in. We're getting already towards the end of our time, I think. Let's talk future stuff.
So I know we talked a little bit about Oregon two years ago passing their psilocybin bill. Colorado just voted on legalizing psilocybin and won with 52% of the vote. So that's now two states and the District of Columbia, I believe, that have at least decriminalized it.
In Colorado, the new law allows for the use of psilocybin at state regulated sites called healing centers. So I'm excited to see if that actually translates into actual healing centers where people can sign up and go do this. It also legalizes personal use, growing and sharing of psilocybin, DMT mescaline and adults over the age of 21.
Commercial sale is still illegal, so it's not going to be like the cannabis industry where all of a sudden these major corporations are dumping millions of dollars into growing as much weed and selling as much weed as possible, which I agree with. I'm glad they didn't do that with psilocybin. States like Oklahoma and Texas are drafting legislation to explore psychedelic research.
Around 60 different bills within the past couple of years have been introduced in the United States to research psychedelics, but most of them never actually go to a vote. That's why the Colorado one was such a big deal. So what's timeline, what's future, what do you see this as? Do you see it continuing to be something of a back room practice with healers? Does it become more mainstream? What do you think? Projections into the future? Use that frontal lobe.
Anything I just about to say could be wrong tomorrow, a month from now, so please don't hate me for it. This is all fun and games and educated guess. I just want to start with that disclaimer.
I am actually pretty concerned about the current psychedelic renaissance. We're in air quote as a lot of people talk about it and we briefly touched that on our episode together. Episode 115.
What I mean by that is there's a lot of talking heads who want to hop onto this trend of the popularity or increasing popularity of psychedelics. A lot of people getting interviewed, a lot of people advocating themselves at this holistic psychedelic gurus. If you call yourself a guru, you're probably fake.
Guru is bestowed upon you don't call yourself a guru, right? Often. And because of that I feel like a lot of the real evidence and healing potentials are overshadowed by all these social media, all these exposure, all these renaissance with all these talking figures. And I think in terms of science we're finally catching up since the halt since the 60s by Nixon admin.
At the same time I think the legal or the policy arms, as a former policymaker, we are very behind Tim Ferriss who is a huge advocate for psychedelics, and maps through John Hopkins. A lot of them talk about the science is here period. At the same time the policy and infrastructure to support the science is not here.
Harvard Law School created their first psychedelic research legal center, I think about a year and a half or two years ago. My timeline could be a little bit loose after the pandemic and their effort is to help spearhead and support the ever expansive science beyond psychedelics, which is amazing, right? Especially like an entity. Like Harvard Law School.
Stepping up. But as we both know, or as we all know that colleges tend to be more liberal, especially like Harvard and a lot of Ivy Leagues. So I'm afraid that this enthusiasm by the public is a little bit skewed and it's actually not representative of the actual perceptions and actual enthusiasm of psychedelics.
I know I didn't answer your question whatsoever, so I'll answer your question super briefly. I feel like we're going to see some explosion about psychedelic research. A new article is coming out literally every week on psychedelics is wild and it's awesome for people like us who like to nerd out.
At the same time, I think the gap between research and policy is only going to expand at this current rapid expansions of research versus the stagnant and unchanging policy aspect and I think that's going to create some negative ripple effect that's unforeseeable. In addition to Big Pharma now they want a piece of the game and they got a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of resources, they got everything. So once her intervenes into this, I know for a fact it's going to taint the purity of this medicine that I truly, truly love and believe in.
And yeah, I'm a little bit concerned about that. At the same time I'm also aware of the nuances that Big Pharma does have their resources so they can be that springboard to really help launch this helping and life saving medicine. So I feel very conflicted but I'm hopeful about the future as I tell people that if you're born anytime after 2000s, you're born into greatest era period and the people who are born in 2050s, they're born into greatest era period.
So I think on an overall societal level, I really believe, and I'm saying this because I'm very cynical through my policy experience, so I'm saying this in part for myself as well. But I think at large, society is swinging towards the right directions and the journey may not always be easy, but I think the outcome will be worth it. And when that day comes, I think a lot of millions and millions of people's lives will be changed and saved like my own.
And I'm really excited that we are in the midst of this exciting time. Honestly, it's very, very exciting to be alive in this very period where we're old enough that we can actually venture or talk about these things. And hopefully we can be the mentors and the elders, so to speak, in this era, like 2030 years on the road and parse some needed insights, wisdom and support for the next generation.
But I'm very hopeful overall, but I do have some concerns here and there. Damn, Benoit, are you tired of blowing Eddie's mind? I think what's cool about this, like, not just today's episode, but just the the whole we we've all three of us have shared about our our podcast journey, you know, and since meeting each other. But I think what's really cool about all of this is just that we get to, like, continually learn while having, like, a good ass time, like, recording and putting out content and, like, having people that, like, listen to it and enjoy it.
So I feel like I learned so much today, and it's like one of those things where you get that excitement and, like, man, I got to read more. I need to look this up more often. I want to look this up more often.
This is really cool. So thank you. I want to say thank you for doing that for us, for sharing with us, for having us on your show and not coming on our show.
Just thank you. Benwa. I appreciate it.
I know Justin appreciates it. Yeah, I appreciate, obviously, the affirmations and yeah, I still can't believe there's all these people who choose to listen to us. It blows my mind that this passion project that I started with Friends three years ago is becoming this thing with listeners from 21 different countries.
I just saw that wrapped by Spotify. Yeah, it blows my mind, truly. But I think the real cherry on top.
No, I think that's the cherry on top. I think the real appetizer and the main dish is the connections we build. One of you live in Omaha, one of you live in Oregon.
I live in La. When could we possibly ever meet? Go to a bar? That doesn't make any sense. I know Bumble has Making New Friends feature, so maybe through Bumble in a different lifetime.
But yeah, it's insane. And I always used to feel a little bit lonely because I feel like, where can I find people that can talk about everything with in a very mindful, intentional way where the attention is dying fast? And through podcasts, I found that avenue and I found I think I've interviewed 85 people by this point. And not everyone's friends, of course, but a good portion of those people, they're wiser than I am.
They're smarter, they're more accomplished, they have more experiences. But do you see the humility? I know, Eddie, you're joking around, but your humility and your compassions and our ability to willing to initiate and make new connections despite the fear of rejections and all this fear we all have, tying back to your earlier conversations, it's amazing. And this is what I live for.
I hate the SEO, I hate the distributions, I hate the marketing. But these conversations every week is why I'm excited to hop on after a long ass freaking day at work, since all of us do more than just this, right? I'm honored, and I really appreciate you guys for having me. Seriously.
We're honored to have you, sir. And I know we talked a little bit about what you're involved in, but yeah, this is your shot to give the listeners, how can they find you and how can they get in touch with your content? Everyone come to my platform. Only reason I'm here is to plug.
All these are just the cherry, of course. But joking aside, I'm really passionate about mental health. That's how all three of us were connected, through mental health.
I really feel like what Eddie shared on my show about mental health is health. I know that's Justin and Eddie's mission statements, that's also my mission statements. So if you're interested in what I talked about, if you feel like I'm not too esoteric or too weird, I'm not being too deep for no reason, because I definitely could be too deep at times.
Not everything has to be too serious, right, in life? Because life's already plenty serious. If you're interested, you want to check out Eddie and Justin's, episode 115 and bunch of other amazing, amazing people that I question, why did you say yes to be on my show? I don't deserve you. But I'm glad that they did.
So check me out and check out the content that we have on Discover More Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, apple podcast, or wherever you receive your favorite dosage of podcast. If you want to connect with me, send me some messages, bring these conversations offline, or ask me a lot more questions about psychedelics, mental health, everything in between. Shoot me a message on Instagram at discover more podcast and discover more means, discover more insights, discover more life stories, and discover more practical insights for mental health.
Because I really believe that all of us walk this path of life together. So why not make it a little bit less suffering a little bit easier by leaning on to each other? Oh, yeah. Thank you, Benoit.
Again, thank you so much for coming on the show. All of this stuff will be plugged on our posts, on our episodes, on our Instagram, all that good stuff. So we will be sure to make it as accessible as possible.
Justin, I'm playing this out. We are done for today. This is too much mind blowing for me.
Thank you guys for listening. Thank you, as always, for supporting. We saw our Spotify wrap today.
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