Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Natalman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of I Heeart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed as
Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
Speaker 1: even represent my own and nothing contained in this show
Speaker 1: should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use
Speaker 1: any type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. Today's guest is
Speaker 1: Dmitri Gainness. Dmitri, I have to say, among all our guests,
Speaker 1: he's got to have one of the most fascinating lives
Speaker 1: I have ever encountered. I've known Dmitri felt fifteen years.
Speaker 1: We've been friends for quite a while. If you look
Speaker 1: around on what these are the labels you see to
Speaker 1: describe Dmitri, right, you know, activist, anarchist, community organizer, poet
Speaker 1: and musician. The face for many people of I be
Speaker 1: gained treatment. He's a harm reduction worker, he's a drug
Speaker 1: positive form activist. He's a former heroin and cocaine addict. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, spiritual healer in the weaky tradition. What can
Speaker 1: I say? Dmitri, thanks so much for coming on Psychoactive.
Speaker 1: I think when you and I first met it must
Speaker 1: have been a fifteen years ago, you know, And I've
Speaker 1: been intrigued by I be Gain since the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: And then I meet you and you're this charming guy,
Speaker 1: and you explained to me what you're up to and
Speaker 1: you're doing, and how it worked for you and all
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff. For those of our listeners who
Speaker 1: don't know, there many people have been addicted to heroin
Speaker 1: other drugs who have just found I began like a
Speaker 1: miraculous cure for them. And then I remember you were
Speaker 1: speaking at the two thousand and seven Drug Policy Alliance
Speaker 1: Biennial down in New Orleans. You've given this talk to
Speaker 1: the people away, and I put you up on the
Speaker 1: closing planary and you blew people away again. So with
Speaker 1: I be Game, which I really you know, you moved
Speaker 1: beyond in many ways, But just tell me about your encounter,
Speaker 1: what I be Gain and why this plays such a
Speaker 1: pivotal role in your life for so many years. Sure,
Speaker 1: when we met, I was probably a few years off
Speaker 1: of heroin. And I don't like to use the word
Speaker 1: clean because it connoucts that you know that I was dirty,
Speaker 1: But I begain. I guess I'll just started at sort
Speaker 1: of the beginning of the end of my relationship with
Speaker 1: cocaine and heroin. I was a twenty year I V.
Speaker 1: Drug user, and what started as exploration fun and also
Speaker 1: a way to anesthetize my pain took over my life,
Speaker 1: and so I was really sort of towards the end
Speaker 1: of my rope. I went from being an activist and
Speaker 1: an artist and a musician to living in my parents
Speaker 1: basement back and Detroy, to move back from New York
Speaker 1: and doing about two worth of heroin and cocaine today.
Speaker 1: I was on the method of program as well at
Speaker 1: the same time, and I was just waking up every
Speaker 1: day and wanting to kill myself. I was parking cars,
Speaker 1: I was a valet, and I was hustling in various
Speaker 1: different ways to make that too in her books. But
Speaker 1: I've known about I began through the work of activists,
Speaker 1: the work of Dana Biu actually the mad Plastizer, the
Speaker 1: yippie pot activists who will not shut up about ibergine,
Speaker 1: and so I'm back in Detroit in my parents basement.
Speaker 1: My common law wife had died pregnant. My world was
Speaker 1: getting smaller and smaller, and I saw no way out,
Speaker 1: and I reached out actually to Dana, and he hooked
Speaker 1: me up with a few people, and I found myself
Speaker 1: in Holland, just outside of Amsterdam. My family cobbled every
Speaker 1: dime they could get together. They were going through some
Speaker 1: financial issues at the time. And I got there and
Speaker 1: I worked with Sarah Glatt in her farmhouse outside of
Speaker 1: Holland with five kids running around. So I went from
Speaker 1: the streets of Detroit to like, you know, fucking windmills,
Speaker 1: you know, But I took it. It was an incredibly
Speaker 1: difficult experience. I began comes from Eboga. The second layer
Speaker 1: of his root part produces this like psychedelic sawdust. You
Speaker 1: gotta like eat spoonfuls sometimes spoonfuls of sawdust that tastes
Speaker 1: like battery acid. Basically, it's the most bitter, bitter stuff
Speaker 1: in the world. It was incredibly difficult. It was three days.
Speaker 1: There was tons of nausea, tons of vomiting, an incredible
Speaker 1: cathartic visual experience where I saw my past, I saw
Speaker 1: things that were done to me things I did to
Speaker 1: other people, And there was no moment where I just
Speaker 1: saw heroin is done. But three days later I came
Speaker 1: out of it with no desire to use, and I
Speaker 1: had no desire to use the entire time that I
Speaker 1: was under that very difficult experience. And from then I
Speaker 1: haven't had a desire to use heroin or cocaine or
Speaker 1: used problematically. I haven't used problematically in going on twenty
Speaker 1: years until next year. Now, I gotta say, I thought
Speaker 1: that's the way it works with everybody, and I found
Speaker 1: out something very different. I should also say this not
Speaker 1: only to see my past. And this is the weird
Speaker 1: ship Ethan, and there's gonna be some weird shack. I
Speaker 1: saw my future. I actually saw that. For instance, I'll
Speaker 1: give you an example that I was going to be
Speaker 1: on this American Life talking about ibergaine, and then you
Speaker 1: didn't actually foresee being on this aide man. No, that
Speaker 1: was those were later d M T experiences, just sitting
Speaker 1: out of my apartment smoking it. But you know, the
Speaker 1: whole time, I was burning to bring this to people
Speaker 1: I wanted for folks that didn't have the kind of
Speaker 1: access that I had, and My family weren't rich at all.
Speaker 1: It took them a lot to get me there. But
Speaker 1: for folks that didn't have, you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: thousand bucks to have this experience, Folks who couldn't leave
Speaker 1: because maybe they're undocumented, or maybe they couldn't leave because
Speaker 1: of a record, or you know, they had three kids
Speaker 1: or whatever it was. I was burning with the desire
Speaker 1: to bring that to people and bring awareness. Can you
Speaker 1: just explain to our listeners what is I began? I
Speaker 1: began comes from Iboga, and Iboga is a plant that
Speaker 1: grows in central West Africa, primarily Gabon, that has been
Speaker 1: used for thousands of years, first by Pygmy people and
Speaker 1: then by Bantu people who migrated into the rainforest the
Speaker 1: equatorial rainforest of Gabon, and it's been used at like
Speaker 1: a central sacrament, much like peyote or ayahuasca is used
Speaker 1: in those places. The spiritual technology religion that grew up
Speaker 1: around it is called wheat Wheaty is an ancestral religion
Speaker 1: and animist religion. Wheaty became your practice fifteen twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: right Dmitri, in which you've used to help people heal
Speaker 1: when they're struggling and just say more about that. Sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I'm a Greek boy from Detroit that
Speaker 1: found his way to Gabon. I think I was the
Speaker 1: first iby game provider ever to be initiated. I was
Speaker 1: coming back to the source of my healing. And I
Speaker 1: would walk into a village and I would tell the
Speaker 1: elder I was healed a boga saved my life, and
Speaker 1: she would look at me and sort of like cast
Speaker 1: her hand through the whole village like, yeah, it saved
Speaker 1: us all, you know. So there was this recognition we
Speaker 1: were in the same space. We had gone through this
Speaker 1: difficult process and it had changed our life. What I
Speaker 1: saw there was the performing arts as healing arts around
Speaker 1: dance and music, where multigeneration people would gather and in
Speaker 1: a very sophisticated and thoughtful way and minister this drug
Speaker 1: that every member of the community took, from the baby
Speaker 1: to the old people. There was African music, which is
Speaker 1: trance music. There was dancing, There was healing, and everyone
Speaker 1: had a job, whether it was building the fire, a
Speaker 1: ministering the medicine, leading the ceremony, cooking the food, shaking
Speaker 1: a rattle, dancing, singing. So it was this mutual cooperation
Speaker 1: and participation, and I realized saying all this the view
Speaker 1: that is cultural appropriation, but on a very personal level,
Speaker 1: it was a fucking mind blow. And this is after
Speaker 1: I was detox and I was administering this stuff and
Speaker 1: sort of a secular sort of as an act of
Speaker 1: radical service. But suddenly I had this idea that all
Speaker 1: these elements that have been so important to me, music
Speaker 1: and song and and coming together could be a part
Speaker 1: of the detox. And that was a journey. I went
Speaker 1: back to Gabon six or seven times and was initiated
Speaker 1: in other deeper levels of breaty. I got to say,
Speaker 1: I'm a very bad student, but I'm really grateful for
Speaker 1: my teachers and my family there. I ultimately I saw
Speaker 1: that I could draw on my own belief system and
Speaker 1: could incorporate aspects of what I learned there, but I
Speaker 1: couldn't ever truly be a part of that as a
Speaker 1: as a Greek boy from Detroit. So I am an
Speaker 1: incredible gratitude to the Breety for teaching me so much.
Speaker 1: It's still a part of my life. The way that
Speaker 1: it was brought into the United States, or at least
Speaker 1: made aware to all kinds of people was through its
Speaker 1: anti addictive properties, which was first discovered by my teacher
Speaker 1: and our dear friend, the late Howard lots Off, who
Speaker 1: has a nineteen year old college student who had a
Speaker 1: morphine habit consumed it in sort of a early sixties
Speaker 1: Lower East Side drug scene and realize that he no
Speaker 1: longer was physically dependent on opiates. It eliminates or mitigates withdrawal,
Speaker 1: and most people who use opiates heroin oxycotton, et cetera.
Speaker 1: I began as a hydrochloride just to be crude, as
Speaker 1: coca leaf is to cocaine, right. So it's this white
Speaker 1: powder that can be put in a small capsule and
Speaker 1: you lose some of the properties, but it's a little
Speaker 1: bit more immediate, or a lot more of immediate, and
Speaker 1: doesn't last as long. The reason it's preferred in detoxes,
Speaker 1: like someone detoxing from heroin cannot really eat that much
Speaker 1: of boga or it's very difficult and you might throw
Speaker 1: it up before you get to the point where it's beneficial.
Speaker 1: It's used in the West for detox but I have
Speaker 1: to say that in terms of like small doses, what
Speaker 1: they call the hunter's dose is amazing, great for hanging out,
Speaker 1: great for dancing, great for sex, and also for people
Speaker 1: who aren't addicted, if they want to have an experience,
Speaker 1: a boga is incredible. You talk about microdocing, Yeah, microdocing,
Speaker 1: this whole thing with microdocy kind of to be laughing,
Speaker 1: I say, you don't want to feel it, Like what
Speaker 1: the funk? I don't want to feel it. I want
Speaker 1: to feel my drugs. But yeah, micro docing, and that's
Speaker 1: been used traditionally for thousands of years. They call it
Speaker 1: a hunter's dose because you can go sit in the
Speaker 1: woods and just you know, wait for the possum to
Speaker 1: come by or the porcupine. So all this time that
Speaker 1: you're doing these ivy game sessions, I mean, just explain.
Speaker 1: So what's it like. I haven't done a detox in
Speaker 1: many years. You know, I've done some group stuff that
Speaker 1: wasn't around detox. I used to, you know, work in
Speaker 1: Washington Square Park or Union Square and I have people
Speaker 1: meet me. We do an assessment to see if they
Speaker 1: are healthy enough. Because there are cardio complications that can
Speaker 1: happen with people whose hearts aren't ready for it. There
Speaker 1: might be medical reasons not to do it. There might
Speaker 1: be interactions with other drugs there on. So it's a
Speaker 1: very high threshold compared to all other psychedelics, not only
Speaker 1: in that it's that there could be a medical event,
Speaker 1: but also you need help standing up, walking to the bathroom,
Speaker 1: sitting down are very deep. It's a very very heavy experience.
Speaker 1: People get really freaked out about it. Done in a
Speaker 1: medically supportive, not medicalized, but medically supportive setting, it can
Speaker 1: be fairly safe. So what would happen is someone would
Speaker 1: come in about ten to twelve hours without their opiates,
Speaker 1: so they're at the very beginning of withdrawal. And the
Speaker 1: really interesting thing to those of us who are opiate
Speaker 1: users or people who had a dependency on them, was
Speaker 1: that you would take a small amount sort of a testos,
Speaker 1: and you would give it to someone who's just starting
Speaker 1: to feel a withdrawal, just to see how it would
Speaker 1: work with them, and within an hour they're not feeling
Speaker 1: the withdrawal and they're not tripping. Now, there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of different ways of a ministering it, but I'll just
Speaker 1: tell you the old school way of doing it. After
Speaker 1: they would go through that bit and they're not in withdrawal,
Speaker 1: we would begin by doing what we would call a
Speaker 1: flood dose, a series of capsules over the course of
Speaker 1: an hour, and that experience asked anywhere from eight to
Speaker 1: twelve hours, and it may be accompanied by intense vomiting,
Speaker 1: but not vomiting from withdrawal, and most people have gone
Speaker 1: through it can tell the difference. Once you've asked them
Speaker 1: were you and withdraw The answers no, they were vomiting
Speaker 1: because like iowasca and payote, there is a nausea your
Speaker 1: body is rejecting it. That could go on for eight
Speaker 1: to twelve hours. Now, if you were detoxing, that would
Speaker 1: be sort of the end of your experience and you
Speaker 1: would go into this period which they called the gray day,
Speaker 1: which would be anywhere from another twelve to forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: We're just sort of laying around, sort of waiting to
Speaker 1: process the experience but also to get your body back.
Speaker 1: So for the prison who's coming in for detox, you
Speaker 1: are asked to take more because your withdrawal will start
Speaker 1: to come back. So over the course of several days
Speaker 1: you're giving booster doses and it might take three to
Speaker 1: four to five days for someone to come out of
Speaker 1: the experience completely. Holding that space is the most intense
Speaker 1: experience that I've ever experience, and I did it hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of time. You have to be in there,
Speaker 1: why people are suffering, why people are processing, why people
Speaker 1: are vomiting, why people might want to start to use
Speaker 1: again or questioning why they use again, And it's an
Speaker 1: incredibly sacred space. And the gift of I begain, I believe,
Speaker 1: but the gift of all psychedelics is that bit is
Speaker 1: incredibly inefficient that we have to spend that much time
Speaker 1: with somebody, but that's where all the magic happens. That's
Speaker 1: where what we might call healing happens because we get
Speaker 1: to honor somebody. So it's it's that place where I
Speaker 1: call it's the exactitude of the inefficiency of poetry that
Speaker 1: happens in those spaces. And that could take days and days,
Speaker 1: and that's just a matter of sitting with people and
Speaker 1: being with them and honoring them. How do you keep
Speaker 1: people safe in the midst of experiences like that. I
Speaker 1: got to say that my early year and a half
Speaker 1: year that I was doing it, it wasn't safe because
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing it with a medical professional in a
Speaker 1: supportive role. So you know, monitoring the heart. You cannot
Speaker 1: go to leap on this. You need to be with
Speaker 1: someone seven. So those early years where maybe a year
Speaker 1: and a half ro I was doing it on my
Speaker 1: owner with other addicts or drug users was dangerous. And
Speaker 1: after an incident in Canada where where someone almost died,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about stopping, but I didn't and I
Speaker 1: never did it without medical professionals. Again, what we did
Speaker 1: was we blended the ceremony in with the medicine, so
Speaker 1: the doctors were dancing with us. We'll be talking more
Speaker 1: after we hear this ad. So the question I want
Speaker 1: to ask you, because you're experience and a lot of
Speaker 1: other of the psychelics as well, what is it that
Speaker 1: distinguishes I Begained from the others. I mean, people talk
Speaker 1: about l S D and and psilocyte peyote is giving
Speaker 1: this kind of deep spiritual insight that can help trans
Speaker 1: form your life. But is there something else going on
Speaker 1: with I Begain, you know, biochemically in the body that's
Speaker 1: causing people to lose their dependence on these substances. I
Speaker 1: can't tell you what's happening other than experiencing it myself
Speaker 1: and seeing it and hundreds of people. I think I
Speaker 1: did over five detoxes. And when you're saying detox, by
Speaker 1: the way, you're talking about sitting with somebody for Oftentimes
Speaker 1: each detox might be two or three days, and sitting
Speaker 1: with somebody right at least three days, three to four days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I spent I spent years in hotel rooms, cleaning up,
Speaker 1: cleaning up vomit with folks and going through similar processes
Speaker 1: that I went through. Here's the thing. I can't tell
Speaker 1: you what it's doing. I can tell you what I've seen.
Speaker 1: I can tell you why it's different. Sure, you can
Speaker 1: take LSD or mushrooms and have what we call the
Speaker 1: spiritual mystical experience that might give you some insight into
Speaker 1: your problematic behaviors. I begain into ups the physical dependency
Speaker 1: on opiates and opioids with significantly reduced withdrawal or without
Speaker 1: withdrawal at all. And you know there's plenty of scientists
Speaker 1: that will dispute that. But if you were to give
Speaker 1: a hardcore junkie like me ahead of acid basically twelve
Speaker 1: hours later, I'd want to kill you because I would
Speaker 1: be tripping, begging for some dope. And that's not the
Speaker 1: experience with most people going through Ivy Gaine. There there
Speaker 1: is a cessation of the dependency. You don't need the
Speaker 1: fucking hit in three or four days. Now do people
Speaker 1: go back to it? Yes, the majority do. But what
Speaker 1: I saw personally, what happened with me was so transformative.
Speaker 1: I was using about a hundred fifty dollars with the
Speaker 1: heroine a day and on a hundred milligrams of methodone,
Speaker 1: and four days later I had a pocket full of money,
Speaker 1: and I was on the outskirts of Amsterdam and I
Speaker 1: didn't have a desire to use. Now that's what happened
Speaker 1: with me. Again, I think that might be about the
Speaker 1: It doesn't happen with everybody, and I think that's where
Speaker 1: the big problem was with I began advocates and with
Speaker 1: psychedelic advocates in general. Yeah, actually, let's just back up
Speaker 1: here a moment, because your life is actually pretty interesting
Speaker 1: before all this stuff that happens when I began, and
Speaker 1: I was just reading up. But you're born in sixty
Speaker 1: two in Detroit, like a kind of working class Greek,
Speaker 1: second generation whatever family, right, you know, you're you're a
Speaker 1: kind of not so white white guy in a mostly
Speaker 1: black city. You get involved in a band. What leisure
Speaker 1: class I think it's called that actually gets a fair
Speaker 1: amount of renown and you're the frontman for it, you know,
Speaker 1: making up poetry and singing on stages and and meanwhile
Speaker 1: you're also doing hero on a lot of time. And
Speaker 1: you're actually being a fairly successful guy for quite a
Speaker 1: number of years, right before things start to fall apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know how successful we were. I think artistically
Speaker 1: we're very successful. But yeah, I was a creative person.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I came to New York as
Speaker 1: a young person, and you know, the habit grew and
Speaker 1: I grew. But you know, it's the thing about especially opioids,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a beautiful grace period and sometimes it
Speaker 1: could last for a very long time, but that grace
Speaker 1: period can be very beneficial. For me. It was a
Speaker 1: faustian deal. It took a lot more in the end
Speaker 1: than it gave. But yeah, my life was pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: The thing is that I was playing nightclubs when I
Speaker 1: was fourteen and fifteen and the early punk days in Detroit,
Speaker 1: and then came to the New York when I was
Speaker 1: like nineteen. I lived in the Chelsea Hotel and this
Speaker 1: whole sort of world of the Hotel Chelsea that have
Speaker 1: been going on for a hundred years. I became involved
Speaker 1: in that, and then politics and art and music on
Speaker 1: the Lower East Side, and you know, for a while
Speaker 1: it was great. And I don't want to talk bad
Speaker 1: about heroin. It's like distasteful. It's like talking bad about
Speaker 1: your ex wife. But I can't be that idealistic about
Speaker 1: it either. You know, if you're nodding out, you know,
Speaker 1: at like an important let's say, meeting with the record
Speaker 1: company guy, it's not a good look, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a good look until it's not um. And so yes,
Speaker 1: most of the harm um from heroin is because of
Speaker 1: its illegality, but as we know from you know, oxycotton
Speaker 1: and other drugs, there's other stuff going on there too
Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with the illegality. Then the
Speaker 1: thing is it's diminishing. There seems to be some sweet
Speaker 1: spot that you hit and then you can't get to
Speaker 1: where you were, and and then it becomes this drag
Speaker 1: about this maintenance thing. And so when you were doing
Speaker 1: the methan on, where you getting that from a clinic
Speaker 1: or getting it on the streets? I was I was
Speaker 1: getting it from the clinic that you were still doing
Speaker 1: the heroin on top of the messing on. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: totally possible. I mean, look, it gave me my wake up,
Speaker 1: you know, which was awesome. Here's the thing about the
Speaker 1: maintenance personally, and and from my observation, I was still
Speaker 1: seeking an outside euphoria so I could do enough air
Speaker 1: wine I get at night really high. But then I
Speaker 1: was mixing in benzos and I was seeking that sort
Speaker 1: of extreme euphoria in our world to say anything bad
Speaker 1: about these things, and is you know, sacrilegious. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I mean if people got all sorts of use it
Speaker 1: on method on from the good the bad like it
Speaker 1: for a while this and that. I mean, the science
Speaker 1: is there that huge numbers of people have benefited by
Speaker 1: making the switch, but we also that for a lot
Speaker 1: of people haven't only worked that well. The matter clinic
Speaker 1: was right up the street from the from the police
Speaker 1: academy that we were clearly junk, and it got to
Speaker 1: the point where I had psychosis. I would think I
Speaker 1: was being followed. I would stand by a window and
Speaker 1: look out for hours I was. I mean, I did
Speaker 1: crazy shit. I mean it's weird though if you think about, right,
Speaker 1: because I mean, what we know right, no matter what
Speaker 1: the intervention, right, whether it's going cold Turkey or doing
Speaker 1: method on or buprenorphreen or iby gain or psychedelics, or
Speaker 1: falling in love or finding a job or you know,
Speaker 1: drinking green tea. I mean, people have every different method
Speaker 1: for trying to finally put some kind of problematic relationship
Speaker 1: with drugs behind them. But it's also true that, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a kind of double edged saying about almost the
Speaker 1: placebo effect of these things that if you believe in
Speaker 1: the treatment, it's more likely to work. I was at
Speaker 1: a Psycholis conference a few weeks ago and I saw
Speaker 1: Matt Johnson. You know, it's been a long time psychological
Speaker 1: researcher at Johns Hopkins and he just got the first
Speaker 1: chair and Psychedelic Studies and we're chatting and I was
Speaker 1: telling him I was thinking about doing a show on
Speaker 1: the placebo effect. And he said, Ethan, sometimes I think
Speaker 1: about psychedelics as placebo's on steroids. Yeah, and I've seen
Speaker 1: that work in the I begat space in particular because
Speaker 1: it has this thing, this miraculous alchemy that happens with
Speaker 1: some people, but also other things are happening that aren't emphasized.
Speaker 1: People might contact a family member that they haven't talked
Speaker 1: to in years and years. You know, they might go
Speaker 1: back to school, they might change the way they use drugs.
Speaker 1: They might just have a couple of days where they're
Speaker 1: just honored. I'm a big proponent of placebo. I think
Speaker 1: placebo is where it's at. I mean, you know, you
Speaker 1: hear people talking about it, Well, that's just the placebo effect.
Speaker 1: And you know, to me, that's like the most interesting
Speaker 1: ship is the way what is that? That's the instant
Speaker 1: in ship, right, And that goes to like this idea
Speaker 1: of creating space, a space in which you can explore
Speaker 1: problematic relationships. You can explore depression or or or or
Speaker 1: deep rumination, you can explore relationships. And creating space and
Speaker 1: accelerating that placebo effect is to me, what's the most
Speaker 1: interesting thing about all of this. And that's what I've
Speaker 1: been doing all my life is creating space, particularly around
Speaker 1: people who use drugs. Have been a bartender, I've ran
Speaker 1: after hours clubs, I work in needle Exchange, and I
Speaker 1: hold space in the psychedelic set. So to me, the
Speaker 1: placebo stuff, that's a great idea. That's the most interesting
Speaker 1: thing to me. You know, it is also something about
Speaker 1: your journey to that your life is, in many respects
Speaker 1: committed to harm reduction. You've been deeply invested in the
Speaker 1: harm reduction space. At the same time, you've talked a
Speaker 1: lot about the powerful, important role that twelve steps and
Speaker 1: the twelve steps consciousness and meetings have played for you,
Speaker 1: and people off times think that those two things are
Speaker 1: at odds, and there's certain elements of the philosophies that
Speaker 1: are odds, but by and large, there's a kind of
Speaker 1: common philosophy right around around recognizing and cultivating and embracing
Speaker 1: the inherent dignity in every human being. For you, coming
Speaker 1: out of that I began thing in two thousand two three,
Speaker 1: beginning to become somebody's given sessions, were both these things
Speaker 1: well integrated for you? The whole twelve step thing and
Speaker 1: the harm merction thing was at a matter of time.
Speaker 1: To me, it was. But let me just tell you.
Speaker 1: Let's say I'm injecting cocaine and heroin. I'm on the
Speaker 1: Lower East Side of New York. My life is spinning
Speaker 1: out of control. I'm still in the band, but I'm
Speaker 1: psychotic a lot of the time. And I'm at a
Speaker 1: point in my life where I'm not very much communication
Speaker 1: with my family. I just lost another girlfriend, another job,
Speaker 1: I'm hustling, and I go to the corner of Avenue
Speaker 1: A and First Street, which was a very different corner then,
Speaker 1: and that's where I would buy my syringes. That you're
Speaker 1: go there and there'll be you know, many women out
Speaker 1: there selling syringes. And this is at a time when
Speaker 1: we were losing a lot of our family members to
Speaker 1: AIDS actually, and so I remember going on there to
Speaker 1: buy one for a dollar or two dollars, and I
Speaker 1: see this little table set out there, and there's these
Speaker 1: mostly men, mostly queer men, and I get choked up
Speaker 1: when I talked about it. They were there giving out syringes,
Speaker 1: which was illegal to do at that time. They were
Speaker 1: passing out syringes and information about injection. And I walked
Speaker 1: into the table and one of them gave it to me.
Speaker 1: I can remember his face as an older guy, and
Speaker 1: I said how much and he said free, and then
Speaker 1: he said, we want you to be safe. Ethan that
Speaker 1: epoch at that time, that to me, it such a
Speaker 1: mind blow for me that someone would risk their freedom
Speaker 1: because they cared about me. The thing about I began
Speaker 1: to me, and the thing about that gesture, and the
Speaker 1: thing about twelve steps. I go back to the Christ's
Speaker 1: story and the story of the leopard. The leopard was
Speaker 1: a social outcast, was contagious, was in danger and a shame.
Speaker 1: Christ stops and heals the leopard. Now is that a
Speaker 1: public health story about leprosy? To me, what it is
Speaker 1: is that Divinity loved the outcast. Divinity loved the untouchable.
Speaker 1: And so whether it's taking time to sit with somebody
Speaker 1: while they go through a detox or handing that that needle,
Speaker 1: that's about love. That's about communal love in action. And
Speaker 1: to me, there's nothing more power. For that's where the
Speaker 1: placebo lies, right and I was seen and what happened
Speaker 1: in the either game space after a while, and then
Speaker 1: the other medicines at work with psilocybin and m d
Speaker 1: n A. What we try to do is honor someone
Speaker 1: just like we honor them at a twelve step meeting,
Speaker 1: or honor them when they come into a harm reduction facility.
Speaker 1: Hopefully this is what we do. It's I think, in
Speaker 1: some ways to me, it's the most important thing. Of course,
Speaker 1: we don't want people to become sick or overdose, of
Speaker 1: course we don't. But that act is so revolutionary, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you to me sometimes when I hear you
Speaker 1: talking about this stuff, you remind me of when I
Speaker 1: think about some of the most talented body workers I know,
Speaker 1: you know, the ones who are studying a half dozen
Speaker 1: a dozen different modalities and then integrating all together. And
Speaker 1: the way you talk about helping people heal seems the
Speaker 1: same sort of thing. You know, you're bringing from twelve steps,
Speaker 1: you're bringing from harm reduction, you're bringing from wheat T,
Speaker 1: you're bringing from iby game, you're bringing from the psychalities,
Speaker 1: you're bringing from a sense of community. It's all about
Speaker 1: helping people and understand that people. Each person's got their
Speaker 1: own journey and that what worked for you may not
Speaker 1: work for others. I mean, is that a fair description
Speaker 1: of of how you do what you do now? And
Speaker 1: think about it. First of all, when people come to me,
Speaker 1: and I've been working primarily with M D M A
Speaker 1: and psilocybin and sound by the way which we can
Speaker 1: get to when they come to me like, yeah, I've
Speaker 1: been doing this, I've been doing this almost twenty years, right,
Speaker 1: and so I know a few things, but what I'm
Speaker 1: listening for is that wisdom that brought them to me
Speaker 1: in the first place, and that's what I'm following. And
Speaker 1: the idea is as someone who's played in nightclubs in
Speaker 1: bands for years, someone who's worked in the harm reduction space,
Speaker 1: and that somebody who is a trained ritualist. What I'm
Speaker 1: looking for is how we can co create a container
Speaker 1: what I call radical hospitality, just that we're there for
Speaker 1: you and we're going to hold you in all you
Speaker 1: unless you start to get into a discursive place or
Speaker 1: a self harming place. We're gonna hold you and honor
Speaker 1: your sacred individuality because it's a big fucking deal. It's
Speaker 1: a big deal when you come to take a journey,
Speaker 1: and that's how we look for it. We're marking the day.
Speaker 1: It's going to be different for Ethan today because we're
Speaker 1: marking it and we're there to show up holy and
Speaker 1: with all the skill. The thing that's guiding us is
Speaker 1: the ethos, which is self love and acceptance. It's really
Speaker 1: about improvisation. You can have a formula, but if somebody,
Speaker 1: you know, we had somebody the other day, brilliant guy.
Speaker 1: He talked for eight hours straight. Now I could tell
Speaker 1: him to let go to you know, go to your breath.
Speaker 1: But after a while, that's what needs to happen. So,
Speaker 1: you know, one and I just followed him. We followed
Speaker 1: him with the music, we followed him with our heart.
Speaker 1: We listened because that's what needed to happen. So it's
Speaker 1: got to be an improvisational while ty to it. And
Speaker 1: that's where all the training and the thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of hours with people come into play, because then you
Speaker 1: can shift and you're not so attached to dogma or
Speaker 1: a template. Let's take a break here and go to
Speaker 1: an ad. You know, there's one other moment in your life,
Speaker 1: right ten years ago where you get set up and
Speaker 1: the d e a bus you and you know, you
Speaker 1: go through a couple of years, a hell, did it
Speaker 1: change in ways what you do, how you think about
Speaker 1: what you do? Did it change it? Yeah? You don't
Speaker 1: don't want to get busted again? Yeah, I'm do what
Speaker 1: it is Jamaica, man, it's Costa Rica. There's that, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I found this quote from you where you say,
Speaker 1: you know they the cop they took away my magic powder.
Speaker 1: So I thought they were my enemy, but now I
Speaker 1: realized we were dancing together. Even the arrest was part
Speaker 1: of my initiation. It was a blessing, pretty generous statement.
Speaker 1: But I guess you still believe that I I do.
Speaker 1: You know, that affected me in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: First of all, like when you read it on like
Speaker 1: you know, a blurb, like you know, you read it
Speaker 1: on Wikipedia or something makes it seem like not a
Speaker 1: big deal, you know, for those that have been through it.
Speaker 1: And I've been arrested several times before, but I was
Speaker 1: never facing anything real, you know. I mean I might
Speaker 1: have spent a week bouncing around or ten days bouncing
Speaker 1: around New York City system, which is not pleasant, but
Speaker 1: I never had that sort of existential threat, just sort
Speaker 1: of damocles just hanging over me for two years. What
Speaker 1: it did for me, it is because I became so
Speaker 1: identified with Iby Game. I became the Iby Game poster boy.
Speaker 1: And you know, the Buddha says that all identity is pain,
Speaker 1: and it became painful for me, and my life was
Speaker 1: totally consumed. It was one you know what usually happens.
Speaker 1: One cop gets a bug up their ass and I'll
Speaker 1: just say this that that. What I learned is that
Speaker 1: they took my magic powder away, right, And I was
Speaker 1: just there without a boga and who was I? What
Speaker 1: was my purpose? And I had this opportunity that Carlino
Speaker 1: Lopez who was running New York harm Reduction Educators at
Speaker 1: the time, and Brian Murphy was a therapist there and
Speaker 1: still like you amazing therapist, amazing psychedelic and harm reduction therapist.
Speaker 1: They invited me to come in and just sort of
Speaker 1: hang out, you know, So I would do that and
Speaker 1: then they offered me this job and I sort of
Speaker 1: joined the team. Initially, I didn't even know what my
Speaker 1: fucking job was. It was like, I don't know, shaman
Speaker 1: at large or something. I've never identified as a fucking shaman.
Speaker 1: But it was kind of like just go and do
Speaker 1: like weird ship with people, right, And what ended up
Speaker 1: happening is Brian had this little meditation group where he
Speaker 1: would shake a rattle and people would go and meditate,
Speaker 1: and some of them were pharmacological challenge so the meditation
Speaker 1: would be deep, basically on a no and I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: let me bring another rattle, and we brought another rattle,
Speaker 1: and I brought another rattle like, well, this guy plays drums,
Speaker 1: and what happened. It became a weekly ritual for ten
Speaker 1: years at Marie where every Thursday at we would gather
Speaker 1: with drums and incense and sage and rattles and an
Speaker 1: altar that was constantly changing and being built by the
Speaker 1: participants who came in there, and we would spend time
Speaker 1: drumming and singing and then talking. But what I learned
Speaker 1: from the Buety and what I learned from twelve Steps,
Speaker 1: is that everybody was participating. Everybody was contributing, either by singing,
Speaker 1: telling the story, talking about themselves, dancing, and some of
Speaker 1: these things turned into these incredible spiritual parties. And from
Speaker 1: that we began to form and co create with the community,
Speaker 1: this holistic space that we didn't have any money for.
Speaker 1: We didn't have a mandate. Management never told us go
Speaker 1: ahead and create a holistic space. But eventually, just through
Speaker 1: I would say spirit, we started doing full body acupuncture
Speaker 1: massage that weekly ritual. Brian and I would do these
Speaker 1: shamanistic interventions one on ones, which were just amazing sometimes,
Speaker 1: and we started bringing gongs and singing bowls and chai chi,
Speaker 1: and we've co created with the community this incredible healing
Speaker 1: space in the middle of all the other great things
Speaker 1: that NAIRI does, which is you know, case management and
Speaker 1: needle exchange and a safe pace for drug users and
Speaker 1: sex workers where we just see people as human beings
Speaker 1: that coming in with spirit. And all of that came
Speaker 1: because the d A arrested me and stopped me from
Speaker 1: doing that. That community during my trial. To me, it
Speaker 1: was the thing that sustained me. And without that community,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean just my co workers, I mean
Speaker 1: the people, the drug users and the people who are
Speaker 1: living in the homeless shelf of the people that you
Speaker 1: know I became very close with. Without them, I don't
Speaker 1: know where I would have been. Yeah, you know you
Speaker 1: mentioned in music, explain more about this healing role of sound.
Speaker 1: You know, lou Reid said my life was saved by
Speaker 1: rock and roll, right, And that's true for me. Music
Speaker 1: has always been healing from me, has always been a
Speaker 1: refuge for me. But vibration and the immersion in vibration
Speaker 1: in sound can deepen any experience. Particularly what I discovered
Speaker 1: and others have discovered, is the psychedelic experience. So when
Speaker 1: you come in to a session or ceremony with me
Speaker 1: and the stuff we're doing. In Jamaica it's mushrooms, but
Speaker 1: in some other locations I've done the combination of mushrooms
Speaker 1: and m d M A. Coming into that space, the
Speaker 1: idea is that you would get comfortable, put on the
Speaker 1: eyemask and allow these vibrations to center you. And much
Speaker 1: like meditation, if you get in a discursive space, if
Speaker 1: you get into space of a mind wandering, you bring
Speaker 1: yourself back to the sound and allowing that sound to
Speaker 1: deepen the journey. The only thing I'm interested in, Ethan,
Speaker 1: really interested is space. Another childhood hero of mine said
Speaker 1: space is the place that Sunraw. As a disciple of
Speaker 1: sun Raw, I embrace that. And the idea is whether
Speaker 1: it is the space in an after hours club or
Speaker 1: a ceremony at a harm reduction center in East Harlem,
Speaker 1: or a twelve step space, the idea is you're creating
Speaker 1: room around yourself, room to be with others, and then
Speaker 1: space around the quote unquote problem or the issue. What
Speaker 1: psychedelics delivered most consistently is that space in order to
Speaker 1: give one perspective and maybe increased curiosity, and so owned
Speaker 1: is an important part of that. So this thing I'm
Speaker 1: reading about that you're started up now with some colleagues
Speaker 1: the Cardia Institute, which looks like your big new venture
Speaker 1: coming up. Is that basically what it's all about? The
Speaker 1: stuff you're talking about now, combining these uh you know,
Speaker 1: programs outside the US using psilocybin or m D m
Speaker 1: A or maybe even iby gain more together with sound
Speaker 1: with creating space, is that the essence of it? First
Speaker 1: of all, we're not using iby gain uh not yet anyways. Um.
Speaker 1: I've tuned up with Ross ellen Horn's therapist and and
Speaker 1: sociologists because we share a similar idea around improvisation. As
Speaker 1: a therapist, he recognizes the most important thing is to
Speaker 1: be a tuned to be improvisational, so we share that.
Speaker 1: We share that idea. We know people are hurting, but
Speaker 1: sometimes the labels and the diagnosis is are harmful, and
Speaker 1: so the idea is how much curiosity can we create,
Speaker 1: how much improvisation can happen between the spaceholder and the participant.
Speaker 1: So we've teamed up with Ross and then for me,
Speaker 1: for a guy who has been like in the underground,
Speaker 1: who barely graduated from high school to be involved in
Speaker 1: this project, it's kind of like a fucking miracle, and
Speaker 1: the idea is that we're gonna have a space in
Speaker 1: Jamaica where we'll be doing retreats and also offering ketamine
Speaker 1: using the same ethos, with live music for each person,
Speaker 1: and not only offering it to people paying you know
Speaker 1: the price were you know that's there's no sliding scale,
Speaker 1: there's free, and there's whatever the prices, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: be teaming up with New York harm reduction educators um
Speaker 1: UH in the Holistic Department to offer these services to
Speaker 1: that population. I mean, I'm so encouraged by this explosion
Speaker 1: of interest and excitement about psychelics and therapy, and I realized,
Speaker 1: you know, you've written some powerful stuff saying let's not
Speaker 1: take this too fall, let's not get carried away by
Speaker 1: our own rhetoric, let's understand the risks here. But I
Speaker 1: also see ways in which the popularization of this is
Speaker 1: kind of educating tens of millions of people and opening
Speaker 1: up a greater understanding. And some of that I think
Speaker 1: may well read down to the benefit of people who
Speaker 1: keep doing it traditionally outside the medicalized system, with practitioners
Speaker 1: and therapists who are not licensed but who are highly
Speaker 1: talented and very focused on helping people. Maybe I'm just
Speaker 1: being optimistic. I think it's I think it's possible, But
Speaker 1: we have to recognize that the tendency for capitalists is
Speaker 1: to consume and to grow, and so we have to
Speaker 1: recognize that what's really encouraging about or gone to me,
Speaker 1: is that once we decriminalize it will take away those penalties.
Speaker 1: Some of the efforts of the sixties to sort of
Speaker 1: radicalize the use of psychedelics in a group space. I
Speaker 1: think we could do that really deliberately, and to use
Speaker 1: psychedelics as an organizing tool of consciousness, raising, you know,
Speaker 1: consciousness about how we treat each other, class consciousness. I
Speaker 1: think that's really exciting. I couldn't agree more. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: you know, people say that doses, the poison right and
Speaker 1: the drugs set and setting are pivotal how we experience drugs,
Speaker 1: and I think maybe many of us are overly optimistic
Speaker 1: that psychedelics can have this sort of revolutionary effect in
Speaker 1: terms of opening up people to what we need to
Speaker 1: do to save the planet and to turn politics in
Speaker 1: the right direction. Yet, as I think you've written about,
Speaker 1: there are all sorts of ways in which pernicious groups
Speaker 1: and the state have used drugs, including psychedelic ones, for
Speaker 1: you know, evil purposes as well. So I've loved this conversation.
Speaker 1: It's a little like sitting in my living room and
Speaker 1: having the same conversation, which hopefully we'll be doing before long,
Speaker 1: you know, and maybe with some of the people you
Speaker 1: mentioned on on our conversation here. So I just want
Speaker 1: to I want to thank you very very much. I
Speaker 1: want to wish you all the best on on the
Speaker 1: next journeys of your life as you get going with
Speaker 1: this institute. I think, I think your commitment and your passion,
Speaker 1: and your your lovable way of communicating this stuff, and
Speaker 1: your courageousness and sense of adventure you know, have been
Speaker 1: ever really played it in spiring role in both the
Speaker 1: broader harm reduction and drug policty reform worlds and beyond.
Speaker 1: So for all of that, thank you, Thanks you. I
Speaker 1: love you do and I and and thank you for
Speaker 1: all your working and for standing by me when I
Speaker 1: when I really needed it. So thank you. Psychoactive is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's
Speaker 1: hosted by me Ethan Naedelman. It's produced by Katcha Kumkova
Speaker 1: and Ben Cabrick. The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronovski for Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams
Speaker 1: and Matt Frederick for I Heart Radio, and me Ethan Naedelman.
Speaker 1: Our music is by Ari Belusian and a special thanks
Speaker 1: to a Vivit Brio, Seph Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Beatty.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to share your own stories, comments, or ideas,
Speaker 1: please leave us a message at eight three three seven
Speaker 1: seven nine sixty. That's one eight three three Psycho zero.
Speaker 1: You can also email us as Psychoactive at protozoa dot
Speaker 1: com or find me on Twitter at Ethan Natalman. And
Speaker 1: if you couldn't keep track of all this, find the
Speaker 1: information in the show notes. Next week, we'll be talking
Speaker 1: about vaping and the cigarettes with Matt Culley, an activist
Speaker 1: and entrepreneur in the world of vaping. It's good to
Speaker 1: remember that this is not just a nicotine product. The owners,
Speaker 1: the business owners themselves view this as a life saving products.
Speaker 1: They feel like it's saved their lives and they feel
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