Speaker 1: All right, agreg when are illegal drugs good for your
Speaker 1: mental health?
Speaker 2: Thought we already talked about this, We might have, but
Speaker 2: we got more to talk about.
Speaker 3: Some heartbreaking news for Melissa Ethridge.
Speaker 4: The singer announced yesterday that her son, Beckett Ceipher, has died.
Speaker 4: My son was given vicodin and from there he just
Speaker 4: never got off of it. He went from vicodin to
Speaker 4: heroin to the last few days it was spentinels.
Speaker 5: On Twitter, singer Melissa Ethridge wrote in part I joined
Speaker 5: the hundreds of thousands of families who have lost loved ones.
Speaker 2: To opioid addiction.
Speaker 4: He will be missed by those who loved him.
Speaker 5: How do you turn that sadness from the loss of
Speaker 5: backet into the great work that you're doing right now?
Speaker 4: The Etharch Foundation was set up to help people who
Speaker 4: are understanding how much psychedelics can do for pain and
Speaker 4: opioid use disorders. You know, there is no other compound
Speaker 4: that will stop somebody from physically withdrawing on yet. We
Speaker 4: have been working with a group out of Africa that
Speaker 4: has used the Eboga root.
Speaker 3: But you make eyebigam.
Speaker 6: If successful, this mysterious compound could have the power to
Speaker 6: heal millions while seriously disrupting the multimillion dollar opoid.
Speaker 4: Market and the results that we've gotten back that not
Speaker 4: only are these users of fifteen twenty years completely off
Speaker 4: opioids and heroin, but they just turn their life completely around.
Speaker 2: I'm Greg Lad, I'm Clayton, England and this is the
Speaker 2: War on Drugs. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome.
Speaker 1: We are back with another War on Drugs podcast.
Speaker 6: You thought you got rid of us, man, Nope, you
Speaker 6: can't get rid of us.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 6: We like drugs, just like the drug warm where ain't
Speaker 6: going anywhere.
Speaker 1: Just like drugs, We're not going anywhere, and we're slightly addictive,
Speaker 1: so you know, we just give it people.
Speaker 2: They fix man.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, absolutely, How you.
Speaker 2: Been man, it's good. We in the summer, you know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, I've been good man. Yeah, how you been.
Speaker 2: I'm great, man, I'm great. Son just had a birthday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't have the big party this time, so
Speaker 1: that was a relief.
Speaker 2: Any though.
Speaker 1: The case oh two, he's two, so it's too fast,
Speaker 1: too furious, of course, yeah, he's too fast, and he's
Speaker 1: often very.
Speaker 2: Furious about things. My mom made it.
Speaker 1: My mom made the race car cake, like she every
Speaker 1: year she's stepping up on her cake. So this one
Speaker 1: was like she made little race cars that were edible
Speaker 1: and all types of stuff.
Speaker 2: She went crazy, Oh wow, yeah.
Speaker 6: All right, I need to bring your mom over for Yeah,
Speaker 6: maybe I'll do there.
Speaker 2: You go, I'm telling you.
Speaker 6: The Big three six coming out.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 6: Well we'll get into all that later. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well we could talk birthdays all day. But yeah, even
Speaker 5: a very special occasion. I was getting leiss Athraage to
Speaker 5: come on and talk plant based medicine. And I mean, Clayton,
Speaker 5: we already did the interview, recorded it. That was just
Speaker 5: an amazing conversation and talking to her one of someone
Speaker 5: that you know, we all kind of grew up with
Speaker 5: listen radio.
Speaker 1: Especially if you're from that MTV era, if you that
Speaker 1: MTV generation, you know those songs, you know.
Speaker 2: The videos to go with them. So oh yeah.
Speaker 1: When they sent the email like would you be interested
Speaker 1: in interviewing Melissa Ethridge about hallucinogens and plant based medicine? Yes, man, Yes,
Speaker 1: I didn't even read the other parts. Like some things
Speaker 1: you just asked me when can I do them? You
Speaker 1: don't have to ask me if I want to do them.
Speaker 5: But you know, she's so raw and honest about everything.
Speaker 5: You know, she she had breast cancer and how plant
Speaker 5: based medicines helped her through that, and then she started
Speaker 5: the Melissa Athers Foundation, you know, really spurred from you know,
Speaker 5: the tragic passing of her Sun Beckett, who died of
Speaker 5: an opioid overdose. And you know, the whole crux of
Speaker 5: the foundation is to research and fund studies on a
Speaker 5: lot of plant based medicines. I've been able to help
Speaker 5: treat depression, PTSD, opioated withdraw addiction, and so we continue
Speaker 5: to kind of push that down because the War on
Speaker 5: Drugs prohibits a lot of this funding, this research and
Speaker 5: actually criminalizes doing some of this stuff. And so the
Speaker 5: fact that we're slowly starting to see shreds of research
Speaker 5: and funding come back again made possible by you know,
Speaker 5: foundations like hers, I think it's it's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 6: So it was great to talk to her about.
Speaker 2: All of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, And it's just one of those things where
Speaker 1: we don't know what we don't know, and there's so
Speaker 1: much research that hasn't been done, and everything is pushed
Speaker 1: to the pharmaceutical side, and we know the SADE effects,
Speaker 1: but I really think like just as a whole society
Speaker 1: got to take a step back.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 5: Just let let these have a seat of the table
Speaker 5: and let them, you know, work on their own parts.
Speaker 6: Like that's all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let the sciences science, let them science man like.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So again, this was it was just an amazing conversation.
Speaker 5: It's an amazing career, amazing life. And she's so open
Speaker 5: and raw and honest about it. Yeah, I can't recommend
Speaker 5: listening to my podcast that I need you to listen to.
Speaker 2: Yeah about that. Let's get too, Let's get into it.
Speaker 1: Hey, Melissa, thank you so much for coming here today
Speaker 1: with us, for being on the War on Drugs podcast
Speaker 1: with me and.
Speaker 2: Greg my pleasure.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: We love what you're doing, and we just kind of
Speaker 1: want to get into it. I mean, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: the best way, but give us your personal history with
Speaker 1: the War on Drugs. That is our podcast, so we
Speaker 1: know everybody has their own personal battle.
Speaker 4: So you know, I grew up in the Midwest in
Speaker 4: the sixties and seventies, and I had a big dream
Speaker 4: of becoming a rock star. And in the seventies and
Speaker 4: the early eighties, I saw a lot of my heroes
Speaker 4: and stuff have trouble with drugs, and I saw a
Speaker 4: lot of what the world was kind of going through,
Speaker 4: and so I chose a very I wasn't against anything,
Speaker 4: I just wasn't participating it. And I was more concerned
Speaker 4: with making my career go than sort of losing myself
Speaker 4: in something that was going to numb me out. So I,
Speaker 4: you know, put that aside, and I didn't drink. I
Speaker 4: was a very strange rock star in that I didn't
Speaker 4: participate in any of that, you know. But I would recreationally,
Speaker 4: you know, have fun with my friends with cannabis and
Speaker 4: psilocybin and and but you know, not a lot. And
Speaker 4: I never you know, got it myself. It was always
Speaker 4: just you know, somebody else. Then in two thousand and
Speaker 4: and four, I got breast cancer and started using cannabis
Speaker 4: instead of all of the gosh they handed me like
Speaker 4: for chemotherapy. They hand me like five, you know, prescription drugs,
Speaker 4: and I was like, you know, and then the the
Speaker 4: drugs that help with the side effects of those drugs,
Speaker 4: and and I was like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, wait,
Speaker 4: what are you doing? And and it was it was
Speaker 4: medicinal in California cannabis was even though it was very
Speaker 4: hard to get, you know, it's like they were still
Speaker 4: busting everybody back then. But I was able to, you know,
Speaker 4: find the roadie that knew, the roadie that could get
Speaker 4: me some cannabis. And I finally used it every day
Speaker 4: for medicinal purposes, and I'd never done that before.
Speaker 3: Was it was to feel normal.
Speaker 4: And after you know, three months of using it and
Speaker 4: helping me so much, keeping me out of the hospital,
Speaker 4: giving me an appetite, helping with depression and pain and
Speaker 4: all these things that it was so good for, I thought,
Speaker 4: I want everyone to at least know this information, and
Speaker 4: hopefully they could if they wanted to.
Speaker 3: Everyone should have a choice to use this.
Speaker 4: And that's what really kind of threw me into the
Speaker 4: more political space of plant medicine and quickly realizing that
Speaker 4: there's a big difference between pharmaceuticals and plant medicine that's
Speaker 4: play around for thousands and thousands of years. You know,
Speaker 4: it's just huge, and you can't you cannot lump them together.
Speaker 4: So I really took a journey with that and it
Speaker 4: led me to ayahuasca. It led me to my own
Speaker 4: soul's searching. It led me to changing my life and
Speaker 4: spiritual awakening and all these things that it led me to,
Speaker 4: which helped when my son who was a teenager sixteen,
Speaker 4: seventeen years old and wanted to be a professional snowboarder
Speaker 4: and was trying out with an Aspen snowboard team and
Speaker 4: he broke his ankle, It broke his dreams, and it
Speaker 4: just broke him and he was given vicodint and from
Speaker 4: there he just never got off of it. He went
Speaker 4: from vicodin too heroin to the last few days it
Speaker 4: was fentanyl. And so I've lost my son to the pharmaceuticals,
Speaker 4: and I have really then put so much of my
Speaker 4: own energy and effort into having the world understand and
Speaker 4: bringing the research and data that needs to be collected
Speaker 4: to legalize plant medicine and that won't kill us.
Speaker 5: Well, it's so sad to hear about Beckett and his story,
Speaker 5: but I want to ask, so you you start the
Speaker 5: Etherrets Foundation, really out this trauma, and how do you
Speaker 5: turn that frustration sadness from the loss of Beckett into
Speaker 5: you know, the great work that you're doing right now?
Speaker 5: Can you talk a little about what the Ethers Foundation.
Speaker 3: Does right after he died, I was very frustrated.
Speaker 4: I was sad. And a family when someone is struggling
Speaker 4: with opoid use disorder and it's there's so much shame
Speaker 4: and guilt and stuff that the family doesn't know what
Speaker 4: to do with. You don't know whether to you know,
Speaker 4: give him money, give him help, or take everything away
Speaker 4: or you know what, what are you supposed to do?
Speaker 4: And no matter what you do, it's not right because
Speaker 4: they have to come out of it themselves.
Speaker 3: That's that's the only way.
Speaker 4: And so towards the last couple of weeks of his life,
Speaker 4: I knew that it was a very good possibility that
Speaker 4: he would not survive this, and I was prepared in
Speaker 4: a way. You know, of course, you never are fully
Speaker 4: prepared for that when it happens. But so when he
Speaker 4: passed away, I thought, I've got to do something positive.
Speaker 4: I don't want to be against things. I believe that
Speaker 4: there's more power in being for something. And I really
Speaker 4: believe that these plant medicines, these entheogens and psychedelics, they
Speaker 4: can if a person is open to it, if they
Speaker 4: want to walk that path.
Speaker 3: It's not.
Speaker 4: I don't think psychedelics are like here, try this and
Speaker 4: your life will totally change. It might if you are
Speaker 4: open to it, but a lot of it has to
Speaker 4: do with the person. So the Etharge Foundation was set
Speaker 4: up to help people who are understanding how much psychedelics
Speaker 4: can do for pain and opioid use disorder and generally
Speaker 4: just for the well being of human beings. And yet
Speaker 4: they're thrown into the Schedule one category where there's no
Speaker 4: medicinal value and we can't even do any research on it,
Speaker 4: which is like, you know, you can't get credit unless
Speaker 4: you have credit. You know, it's stuck in this this
Speaker 4: saying well, no, well we don't have any research. So
Speaker 4: I said, well, we need to find the research. We
Speaker 4: need to go do this, and so we have been.
Speaker 4: We actually are the only foundation that is specifically focused
Speaker 4: on opioid use disorder, and the people that are running
Speaker 4: these trials are just just you know, frontline miracle workers
Speaker 4: and we're getting amazing, amazing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it just does almost sound like a trap, like, yeah, hey,
Speaker 5: are you using illicit drugs? Come on by to this
Speaker 5: discovery exactly.
Speaker 2: You know, are you on drugs? Would you like some more?
Speaker 2: Come by? And we got you.
Speaker 1: I love what you're doing because so much of the
Speaker 1: things are misunderstanding and we haven't done the research and
Speaker 1: haven't had the ability to.
Speaker 2: Really do it.
Speaker 1: And when we look at pharmaceuticals and just the way
Speaker 1: they're so quick to put opioids in people's hands when
Speaker 1: they're in pain, but at the same time they'll cut
Speaker 1: them off at the drop of a hat, knowing how
Speaker 1: addictive they are, and nobody really even talks about that.
Speaker 1: Nobody's like, hey, okay, well maybe this is leading people
Speaker 1: down a path of.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they put so much on the person, the own
Speaker 4: personal well, you you shouldn't get addicted, you know. It's
Speaker 4: like wait a minute, right, So really, these antheogens, the
Speaker 4: psychedelics do so much for a person's spirit and soul,
Speaker 4: and once again, it's still a lot has to do
Speaker 4: with the person and their own life force. So it's
Speaker 4: a it's not in the pharmaceutical categories because we pharmaceuticals
Speaker 4: come from the place of one pill is going to
Speaker 4: fix everybody on this, right, and how can you compete
Speaker 4: with that When you're saying, look, every person has a
Speaker 4: choice of all this and what fits them. It's a
Speaker 4: whole different way of looking at wellness and medicine and health.
Speaker 4: So it's it's a long road we're gonna walk care.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm all for the plant based medicines. And you
Speaker 1: said one thing, we put so much trust in the
Speaker 1: pharmaceuticals and big pharma and they call the plant medicine
Speaker 1: and things that have been around for thousands of years,
Speaker 1: that's the alternative medicine.
Speaker 2: When how has it been here longer?
Speaker 1: And it's the alternative and it's been proven throughout history.
Speaker 1: But this so it's one of those things to distance
Speaker 1: it and make it seem foreign, dangerous, or will.
Speaker 2: Take take it to your chance with it if you
Speaker 2: want to. It might alter you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like you know, you should really start to unravel
Speaker 5: this whole thing where none of this is really based
Speaker 5: in evidence and science. It's all based in propaganda and
Speaker 5: what you can control and what you can't.
Speaker 2: And undoing that. Yeah, that's the work that we try
Speaker 2: to do here, and we see you're doing it. It's
Speaker 2: it's hard. It's like you said, years and.
Speaker 4: Years information education, that's all you know.
Speaker 3: Research.
Speaker 4: That's why it's like, look, let's we're gonna get these
Speaker 4: things one after another. And it's slowly and once again,
Speaker 4: it's not for everybody. You know, there's some people you're
Speaker 4: not going to get to, hey, here's some psilocybin, it'll
Speaker 4: it'll you know, change your life or whatever. You know,
Speaker 4: it's it's not gonna work. They're going to just think
Speaker 4: that's really weird. You You really have to have your
Speaker 4: own personal journey with it. So it's it's it's not easy.
Speaker 4: It's not a one pill fix it all thing.
Speaker 1: Right, Can you talk about that a little bit, just
Speaker 1: as far as the journey and what do they need
Speaker 1: to decide that they want out of it?
Speaker 3: Wow?
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, if they're listening to your podcast,
Speaker 4: they got to be pretty cool, and they got to
Speaker 4: be you know, they've got they've got to be a
Speaker 4: certain you know, understanding going on. I think a lot
Speaker 4: of it's generational. You know, the younger generation is a
Speaker 4: is a bit more open and they know that they've
Speaker 4: been lied to about cannabis. They that you can see
Speaker 4: that as years go by and one by one the
Speaker 4: states are legalizing, so you can see, oh, well, massive
Speaker 4: amounts of people haven't gone crazy or nuts on cannabis.
Speaker 4: So maybe that whole refer madness.
Speaker 3: Was a lie. Oh yeah, it was. It was a lie.
Speaker 4: And so you know, so you kind of start that
Speaker 4: and you check what your own understanding of it is,
Speaker 4: and you have to you're looking for harmony in your life.
Speaker 4: You're looking for some kind of harmony, and that one
Speaker 4: path that so many of us are on.
Speaker 3: We got to get up, go to our job.
Speaker 4: We've got to do this, got to take care of
Speaker 4: the kids, and we've got to solve all the problems
Speaker 4: and then try to get it to go nights sleep.
Speaker 4: But we can't because we're all caffeined and we're all
Speaker 4: worried and the stress. You have to kind of look
Speaker 4: at that first and go, that's the biggest problem. That
Speaker 4: might be why I have back pain, right, not because
Speaker 4: there's something.
Speaker 3: Wrong with me.
Speaker 4: And once you kind of make that choice, if that's
Speaker 4: what you're looking for, then psychedelics can help you.
Speaker 3: If you understand, oh, I need to change some behavior here.
Speaker 4: I need an answer, not just oh God, my back hurts,
Speaker 4: give me a pill, because you're gonna keep going down
Speaker 4: that road.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: If you're ready to make a change, then cannabis can help.
Speaker 4: And a little bit of THC can help because it
Speaker 4: kind of spreads time and space out for you and
Speaker 4: you go, oh, there's more to this than what I've
Speaker 4: thought now some people it's a hard jump to go
Speaker 4: from left brain to let your right brain sort of
Speaker 4: do some things. But if you're reading helps, talking to
Speaker 4: other people, information, your podcasts, these things help, and then
Speaker 4: it's a road and before you know it, you're at
Speaker 4: some ayahuasca circle and you're journeying and you're discovering that
Speaker 4: you are light and love and the world is a
Speaker 4: full of a full of love.
Speaker 2: What you said about the psilocybin.
Speaker 1: Definitely, I've had some experiences where it's okay, I need
Speaker 1: to let things go, and it's simple stuff. If you're
Speaker 1: allowed to be in that space, it's like breathing. You're like, wow,
Speaker 1: this feels good. Oh, this is what I'm not doing
Speaker 1: when I get upset. This is why my shoulders hurt,
Speaker 1: this is why my neck. I can hardly turn around
Speaker 1: without you know, spinning my whole body.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, it's to take our population and the majority,
Speaker 4: if we can get them out of the pill, fix
Speaker 4: it all and gets them back on the construction line.
Speaker 4: Quality of life is really important, and not everyone's gonna
Speaker 4: do that. You know, people are always going to think
Speaker 4: that hard work gets you somewhere, you know, and and boy,
Speaker 4: you know, yeah, one one little nice journey with psilocybin
Speaker 4: can really teach you that breathing is an incredibly important
Speaker 4: thing to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And it must have been so trying to flip
Speaker 5: that off, because I mean, being the megastar that you
Speaker 5: are and the amount of work that that takes, and
Speaker 5: then being a female in the time that you were
Speaker 5: coming up and that, and then being a part of
Speaker 5: the LGBTQ community and trying to.
Speaker 3: Do as all that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean there is you had.
Speaker 5: To bust your ass in the way that you did
Speaker 5: to get there, and then to kind of say like
Speaker 5: I have to balance this or turn that. That must
Speaker 5: have been such a challenging experience.
Speaker 3: And so well, you know, I got breast cancer.
Speaker 4: It eventually, you know it eventually, will you know, burn
Speaker 4: yourself up till you finally go, well, okay, I got
Speaker 4: a change, and that change is what saves your life.
Speaker 4: Every time my even doctors, bless their heart, they would say, well,
Speaker 4: we have found people that make a change in their
Speaker 4: lives are the ones that survive. So it's kind of
Speaker 4: simple there, and even they've seen that it's about finding
Speaker 4: that thing, whether it's the family, whether it's your mother,
Speaker 4: you know, whether it's your you know, what you think
Speaker 4: you should do is a job, what you should make
Speaker 4: and all those things. No, that's not what life is about.
Speaker 4: Life is not just some sort of race that we're
Speaker 4: on that That is not how it is. It's it's
Speaker 4: joy is ridiculously important in life, and we just don't
Speaker 4: ever put it first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very true. You felt that in your life the nineties.
Speaker 4: The nineties was when you know, I was huge and
Speaker 4: was the you know, playing stadiums and arenas, and it's
Speaker 4: like I was there, and I've seen many many people
Speaker 4: that get there and you go, ha wow. It was
Speaker 4: a lot more fun getting too there than it is
Speaker 4: being there, because being there lasts a day maybe, you know,
Speaker 4: and it moves on, and life moves on in the
Speaker 4: light of fame moves on. It's very fickle. It never
Speaker 4: stays in one place. And you see these people that
Speaker 4: make it and then they keep trying. Then then they're like,
Speaker 4: oh God, I got to get up there. I've got
Speaker 4: to I've got to do that again. I've got to
Speaker 4: have that level and there's something can sustain it, you know,
Speaker 4: for a long time, but eventually you got to just
Speaker 4: you know, love it yourself, no matter what the outcome is,
Speaker 4: no matter what people, how many you sell, or you know,
Speaker 4: whatever is happening, you got to love it. That's what
Speaker 4: saved me is it's like, oh no, I love doing this,
Speaker 4: but I can be myself when I'm paying. I don't
Speaker 4: have to be I don't have to make myself up
Speaker 4: to be something else. And that that's the way it is.
Speaker 5: And it's that high chase it feels like to what
Speaker 5: you're talking about and people trying to maintain and getting
Speaker 5: that from other sources in Clayton, I know this is
Speaker 5: something you talked about in your stand up where there
Speaker 5: can't be a better high than like being up there.
Speaker 5: And you've seen it with people trying to maintain that.
Speaker 5: You've lost some friends in the comedy you know world,
Speaker 5: and how difficult that is, and I see those parallels.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I mean it's but one thing about
Speaker 1: it is the love is what got you in it,
Speaker 1: and it's what keeps you there. And from what you're
Speaker 1: telling me, Melissa, is what can save you too.
Speaker 3: Amen. So exactly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, We'll be right back with the War on Drugs Podcast.
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Speaker 5: Melissa, I was listening to one of your interview I
Speaker 5: think it was with Rolling Stone, and you talked about
Speaker 5: doing like a hero dosage of cannabis heroic. Yeah, can
Speaker 5: you talk about that a little bit? And you actually said,
Speaker 5: like it actually really you know, it's funny, but like
Speaker 5: it really helped you and you kind of fell into
Speaker 5: it yeah, I'd love to hear about that.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, break yeah, break it, you got it.
Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you the story.
Speaker 4: So I was had just been through my first divorce.
Speaker 4: It was this the late nineties, and a friend had
Speaker 4: given me just a massive amount of cannabis and I
Speaker 4: was starting to to know cannabis better.
Speaker 3: It was relaxing me.
Speaker 4: My girlfriend at the time was really fun, especially when
Speaker 4: we would smoke. And in one weekend, I said, Oh,
Speaker 4: my gosh, have you ever done like, you know, pop
Speaker 4: brownies or you know, eating it to edibles and and
Speaker 4: she was like no, and I hadn't done it in
Speaker 4: a long time.
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh, it's so much fun, you know.
Speaker 4: And my girlfriend was the kind that she was from
Speaker 4: the Midwest, and she baked really well, like really made
Speaker 4: really good cookies, right. And she was also the kind
Speaker 4: of was like, hey, if a quarter cup is good,
Speaker 4: then a whole cup's got to be fantastic, right, And
Speaker 4: so she puts all this cannabis in, but she makes
Speaker 4: it taste so good in the in the cookie, and
Speaker 4: so you know, I ate one, and it's the you're
Speaker 4: eating one and you're waiting twenty minutes maybe and You're like,
Speaker 4: I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. Well let's
Speaker 4: have another. And I ate another one and it started
Speaker 4: to kind of come on, and then I got the munchies,
Speaker 4: so I ate another one, you know, and she passed out.
Speaker 4: She fell asleep, which, ladies and gentle, if you don't know,
Speaker 4: you can't overdose on cannabis.
Speaker 3: You just fall asleep.
Speaker 4: But before I fell asleep, I went on what I
Speaker 4: call a heroic dose journey. It was so much cannabis
Speaker 4: that my right brain, my intuitive brain, completely took over
Speaker 4: my inner being and connected to the non physical and
Speaker 4: the spiritual was completely wide open.
Speaker 3: And of course I thought I was dying.
Speaker 4: That's what that's what you think. How many phone calls,
Speaker 4: how many police phone calls have we heard of I'm dying.
Speaker 4: I've taken too much cannabis and my heart's founding and
Speaker 4: I'm dying, and you know, and I did.
Speaker 3: I went through that. I went, oh God, I'm dying.
Speaker 4: And then after a few moments of Okay, I'm dying,
Speaker 4: it was like, well, if I'm dying, it's not so bad.
Speaker 3: This is not so bad. And I started thinking about, well,
Speaker 3: why are we so afraid of death?
Speaker 4: We just it's because my soul felt like it was
Speaker 4: so big that I was I was definitely going to
Speaker 4: continue forever.
Speaker 3: So what am I afraid of dying for?
Speaker 4: So that was the first thing that changed my life,
Speaker 4: was overcoming, like really seriously overcoming the fear of death
Speaker 4: because that that holds so many of us back.
Speaker 3: And for Heaven's sakes, we're all gonna die, really we are.
Speaker 3: And and let's let's make this breakings. Yeah it's great. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we're all dying. Guess what.
Speaker 4: But I know, no matter what they say, we are
Speaker 4: all gonna die someday.
Speaker 1: The funny thing is, you know when you get too
Speaker 1: high and you think you're about to die, you always
Speaker 1: associated with stuff your body's supposed to do, Like my
Speaker 1: heart's beating, Like I can feel the blood flowing through
Speaker 1: my veins, my lungs keep getting bigger, and then they
Speaker 1: get smaller.
Speaker 2: I don't know what's going on, Like this is.
Speaker 5: All yeah, just understanding and being comfortable with death and
Speaker 5: taking that head on. And that's a major area of this.
Speaker 5: And you know, we talked to Ishmael Ali from maps Or.
Speaker 5: They're doing some amazing work and there I think they're
Speaker 5: in their third trials of m DMA and taking combat
Speaker 5: veterans with severe PTSD and.
Speaker 6: Actually curing them.
Speaker 5: And the shame of it is, you know, most of
Speaker 5: these medicines, we had hundreds of research papers and trials
Speaker 5: you know, in the fifties and the sixties, and then
Speaker 5: prohibition comes on all these things and it just stops.
Speaker 5: And because of foundations like yours, you know, they're helping
Speaker 5: kind of move that through and we're getting there. But
Speaker 5: I always just think about what a shame it is
Speaker 5: that we've lost, you know, decades of research and therapeutics
Speaker 5: on this, and that's that's the biggest thing. And so,
Speaker 5: you know, we talked about some of the regulatory aspects
Speaker 5: and prohibition and things like that. What are some of
Speaker 5: the other impediments that you have seen with your work
Speaker 5: with the foundation to actually get these things off the ground.
Speaker 5: And how can people help your foundation? How can they
Speaker 5: help in their individual capacity? We love to you know,
Speaker 5: always end on callbacks.
Speaker 4: Well please look AT's ethargefoundation dot org. And course money
Speaker 4: is what makes us go, because that's what enables us
Speaker 4: to do these the research, you know, do the research
Speaker 4: and these trials. And you can go to the website
Speaker 4: Foundation dot org and you can read what we're doing
Speaker 4: and you can see the incredible results that we're just
Speaker 4: starting to get. We are also starting the very first
Speaker 4: clinical trial.
Speaker 3: We're doing.
Speaker 4: It's like a pre trial so that we can go
Speaker 4: to the next step of it of ayahuasca. Once again,
Speaker 4: very hard because of the legal ramifications. There's a scientist
Speaker 4: in Australia who's able to use Australian vine and leaf
Speaker 4: down there to create the ayahuasca medicine down there, and
Speaker 4: we are just starting that and if you check out
Speaker 4: ETHERG Foundation dot org you can find more information about that.
Speaker 4: We've also one of our this is one of the
Speaker 4: favorite things that we're doing. One of the first things
Speaker 4: we did is Spain, who provides a methadone to their
Speaker 4: heroin addicts. It's a government supplied system. They now have
Speaker 4: people on methadone for fifteen twenty years and they are
Speaker 4: looking to us to find a way to get them off.
Speaker 4: And we have been working with a group out of
Speaker 4: Africa that has used the Aboga route which you make
Speaker 4: ibi gain, which is very similar to ayahuasca, but even deeper.
Speaker 4: And these are not recreational drugs whatsoever. This is really
Speaker 4: hard soul searching work and the results that we've gotten
Speaker 4: back from Spain that not only are these users of
Speaker 4: fifteen twenty years of methadone completely off, opioids and methadone
Speaker 4: and heroin completely off, but they stopped drinking, they stopped smoking.
Speaker 4: They just turn their life completely around.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Once again, it's not one hundred percent because the person
Speaker 4: also has a lot to do with it, but remark
Speaker 4: like like eight out of ten or something, I think
Speaker 4: really had incredible results with that, and so that's what
Speaker 4: we're doing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if you ever want to know about the War
Speaker 5: on drugs and it not being about drugs, understand the
Speaker 5: addiction of the drug that they put you on to
Speaker 5: take you off another addiction that is methadone, and then
Speaker 5: they counts cannabis as a Schedule one drug. And this
Speaker 5: is all honky dory.
Speaker 3: It's here, we are insanity where we're working on it.
Speaker 6: Thanks guys, thank you so much, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with the War on drugs. Man,
Speaker 1: that's it, greg our first celebrity guest man.
Speaker 6: Well, we did have air condo.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: I forgot, I forgot, we got we got celebrities on
Speaker 1: our show were.
Speaker 2: So humble man and there, Yeah, I forget. Yeah, well, I.
Speaker 5: Guess you're so big now, like what you consider celebrity now?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, that's probably not kidding.
Speaker 1: Saron Andre is definitely a celebrity and I know him.
Speaker 1: That's that's like my dude, So that might be why.
Speaker 1: But nah, that was great just to hear what she's
Speaker 1: doing with the foundation and what it's able to do.
Speaker 1: And I like the point that she brought up that
Speaker 1: is not necessarily one cure for everybody, right, Like, there's
Speaker 1: still work that has to be done. Some of these
Speaker 1: things might work for you, some of them may not,
Speaker 1: but just having that option gives people a chance to
Speaker 1: not be subject to getting addicted. And I love the
Speaker 1: work they're doing, you know, I want to know more exactly.
Speaker 5: This is not going to solve all your problems. This
Speaker 5: is not you know, one hundred percent money back guarantee.
Speaker 5: It's just give all this stuff a chance to at
Speaker 5: least like come out. Because what we're doing right now,
Speaker 5: sure as helling, we're right, you know, we're tipping over
Speaker 5: one hundred thousand overdose tests a year, and so these
Speaker 5: types of things really help and that's one we kind
Speaker 5: of wanted to touch on with our end credits. Here,
Speaker 5: our producer, Michael, one of the hardest working men in
Speaker 5: the book, send us his story of Goward.
Speaker 1: He's scoured Stex and scoured the x of information, went.
Speaker 5: To a library, filled out an application for a library card
Speaker 5: to the whole thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he got late fees and everything.
Speaker 5: So he found this story about this guy, Howard, lots
Speaker 5: of you know, we're talking nineteen sixty two. This guy
Speaker 5: was addicted to heroin at nineteen and then he decided
Speaker 5: he wanted to ingest iba game, which is this extract
Speaker 5: from a West African shrub called the aboga. You know,
Speaker 5: now we kind of know that it's helpful with you know,
Speaker 5: opioid with drawls, heroin withdrawals, and actually can reduce the
Speaker 5: cravings for heroin.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess kind of the way he took it.
Speaker 1: He said he had a friend who had a lot
Speaker 1: of drugs and a freezer and was going through it
Speaker 1: and just kind of offered it.
Speaker 2: Hey, you might like this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, here's a great quote from him, just
Speaker 5: kind of telling the story. This is from a lecture
Speaker 5: that he did in two thousand and eight. I follow
Speaker 5: the tree up in the sky and I saw these
Speaker 5: clouds in the sky, and I realized, for the first
Speaker 5: time in my life, I wasn't afraid. And that brought
Speaker 5: me to the understanding that at least certain drug addiction
Speaker 5: is fear and anxiety driven, and that fear and anxiety
Speaker 5: were gone for the first time of my life.
Speaker 1: And it gets you high for like thirty six hours.
Speaker 1: And he said he took it, and he was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm going to go to sleep for a
Speaker 1: week and I'm never doing this again. And that's when
Speaker 1: that realization that you just spoke about kind of hit him.
Speaker 1: And most of the reviews of people that I've seen
Speaker 1: that have taken eyeb again or either the boga plant
Speaker 1: all kind of say that same thing about that fear
Speaker 1: being lifted. It's a thread you want to follow and
Speaker 1: you want to be like, Okay, well, let's find out more.
Speaker 1: Let's find out so.
Speaker 6: Let's pull on this a little bit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, And again, this guy took this in nineteen
Speaker 5: sixty two.
Speaker 6: This is not some new weight loss drug or miracle drug.
Speaker 5: But a lot of the results that we hear from
Speaker 5: this stuff is all anecdotal, where it's just like this
Speaker 5: I doing this thing, or a couple of people doing
Speaker 5: out here because the government blocks so much studies and research.
Speaker 5: And now we're talking. I mean, gosh, I'm not great
Speaker 5: at math. What is that sixty years ago?
Speaker 1: This guy was in for sixty years. We don't have
Speaker 1: any more info, you know what I mean? We have some,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we have nearly what would be if people
Speaker 1: would actually study it are allowed to study it.
Speaker 6: Exactly.
Speaker 5: It's still Schedule one drug and so it's still considered
Speaker 5: to not have any you know, medical value whatsoever, which
Speaker 5: seems kind of bullshit. Yeah, and so you know, the
Speaker 5: Ethers Foundation is actually given to a lot of organizations
Speaker 5: that are studying this. And something I just saw Clayton
Speaker 5: was the state of Kentucky, of all places, just set
Speaker 5: aside like forty two million dollars to research I begain
Speaker 5: to help with opiate addiction and withdrawals because they lose
Speaker 5: about I think the last thing I saw was like
Speaker 5: two thousand to three thousand people every year to overdome.
Speaker 5: So again, slowly but surely we're seeing this to start
Speaker 5: to move. And so we're at this amazing time right
Speaker 5: now where things are getting better of a man. You
Speaker 5: just how many lives have been lost, how many how
Speaker 5: much the research could have been done that just was
Speaker 5: blocked because of the drugs.
Speaker 1: And at this point it feels like, oh, we're trying
Speaker 1: these things because we're desperate now, like we've let it,
Speaker 1: we've shut it down so long and we haven't done research,
Speaker 1: and we could be so much further ahead.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and Howard Lotsov he died in twenty ten, and
Speaker 5: so he didn't really get to see kind of what
Speaker 5: he was doing. Come to this kind of we're not
Speaker 5: there full circle, but at least you know it's getting
Speaker 5: national exposure, and you know it just again just kind
Speaker 5: of takes you back to the lives that have been
Speaker 5: lost like Melissa Sun Beckett and thousands and thousands of
Speaker 5: others have struggled with addiction when these types of cures
Speaker 5: and medicines could have been out there. But there is
Speaker 5: some positives coming out of here, and so you know,
Speaker 5: even though Howard didn't get to see it, even though
Speaker 5: many were not able to see kind of like the
Speaker 5: full clinical aspects of a lot of these plant based
Speaker 5: medicines come to light. I think we're getting to a
Speaker 5: better place. And so you know, like we always try
Speaker 5: to say, we try to leave positive note. I think
Speaker 5: that is the positive note.
Speaker 1: I want to find out more. I'm not quite sure
Speaker 1: I want to partake on the BOGA. I don't think
Speaker 1: being hilfh for thirty four hours is if you do
Speaker 1: anything for thirty four hours you should get a paycheck
Speaker 1: at the end of it. There's no way like that's
Speaker 1: that's not recreational anymore.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 6: But yeah, now that's what we call a bender.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is bent. That is bent, almost broken. You
Speaker 2: hear me.
Speaker 7: With that.
Speaker 2: I'm Greg Glad, I'm Clayton, English and.
Speaker 5: Thanks for listening to War on Drugs. Make sure you
Speaker 5: follow the War on Drugs podcast so you don't miss
Speaker 5: any new episodes. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: Executive producers for War on Drugs are Jason Flahm and
Speaker 1: Kevin Wadas.
Speaker 2: Our Senior producer is.
Speaker 1: Michael Epstein, Editing by Nick Massetti and Michael Epstein, Associate
Speaker 1: producer and mixed and mastering by Nick Massetti. Additional production
Speaker 1: by Jeff Cladbone.
Speaker 5: Sure to follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook
Speaker 5: at Lava for Good. You can follow Greg on Twitter
Speaker 5: at Greglott, and you can follow Clayton English on Instagram
Speaker 5: at Clayton nabors. The War on Drugs is a production
Speaker 5: of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company
Speaker 5: Number one.
Speaker 6: I'm your host, Greg Lott.
Speaker 2: And I'm Clayton English. Thanks for listening.