Speaker 1: School of Humans. Charlie Marinelli is having a psychotic break
Speaker 1: in India, a country halfway around the world, from his parents,
Speaker 1: Nanette and Charlie Senior, who are frantically trying to get
Speaker 1: to their son. On their layover in atam Bull, Nanette
Speaker 1: facetimes with Rennick, a friend of Charlie's they sent from
Speaker 1: Delhi to keep tabs on him until they got there.
Speaker 1: Rennick is standing with Charlie outside of a hospital, begging him,
Speaker 1: along with his parents, to go in, but Charlie refuses.
Speaker 1: He believes he's the Messiah and whatever this hospital is
Speaker 1: going to do to him will strip him of his enlightenment.
Speaker 1: But this is not a state of enlightenment that anyone
Speaker 1: can survive. If Rennick can't get Charlie into this hospital now,
Speaker 1: then Charlie will be another missing person in India. I
Speaker 1: went into psychosis, and there were definitely things that I
Speaker 1: did that were not rational at all, But the experience
Speaker 1: was very real and what I went through was very real.
Speaker 1: This is Charlie Marinelli. He's back from India and integrating
Speaker 1: after a psychosis. I got an email from him on
Speaker 1: March twenty second, with a subject line that read India
Speaker 1: Syndrome Survivor. Episode three of Austray just launched and I
Speaker 1: had received a handful of emails and dms from listeners,
Speaker 1: but this one, as you can imagine, stopped me my tracks.
Speaker 1: When I got on a call with him, he told
Speaker 1: me a story. I was on the edge of my
Speaker 1: seat for every minute of that three hour call. Charlie
Speaker 1: ended up going into that hospital with Rennick and his
Speaker 1: parents eventually met him there, but how he got there
Speaker 1: as a journey that's changed him forever. Last week we
Speaker 1: heard Charlie's family speak and depth about their rescue mission.
Speaker 1: But this week we'll hear from Charlie, who knows what
Speaker 1: the cost of enlightenment is because he's lived it and
Speaker 1: he's here to talk about it. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I was running away from something or towards something, maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit of both. That I was running towards
Speaker 1: some promise of higher level of living or some you know,
Speaker 1: higher mental state, and I was running away from the
Speaker 1: emotions of my grandfather dying and all of that. After
Speaker 1: his grandfather's death, he started to rethink at all and
Speaker 1: going to India felt like the next step, a new phase.
Speaker 1: It's the next level place, if you're a secret. For
Speaker 1: me to go to India is to be away from
Speaker 1: my family and to be able to think for my
Speaker 1: own and to go more inward. On July ninth, twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: Charlie flew to Delhi. He spent one night there then
Speaker 1: headed to Bagsu, which is a twelve hour drive through
Speaker 1: the Himalayas from Delhi and it is about thirty minutes
Speaker 1: from the Dalai Lama's temple in Darmshala. I got there
Speaker 1: and started hanging out with a bunch of people community.
Speaker 1: It was relaxing, it was meditating, it was hiking a lot.
Speaker 1: It was just an adventure and there was so much
Speaker 1: to do there. There were all these yoga classes, yoga
Speaker 1: teacher training, massage training, this raiky instructors. There were all
Speaker 1: of these different things and I never did any of them.
Speaker 1: I just I was meditating and I was going and
Speaker 1: visiting temples in the mountains. And so for about a
Speaker 1: month there, it was just hanging out smoking chill them.
Speaker 1: We've spoken about chilling before, but I didn't realize there's
Speaker 1: a ritual around smoking it. Chillum is a ceremony when
Speaker 1: you light up at chill em. You know, you say
Speaker 1: one of the things was boom by way, not sab kissa,
Speaker 1: and you say this before you are boom shiva, basically
Speaker 1: saying you're smoking with shiva type of deal. Everyone sits
Speaker 1: down in a circle, whether you're at a table or
Speaker 1: you're on the ground, and one person lights it for you.
Speaker 1: You have to get it going, get it going. It's
Speaker 1: mixed with tobacco, so it's harsh. It hits very hard,
Speaker 1: so it feels like, I guess smoking a decent amount
Speaker 1: of not very good weed. So Charlie didn't listen to
Speaker 1: his mom's warning not to do drugs in India, but
Speaker 1: Chilham was his only vice. He wasn't drinking, he was
Speaker 1: eating clean, meditating daily. It was exactly what he needed.
Speaker 1: But he got a wake up call about a month
Speaker 1: into his visit when he walked into one of the
Speaker 1: cafes he frequented. An American woman in her sixties was
Speaker 1: there and something wasn't right. She's very disoriented. And I
Speaker 1: came in and this cafe I went to every day,
Speaker 1: so they knew me, they trusted me, they liked me.
Speaker 1: They're like, hey, this lady, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: can help her out. She's an American and she's not
Speaker 1: acting rationally. She's just got out of two silent meditations
Speaker 1: and was doing a dry fast, which means that you
Speaker 1: don't eat, you don't drink, you don't shower. It was intense.
Speaker 1: She was scared. She didn't know where she was, She
Speaker 1: didn't have her passport, her clothes. She had a little
Speaker 1: bag of like one change of clothes. I was like,
Speaker 1: where's your passport. She's like, I don't know where my
Speaker 1: money is and I didn't. I couldn't pay them for
Speaker 1: my room, so they kept my passport, so I can't
Speaker 1: find a place to stay. And she's just like she's
Speaker 1: out of her mind. She could not I mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't even think I could get her name out of her.
Speaker 1: And so we talked for a little bit, and she
Speaker 1: was just really freaked out. She didn't know what to do.
Speaker 1: She was basically in what I would call a psychosis state.
Speaker 1: Even though this woman was acting off, he didn't want
Speaker 1: to leave her stranded, so we let her use his
Speaker 1: room to shower and hopefully sleep off whatever she was on,
Speaker 1: if it was a drug or if it was due
Speaker 1: to her dry fast, to drink some water, and acclimate.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't that easy. My friends got me a
Speaker 1: little paranoid because I was like, I have this person
Speaker 1: who's in psychosis in my room in India. So they
Speaker 1: got me a little paranoid as like what could happen?
Speaker 1: And then the other thing was as worried that, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't know if she was gonna die or she
Speaker 1: was gonna She didn't drink water for like I think
Speaker 1: seven days or something. She was not looking well. So
Speaker 1: the next morning I was like, Okay, we need to
Speaker 1: go to a hospital, Like, come with me. We're going
Speaker 1: to go down to town and I'm going to take
Speaker 1: you to a hospital and we're going to figure this out.
Speaker 1: She wouldn't come. She did not want to leave the room.
Speaker 1: The people that I rented the room from, they were
Speaker 1: like weirded out because they knew she wasn't in her
Speaker 1: right mind. And I couldn't get her to leave to
Speaker 1: go to the hospital. So I ended up calling the
Speaker 1: US embassy. They called the local police. The police came.
Speaker 1: The reason I told you that story is because these
Speaker 1: police that came that were called from the US Embassy
Speaker 1: to come and deal with this woman were the same
Speaker 1: police that came and dealt with me later, and this
Speaker 1: part I think is very important. Keeps this in mind
Speaker 1: for later, but for now. Charlie, with the help of
Speaker 1: the police, was able to safely remove the woman from
Speaker 1: his room and she was taken to the hospital for
Speaker 1: immediate care. So that was my first brush against psychosis
Speaker 1: in India, but it didn't really trigger anything for me
Speaker 1: at that time. Little did Charlie know this woman's delusion
Speaker 1: would be his reality in just two months, because he
Speaker 1: was about to meet someone who would change his life forever.
Speaker 1: I think one of my main things was looking for
Speaker 1: a teacher. I think that was one of my intentions.
Speaker 1: Charlie came to India seeking more enlightenment or an awakening,
Speaker 1: which is the word he prefers to use, and he
Speaker 1: had heard these legendary stories of Baba's or holy men
Speaker 1: who were able to transcend what we believe to be
Speaker 1: humanly possible. I still can't place whether things are true
Speaker 1: or false with India because I've heard stories of Baba's
Speaker 1: levitating in the mountains and not eating. And there's a
Speaker 1: hand printing I think it's in a Himalayan cave or
Speaker 1: something of someone putting their hand through a wall. It
Speaker 1: was an ancient teacher and just showing that these boundaries
Speaker 1: that we have in our heads don't exist. Charlie didn't
Speaker 1: know if these legends about baba's were true, but he
Speaker 1: did want to meet one of these babas, someone who
Speaker 1: could guide him on a spiritual path, a teacher. And
Speaker 1: then finally, how did we meet? And eventually he found him.
Speaker 1: He called his teacher the Baba and Black because he
Speaker 1: wore black robes, as opposed to the handful of other
Speaker 1: babas Charlie and matten Bagsu who all wore white. And
Speaker 1: this kind of has some significance for some reason. I
Speaker 1: think of the light in the dark side. The Baba
Speaker 1: and Black goes by Baba Gee and at this point
Speaker 1: Charlie was charmed by him. He provided the same spiritually
Speaker 1: rich conversation that the other babas did, but there was
Speaker 1: something more. Obviously, I had never met this guy before,
Speaker 1: and immediately we had like this connection. It was like
Speaker 1: seeing someone that you hadn't seen for a long time.
Speaker 1: He was an intelligent person, he knew multiple languages. He
Speaker 1: had like this playfulness to him right, he had this joyful,
Speaker 1: kidlike spirit. Charlie felt a familiarity with Boba Gee and
Speaker 1: eventually he knew. I was like, oh, I found my teacher.
Speaker 1: He just came. He found me. For Charlie, being in
Speaker 1: the presence of Baba Gee was an education in itself.
Speaker 1: He was a sounding board and guided Charlie to trust
Speaker 1: himself in his own spiritual insights. They were so connected
Speaker 1: that eventually they didn't even have to use words to
Speaker 1: express themselves. At a certain point, the Baba and I
Speaker 1: weren't physically talking to each other in the most simple sense.
Speaker 1: It was to me we were communicating through telepathy. See,
Speaker 1: this is where it gets weird. We'll get into how
Speaker 1: weird things got after the break. Charlie had set an
Speaker 1: intention for India to find a teacher to guide him
Speaker 1: on a spiritual path to an away makening. When he
Speaker 1: met Baba Gee, he knew he'd found his teacher. What
Speaker 1: he didn't know was what was in store for him next.
Speaker 1: We were communicating through telepathy, but it felt perfectly natural.
Speaker 1: It's like, whoa, this is interesting. I was hearing thoughts
Speaker 1: and I was like, wait a minute, these are from him.
Speaker 1: There were even points in time where I was like
Speaker 1: physically voiced. I can't hear you anymore. He's like, get
Speaker 1: out of your head. Your mind is too cluttered. So
Speaker 1: there was a confirmation that we were talking right now.
Speaker 1: That would seem a little weird, then it was perfectly normal.
Speaker 1: At this time, reality was blurring with something Charlie didn't
Speaker 1: understand and couldn't control. From this point in time, I
Speaker 1: was still hanging out with the blah blah a lot,
Speaker 1: and I no longer slept, you know. I'd hang around
Speaker 1: the cafes during the day. I'd be walking in the
Speaker 1: Himalayas barefoot and sometimes with no shirt all night. Things
Speaker 1: took over when I was when I was in this
Speaker 1: state of doing jewels that I didn't know what they were.
Speaker 1: As he wandered at night, he would find these small
Speaker 1: private temples on people's properties where he would chant and
Speaker 1: perform rituals he had no prior knowledge of. He'd also
Speaker 1: paint his face like different Hindu gods. He didn't use
Speaker 1: any pictures of these gods to instruct him, or even
Speaker 1: a mirror. It's like he already knew what he was doing.
Speaker 1: At one point in time, I was absolutely convinced that
Speaker 1: the Dalai Lama was a higher incarnation of my dad.
Speaker 1: So at a certain point I was walking down to
Speaker 1: the Dalai Lama at Dalai Lama Temple every morning and
Speaker 1: waiting there. In my head, I had already had a
Speaker 1: conversation with him, you know, and we both understood that
Speaker 1: he was my dad. Finally I went up and actually
Speaker 1: requested his presence from the guards, which I was obviously
Speaker 1: very much denied. In this state, Charlie believed he was
Speaker 1: connected to the Dali Lama because he saw himself as
Speaker 1: one with everything, so there was no separation between himself
Speaker 1: and the Dalai Lama, just like there would be no
Speaker 1: separation between himself and the Messiah or Jesus, whom he
Speaker 1: would eventually claim to be. So through this period of psychosis, india, syndrome,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, I started, you know,
Speaker 1: very much believing I was enlightened, very much believing I
Speaker 1: was some sort of reincarnation of Jesus or Buddha or whoever,
Speaker 1: as very much believing that I was put there to
Speaker 1: cleanse people of their demons. In his state, Charlie was
Speaker 1: seeing physical manifestations of demons and people's faces and bodies.
Speaker 1: I remember I was sitting in a cafe and this
Speaker 1: guy walked in. He was wearing a fancy fedora, nice clothes,
Speaker 1: but his face was completely dysform looked like it had
Speaker 1: been through a fire. He was missing fingers, teeth, all well.
Speaker 1: Being very well dressed, Charlie saw these man's deformities, which
Speaker 1: made him look like a demon, as a manifestation of
Speaker 1: the man's materialism or greed. So Charlie approached this guy
Speaker 1: and asked him if he could perform a blessing on him. Surprisingly,
Speaker 1: this guy accepted Charlie's offer. Charlie knew the owner of
Speaker 1: the cafe and asked her to bring them a bowl
Speaker 1: of soup. He performed a blessing or spell over the
Speaker 1: soup and asked the guy to drink the whole cup.
Speaker 1: After he did, the man went into the bathroom, and
Speaker 1: from outside the door, Charlie could hear something happening in there.
Speaker 1: Maybe he was throwing up or who knows, but there
Speaker 1: were definitely noises coming from the bathroom, which in his state,
Speaker 1: Charlie saw as part of the purification process or an exorcism.
Speaker 1: When the noises died down, Charlie knocked on the bathroom door,
Speaker 1: opened the door and sat down next to him, and
Speaker 1: he was kind of freaking out, and I said, now
Speaker 1: you go on this hike. And I told him to
Speaker 1: go on this certain hike. It's, you know, a sacred
Speaker 1: mountain right at the base of the MLAs in northern India.
Speaker 1: And he left. Anyone on this hike and time was
Speaker 1: irrelevant at this point for me. But a bit later
Speaker 1: someone came walking through the door wearing very natural like
Speaker 1: hemp clothing and very grounded looking person and no deformities,
Speaker 1: and walks in and says thank you for telling me
Speaker 1: to go on that hike, and thank you for everything.
Speaker 1: And then it clicked that that was the same person.
Speaker 1: And I did the cleansing on He just found himself.
Speaker 1: He just went and did a spirit quest. So at
Speaker 1: this point Charlie was living in a different reality than others,
Speaker 1: and looking back on it, he can't decipher what was
Speaker 1: real or what was a result of his psychosis. Some people,
Speaker 1: like this man he had helped, saw him as he
Speaker 1: I saw himself and enlightened being. These people identified him
Speaker 1: as a baba. There were many more experiences like this,
Speaker 1: and it went from being accepted to being I got
Speaker 1: beat up by I don't know how many Indian people
Speaker 1: at one point in time started hitting me till I
Speaker 1: hit the ground. I mean, to them, it looks like
Speaker 1: a psychowesterner trying to I don't know, cast spells on
Speaker 1: someone type of thing. From what Charlie says, he was
Speaker 1: walking into people's shops and cafes, trying to cleanse them
Speaker 1: of their demons with various rituals he was pulling out
Speaker 1: of nowhere. It was apparently disturbing to a few of
Speaker 1: the people he approached, especially as the psychosis got worse.
Speaker 1: During this time, there were brief moments where Charlie was
Speaker 1: completely lucid, and one of these moments, Charlie remembers waking
Speaker 1: up from his psychosis terrified. So I was sitting in
Speaker 1: my room at this one night, and it almost felt
Speaker 1: like I was coming down from a journey from a trip.
Speaker 1: To be clear, Charlie's longest acid trip lasted twelve hours,
Speaker 1: which is a really long time. But this psychosis Charlie
Speaker 1: was in lasted at least two weeks, with brief moments
Speaker 1: of clarity like this one. And I finally called my
Speaker 1: dad and I told him I was scared of something.
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know if it's this Bamba.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. I think someone's drugging me.
Speaker 1: I'm not in the right state of mind. I don't
Speaker 1: know what to do. I feel like it's all around me,
Speaker 1: like I felt vulnerable, and I was scared, like really scared.
Speaker 1: I did not know what to do. My dad he
Speaker 1: got scared. He was like, hack up your stuff and
Speaker 1: leave now. As we heard in the last episode, this
Speaker 1: is when Charlie's parents went into rescue mode and started
Speaker 1: their panicked journey to India to save him, which was
Speaker 1: crucial because after this call an a lucid conversation Charlie
Speaker 1: had with a friend about suspicions he was being drugged,
Speaker 1: he fell right back into psychosis. Before we go any further,
Speaker 1: I want to cover something else that might have been
Speaker 1: going on between Charlie and Baba Ge. Now we've explored
Speaker 1: a lot of facets of spirituality in this podcast, and
Speaker 1: what we're about to discuss might be the most out there,
Speaker 1: but I think it's valuable to share. Remember how Charlie
Speaker 1: said that Baba G, who he referenced as the Baba
Speaker 1: and Black, represented the dark side. Well, I was talking
Speaker 1: to Suzi Singh, a New Delhi based therapist and author
Speaker 1: who in Keita and I will be speaking to in
Speaker 1: the next episode, and she mentioned something we haven't explored
Speaker 1: yet which she thinks is important to identify, and that's
Speaker 1: black magic and the occult, or as Charlie put it,
Speaker 1: the dark side. The occult relates to magic and the
Speaker 1: supernatural and falls outside the scope of religion and science.
Speaker 1: The learned occultist is able to see here and do
Speaker 1: things that I hidden from the eyes of ordinary people,
Speaker 1: and that seemed like magic. So when occult practices are
Speaker 1: used for the good of other people or for the
Speaker 1: good of one's own self to gain evolution and enlightenment,
Speaker 1: it is constructive, it's powerful, it's positive black magic. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, it's the misuse of occult information to
Speaker 1: cause harm to others through the manipulation of energy for
Speaker 1: some personal game. Now, this distinction is really important, Caroline,
Speaker 1: because just as fire can be used to cook a
Speaker 1: meal or to burn down the house, occult practices can
Speaker 1: be used for evolution often destruction. It depends entirely on
Speaker 1: the intention. So as black magic really dangerous, and do
Speaker 1: you have examples of this? Black magic is definitely dangerous
Speaker 1: in India. People who practice it are often referred to
Speaker 1: as panthrics. In November twenty twenty, there was a news
Speaker 1: report about a six year old girl in Khanpu who
Speaker 1: was raped and murdered on Devali night, which is a
Speaker 1: festival of lights incidentally, and her liver was extracted for
Speaker 1: a thumb thick ritual which involved eating the liver to
Speaker 1: enable a childless couple to bear a child. I've heard
Speaker 1: of several such instances where you can kill another person's
Speaker 1: child just to become pregnant to yourself, so we can
Speaker 1: see how destructive and how evil in darkness is saying.
Speaker 1: Also had thoughts in charlie situation if in fact this
Speaker 1: baba was performing some sort of black magic on him.
Speaker 1: I think what you're referring to in Charlie's case is
Speaker 1: something called Bashi curran, which is a hypnotic state brought
Speaker 1: on by the Baba and Charlie, who then becomes like
Speaker 1: a puppet on his chain. Once the barber has control
Speaker 1: over his mind, Charlie has very little personal who were left.
Speaker 1: He is going to be directed entirely by the magician himself.
Speaker 1: In some ways, it can be compared to voodoo practice
Speaker 1: So if this is what was happening, did Charlie, how
Speaker 1: could he have protected himself? When we talk of black
Speaker 1: magic in general, protection can become very difficult because one
Speaker 1: may have no idea where the harm is coming from.
Speaker 1: From the little experienced and exposure that I have in
Speaker 1: this field, personally, I've come to conclude that one of
Speaker 1: the most powerful protection arises from beaming blessings and love
Speaker 1: to the sender. So, according to Saying, love is an
Speaker 1: insulator against black magic, while fear enhances it. I had
Speaker 1: an energy session with an Irish practitioner when I was
Speaker 1: going through a tough spot in December. I was hoping
Speaker 1: he could clear some stuff. I was feeling blocked, like
Speaker 1: nothing was flowing. Things were either blowing up or they
Speaker 1: were stagnant. And though this practitioner didn't use the term
Speaker 1: black magic, he did identify what was going on between
Speaker 1: me and another person he said was part of the
Speaker 1: problem the same way Sing described the dynamic between the
Speaker 1: Baba and Charlie, and the intentions this practitioner set energetically
Speaker 1: were also the same as Sing just expressed. He took
Speaker 1: me through a visual exercise of sending love and blessings
Speaker 1: to this person with the intention to transform their negative energy,
Speaker 1: and it worked. This practice of sending blessings is not
Speaker 1: regulated to tantric or energetic healing. It's like prayer and religion.
Speaker 1: So even though this idea of magic can be hard
Speaker 1: to comprehend in our Western culture, if you view it
Speaker 1: in a different context you're familiar with, it makes sense.
Speaker 1: But what might make more sense in context to Charlie
Speaker 1: in his situation is that he was being drugged, which
Speaker 1: is something as dad believes he was drugged. Can I
Speaker 1: prove it? No, I didn't go to Bagsue. The only
Speaker 1: reason why I know that that happened to him is
Speaker 1: because what he had done in the past, the experiences
Speaker 1: that he had taken other people on and been on himself,
Speaker 1: he always came back grounded. He journaled what had I learned.
Speaker 1: This was not that type of experience. This was psychosis,
Speaker 1: according to Charlie, and like nothing he'd ever experienced before,
Speaker 1: and his parents knew it. So September twenty nineteen, after
Speaker 1: Nanette and Charlie Senior both received those cryptic FaceTime calls
Speaker 1: from Charlie, they were on a seventeen hour of flight
Speaker 1: heading to India to track down their son. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: they sent Rennick from Delhi to Bagsue to keep tabs
Speaker 1: on Charlie. In the United States Embassy, it sent the
Speaker 1: Indian police to help. Apparently this part the police got involved.
Speaker 1: They found me. I'd disappeared from them for a few days,
Speaker 1: like days, I don't know where I went. I think
Speaker 1: this was the tipping point where it could have gone
Speaker 1: really wrong and I could have disappeared. Charlie is lost
Speaker 1: a lot of time and clarity due to the state
Speaker 1: he was in, but he's been told that he was
Speaker 1: found naked in the woods by Taurists who were hiking,
Speaker 1: which Charlie's mom the Net confirmed in the last episode.
Speaker 1: Something happened and they found me. And then the next
Speaker 1: thing I remember is these police. So I knew these
Speaker 1: police from before. These were the same Indian police that
Speaker 1: the US Embassy had sent to help Charlie get the
Speaker 1: American woman and psychosis out of his room and into
Speaker 1: a hospital. They'd built her apport with Charlie through that,
Speaker 1: so as you can imagine, when Rennick led them to
Speaker 1: him and he was in the same psychotic state as
Speaker 1: that woman, it was a shock. They came up to
Speaker 1: where I was in a cafe. My friend brought them
Speaker 1: to me. I was like, oh, these guys are my friends.
Speaker 1: I already knew who they were, right. They were very nice.
Speaker 1: I mean, these police were saints, and they're like, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: come with us, and we're just like casually walking, you know,
Speaker 1: like thinking nothing of it, and then we finally get
Speaker 1: to their car, and then I'm like, WHOA, what's going
Speaker 1: on here? This is when Charlie freaked out in his state,
Speaker 1: he didn't know reality from delusion, and even though Rennick
Speaker 1: and these cops were there to help, he was scared
Speaker 1: and tried to leave, and they grabbed me and forced
Speaker 1: me into the police cruiser. One cop got on one
Speaker 1: side of any one cop got in the other. There
Speaker 1: was two in the front seat and one in the back,
Speaker 1: and then my buddy jumped in the back too, And
Speaker 1: at this point I was bawling. I was crying. I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know what's going on. Eventually Charlie
Speaker 1: calmed down, but when they pulled up to the hospital,
Speaker 1: he had a very different idea about why they were there. Now.
Speaker 1: Mind you, at this point, I think I'm like a messiah,
Speaker 1: like Jesus so they bringing me to the hospital. I
Speaker 1: think they're bringing me there to heal these people. I'm
Speaker 1: like looking at these different people, like these very sick
Speaker 1: people in these beds. Then I think I'm healing people.
Speaker 1: They're looking at me like, Okay, what are we two
Speaker 1: with this person? Like I was clearly out of my mind.
Speaker 1: In the last episode, the nets spoke about what looked
Speaker 1: like holes and the palms of both of Charlie's hands.
Speaker 1: According to Charlie, this was from ashing chill him or
Speaker 1: incense into his hands after a ritual, which usually didn't
Speaker 1: leave a mark, but one time he accidentally burned a
Speaker 1: hole into one of his palms. He did the same
Speaker 1: thing either purposefully or not. He can't remember to the
Speaker 1: other palm. In his psychosis, he believed this was a
Speaker 1: sign he was the messiah. In this state, these public
Speaker 1: hospitals didn't know what to do with Charlie. Rennick and
Speaker 1: the Indian police tried at least two hospitals that wouldn't
Speaker 1: take him, but the third hospital did. This is all
Speaker 1: Charlie remembers about that hospital. I was refusing all of
Speaker 1: their treatment that they wanted to give me. I ran away.
Speaker 1: They grabbed me and drugged me back to this journey
Speaker 1: or to this bed, threw me on it, held me down,
Speaker 1: and they injected me of this stuff. Next thing I remember,
Speaker 1: I woke up in a really nice hospital in Delhi
Speaker 1: with my parents coming up. We'll find out how Charlie
Speaker 1: came back from the brink of a spiritual edge, which
Speaker 1: he was now experiencing as a psychotic break. Charlie lies
Speaker 1: in a hospital bed in New Delhi and severe psychosis.
Speaker 1: His parents, who are with him, believe he's in this
Speaker 1: state because he was being drugged. So I asked Charlie
Speaker 1: point blank, did he think he was drugged by his teacher,
Speaker 1: Bob A. G. I don't know for sure, and that's
Speaker 1: why I'm not going to say yes he drugged me.
Speaker 1: Is he probably the top candidate for drugging me? Yes.
Speaker 1: Boba Ge was with Charlie before he went into psychosis,
Speaker 1: and he was with him during it, which we witnessed
Speaker 1: on Charlie's call with his mom Nanette last episode, but
Speaker 1: he vanished when Charlie was taken to the hospital by
Speaker 1: the police. However, before things got bad, Charlie truly valued
Speaker 1: bobba Ge and his guidance. I do believe that I was,
Speaker 1: and still to this day, that I was achieving some
Speaker 1: sort of spiritual awakening prior to what I've been described
Speaker 1: as I fried circuits and I went too far too fast,
Speaker 1: and dropped and went into psychosis. So on that side
Speaker 1: of things, I do believe that he to a point
Speaker 1: facilitated and awakening. And then on the other side he
Speaker 1: was drugging me. That's not okay and very deceitful, and
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't have subscribed to that. But Charlie didn't
Speaker 1: know Boba G's intentions, and he still doesn't know. Whether
Speaker 1: he had good intentions or bad intentions. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But the one conclusion that we've all drawn is that
Speaker 1: he did not help ground me. He did not do
Speaker 1: any thing to pull me out of this space. The
Speaker 1: therapist that I'm working with he had an experienced in India,
Speaker 1: and he said, the Indians Sawdus. They're about up and out,
Speaker 1: that's all. They're about getting to this highest level possible
Speaker 1: as quickly as possible. They don't really think about the
Speaker 1: coming back down to Earth. Their goal is to take
Speaker 1: you as far as possible. Well, Charlie went as far
Speaker 1: as he possibly could and He realizes now that in
Speaker 1: this state of psychosis, there were many times when he
Speaker 1: could have disappeared in India, like some of the other
Speaker 1: stories we featured, but things lined up in his favor.
Speaker 1: I think I got very lucky for certain reasons. I
Speaker 1: got lucky because I knew these police, my buddy found me.
Speaker 1: My parents cared it well. I think there's no lack
Speaker 1: of caring when it comes to parents and children, right,
Speaker 1: That's not the special part in my case. I think
Speaker 1: the special part in my case was a fair amount
Speaker 1: of luck me knowing the police and they saw me
Speaker 1: held out this lady before. Earlier in this episode, Charlie
Speaker 1: said how important it was that these specific police who
Speaker 1: knew him were the ones that found him. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just important, it was a vital because when the doctors
Speaker 1: drew Charlie's blood, they found LSD. And though he did
Speaker 1: one psychedelic journey in India, it was before a psychosis.
Speaker 1: So he doesn't know how LSD got into a system
Speaker 1: if it wasn't present from earlier, And this was not
Speaker 1: why he was in a psychotic state. Like I've said,
Speaker 1: a psychedelic journey can last twelve hours, not over two
Speaker 1: weeks either way, He and his parents knew he was
Speaker 1: in trouble. That's technically like a fifteen year prison sentence
Speaker 1: in India, so I could be in prison right now,
Speaker 1: but they didn't do that. They helped me out. Charlie
Speaker 1: knew how lucky he was in this situation, but he
Speaker 1: and his parents also knew they had to get him
Speaker 1: out of India just in case anyone else got wind
Speaker 1: of their being LSD in a system. So after antipsychotics
Speaker 1: grounded him enough to get on a plane, they were
Speaker 1: on the first flight back to the States. But things
Speaker 1: weren't any easier there. I mean, things never stopped being
Speaker 1: weird at this point. I was still kind of I
Speaker 1: was like in a midway. I wasn't fully where I was,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't back on my ground either. I was
Speaker 1: just uncomfortable in this existence. When Charlie got back to
Speaker 1: the States, he was staying with his mom in California,
Speaker 1: but like he said, he wasn't completely with it, so
Speaker 1: he thought his mom was drugging him, so he took
Speaker 1: off for Austin, Texas and asked his fiance Michelle to
Speaker 1: meet him there. Just to note his mom, Nanette was
Speaker 1: definitely not drugging him. I was having anxiety attacks, panic
Speaker 1: attacks all the time. I remember once my fiance got there,
Speaker 1: like we'd go out for a walk and we'd get
Speaker 1: out of the car and like five minutes in, I
Speaker 1: was like, no, I gotta go back. Like I'd just
Speaker 1: get this anxiety attack, just anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. I mean
Speaker 1: in the apartment, I would get up from the couch
Speaker 1: and I'd been pacing back and forth, and I would
Speaker 1: like stand in a corner and like, I don't know
Speaker 1: why a corner, but a corner hoop made me feel safe.
Speaker 1: Charlie couldn't sustain this level of anxiety. My buddy he had,
Speaker 1: he had had my gun for a long time. And
Speaker 1: I finally when I was there, I was like, I'd
Speaker 1: like my gun back, and it was just sitting on
Speaker 1: my dresser and I was just waking up and just
Speaker 1: looking at it. At this point, things were really bad.
Speaker 1: Charlie wanted out. He turned to his dad for support.
Speaker 1: He's like, you need to find a psychologist or a
Speaker 1: psychiatrist or someone to talk to you right now. If
Speaker 1: you know anything about the mental health system in this country,
Speaker 1: it's not easy to find someone to talk to Even
Speaker 1: as a middle class American with health assurance, there's waiting
Speaker 1: lists for months just to get an initial appointment. So
Speaker 1: he's like, well, you got to check yourself into a hospital,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, no, but I guide no other option.
Speaker 1: This is the time where I started questioning everything that
Speaker 1: had happened. I was lucid enough and out of the
Speaker 1: psychosis enough to be questioning what happened, but I wasn't
Speaker 1: out of it enough to rationalize it or to like
Speaker 1: make sense of it. I was still on this fence
Speaker 1: where it was like magical thinking on one hand and
Speaker 1: then thinking I'm crazy on the other side. The magical
Speaker 1: thinking was that his spiritual awakening in India had him
Speaker 1: living in a different realm than the rest of us.
Speaker 1: But there's another side to that. So if you have
Speaker 1: the whole population telling you you're crazy, you're gonna start
Speaker 1: believing it. I didn't notice too. I trusted myself one moment,
Speaker 1: and then I didn't trust myself the next moment. It
Speaker 1: was just like this constant teetering, and I finally admitted
Speaker 1: myself to the hospital in Texas. Charlie went to an
Speaker 1: emergency room so we could be admitted to the psychiatric
Speaker 1: hospital in Austin. At the hospital, a doctor diagnosed Charlie
Speaker 1: as bipolar one, which is also known as manic depressive disorder.
Speaker 1: Someone affected by bipolar one has at least one manic
Speaker 1: episode in their life. Charlie didn't agree with his doctor's diagnosis.
Speaker 1: What who are you talking about? Like, I've never had
Speaker 1: anything similar to bipolar in my life. Oh well, I
Speaker 1: can just come on and I'm like, okay, So what
Speaker 1: Her explanation was that it didn't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with the acid, except for the fact that the acid
Speaker 1: made me not sleep that first night, and then it
Speaker 1: threw me into a manic episode, which made no sense
Speaker 1: to me. But I've learned now the only way to
Speaker 1: get out of a psychiatric hospital is to accept whatever
Speaker 1: diagnosis they've given you. Charlie left the psychiatric hospital, diagnosed
Speaker 1: his bipolar one, and on twelve hundred milligrams of lithium
Speaker 1: a day. To anyone who has not been on lithium before,
Speaker 1: this feels like the pillform of a lobotomy. I didn't
Speaker 1: care about anything. I didn't want to really live, I
Speaker 1: didn't want to die. I just kind of was. There
Speaker 1: was no emotion. It was gone and I was on
Speaker 1: lithium for almost a year. Charlie eventually got off the
Speaker 1: antipsychotics and found alternative therapy and healing modalities that have
Speaker 1: helped stabilize him. I mean, I can't believe the person
Speaker 1: sitting on the other side of this zoom went through
Speaker 1: what he did less than two years ago. Regardless of
Speaker 1: how intensive an experience this was. For me, it was
Speaker 1: a pivotal point in my life. I mean, it's changed everything.
Speaker 1: Charlie was chasing a spiritual edge in India, which ultimately
Speaker 1: led to a psychotic break. But he came back from
Speaker 1: this edge and now he wants to use his experience
Speaker 1: to help others. He's going back to school to get
Speaker 1: a degree in psychology so we can support those who
Speaker 1: have had similar experiences to his own. And I know
Speaker 1: those people are out there because of this podcast. I've
Speaker 1: spoken to them. Charlie attributes where he is now to
Speaker 1: a company nation of psychedelics and therapy, which he integrates
Speaker 1: with a trained practitioner. I think they go hand in
Speaker 1: hand really as a healing modality. One stirs things up
Speaker 1: and the other makes sense of what comes up during
Speaker 1: the experience. Though the idea of psychedelics can be taboo.
Speaker 1: The use of drugs like LSD and psilocybin to heal
Speaker 1: trauma is having a resurgence after a heyday in the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies with advocates like Ramdas and Timothy Leary,
Speaker 1: who as clinical psychologists research the therapeutic effects of these
Speaker 1: psychedelic drugs. Now, educational organizations like the Multidisciplinary Association for
Speaker 1: Psychedelic Studies or MAPS are legitimizing the use of psychedelics
Speaker 1: again through clinical trials that are proving these drugs, when
Speaker 1: taken within a clinical or therapy setting, can help heal PTSD, depression, anxiety,
Speaker 1: and more, and it helps integrate the experienced into everyday life.
Speaker 1: I think that putting a proper container on the use
Speaker 1: of these medicines, like having a safe space and proper
Speaker 1: knowledge of use, and also having a good support system
Speaker 1: is really key to using these medicines safely and effectively.
Speaker 1: Because this therapy is the only thing that has helped
Speaker 1: truly integrate Charlie's experience in India, It's something he eventually
Speaker 1: wants to study so he can become a practitioner and
Speaker 1: safely use psychedelics and his therapy sessions with others. But
Speaker 1: for now, the way he wants to help others is easy.
Speaker 1: When I've reached out to you, and you know, obviously
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff started going through my mind. Is
Speaker 1: this a good thing? This is a bad thing? Like,
Speaker 1: you know, why do I want to be on a podcast?
Speaker 1: And there is you know a couple of things that
Speaker 1: really came up for me. And one is, if there's
Speaker 1: other people that have been through what I've been through
Speaker 1: and don't have the clarity around it, maybe the integration
Speaker 1: that I've been able to have with therapy and really
Speaker 1: moving through it. I mean, if one person or to
Speaker 1: call me and I was able to have a conversation,
Speaker 1: it was just able to shed some light on what
Speaker 1: they've been through and maybe helped them in some small way.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, it banged this whole podcast worth
Speaker 1: it for sure. The day after Charlie and I had
Speaker 1: this initial interview, he texted me. The text read, have
Speaker 1: you heard of data? I replied no and called him,
Speaker 1: so you've never heard of data? Wo Okay? I think
Speaker 1: that this is very important information for this podcast because
Speaker 1: no one's mentioned this so far. Data is a missing
Speaker 1: piece of a puzzle that Charlie is just now putting
Speaker 1: together as he starts to integrate his psychosis in India
Speaker 1: with his current reality. Last night, going through the whole
Speaker 1: story really like it got me thinking. So I remember
Speaker 1: the story of the lady, the American woman Charlie helped,
Speaker 1: who was in psychosis. The Austrian guy that I was
Speaker 1: around when I was there, he suspected that she had
Speaker 1: been given to Torah. So data is a flower, and
Speaker 1: it's been compared to salvia. It's a hallucinogenic that you
Speaker 1: don't want to take. It causes nightmarish hallucinations and the
Speaker 1: effect on data can last six months a year and
Speaker 1: it can never go away. Sometimes Tatora is also known
Speaker 1: as I believe the Devil's trumpet. Data is a poisonous
Speaker 1: flower that does look like a blooming trumpet. It's pretty,
Speaker 1: but it's psychoactive and can cause hallucinations and psychosis. So
Speaker 1: do you think Baba Gee was drugging you with data?
Speaker 1: That's what I'm wondering. Either way, Data is something Charlie
Speaker 1: thinks we need to explore further. I'm wondering how this
Speaker 1: part slipped through the cracks about India because We're recording
Speaker 1: this in real time as Charlie's story unfolds and my
Speaker 1: team needs to do some digging on the Statira lead.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in early May with the final episode
Speaker 1: of Astray. If you've gone through a similar experience to
Speaker 1: Charlie or just want to reach out to him, you
Speaker 1: can contact him at Charlie Marinelli seven seven seven at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. Astray is a production of School of
Speaker 1: Humans and iHeartRadio. Today's episode of Astray, Charlie Marinelli found,
Speaker 1: was produced, written, and narrated by me. Caroline Slaughter and
Speaker 1: Kita Nanda is my co producer, and Gavi Watts is
Speaker 1: our supervising producer. Astray was sound produced by toone Mothers,
Speaker 1: with score and sound design by Jason Shannon and mix
Speaker 1: by Harper Harris. Executive producers are Elsie Crowley, Brandon Barr,
Speaker 1: and Brian Lovin. Thanks for listening, School of Humans.