Psychedelic Renaissance

An experience of many & one of learning more on what is happening currently in the world of psychedelics & beyond. My interest in psychedelics beyond cannabis...

This episode touches on Psychedelic therapy, Dissociative?..out of body experiences from medicines like Ayahuasca, Ketamine, & DMT.                        

I will also share my special experience of Reggie Watts & a very cool music review/video(must see) from the infamously talented Flea shown here: https://open.spotify.com/track/6JKOLQc89L8qXqljarJB2V?si=092dd502dbab47e0

Blog version(: https://consciouschoicesforwellness.substack.com/publish/post/194095325

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Thank you so much for joining me today!  I strongly Believe that we are all Connected and want to Share our gifts with One another.  Remember how amazing you are, Never Give Up, We can help and Support each other along this Crazy Journey...I'm going to keep Sharing what I can with all of You, just wish I could do more each day, Life is passing by too quickly!  This podcast is new and will be ever-evolving & improving as long as possible...Please share this with others who could benefit from this information(:

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Hello and welcome to the Conscious Choices for Wellness podcast. Here I am, your host, B. Critelli. Like I said, every other week I'm going to be doing an in-person episode. Hopefully, if all goes well, you know, just gotta go with the flow. But um, yeah, I was just getting ready to record uh my last recording in person. I let you know that I'm settled into my new place now. I finally found a home for now. And uh I um do have a neighbor. She just returned. I was going to start recording a little sooner, and this morning is just like, I don't know, sometimes it just seems like time is just going quicker, and you're like, why does it seem like it's just going so quick right now? Um, so anyways, um try not to get segued too much because I was going to keep my episode short, and of course, I wrote quite a lot. So um I will be talking about the psychedelic renaissance that's happening, although that is a really big top topic. So I am going into just a few areas and trying to keep it brief, but I will continue this discussion as it is something that is passion of mine. Um so understanding where we want to go. Hmm. That was a subtitle I put, but um now I'm like, um, what does that mean exactly? That might mean something different for anybody. Um, so today is a story of where I went last weekend, not just a few days ago, or this last weekend, but the weekend before, because when I started writing this, it was it was like the week after I had returned from an experience of many, actually, and one that I will tell a little story about that I didn't write about, which I always like to do anyway, that happened on my journey back from day two from this conference I went to, and learning more of what is happening currently in the world of psychedelics and beyond. And the conference was called Spirituality and Beyond, but really it was about psychedelics and how that um interacts and inner is interwoven with spirituality. My interest in psychedelics beyond cannabis went to sleep for the most part while I was raising my kids for the last 30 years, and it was vastly reawakened over the past several years. There was only one bad trip experience that I've ever had, and these are on natural substances that I speak from. Now, this podcast is going into other substances that a few I have not yet experienced. Though that experience that I had was around age 18 due to the wrong mindset going in on shrooms while camping with some friends. All other experiences with either LSD, shrooms, DMT, etc., of the more natural substances have brought me great peace, joy, insight, and growth. DMT or dimethyl tryptomine is not in its natural form unless it's consumed within the vine plant known as ayahuasca. And ayahuasca is two different plants that are put together to make the medicine. And I think just one of them actually contains DMT. So that's the primary psychoactive component in ayahuasca. And in um in case you don't know what ayahuasca is, many of you have heard of it or maybe have done it. Um it's very widely used now, almost too much, and it's a traditional Amazonian brew. That um the DMT, the DMT is a serotinergic hallucinogenic, okay. Um and it is a widely researched, it's a widely researched drug of the tryptamine family. And the tryptamine family has to do with um being an amino acid that the body understands and it works with our hormonal system and our neurological system and our emotional system, and it's you know, an amino acid like many amino acids do many different things in the body. So it's in that family of the tryptamines. It's structurally similar to psilocybin or magic mushrooms and is known to produce short acting and intense visual hallucinizations. I have uh also taken TMT by itself, um, which you know it's been extracted like from a plant into a medicine. Now you can get it as an extraction, and it is something that people are taking to get a really strong hallucinogenic effect, maybe get you know, direct contact with the outer world and understand maybe something that you're asking a question about. It's very intentional, it's something you should really, you know, do, I think, alone and with spirit, and be very intentional about why you're doing it. It's a very quick acting and very short-lived experience. I've never feared was natural from the earth and adulterated by a lab. These days, lab-made psychoactive drugs are being casually classified by some into the same group as natural substances. Honestly, this alarms me, but doesn't surprise me one bit. Drugs are drugs, and most concerning and important part is that they are safe enough to consume as medicine. Okay, many drugs, I say drugs are drugs because drugs are man-made, they're synthesized in a lab, they're not in its natural form anymore, in its whole form of you know, wherever they came from, which is a lot of times plants, so then they are going to cause side effects, and sometimes that can be very severe. So I have many reasons for staring away from them, and plant medicine will always be plant medicine, truly unadulterated by man, only made into an extract by adding hot water or another sulfant like alcohol to extract its medicine, and this is what keeps the substance safe, never harming with continual use if respected and not overused. Okay, so medicine from plants or medicine from a drug, in my opinion, should never be overused or abused, it should be respected as medicine. Why shamans and some spiritual teachers use as sacred medicine daily for insight and balance, respect, right? They know what they're doing, they respect the medicine. There are four levels: one, two, three, and four. And one is the most mild, like if you think of like peppermint tea or chamomile tea, okay, those would be classified as like an herbal, like a um classification of a one, and four being deadly. Very few plants and fungi are, but there are some out there, and so always know before consumption, just in case. At this virtuality and beyond conference in Oakland, California, there were many diverse panels of speakers and a few musicians, which of course made it even better. Everyone was amazingly passionate about their craft or a sacred offering to the world, topics ranging from sustainability of entheogenic harvesting like ayahuasca and peyote. There's, you know, just devastating effects that are happening out there now because there's overuse, overconsumption, not respect for the medicine, and so that's become an issue. Two fentanyl test strips for burning man. So, you know, there was a wide range of different topics that were discussed. I think I missed a couple of them. Um, today the psychedelic world has expanded into other lab-made substances known as dissociatives. The most popular one being ketamine, which many of you have heard about. Ketamine's been around for a long time, but now it's, you know, a street drug, and now it's like used very, very widely. Discovered in the early 60s as a well-known veterinarian tranquilizer, and was a valued anesthetic used in Vietnam. That's when it first was used as an anesthetic, and it's been used in hospitals ever since. Then in the early 2000s, researchers began noticing something fascinating about it. Patients who had received ketamine for surgery were reporting rapid and dramatic improvements in their mood. People who had struggled with depression for years suddenly felt lighter, more hopeful, in some cases, becoming completely free of symptoms. So, you know, that's that's a good medicine, right? I'm sure there's got to be some side effects of it, though. It is a drug. Um, not getting into all of that, but today ketamine use is on the rise in clinical mental health settings for treatment of anxiety, depression, and PTSD. So I know many other more natural substances that are also used for this, so I would advocate for that more. Um, you know, like cannabis and psilocybin. So hopefully shifting more into the safer realm to avoid overdose and have safe access. That's good news, right? So unfortunately, many won't be able to afford the expense of these treatments, though. So since it's a drug, it will be street-driven. There will still be, you know, illegal um illegal access to it. And these drugs are largely man-made laboratory substances that have the risk of containing fentanyl if bought on the street. Dissociatives create the feeling of being out of body, definitely a way to see self differently and even the world as being an illusionary experience, creating an infinite perspective of what life essentially is, right? Like you've heard, like, this is all an illusion, you know, like we we've been taught and conditioned, and we're like doing what we're supposed to think we're supposed to be doing, but are we really supposed to be doing what we're doing? It's like, um, is it all just um yeah, just a funny joke? Um but from what I gather, they differ though, and not giving the psychedelic hallucination experience as much as traditional psychedelics do. There is a different molecular action happening here. So DMT kind of gives you that as well, which I think I I get into here, but it's like it kind of gives you this out-of-body experience. Um, but there's also very like very deep psychedelic experience. And I remember that when I took ayahuasca, um, that could be from the DMT because the DMT extract that I took was also very much like that. It was just very short-lived and not this lawn drawn drawn out, not as, you know, yeah, I'm not gonna get into all that right now, but um, I did want to mention that Reggie Watts, musician, comedian, and psychonaut, wrapped up the conference on Sunday discussing how he came to be his authentic self through the early use of dissociatives from his mid-teen years in Montana until the now. So when I'm saying dissociatives, it's not just ketamine, there's a whole bunch of them out there. Um not gonna get into all that. I'm not advocating that. I actually haven't even um experimented with that. Um, like I said, DMT is probably the closest thing that I've gotten to, although um psilocybin, I believe, even LSD, you know, other that's probably why they're like intertwined kind of in a similar category with psychedelics, is because psychedelics, um traditional ones like mushrooms and LSD also kind of give you that feeling, but I don't think it's as like intense as these other disassociative drugs. Reggie, yeah, he was there, and that was one of the reasons that kind of drew me in, especially on the second day. I wanted to see him in person. I was right up front, I was in the third row. Um, it was very nice to be like that close to him because he's somebody I just kind of learned about uh this winter uh on a podcast and then looked him up and like watched his comedy special on Netflix. And um, I really love his music too. He's just very different, you know, he's just um got his own unique style. So he was there, and when he was asked what his favorite drug of choice, he stated after cannabis. Thank you, Reggie, for mentioning cannabis first, that it was ketamine, which I kind of thought that's what he was gonna say. Um, so hopefully, I mean, I hope he's my age, by the way. Um, and you know, he talked a little bit about growing up in the 80s, and you know, it could just very much relate. We're we're the same age. And I just hope that he stays safe, you know, out there because he's he's very much an exploratory psychonaut that's really delving into some heavy, different, like every single dissociative he has access to and can experiment with. And um his partner that he cared very much about, I didn't even know at the time. I just found out actually, as I was writing this, that she passed away in Lima, Peru. Actually, she um left by choice, it sounds like, took her life, and she was 15 years younger than him. Um, but he was very connected with her and loved her very much. And they had been dating for a few years, and it's very sad. So he was just dealing with that. This conference just happened like a week maybe after she passed, and I felt like he was very emotional on stage. He he cried a few times, um, which I thought was kind of interesting, but also very, you know, heart-touching. I I love it when people can just be authentic and you know, if they need to cry, be emotional, be themselves, whatever's touching them. Um, but I'm sure some of that was because he was, you know, grieving a loved one that had just passed the week before. And I did not know that at the conference. So that was interesting to just find that out. We're all gonna leave this world, right? Um, that we're in here, and we're gonna go to where we came from. We're gonna go back, you know, we're just here having this human experience. So, anyways, um, I have yet to try this substance. Speaking of ketamine, um, clearly have been avoiding it for the past seven years since I first heard about it, or first really talked about it with a friend of mine, somebody I was dating at the time. Um, I heard some unfavorable things about it and some trips that people were having, and one that led to a death in the snow up in Lake Tahoe here. And that just kind of like, I was like, oh, yeah, you know, it's just a drug, you know, like I don't want to experience it. I yeah, just felt like it was a little bit more risky. And since I've been hearing, you know, just the rampant use and more and more people using it. I feel that drugs like this and others that are now being used widely by psychotherapists in clinical settings are meant for healing deep traumas and should be used in such a way under professional experienced guidance, especially to ensure the safety of what you are consuming. Over the past year, there has been a decline in fentanyl-related deaths. Good news, yes. There's still, I kind of did the math really quick, just in the last year, there's been almost 150 per day, and I believe that was just in the US. So there's still quite a lot. But that could be combined with other synthetic drugs, opioid related. But most of those, I think it was like 60%, still are their finding contained fentanyl. So that's why if you can get your hands on fentanyl test strips, but for some reason the government is outlawing them in many states, very important to test if you're going to experiment or take any kind of drug that could have fentanyl in it. So the market is finally saturated though with fentanyl, and many have become more weary of what's inside their drug of choice. As you may have heard from one who has had a near-death experience, right? Some of us know people who have died from an accident and um they were able to be brought back. One that leaves their physical body and then comes back. They may be a little bit altered, they may see things a little differently, but maybe in a better way than before, right? They might be more open-minded, they're just they're just kind of changed. So I think that's why people like the disassociatives because it you're actually like having this out-of-body experience, and it just kind of changes your perspective. And you don't like I know for Reggie Watts, like he doesn't see things the way other people see it. And I think that's why people are like drawn to him and like his perspective on life. He's not taking this experience here like so seriously, and like grinding and stressing, and like, you know, I mean, he's a comedian and he's a musician and he's he's like doing what he loves, but he's definitely not stressing out over the endless conditioning of our culture. So I will always stand firm in going natural, always the safest route, always the purest, and always plenty of options to do such. Um we add some nice photos on the blog, which I will link in the show notes. Psychedelic plant and fungi medicine always can have a slight to medium disassociative effect if you want kind of that, right? To kind of change your perspective, kind of see things a little differently, hence bringing into the realm of the drug types, just meaning that they're kind of like intertwining it, you know. Like at this conference, it was kind of like it was intertwined. You could tell that like cannabis advocates and um mushroom and LSD advocates were, you know, kind of intertwined together with the people that are taking the more like drug type disassociatives, as well as the medicine for higher ground, creating a positive mental health outlook if taken with an experienced practitioner. Okay, so going back. ayahuasca containing DMT, primarily classified as a potent fast-acting psychedelic hallucinogen or in that tryptamine group rather than a traditional disassociative like ketamine. But it commonly produces intense disassociative effects. It acts as a serotonin receptor agonist, causing rapid vivid hallucinations and profound detachment from reality and the physical body. Okay, so I have my own ayahuasca experiences and um yeah it's like you know your body is there right and you you can you can almost I mean my experience was like you know you can you can you could touch and you can be with your body but um I never had to like get up when I had done it twice um and necessarily like walk around I think you would maybe need like someone assisting you. Maybe I did once have to go to the bathroom but that might have been like towards the end of it you know and I was kind of not feeling it as much as the peak moments um there's definitely like purging going on and you know that's to really like get out like your your the things that's blocking you know like your your demons and you know like really like purging things out so you can feel the medicine more. So that was many many years ago and I definitely felt like I was like out of body but I sensed my physical body nearby and um all I can say is it was a very profound special experience that I don't want to do a lot but I will never forget I um felt very connected with the plant like she was like my my grandmother and my teacher and my my spirit guide and I could ask her questions and get answers. And so it really kind of helped me in that time of my life um to know what to do next and to feel more comfortable with whatever I was dealing with. Set and setting I think is very important with any of these kind of substances as a mother on a mission to spread more healthy healing vibes and love. I pray that everyone stays safe and guided respectfully on their beloved journeys here. Okay love you all and let's um yeah let's just do that okay and let's um work together and just you know I know there's there's lots of intense things happening out there but there's lots of people that are changing for the better and we just need to collaborate more support each other more do more good things that are helping the planet just keep keep keep doing it spreading the love it's all about the love and the positive vibes it's just it's always been about that right so on a side note I want to share my latest music review remembering flea from the infamous amazing red hot chili peppers remember them from the 90s they may have started in the late 80s but definitely were huge in the 90s so a friend of mine shared this with me this last week and he Flea has dropped this creation recently I think it was in October September October last year I looked it up and I missed it but now I'm following him because he's he was always really cool and he's doing some amazing work it looks like out there. So the video adds so much artistic expression you have to watch the video version. I'm going to link it in the show notes or you can look at the blog and there's a link at the end you can just click on it. It's called Build a Bridge is where the courage is and it's called a plea okay so it's a song that he did but then he made a video and you got to watch the video so it's all about peace and love spreading more awareness and he is doing such in such a creative way that so much love and respect to him that man yes um peace and love to all of you thank you for being here today and I'll see you in a few weeks or you'll hear me in a few weeks if you listen and please love comment subscribe all those things all right take care