The War on Consciousness: Psychedelics, Rebellion, and the Stories That Won’t Die

One on One Video Call W/George
https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meeting

Support the show:
https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US

The Lila Code: 
https://orcid.org/0009-0008-4612-3942

🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door.
Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first year

https://www.district216.com/

Artem Smirnov | Normalize Psychedelics

“One testimony at a time, he’s normalizing the miracle.”

In this episode, George sits down with Artem Smirnov, Co-founder & Creative Director of Normalize Psychedelics — a project collecting 1,000 raw testimonies from people whose lives were radically changed by psychedelic medicine. Once a filmmaker documenting narrative, Artem has become a witness to resurrection: real people coming back from “impossible” experiences with new eyes, new lives, and new purpose.

From a van rolling down the West Coast to a global archive of healing, Artem is preserving the unfiltered human truth behind psychedelic transformation — not the corporate version, not the sanitized version, but the real one.

In this conversation, we explore the movement, the mission, and the mythology behind the psychedelic renaissance… and the questions that will define its future.

Topics We Explore

• The origin story of Normalize Psychedelics and why Artem chose testimonies over theory
• The danger of sanitizing or corporate-branding a medicine born from rebellion
• The difference between safe access and spiritual sterilization
• Ritual, archetype, and the “impossible” — why psychedelic stories sound like modern myth
• Whether the real war has always been a war on consciousness
• The struggle between sacred medicine and capitalist extraction
• Psychedelics as the potential literacy of the future
• How to hold space for healing without turning it into an industry
• What a world could look like where psychedelic experiences are considered a public good

Key Questions From the Episode

• “What does ‘normalizing psychedelics’ look like without sterilizing or neutering the rebellion that gave rise to them?”
• “Is the real war not on drugs but on consciousness that refuses to behave?”
• “What if psychedelics become the literacy of the future — and sobriety becomes the illiteracy of the past?”
• “Are we ready for a world where psychedelic experiences are considered a public good?”
• “How do we avoid turning sacred medicines into another consumer commodity?”

About Artem Smirnov

Co-founder & Creative Director of Normalize Psychedelics, Artem is traveling the world collecting first-person accounts of transformation — building the largest living archive of psychedelic healing on the planet.

Learn more at: www.normalizepsychedelics.com

One on One Video call W/George
https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meeting

Support the show:
https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US

Check out our YouTube:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Creators and Guests

Host

George Monty

My name is George Monty. I am the Owner of TrueLife (Podcast/media/ Channel) I’ve spent the last three in years building from the ground up an independent social media brandy that includes communications, content creation, community engagement, online classes in NLP, Graphic Design, Video Editing, and Content creation. I feel so blessed to have reached the following milestones, over 81K hours of watch time, 5 million views, 8K subscribers, & over 60K downloads on the podcast!

What is TrueLife?

TrueLife is a story-driven documentary podcast that explores the invisible threads connecting us to each other, the world, and the mysteries of life. Every episode uncovers extraordinary journeys, human transformation, and the relationships that shape our stories.

You hear me okay, too? I can. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life Podcast. I hope you're having a beautiful Black Friday. I hope your Thanksgiving was amazing. Today I have with me in the studio Artem Smirnoff, co-founder and creative director, Normalize Psychedelics, a filmmaker turned witness to resurrection. Artem is collecting a thousand raw, unfiltered stories of people who met the impossible on a molecule and came back changed forever. From a van rolling down the West Coast to a global archive of healing, he's building the living proof that medicine once outlawed is now rewriting what it means to be human. One testimony at a time, he's normalizing the miracle. Artem, thank you for being here today. How are you? Dude, thanks for having me. I'm honored. I'm honored to be here. um i'm feeling feeling a little overwhelmed today but i'm well you know overwhelmed because there's so many good things happening and i'm and i'm and i'm uh learning how to handle them what are the good things happening man fill us in well i don't know it's just it's it's life man you know uh yeah all the opportunities coming from I feel like there's just so many incredible conversations I've been having for this project specifically. And a lot of people are just open to to be a part of the project, and they're so stoked to be a part of it. But sometimes I don't know what to do with all the opportunities, and I'm like, oh, shh. Because opportunities are also, you have to know how to deal with them and how to cash in and how to make the most of them. But also, just life, man. Life is happening, and I'm grateful to be here, brother. Yeah, man. You know, sometimes I feel like we're like this empty sort of riverbed. And then when these opportunities come to us, it's like these tributaries flowing into us and like filling us up on so many levels. And I think half the battle is just realizing that like there's all this opportunity waiting to fill you up. But it is a matter of trying to figure out how how it can fill you up. Like, how do you dig it deeper? How do you get more inflow coming in? But it's an exciting time for psychedelics. Yeah, it really is. And this project is about three years old. And in that time, like a lot of things have shifted just in that short amount of time in three years. Like you think three years, what can happen in three years? It seems like a lot can happen in three years, man. And yeah, like people are, I feel like people are more open than ever. I mean, even the conversations I'm having with older folks and my parents around psychedelics are very different now than they were three years ago. Yeah. Is that normalizing psychedelics? What does normalizing psychedelics mean to you? Yeah, I think it's having real conversations with the people that we love around things that have helped us. Um, and when I, you know, uh, when I first started this project, I was not into the idea of normal before I started the project. I wasn't really into that idea. Like I was, I was one of those people who would, you know, I would, I would take mushrooms recreationally. I'd go into the forest with a few friends and I would pretty much keep that experience to myself. You know, I would share it with a few friends. I would, I would give out, uh, mushrooms handily to people who asked, but like, I wasn't, I wasn't out there like, uh, sharing it with the world, if you will. I didn't really necessarily understand why that was important. But when I met my partner for this project, Jamie, and seeing her come from the other end of the spectrum, where she only found them later in her thirties, and she felt deceived by the world, that the world lied to her. uh you know the the question was if something something really helped you in your life and society tells you not to talk about it do you still talk about it or do you listen to society That's a great question, man. I feel like we're conditioned to listen to society. When I think of normalizing something, there's all these taboos around certain things, like don't do that thing, or if you want to live a good life, you have to stay by the straight and narrow. There's all these confines, all this confinement around you. Society's constantly telling you what is normal, but You're right. What happens when these things that make you see the world differently are told you're not supposed to do that? What does that mean? What does that mean to you when society tells you not to do these things? I totally listened to society for definitely more than a few years. I wasn't super late on it. My first experience, I was probably I thought people like I, the funny thing about this project is I thought people who shared every detail of their psychedelic experience in college, there was this one guy who I love to death. He was a great friend of mine and he used to do acid all the time and he would share every detail of that experience with me and it would drive me bonkers. And I'd be like, dude, I don't want to hear about it. Like it super turned me off because it was like, it was a lot on the experience, but it wasn't a lot about what I learned from the experience and what I'm taking away from the experience. So I was not really interested until I had my first experience. Like it was almost like I wasn't interested until I experienced it. And then everything changed after that. Do you know what I mean? Kind of. How did it change? Explain it to me. Well, I feel like it opened up a whole portal of things that were invisible to me prior. And funny enough, my first experience, I was twenty-three, and I accidentally dosed me and one of my best friends with a research chemical called twenty-five I and B-O-M-E. Prior to that, I'd never done psychedelics before that. And I had this crazy, I'm not going to say crazy kid. I'm going to say this interesting Russian kid who lived on my street. He used to get a lot of substances from the dark web. And he'd always just offer them to me. And I would say no every time. And I'd be like, dude, I don't want that. And for this one, he said, Artem, just try it. You're going to see light trails in the sky for a few hours. It's just going to make the stars look really cool. And me and my buddy were playing basketball. And we decided we're like, you know, we're kind of a chill night. We're playing basketball. And we popped it in. We popped one little tab of . And then an hour into it, we stopped playing basketball. We're just walking around the neighborhood with our eyes completely like wide open. Like we're seeing the world for the first time. Yeah. Completely unprepared. No pre-work, no understanding what this even was. I wouldn't recommend this to anybody. But this experience lasted like eight to twelve hours. And I mean, even talking to him, my buddy, thirteen years later, he would probably agree that this was one of the most important things that's ever happened to him in his life. Because there's like a before and after. Portals were open. Opportunities were open. It's so mind-blowing to hear that. And I know that experience well. But for people that may be listening that may be on the fence or just kind of curious about it, think about the language of, I walked around the neighborhood and saw the world for the first time. That's such a large statement. It's so incredible to see through that lens, to see the sort of grass waving or to see the ecosystem beneath your feet in a way that makes sense to you that may have just been oblivious in the past. That sort of opening of the world around you, it's magnificent. Totally. I mean, it's ineffable, really. It really is. It's something that you cannot put into words. And yet, here we are trying to put words to it, right? Exactly. Exactly. It's beyond words. And that's the point I think that's so contagious for people. And that's why your other friend probably was like, listen to what happened to me. This is amazing. Listen to what happened to me. And, um, it's just, that's the experience that everybody, not everybody, but most people find sometimes through breath work, sometimes through psychedelics, sometimes through running or working out super hard, but it is this opening of the mind that allows you to experience yourself in a way that you haven't done before, man. It's. It's mind-blowing to me. Tell me more about the project, though. When you think about normalizing psychedelics, you have a lot of incredible stories that are coming to you and you're publishing them, but there's so much more with normalizing psychedelics. Tell me more about it. Yeah, so the idea of normalized psychedelics started with my friend Jamie, who I just mentioned, and she's part of Decriminalize Nature. And Decriminalize Nature is a grassroots organization a grassroots political organization changing local laws in cities all around the United States. It's a movement. And they've been able to decriminalize psychedelics in a lot of these cities on the West Coast, but also places in Michigan and really all over the country. And Their idea is, you know, let's not wait for these things to be legal. There's a bunch more grassroots way of making these things safely available to our communities. And it's by being open and honest with our towns and city councils and stuff like that. And really, it's a brilliant organization founded. One of the founders is Dr. Larry Norris. And um one of the things that they're doing they have a they have a playbook of how to make these things decriminalized in your community and a big part of it is convincing city council that these things are actually helping your community it's pretty simple and a big part of that is having people come to these meetings uh city council meetings and talking to uh local government officials and just open and honestly telling them like what's happening like hey you know I am Joe, and man, I've had such incredible experiences with mushrooms. They've been so helpful in my life. They've helped me with feeling more in my own skin, feeling happier, feeling more life satisfaction. And the idea is if enough of these stories come, city council has no choice. They're like, well, who are we to tell these people that they're not telling the truth? And A lot of times they'll vote in, you know, six and twelve months after these initiatives are started and they'll decriminalize. So Jamie was part of that organization and I wasn't. I was just a psychedelic advocate. I was like, I'm just the dude who likes doing mushrooms in the forest every six months to help me with life's transitions, you know. Yeah. So the idea with the project got started was we met a lot of these separate decriminalized communities around the country, and we talked to them. And they had a lot of shit to say. They had a lot of stories. And some of them were coming from, you know, just, I mean, being hugely depressed, feeling suicidal, and then coming back to life. Finding their way back to wholeness, if you will. A lot of them were more on the political side, and they were just, you know, they're organizing these get-togethers, and they're the stories were both, you know, they're all from health stories, they're from veteran stories, they're politics stories, grassroots stories, and Our original idea was to create a documentary about how these things are being normalized through grassroots organizations in the United States. We wanted to make a documentary about decrim. But we didn't know exactly what we wanted to say. So we came out of this trip with like, fifty stories. some of them so powerful. And we were like, well, well, what do we do now? Like, we don't know exactly the narrative for this, for this documentary. And I, and I do think that the documentary is still really important to make, but we, we just decided to put them off as, as one-offs. We're like, Hey, we're just, we're sharing these stories as a way of normalizing the conversation on YouTube, on Instagram. And we partnered with Decrim Nature and we're like, We're calling in other people who have experiences that they want to add to our collection. And we had so many people reach out to us and tell us that they want to be a part of the movement. They wanted to share what they were going through. so we at that point we had more stories than we knew what to do with you know so you know that was that was the birth of the project we're like okay well we're a living library of psychedelic first-hand testimonials you know and if we can if we can create a way for this to to to make waves in the world well that's good simple Yeah, I think it is. I love the language of a living library of stories. Because in the end, it's the stories that move us. It's the experience of the others that we can incorporate into our lives. Or at least see through that lens in a way that changes everything. I've got a couple questions chiming in over here. This one comes to us from... Who is this coming from over here? This one's coming from Desiree. She says... Are we ready for a world where psychedelic experiences are considered a public good? That's a good question. Thanks, Desiree. I think that the alternative is if we flip that question on its head and we say, what if we don't share our experiences for the public good. And I think that there's more to be lost if we don't share our experiences. And I think that being open and honest with something that helps us, I think we have to take the leap of faith and say that if it helped me, it's going to help other people too. I'm not saying definitively it's going to help, but you know, I'm saying that this is something that's helped me. Um, So education is a good thing. I mean, giving people education around safety, around how to set up their environment, how to do the setting thing, how to find a good source for what they're doing, how to make sure that they don't do something stupid. I think that's definitely in the public good. And I actually know somebody who ruined their life also on psychedelics. So every day that I continue this project, I think about my friend. I'm not saying that his life is ruined, but I'm saying that it didn't change him in the best way. And he had a really, really challenging experience that lasted many years. So I know that there's risk associated with it, but I think that Giving education to as many people as possible is a public good, especially now when there's research that it's helping all sorts of individuals that we had no idea prior that it could help. I love the stories of chronic illness, autoimmune illness, of people losing weight, of people finding like their sense of spirituality um i like the really unconventional stories so yeah i think there is a lot more to be gained by having it a part of the public discourse than lost for sure yeah i agree too when i think about that question you know it It's interesting to me because it seems like all it takes is like one bad story. There's one sensational bad story about someone losing their life to psychedelics, and that's a total tragedy. But for every hundred good stories, it seems like that one bad story overshadows all of them. How do we combat that? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. Well, I mean, those bad stories are also important. Agreed. And we can't just walk around with rainbow-colored shades saying that all that happens is good. Because I live in a very psychedelic town, and there's a lot of people who I would not advise taking more psychedelics. They've taken enough. They need to go to the gym. They need to go find a job. Yeah, yeah. So, so I think, you know, tell telling the stories and in in the most natural way, like you would to your parents, is kind of the lens that I'm trying to see it through. And the bad stories are also important to share, like the stories of, you know, the shamans who are shamans, fake shamans, you know, taking advantage of people. Those stories are really important. People are getting in trouble. And people need to know that... There is risk when you're going into a completely new land doing something that is going to put you in a very perceptible state. Those stories are really important. Those stories are really important too. And for me, a lot of those bad stories are the ones that I'm hearing with people taking advantage of others is people just giving too much power away to other people, which is you know, wanting somebody to heal them instead of understanding that we are the healer. So it's reframing. I think a lot of it's reframing those stories in a way that's more accurate. It's just like people didn't have a bad trip. like what is a bad trip right a challenging trip is finding something that you maybe weren't prepared for and what does that mean you know and understanding why that came and what you can still learn from it and but also also not blaming not blaming the victim if somebody got taken advantage of like there's there's bad actors out there for sure yeah sometimes i think perhaps Psychedelics are supposed to remain underground and the people that have the courage to try them, knowing the risks, become like the catalyst for change. And so maybe it's maybe it's something that will never be adopted by the mainstream. Like I see a lot of work right now in medicine and people with PTSD and a lot of veterans. And of course, there's always the psychonauts out there. But is it possible that maybe it's just something a catalyst for the underground, for like the change makers? And maybe it never gets accepted by the mainstream. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely That's definitely one way to view it. But then the thing that gets me is, well, then a lot of the people that actually do need it the most aren't going to get access to it. So I'm trying my best to stay open to both the medical model and the underground model. Although I sway towards one of those, which is, one hundred percent, the underground model. But there's a lot of people who are beautiful law citizens who don't want to do stuff. That's illegal. Yeah. Like they don't want to do it and they're really good people, but sometimes they can probably benefit from it the most. So having it offered and, Having the experience offered in a Western model with therapists, it's not necessarily my cup of tea. But I think there's a lot of people that that can also serve. And I want to make sure that this project isn't necessarily It doesn't have too many of my opinions. It's just people sharing their stories. So if people had benefit from the therapeutic model, the legal model, the more sterile model, that's great too. So for me, though, going and meeting the people who have been working with it for a long period of time and understanding the cultures and the traditions that they come from, that's half the fun. And that's the interesting part. But that's my opinion. Yeah. It's well said because like you are really well traveled, like you're in Denver, you're in San Francisco, you're down in Mexico. Are there some, what are some similarities and some differences that you see culturally in the different places you go with psychedelics? Yeah. Um, well, San Francisco is a really psychedelic place. Totally. It's also a mess. Totally. Total mess. It gives me a total conundrum and a headache every time I go there. Encountering ultra, ultra millionaires and homeless people and so much anger, so much anger there as well. Denver, super open-minded place as well. I mean, both those places are on the cutting edge of like seems like what what is to come in the united states yeah it's a good point and the united states has rules that people listen to more often than that we actually have a really you know if you if we if we get a ticket in the united states we're probably going to pay the ticket and then try to bribe the police officer um so and in in mexico i think that um there's a lot of really really really really really powerful research underground work going on in mexico right now mexico seems to be where a lot of a lot of that's being done just because although it's a lot of the things aren't necessarily legal they're sort of in the gray area and you know you're seeing it with the ibogaine clinics and stuff like that um so in terms of the differences that that people see with with psychedelics i think that people are open to it um in in a lot of the world even for our project we we get people writing to us from europe and yeah you know different countries in eastern europe and africa i think i had a few people writing to me from like pakistan around like hey you know this is we're they're looking to us for like um for for help because they're like, hey, we don't have this available in our country. This is very taboo in our country, much more than it is in the United States. So they're seeing us as a blueprint for what's going to hopefully happen in their country in a few different decades. So there's that note. In Mexico, there's a really interesting, like Mexican tradition with peyote goes really, really deep. Mexican tradition with mushrooms goes pretty deep. People like the Mazatecs here have been using it for many, many years, which I think the the sense I get that even in small towns in Mexico, there's people, there's more people who have had experiences with mushrooms or peyote than, it's part of that, it's part of their culture more than it is part of our culture in the United States. It's so interesting. Like I, when I think of some of the incredible people down in Mexico, I think of like Gareth Moxie, Tendava retreats, Barry Rusanoff's down there. There's so many incredible people that are really working to, to help people work through their trauma. And it seems so much more ceremonial when I think of medicine down that way, but maybe our model ceremonial too. Like we don't really think of going to a clinic or we don't really think of going to a psychiatrist and sitting in a room and doing psychedelics is ceremonial but in some ways it kind of fits that bill do you think just a different kind of ceremony it's a ceremony that maybe we're we're ready for i didn't i didn't know anything about setting up spaces like that's something that psychedelics brought me to like setting up a beautiful environment yeah like like there's there's i think there's a big difference of of like uh that's my dog just coffee random things There's a difference between drinking ayahuasca behind a dumpster and drinking ayahuasca. Hey, buddy, you're ruining my recording. What you doing, man? And doing it in the most beautiful setting with music, with songs, with all of these things. I think creating a... An atmosphere that feels sacred seems to be part of the ceremonial experience. And that's something I didn't even know existed prior to psychedelics. Psychedelics brought me to that. It's not like sacred containers didn't exist. They've always existed and people know how to set up a room and how to clear a room and to do stuff like that. But I think that the sacredness it it's really important for this for the psychedelic experience i i think i think doing it in that way will it adds a layer of beauty right yes that um that maybe we can't even put words to that will stick that will stay with you forever you know when i when when i drank ayahuasca like on a like an on a little island south of mexico city and i woke up with like parrots you know singing there but the the way that they set up the container was was just so beautiful with some of the most beautiful songs and um it felt it felt it just felt so sacred that that's the part that stays with me years later when when generally the experience has left my field you know yeah yeah that's well put it It seems to me like in the Western world, it's a lot about labels and isolation. Like you go into a room with one other person who is a professional and you are sort of the patient. You know what I mean? But when you have those labels on you and it's so isolating, like... Maybe that speaks to so much of what's going on in the United States is this feeling of isolation, like this lack of connection. And in the way you described it as being in this incredible environment with being surrounded by nature, it almost seems like nature itself is acting as a community member to help snap you out of this lack of connection. What are your thoughts on that? One hundred percent. One hundred percent. You phrase it so beautifully, I just have to let it seep in for like ten seconds. I'm like, this guy just said it so beautifully. I do think that we have a problem with isolation in the West. In the West, not just in America. Yeah, agreed. My dog is just hawking. You want to be part of the show, man. That's awesome. Where are you at, dude? What's your dog's name? This is LeBron. LeBron. What's cracking, buddy? LeBron. Buddy, are you okay? What are you doing, man? What's going on? Yeah, but it seems to be like that's that's one of the things that people come away. That's one thing that I came away like is like the importance of community afterwards. Yeah. You know, and I feel like that's a really popular that's a really popular thing. like takeaway is is is like feeling isolated. And when people feel isolated, they also feel depressed. They feel like they can't share themselves. Yeah. And then understanding that you're you're part of a whole and you've been part of the whole the whole fucking time. Yeah. But you forgot. Yeah. Just like remembering that you're part of a community and remembering that healing doesn't happen in isolation. And, yeah, like I think that for me, nature is one of those things where it's just inherently healing. Like if I don't go in nature every week, like I just find myself feeling disconnected. It's one of those things that balances me out. But to circle back on the isolation, I'm hoping that this is one of those things that helps us come together and form tighter knit communities and in in our own countries without being cults because that's also that's also the dark side the cults they they happen as well um but yeah like just another thing about sometimes we don't see it when when we're in it but yeah like we we have so many like we have such a homeless uh problem in in the west and it's like well you know what does that have to do with psychedelics well on the surface nothing right but but if you dig deeper it's maybe a lot it's like um We have a huge homeless problem. We're also the richest country that's ever existed in the history of the world. So we're just not fucking sharing. We think that the homeless problem isn't our problem. but it actually is everybody's problem. Like in the, in America, there's a common sentiment that, that that's not my problem, but it actually is your problem because it's part of, part of, it's part of your community. And it, one person makes, you know, healing one person heals the whole and living in Mexico, Mexico has a ton of poverty, a ton of poverty. Like forty or fifty percent of the population live live in poverty but they have almost no homeless people which is it's an interesting like comparison um and and kind of seeing how the two cultures the two neighbors there are you know america and mexico side by side neighbors one is much richer than the other and the richer one has more homeless people although there's much more poor people in the poor country obviously you know so that's just a small small comparison but i'm i'm hopeful that that psychedelics are one of those things that can help us see each other um that will help us come together as as smaller communities and as larger communities as well yeah man that's really well put it's interesting like i've been tripping out on there's there's a a friend of mine her name is lila lang and she's written these paper multiple papers people check it out i'll put some links in the show notes but it speaks to the idea of cancer in the body like an individual body like rogue cells you know deciding that they're no longer part of the whole and then trying to live forever and then she expands that out into society and i can't help but see the parallel there like What happens when a group of individuals decide that they're no longer part of the whole? Well, I think it looks a lot like the world we live in today. And like we mentioned San Francisco, like there are some really incredibly intelligent, beautiful, wealthy people there. But on the flip side, there's probably five to one people that are homeless. And to see that not as a dying organism, it's like, look, this is the cancer. Like when you go into the town, when you go into the city, you see all these homeless people. That's clearly cancer. Not that those people are cancerous, but like like this is what an organism looks like when it's not dealing with the whole. It's just segregating itself. And part of it is flourishing. And the other half is just slowly being having all the life sucked out of them. It's amazing to see it from that perspective. And I think that psychedelics can show you that. I think psychedelics show you, like, you are part of this huge thing right here. And when you see something like homelessness at the scale that it's at, like, that is a warning sign to you. Like, this organism is dying. You know, and it's just so interesting how... Myself too, I am totally guilty of this, of not caring enough about maybe the homeless problem or different problems out there. It's so easy to just not try and think about, but it's right there in front of you. It's an interesting parallel. What are your thoughts on cancer in the body being same as cancer in society? Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah. It seems plausible. Yeah. You know, I actually read that paper that you posted and I was, I, uh, I sent it to a few people cause I was like, man, this is, uh, this is so well put. Right. I mean, it's holistic thinking, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um, like, like what is cancer? yeah yeah like what is cancer at its root yeah and you know i was just talking the other day in terms of partnering with different organizations that can help us collect the most um unfiltered the most raw stories of what's of what's happening with psychedelics you know i talked to shout out to heal i think it's healing cancer stories and they're they're putting stories together with cancer healing and psychedelics with how psychedelics are helping people heal with cancer so it it seems like yeah it's it seems like nothing is nothing is isolated we're all part of this thing together and i would i would i would agree that that it's almost a snapshot of what cancer looks like, like disconnection, people not thinking that they're part of the whole. And if that happens within our bodies, why wouldn't that happen within other living systems and living universes? What's the saying? as within so without yeah like what what's happening in there the the it has to be um the universe inside of us is the universe outside of us so to me that makes sense um and i'm hoping that you know for our people we can we can you know we can find enough science to convince more people of um of of yeah of just like how living in in community and living in um in more balance actually makes us healthier i love the stories of of of wellness of like of people using this to feel um to feel one hundred percent to feel like they're living their their healthiest lives you know yeah yeah i do Shout out to Jacob Kishere. What's up, Jacob? Thanks for being here. I hope your day is going absolutely beautiful. Jacob says, hey, gentlemen, beyond the limits of the medical research model, do you have any thought on the need to reforge a grammar for the sacred and bridging Christianity and psychedelics? What are your thoughts, Artem? Oh, I need to comprehend this one. Shout out, Jacob. I know Jacob. Jacob is a really cool dude that I met in Oaxaca City. Yeah. With Adam and Christian, actually. Imagine that. Yeah. Okay. Beyond the limits of the medical research model, do you have any thoughts on the need to reforge the grammar for the sacred and bridging Christianity and psychedelics? I wish he could rephrase this in another way. Let's see. How do I... I love the stories of religion and psychedelics. We had one story on our platform. We had a few stories of religion. We had... We had like a Buddhist Lama talking about his psychedelic experiences, which I thought was awesome. He was like a seventy-year-old Buddhist Lama talking about how these things can go completely hand in hand with Buddhism. We also had like a seventy-year-old pastor. He used to be a fundamentalist pastor talking about how like Bufo changed his life. And he's like living his best life now when he's seven years old. And it's cool that he's seven years old. It's even cooler that he's a former fundamentalist pastor. Yeah. So I still think that and I hope this answers your question, I still think that people don't think of religion as having direct experiences, whereas with sacred, profound, and psychedelic states, but I think that it probably is the way that all of religion was formed and even with christianity i don't know that much about christianity but you know i read about the gnostics back in the day and those are the guys who believed in um direct experience more than they believed in scripture and i think that that we're probably all in that camp of gnostics. We're all looking for direct experiences with something sacred. So I think I would love to hear and collect more stories of people who are very pro-religion and also very pro-psychedelic. Because I don't think that they should be mutually exclusive. I think that they should very much go hand in hand. So yeah, I'd love to see more of those stories. And I feel like for most major organized religions, we've grown away from direct experience because it's been diluted through many, many generations. And I think we've gone more in the direction of scripture and discipline and stuff like that. Whereas I would love to hear the stories of Jewish rabbis doing underground ayahuasca ceremonies, which they are doing. They're doing. This is happening. They're not always willing to share these things, but I've talked to these people. This is a call to all those folks to go more public, because I think that we can do more in terms of merging Not merging them, but just having them be more open towards one another. Because I don't want to demonize religion. In fact, I think that before psychedelics, I would probably say that I was in the camp of people who thought that religion was really stupid. I was like, wow, these people are so ignorant. I couldn't even understand where they were coming from. um i like i didn't understand church or synagogue it just it seemed really foreign to me and i think that after having a few you know mushroom experiences and psychedelics in general i completely got it i'm like okay cool like i no longer have like a hatred of religion personally can you share your what do you think what do you think man First off, I agree with so much of that sentiment. Jacob, I think that Christianity, religion, it can be an incredible psychedelic experience. One thing all you have to really do is look back at some of the mystics, like Merce Iliad, or there's a great book called The Cloud of the Unknowing. And if you look back to the medieval mystics, These guys were right on top of the experience of psychedelics. They're talking about being in communion with different deities, being not only inspired by them but guided by them. And the same thing is true. When I read the – Like Thomas Aquinas, you know, it sounds like a psychedelic journey to me. You know, when you think about like the Eucharist, like you're fed the flesh of Christ, like that seems a lot like the mushroom to me. That seems a lot like taking the flesh of God, eating it, and then seeing the world in a way you've never, ever seen it before. It is this direct experience of communing with God because you see the world from a whole other perspective. You see this idea of these geometrical images being shown to you the same way a burning bush is talking to you. You can have those direct experiences. And it seems on some level, maybe with Martin Luther or something like that, we've got into this ways where the communion with God was sat down and explained to us instead of us having our own birthright in our own way of it. I love the way you said to reforge grammar. And I think it's – when I think of reforging grammar, I think of remembering, but not remembering in the sense that you play back a memory, but actually remembering, like taking yourself apart and then putting it back together. And I think that that's what we can do to bridge Christianity and psychedelics is take it apart from the story that was told to us and relive it. Like you remember it the same way you would take yourself apart and then remember yourself. If you go back and read some of those stories from whether it's the Kabbalah or the Talmud or from – the Bible, like just remember them in a way, put them in, change the variables around so that it means more to you. And I think you'll get the direct experience of it in ways that, you know, is, is lacking from traditional scripture where you just go in and you listen to someone talk, but I love that. I think it's, um, I think it's a great question, Jacob, and I wish more people would think about it. There's a great podcast, Jacob, you should check out. It's by Clint Kiles, the Psychedelic Christian Podcast, and he goes pretty deep into a lot of this stuff. There's another gentleman named Dr. David Solomon who is, in my opinion, the most incredible scholar on medieval mystics, and he dives deep into mysticism and psychedelics. Maybe not psychedelics, but he talks about the mystics And people like Marseille Eliade, who talks about the terror before the sacred, which to me is being in the depths of like a super balls deep journey where you're like, ah, you know what I mean? And you're like, ah, but you're you're scared out of your mind. That's like the terror before the sacred. You're in front of something so beautiful that you're shaking because you've never seen it before. And so I think I think that's what the psychedelic experience holds for us is actually touching the divine or getting close enough to it to experience it in a way that most people have forgotten about. Jacob, I love that question. And let's see what else he comes in here with another part, too. And he says, part two. Yeah. How does modern society's addiction to caffeine and alcohol affect the sensibility of disconnection? Artem, what are your thoughts? Jesus, dude, you're on it. He's on it. These are love. These are things I think about a lot. Yeah. Um, well, caffeine. So, so a lot, a lot of the time that people, you know, talk to me about psychedelics, you know, they're, I feel like I'm constantly reminding people that they're consuming drugs on a daily level. That's a lot of the conversation. Alcohol, yes, it's legal. It's very much a drug. It's very psychoactive. It alters your state. Caffeine is incredibly psychoactive. And But in which ways is it psychoactive? I think that's the question. And I read somewhere that, and I think this is probably accurate, caffeine, it makes you think that you're doing a better job with your work. It makes you think that you're doing a better job. But actually, when they look at any work that you do under caffeine, it's actually not better at all. so caffeine is like the productivity drug yeah totally and it makes it kind of turns you into a little bit of a like a robot yeah that's it's not not like i haven't had great insights on under caffeine and i love caffeine i actually have to be careful with it because My only addiction I've ever had in this life has been to coffee. And I say this very seriously, like getting off of coffee was one of the hardest things ever for me. And I know people have had harder addictions, but for me, it was kind of a brutal addiction actually to caffeine and to feeling like I was productive and feeling like I'm in an advantage, putting myself in this like... like the state of like i um i'm i'm at an advantage but but i like i literally had like bad biological effects from the caffeine like caffeine triggered caffeine triggered my body to go into like fight or flight and i feel like it does that if we consume it too much to the like my body would get itchy. Like if I drink too much caffeine, my body will get itchy even to this day. So very, very much legal, very much something that we, God, we really endorse caffeine so much that there's a Starbucks at every corner. Like we love caffeine. Like we love caffeine so much. But I would argue that it's not very healthy. You know, at least in my life, it hasn't been very healthy. Other people can, you know, they could argue with me and a lot of people, a lot of biohackers, They love caffeine. So I'm not going to say that it's unhealthy for everybody, but it was unhealthy for me. And alcohol, too. There's an alcohol store at every corner. And so we very much endorse alcohol as a culture. And why do we endorse it? I find that the correlation, this is one of my observations. I feel like the correlation between mushrooms and alcohol is hilarious because there's a complete inverse correlation where the more mushrooms somebody takes, the less alcohol they drink. I've met so many people who love who love mushrooms and they detest alcohol. They almost seem to detest it to a very high level to where they have to tell everybody how much it sucks, like I'm doing right now, like they're doing this. But there's an interesting correlation between alcohol, which I can only speak from my own experiences, Uh, waking up with, with, with a hangover, like feeling not at your best the next day. Um, you know, I have nothing against like having, having a few shots or a few beers with, for an occasion, but there, I feel like there needs to be an occasion for alcohol in my life. And yeah, like it, it. I think that the sign for me of how it's not working or things that I don't like about alcohol are the next day. Like you wake up feeling disconnected, depressed, depleted. Whereas when you take something like mushrooms, you feel literally the next day you feel rejuvenated and in love with life and healthy. So I don't know if that answers your question, Jacob, but yeah, I'm going to end it right there. What do you think? Man. Dying to hear your breakdown here. Yeah. Again, Jacob, beautiful, beautiful question. I feel like disconnection is the desired effect, you know, and I don't know that it was. I think all societies run on drugs. And since the industrial revolution, we've run on caffeine and alcohol. Caffeine is the ultimate productive drug and it allows you to do something monotonous for hours and not even care about it. Like if you have enough caffeine, you can put a widget on another widget and be happy about it. And then you can go home and. booze it up a little bit and then feel good. You know, I think that that has been our society for a long time and maybe it started off in the industrial revolution and we had to build all these tanks and we had to build all these things and we had to do a lot of shit we didn't want to do. So here's these drugs to help you do it. And then here's another drug alcohol to help you feel a bit better about it. But I think we've outgrown those drugs. And I think that The connection or the disconnection is something that is maybe baked into the cake by people that are pulling the levers right now. And this might be a little conspiratorial, but there's really no desire for people in positions of authority to have a connected populace. That's the last thing you want if you have a position of authority. I don't want all these fucking people down here getting together, figuring out how badly they're getting screwed for the last thirty years. Give them some alcohol. Let them go out there and fight each other. It's so much better when they wake up hungover and they're fighting each other instead of getting together and realizing there are no differences between the blacks and whites and gays and straights. Pretty much everybody wants a house to live in. Everybody wants a better future for their kids. And so if you hold these levers of power, you want to drive these divisions into people. You want to have red versus blue. You want to have Democrat versus Republican. And we're going to try to just alienate everybody so that they don't get together. But I think that's changing, and I think psychedelics are a giant part of that. Because what happens when a society runs on mushrooms? What happens when a society runs on drugs that brings people together? Well, that's the burgeoning of a whole new culture. That's the burgeoning of a whole new set of industries. That's a burgeoning of a whole new way of looking at life. And so I think that we're moving away from these drugs of the industrial revolution into a more connected populace. And that's why you're seeing a lot of. a lot of areas of borders being dissolved. Psychedelics in themselves are inherently border-dissolving. And so when you start seeing a world running on psychedelics, you see these borders start coming down. You see people working together. And the psychedelic space is something that just... There's all kinds of people in this space, and they all have a similar goal of creating wellness. And everyone's talking about being in the whole. So I would say modern society's addiction to caffeine and alcohol are... a direct reflection of disconnection and that maybe disconnection was something that was sought after but we're changing that jacob i would love to hear your opinion jacob what do you think it is and let me jump over here to his next question so stoked jacob's chiming in with us over here he says i'm already going to talk to clint kyle's great move and he says notably he told me that his youtube channel was just recently banned without recourse so i have some thoughts on this one too jacob um First off, Clint Cliles is an amazing orator and he is speaking specifically to the Christian community. And while his channel was taken down for mushrooms and not even psychedelic mushrooms, it was like functional mushrooms. I think what happened is people are beginning to see Him specifically speaking to a group of people that maybe it's a little taboo for them. What happens when you revive, when you have a revival of the Christian community? What happens when you have a revival in faith? And I think that that is what makes Clint Kyle's not only incredibly powerful, but dangerous to a lot of people. Like here's a guy, salt of the earth, famous. finding a way to communicate to people just like him and reviving their faith. I think that's what makes Clint Kyle's a lightning rod is that he does inspire faith and he's using psychedelics to do it. And everyone should check out Clint Kyle's and support him because he did lose his channel out there, but let me kick it off to you, Artem. What are your thoughts? Yeah, shout out to Clint. I haven't had a chance to hang out with him in real life. I have checked out some of his content. It's powerful stuff. But in terms of the banning and censorship, that's something that we have to deal with in this space pretty heavily. And I think that comes with the territory, unfortunately. But I think it's just the beginning. I think it's just the beginning for what is to come. And I think that right now it's sort of the brave, the trendsetters who are talking about this stuff and the people who are unafraid, maybe the people who are self-employed. Because if you have a job and you're worried about it, You're worried about getting fired. I get that. You don't want to share these things. You don't want to share stories about doing ayahuasca in the jungle if you're doing something corporate stuff for a conservative company. They might not look too kindly on that. But it seems like in when we look back at this time in in twenty or thirty or forty years, we're going to probably have a lot more data. And we're it seems like with with due time, I'm hoping that if enough people voice their opinions and voice their stories, that the censorship will go away. They can't censor the whole world. Right. So. yeah like right now we people have to be a little bit brave um especially if they're afraid for you know the the law or losing their job or something like that and youtube and instagram is especially when stuff goes viral they they're they're more likely to take it down so Yeah, that's the world that we're living in. And I think that in twenty, thirty or forty years, we're going to look at this time and be like, wow, I can't believe you guys were censoring something that was helping so many people. Yeah. I'm hoping that's the case. I think so. I think it was Julian Assange who said that censorship is a good thing. Censorship means that your message is so powerful that it has to be shut down. And as soon as you start seeing censorship somewhere, that means it's already broken through. That means that it's already permeating the culture. And we have seen huge bans in meta all over the place when it comes to psychedelics. And I think that that means it's permeating the culture that it's already there. And I wouldn't be surprised that in the next ten years we start seeing this sort of explosion of creativity. And I, for one, am an advocate of trying to establish psychedelic societies on college campuses. You know, I think that that's where the real power is going to come from. So you start seeing some college radio stations promoting different events or starting their own psychedelic societies. My friend Jacob tell has a, the company called district two, and then that to me is like the evolution of a lucid. So it's maybe a better way to say it would be. It's the new, um, Gosh, it's like the new Esalon Institute for Gen X. Like I see so many cool people going there and giving talks and giving presentations. And I'm like, look at this model. This is something that travels the nation. This is a message that's experiential. And I see that as the message of psychedelics, the same way mycelium begins to grow and make these different nodes and then produce fruit. I think that's how movements are born. And I see it in the psychedelic community, whether it's through Christianity or whether it's through breath work, whether it's through books or whatever. But I just see this psychedelic culture moving in the underground and producing fruit above ground. And I think that's going to continue for the foreseeable future. yeah i love that um and yeah like these these and these things are meant to be shared in in real life like regardless of what's happening on the internet yeah um like there's uh the magic is happening in person in community agreed and there's something happening probably in in most communities in in the united states Yeah. Everybody knows somebody, I think, who's who's shared a story or been on a podcast or read a book. And that's why I think what normalizing psychedelics is doing is so important. It is this collection of stories that permeates everything. You know, you catch a little bit of a story here or you catch a little bit of a question there and you're like, what is that? And that causes you to go and research it more. And with the collection of stories that you have and just the amount of people reaching out to you, I think that's a really positive sign. Totally, totally. And I'm hoping that I know how to best share these stories because it's one thing to receive them. But it's another thing to actually, people want their stories out there. People are like, hey, man, share mine with the world. And a lot of people I speak to organizations and they're like, you know, we want to protect the privacy of the people. Absolutely. A lot of people that write to us, they want their name everywhere. They're like, dude, I don't care. Like, I'm ready. I'm ready to take this on. So, yeah, like the idea is to tap into so many different subcategories of stories that to really to really give it the like three hundred and sixty degree angle, like talking about. um you know chronic disease but also talking about how people are using these to get better orgasms you know yeah yeah and then also talking about um people losing weight and then also talking talking about new moms, you know, how people are using this for, for, um, you know, for hormonal balance and stuff like that. So tapping in to as many different micro communities out there is, is really the goal. Um, because there's, there's so many different organizations in the psychedelic space doing like incredible work. And, um, uh, you know, my opinion, I'm like, let's, let's partner with all of them, like reach out to us. Yeah, one hundred percent. One hundred percent. Artem, I feel like we're just kind of getting warmed up, but my family's coming with a Christmas tree right now. So I'm going to go do some decorating some Christmas trees over here. But before before I start doing that, man, I want to kick it back to you and give you a chance, hopefully, to tell people what you where people can find you, what you got coming up. Let's say there's someone listening to this right now and they're like, I want my story to be with Artem over here. How do they reach out to you? How do they find you? What do you got coming up? Cool. Yeah, so we have our website, and we have our Instagram and YouTube channel. Those are generally our platforms. Everything is, the website's www.normalizedpsychedelics.com. The Instagram is normalized underscore psychedelics. And on the website, there is a way for people to submit their story. Like right in the beginning, you say submit your story. And then there's a few different questions that we ask. And it asks for a description, a synopsis of the story. And if you want to share it yourself or if you want us to interview you. And we're not able to interview everybody that wants to share, but we do our best to interview people from our community. We're also working on a way for people to just be able to share these stories on Instagram and tag us and invite us as collaborators. If you have a wild story that you really want the world to hear with psychedelics, you are welcome to record it on on platform like instagram and um invite us to be a collaborator if we're able to do it we'll accept and there's um there's also a way that each story that we share also gets added to the living library on the website and that way they become searchable and They're going to be there for the world to see. So if you have a story, reach out to us, connect with us, submit it on our website, tag us on Instagram, hashtag Normalized Psychedelics. And this year, we're looking to partner with as many people uh innovation uh like different organizations within psychedelics and within health and spirituality and religion as we can um to create this uh this hub of first experience stories so if you're um you know if you're an organization that that wants um collaboration storytelling also reach out to us we'll also be at um We'll be at different various conferences and hopefully a few festivals. Not sure yet which ones, but we will be at as many conferences as we can be at, both in Mexico and the United States. So if you guys have an opportunity with a conference or with a festival and you want us there, reach out to us as well. We're open and we're here to make a little ripple in the world that will hopefully be remembered. I think it's more of a wave, man. I think you guys are creating a wave of change, man. Everybody within the sound of my voice, go check out normalized psychedelics.com. Reach out to Artem yourself. He's an incredible individual to talk to and they're doing incredible work over there. So, Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for hanging out with us today. That's all we got. Artem, hang on briefly afterwards, but to everybody else within the sound of my voice, thank you so much for being here. That's all we got. Aloha. Peace.