Horizons NYC - 2017 - recap

Hey everybody, Joe Moore here. Welcome back to Psychedelics Today. Today on the show, Kyle and I share some interviews we did on site at the Horizons Conference in New York City. It was really cool. We did maybe five or seven minute spots with a bunch of folks outside the event so we could kind of unpack a little bit of what we ran into. Good news for all of you is that Horizons has started producing videos of their talks already. So it's been what, less than a month and a lot of those talks are available online, ready to download, I think on Vimeo or YouTube or something. So we'll link to that. And I definitely recommend checking the event out in the future. It was amazing. Neil Goldsmith did a great job emceeing the event, running the whole thing. It was really fantastic. You could tell how much effort he and Kevin Baltic put in. It's really just an amazing set of days there in New York City in early October. Friday night, the event opened with a party kind of soiree thing. It wasn't crazy. It was just people chilling out on little pillows and there was an organ going, kind of traditional Indian music at some points and folk music at others, cash bar. It was just really fantastic. It was a great time to just warm up to being in this highly engaged mental space for a few days. And it was great. And it was great. And we also had a great time at the event itself where people were presenting. And then Saturday night, Kyle and I had a great time at the Symposia after party. We got to meet some other friends of the show and, you know, I'm on the show in the near future. So the idea of that event was microdosing pros and cons and kind of getting into the nitty gritty. What is it? How might it operate? And it was cool. We went in thinking there was going to be a really heated debate, but it was actually, you know, quite moderate and people were definitely listening to both sides and kind of just, I think everybody learned a lot. And we laughed a lot too. Duncan is incredibly hilarious. He's a great guy. He's hilarious. Catherine McLean, Paul Austin, Hamilton Morris, and Sophia Korb were all amazing on the panel too. And Symposia does a great job with events. It was cool. It was like a living room almost. And then the audience was around it in a circle. So if you get the opportunity, definitely check out some Symposia events in person. They'll probably be coming to a city near you in the future. So I think that's it for an intro. Let us know what you think about this episode, because this is a little new for us. It's a bunch of voices. It's not a cohesive narrative for an hour. So if you like it, let us know. Maybe we can do more of these things and maybe there's a lot of new ways we could run the show. We've been thinking about listener feedback where we make it possible for you to record your voice on a website or submit to us some files. So that's something we're thinking about. And yeah, let us know if that's of interest. And a lot of you offered to help us. I reached out for help the other day. I really wanted to thank you all for being willing to help. We got over well over a hundred emails and I'm a little daunted at how to even approach coordinating that many folks for help. So we're going to look at it and see if there's a way to make it reasonable for you guys to we'll definitely be in touch soon. I'm working really hard on a plan. I'm getting closer. It's just a little new, but it's coming. So thank you all for being willing to help and really appreciate it. That's it for this intro section, a little bit of business, and then we can get to the show. Kyle and I decided to run another book giveaway contest. We're giving away a ton of stuff here. And all you have to do is give us your email. You can sign up over at psychedelicstoday.com. It's called the ultimate psychedelic book giveaway, probably close to $350 worth of stuff. Let me read off the list of stuff you can get here. Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, Dennis McKenna, LSD, My Problem Child, Reflections on Sacred Drugs, Mysticism and Science by Albert Hoffman, The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide by Fadiman, P-Call, A Chemical Love Story by the Self-Discovery by Groff, Healing Our Deepest Wounds, The Ultimate Journey, When the Impossible Happens, and Holotropic Breathwork, all by Groff. And that last one was co-written with his late wife, Christina. And you get a seat in our class, Navigating Psychedelics, Lessons on Self-Care and Integration. More on that soon. You also get a Psychedelics Today t-shirt and mug. Yeah, we're roughly guessing this is about $350 worth of stuff. If you want to sign up, check us out, psychedelicstoday.com, and you'll see the link. For a giveaway, you'll see my face with holding some books. You should click that and you get there. The more you share, the more you increase your odds of winning. Some folks have shared it all over Reddit, YouTube, various forums they're in, and it really has increased their odds of winning. So you just, we'll email you a link after you sign up. You share that, the more people that sign up through your link, the more chances you get to win. The contest ends January 1, so make sure to get your entries into the contest before then. Best of luck. If you want to look really cool in some Psychedelics Today gear, you really want to check out psychedelicstodayshop.com. We've got all sorts of cool stuff from t-shirts to mugs to shower curtains and pillows. So check it out. Any small purchase helps, even if it's just some stickers. We've got some cool stickers there. Check it out, psychedelicstodayshop.com. Tell your friends, maybe buy some presents for this upcoming, what do you guys call it? Black Friday. Yeah, Black Friday. Maybe that, or maybe it's a Christmas present. Or whatever. We would love you guys to check out some of our stuff there and support the show. Again, here on the scene, Cooper Union Building with Heidi. Heidi, thanks for talking to us. Oh, anytime. So we are asking folks about what are some big lessons they learned at Horizons, or like one or two big lessons they've learned? I think it's an, for me, it's an ongoing lesson about how this conversation is growing, and how many facets there are to it. And I feel like we heard from a variety, a variety of like different areas this weekend. But I don't know, I don't know if I have a big takeaway. I'm really tired right now. But it always feels great to be in this community of people that introduce new ideas and new thoughts about moving forward. Not just in the world of psychedelics, but just in the world as it is today. So I think that everybody brings like something a little bit different, and it forms a puzzle that's really fun to be a part of. Yeah, that is true. It's kind of nice to see that people are kind of holistically aware and aware that not everybody can work on every issue, and that it is a community effort. And that's pretty cool. And you asked a question about children earlier in one of the sessions. Do you feel like you have a way to get that answered? Like how to engage with children more around the issue of psychedelics? I feel like it's a work in progress. I have a 13 year old. Not that she's a guinea pig. But I think a lot about, you know, rite of passage, and the fact that we just don't really have a good rite of passage for adolescents coming into the world in this country in our culture. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's just going to be an ongoing process of discovery. And, you know, as she gets older, I think I'll learn and then maybe I'll be able to share with other people from my own experiences. But it's there's sort of a dearth in that area. I think it's culturally understandable. Absolutely. Yeah, it is tricky. There's so many legal issues, cultural baggage around it. Ethical. Ethical, too. And, you know, even say, for instance, if we did a whole lot of breath work with kids, like that's still not all that accessible, because it's a big event. And it's really hard for people in America to even take a day off to do that kind of thing. I think in Europe, five, six weeks of vacation a year, legally, which is a huge leg up over it from what we have here for the availability of doing that kind of thing. So, you know, definitely some problems. I think there are going to be more family type things that will start to come up and it will become more like a conversation. My concern is that what do the kids do like they come back, they have this experience? Who do they talk to? Like, how do they feel around their kids? I mean, their friends, their peers? Like, hopefully, it's almost like a community thing. But, you know, that's not necessarily possible. Not right. I don't know about right now. No, no. And can you describe why that conversation came up? So what led to that? I'm not sure where you are. in at the time oh i was listening to um oh what's her name the weech weechel i'll pull it up while we talk yeah stacy um i can't remember her last name she was um talking about how in the weechel community um the kids are incorporated from prenatally on and you know i was just wondering if she had any resources to share about you know how we can bring some of that in right it sounds like she's just trying to start the conversation i have stacy schaefer from university california at chico yeah so yeah it was interesting because yeah even in utero they're getting exposed and having kind of it's obvious that the mescaline is making it to the brain of the um on more child so it is having an effect and it's almost like they're having this um um the relationship from a very early age with it and it's it's fascinating and yeah i i think as an anthropologist she's kind of like they fill in the backstory and let people run with the data so i feel like jonathan thompson did some good stuff i i haven't necessarily spent enough time with his material yet so i could look parenting but um he did he did a fair amount of work on the subject for sure a lot around like how do we be able to do this and how do we be able to do this and i think it's a challenge i think it's definitely a challenge i mean i'm noticing it even with my own daughter when you know we talk about things i see how the cultural influence is around things that i'm not necessarily too keen on her going in that direction but like i see how it's already there like oh like you know when you go to college you drink drink with your friends like that's just like a given so i think it's changing the conversation the media gave us that thank you media yeah and it's still going on so the conversation needs to be more expansive absolutely all right thank you heidi thank you we're here with erica erica you wear a lot of hats yeah so so let's maybe pass that we'll get you on the show later but uh what what have you been thinking about this event so far horizons um this is only my second sex like psychedelics conference and uh so but i went to the maps conference in april and that the scale of that was like it's insane and beautiful and like like just an incredible experience but this is uh a really small intimate like everything uh being on one track and like everybody getting a pretty like similar content experience is a really good platform for like communication um and uh yeah it's just been really awesome seeing the same people that i saw a lot of the same people from there a lot of the same people from burning man um it's cool to encounter people continuing to come to these events over and over and over and i look forward to it again next year so you do a lot of communication stuff do you did you learn anything about um like how to approach that i learned about um like when i think one of the my favorite things i learned uh is how much so shannon claire did her talk on uh the psychedelic training uh psychedelic therapist training and um i was really encouraged and like i felt it in my heart like how much work is going into making sure that everybody who goes into the field is truly prepared for like what they're doing um and like uh the way that we communicate that to each other i think that you know just the work that goes into helping people become psychedelic therapists is like a context for how seriously people take this you know um and i thought that was really beautiful um and on the communication aspect i think like um there was a lot of conversation here about making these subjects more accessible to populations that are you know have historically been overlooked and even like victimized but particularly victimized by the war on drugs and um you know creating a conversation that they are invited like feel invited to you know um and i think that's something that we all have a responsibility to work on absolutely there's so much responsibility we have by being at this particular juncture in history which is it feels perilous at times it does it does uh but it also feels like imminent and like uh what is the word um like you you can't stop it like this is this has already hit its critical point and it's like it's not downhill but it is kind of like you know we've hit it we've hit we've hit up like a point where it's uh you know this the the narrative is on our side a lot more than it was like when i first got involved with this like four year five four years ago um that was when like the bubble really started to burst on the psychedelic research and like pc mtma for ptsd like started being headlines and now like not a day goes by that you don't see a headline about something like this and it's really positive like there's like generally not a lot of like hate articles about it at least not that i see you know never it's either they ignore it or they talk positively you know yeah yeah that's really cool and um was there any like person that you really resonated with like who was presenting at the event so far um i really really enjoyed nishay's talk it's the first time i've heard her speak and uh i've been waiting to hear her speak for years i have to say that i really love the comment about what she was she was talking about ann shulgin's experience with mescaline and how that felt very familiar to her and how they're psychedelic people and like the this analogy of like harry potter getting a letter into this place that like you something inside you knew it existed but you hadn't been able to access it before and then you find there's like this whole community of people who feel the same way and you're all working to make this like you know a more consensus reality you know like it doesn't all have to be about war and you know destroying the planet we can help people heal their own issues so that we can heal as a culture and possibly not kill ourselves have you been thinking at all of any kind of pitfalls in the movement any kind of like obvious errors that we should try to work towards correcting um i think uh as this becomes more mainstream like the idea of the privilege that comes with being able to safely access psychedelics like that's something that comes up a lot and it should and it's like we need to have those those you know we need to be able to i mean obviously we can't say that we're working on it and we need to be able to make sure like you know we're there to invite those communities and invite those conversations and not like shy away from them like a lot of other uh a lot of things a lot a lot of other you know uh subject areas try to you know we can't pretend like it's not real and you know ignoring it is insulting to those who experience it so you know uh and uh talking uh so uh shannon's talk about the psychedelic therapy uh research like talking about how they're like specifically recruiting psychologists who would have experience in that realm and those you know marginalized and minority uh communities would feel safe talking to that's really important um because like i know that uh in like uh they've had a hard time even recruiting people of color and people of you know um of uh not in like the main that fall into the mainstream you know demographics to even participate in the studies you know um and that's that really that's something to be said about like the bias like is there something that we're not catching because we're not accessing those demographics um but uh as psychedelic researchers we're not catching because we're not accessing those demographics um but uh as psychedelic research progresses and particularly i think in 2019 is when like the extended uh the expanded access will begin so more psychedelic therapy will be available even as uh mdma is still in phase three trials because the fda like accepts that this is a a therapy that will become eventually become legal and it is safe that you know it's immoral to not let people access it before it's fully legal you know um so that should be really interesting and um a really powerful way to like uh as as we're changing all these drug laws and everything like kind of trying to help some heal some of the harm that has come from the war on drugs and come from like all of it in general awesome any any uh closing thoughts um i really invite anybody who thinks that they even maybe want to be involved in psychedelics to just come to a conference you know volunteer like whatever any volunteering is a particularly fulfilling experience you know like even if you don't necessarily get to see all the content like you know you're meeting a lot of people and you know it's a really awesome way to become involved and you know if you feel a calling to it definitely come you know like what's it gonna hurt absolutely thanks for your time erica all right we're on the street here we're bryce from maps so um we want to hear your thoughts about horizons so far how's it been horizons is one of the best psychedelic events i've ever been to and i'm so thankful that it's a annual gathering in new york and that the new york community is able to cultivate their appreciation for psychedelics in a safe environment and a professional high quality program and i think that new york is really expanding uh what psychedelic events can be through horizons and the uh the work that they're doing on a regular basis and i'm uh really impressed overall nice why do you think it's one of the best like compared to say psy science yeah i think one of the benefits of horizons versus psychedelic science is that it's an annual gathering psychedelic science is an event that takes maps you know two years years to produce largely because it's not just you know one stage with one person speaking at a time it's four concurrent stages and workshops other events so it's great to have like the big blowout like psychedelic science though I do find a lot of value in the annual gathering the regular space to learn and talk about these things and I think that having only one speaker at a time is really nice it gives everyone like a hyper focus and makes them more present in the event it's more of a curated experience so I think that horizons does really well in keeping people focused and yeah that's very intimate you know a lot of I feel like outside conversations happening totally yeah I mean the the fact that I was able to meet you guys in psychedelics today just because I saw a shirt and now we're hanging out with friends it's it's great I really appreciate just going up to new people and be like hi what brought you here and you know you hear a lot of different responses when people say they came from very far away I met someone that came from Ireland for this and it blows my mind and I'm so thankful that again this is such a high quality event that people will travel far and wide to be here yeah so how long have you been involved in this psychedelic community doing this work and like how have you seen the evolution of this maybe into the mainstream and how are these events impacting that sure yeah I've been in the kind of psychedelic science field since June 2011 I started at MAPS as a social media intern after having a very potent LSD experience at Coachella music festival and after that experience I kind of started to do a little bit more intense research on the science of psychedelics prior to that I read a lot on Arrowhead about experience reports saying like how other people would phrase their experiences and contextualize it for other people to understand but I never really focused as much on the science like I was not familiar with MAPS at the time and when I had my experience with LSD I came back and started asking a lot of people you know they knew of any entity or company or research institution that was studying psychedelics and someone pointed me to maps.org and I'm very thankful that at the time they had an internship position open I lived in San Jose California and Santa Cruz was just 45 minutes so I'm very blessed and fortunate and privileged to have been geographically near you know MAPS and since then I've helped cultivate our social media presence our website our emails and multimedia crowdfunding projects and yeah very thankful to be involved I've just hit six years with maps and now I'm associate director of communications and marketing awesome that's yeah that's wonderful awesome work that you guys are doing thank you so what's one takeaway from this weekend so far has there been a lecture that really stood out for you or just something that you've learned that maybe you didn't know before yeah I think one of the things I've I've kind of known but I'm learning again and being reminded of is the diversity of this work at MAPS we have a large number of studies that we have concurrently going on though our big focus is MDMA assisted psychotherapy I learned a lot about peyote today which is really great and especially how the use of peyote in certain cultures can possibly inspire our culture to integrate psychedelics in various ways and add more meaning to the experiences and use them with maybe more respect and more of a regular consistent container I learned a lot about these of psychedelics and language in terms of creativity from Neche Devonaut and it was really cool to hear you know some actual direct like reports of the use of psychedelics for creativity in the past and hearing a writer's account of what it was like is really inspiring because someone that already has proficiency with word crafting now in this metaphorical space they're able to approach things differently and also after the fact they're able to integrate the way that they were approaching things differently and continue forward with their newfound appreciation of alternative words to describe regular behavior yeah Neche's doing some really cool work and being able to play with language I think is huge because it helps us get that out there and developing new ways to describe these experiences and talk about them I think it's definitely like an evolution of like how do we keep totally I yeah I completely agree and I think it's really important to focus on language especially in this this day of psychedelic research because in the past people were very sensationalist with their language and it kind of was a disservice to the the overall scientific field and now knowing what happened in the past we're able to approach things at maps more cautiously kind of keep things unbiased and not don't exaggerate things very very intentional with words like MDMA assisted psychotherapy could help someone overcome PTSD it doesn't always help someone overcome PTSD you know we use kind of vague and yet specific phrases like may very often like we can't say this is definitive every time it's not a panacea for everything but you know it may it can it could it does not like definitively though and that's something I've focused a lot on in my work in Communications and I'm very thankful to have been so cautious and I don't think anything we post on social media would take psychedelic science down but I would uh you know prefer to not create any variables that would allow that yeah awesome and then uh what was that one comment when we first met uh you know you just tweeted about it so let's just uh oh yeah sure I it was it was really great to to meet you guys um I'm so thankful uh that Joe is wearing a psychedelics today shirt because otherwise I probably would never recognize you guys and uh I was really glad to pull Rick Doblin founder and executive director of maps into the conversation just because I know he's a notable character and I wasn't sure if you guys had met him and I really appreciated Rick's just uh general openness to chatting and when I was highlighting like what psychedelics today was at least from my basic understanding uh uh his his uh humorous response was oh well we're working on psychedelics tomorrow uh and I I just thought that was like a nice little one up but also you know you guys are today and that's tomorrow so you guys have the present advantage yeah yeah awesome well I'm sure it would be awesome to get you on a full length podcast um so we'll definitely invite you on chat more but uh any last takeaways from this Horizon weekend I just want to say thank you to everyone that helped post the event who are everyone who came to the event everyone who shared research at the event or will future will be here in their uh their research and thank you to you guys for not just being here and learning yourself but also making it less of an echo chamber by doing these interviews and helping scale a lot of the connection and you know learning that's happening here so thank you guys for adding more value to the conference by doing this awesome thanks so much thank you all right Kevin so one thing you might have learned that was awesome yeah Shannon uh Carlin's presentation from maps she's she's the uh the coordinator of the therapist training program was really inspiring getting to map out kind of the future of training the next round of therapists from phase three to Beyond phase three that was really neat kind of optimistic sounds like it might really scale well especially with that expanded access yeah I think I was I was actually I've been following the MDMA for PTSD research for quite a while and I was pretty shocked actually that the FDA gave it that designation and that I've been optimistic about it for a long time but that really kind of solidified my optimism that this is a thing that's actually going to happen um which was which is pretty amazing that's cool do you think that will blow over at all into any of the other psychedelic research and approvals yeah I think it'll definitely be uh kind of a watershed moment in the movement overall and I think psilocybin and the work that hefter is doing is not far behind um I would really like to see an emphasis on non-medicalized policies now that maps will kind of have resources freed up to focus initiatives into harm reduction potential uh decriminalization of personal possession of drugs like MDMA and psilocybin and kind of move into that direction similarly to how the cannabis kind of Arc has been with medical to now legalization for personal use yeah that's a great point um did you learn anything in particular about um you're up on the iboga Ibogaine world pretty well but did you learn anything on that this time around uh yeah Tom's presentation was really great yeah uh I know he'd been Tom Kingsley Brown who's been working for maps on that study for a long time um I think it was interesting that he included these lesser known legislative movements in states like Vermont and even New York that has a bill that's not really moving anywhere but it's just kind of weird how there is actual legislation being proposed that's talking about facilitating funding into ibogaine and I hadn't heard all that much about it so it's really great that um that that Tom was able to include that in his presentation to this audience and hopefully inspire some activists yeah it's not really that hard to start any kind of movement like that in even in a small state like you know maybe Rhode State get on board it's a tiny ass place yeah yeah people you know talking to their Congress congressmen and women and state officials and This opioid kind of attention on the crisis with overdose rates and addiction rates is kind of ripe to bring that public attention into these alternative treatments as far as the mainstream is concerned. We, of course, in the movement know a lot about it, but even if the legislation doesn't necessarily move towards passing, it could still be a good excuse to start a conversation with people who are not familiar with this type of work at all. All right, cool. Kevin, thanks a lot. Yeah, thank you guys. Here we are in Cooper Square, New York City at the Cooper Union Building. And I'm here joined by Lindsay. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So we want to kind of chat with you about your Horizons experience. This is your third Horizons. It is. And any big takeaways? I think one thing that was unique for this year, it's always wonderful to see all of the presentations with the, you know, different psychedelics and the different therapy modalities that are going with them and the different results. But I thought Dr. Elizabeth Nielsen's talk about sort of, you know, starting new research into, you know, therapist use and is it important or not if a psychedelic therapist is hallucinogen naive or not? So does it matter? You know, these are very big questions and everybody's got a lot of opinions and opinions don't really mean a lot without the science behind it. But it's a great place to kick off for future paths of research. Right. There's a huge future ahead of us for research. It's like this thing that was illegal forever shouldn't have been. All these other fields got to develop and now psychedelics gets the opportunity to catch up in a lot of ways. And it's a time full of opportunities. Maybe a little disappointment here and there. So can you talk about your work at all? And like how it might relate to like perspectives on what you could bring in the future? Well, if I'm on one of the psilocybin research teams and may have the opportunity to start engaging in some, you know, Psy training and therapy myself. And so that's sort of, you know, if I might become part of that role, you know, what does that mean for me and psychedelics? And yeah, no, I think. I think it's great. Yeah, no, that's perfect. And were there any, are you seeing or in this movement, are you seeing anything that might be like an obvious flaw or like something like any obvious issues? I mean, there's sort of the main one that we've seen, I think, forever is sort of the idea of the pansy effect, you know, like it's a cure all. And I mean, I think the research indicates that there's really good stuff there, even if it's not a pansy. Just all the different indications that are being helped. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. So maybe it's not great for like post-surgical recovery. Right. Maybe it's great to have some acid instead of a 30 rack of beer. There you go. Okay. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Or to throw spaghetti on each other. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how the acid test situation unfolded in the past. So cool. Well, thank you for your words. Thank you. We'll talk soon. Okay. Thanks. All right. Welcome to Psychedelics Today. We're here at the Horizons Conference, New York City. Here with Joe. Nathaniel. Nathaniel. Awesome. So we just want to just hear what your thoughts are about the weekend. What is one thing that you've learned from this weekend? And one thing. It doesn't have to be great. Yeah. One thing so far. Well, I thought the last talk, Najee's talk about Timothy Leary was a new concept in terms of his tune-in or turn-on, tune-in, drop-out mantra that he always was saying in terms of looking really at that from a different perspective. And I thought that was interesting. And the fact. The fact that she spoke about the words behind that and kind of looking at how to describe the experiences that you have with psychedelics within that construct. Can you dig a little bit more into what she meant by that? Did you understand it? Yeah. Yeah. In terms of what she meant was really, you know, tuning in is understanding that there's an alternate reality to what we experience. And turning on it is really like going into that space, being going into that space and kind of the drop-out piece is saying, okay, like there's the alternate realities. You know, how do you make that part of your reality? You know, and it can be, you know, it's very subjective in terms of the person's experience and what it could be. So it's a lot of kind of, as you see a lot of people going into these experiences and having these authentic experiences, it's very, it's individual, but it all. It seems to have the same kind of flavor in terms of what people get out of the experiences, depending on how deep you go with the medicine or the sacraments that you're using, you know. It was really interesting because I think normally when people hear that, they think about like dropping out of society and dropping out of like the mainstream. I think that's like the cultural kind of narrative that when you hear that, but it seemed like it was almost like kind of dropping out of your own narrative and kind of redefining it. That's, I guess, the way I took it when she described it. Yeah. Kind of like an opportunity to tune into yourself and like kind of drop out of whatever you kind of created to. Right. Well, redefining yourself. I mean, if you look at, I've kind of taken this perspective, you look at the cycle of life and every day, like every day is a new chance to redefine yourself inside your own head. And I think kind of Larry was trying to border on that, but it got pulled in from a historical perspective in terms of like, he was seen as like the Messiah. And the guru and everyone who had his answers, because he came from Harvard and he was an intelligent guy and, you know, that kind of took off. So it has this more cultural flavor to it when people say it as a sign of the times. But in terms of the actual, if you look at it from an individual level versus a cultural construct of like, this is a sign of the times and this is what you have to drop out of society. He was saying that in that way, but in terms of didn't have to drop out of society. You have to drop out of what society says about yourself or what. You say about yourself, you know, it's very introspective in those respects. So it was definitely a new flavor and a new take on that statement that you don't necessarily hear all the time because a lot of people have, you know, the big cultural reflection of this is the 60s and this is what he was doing and it went on and, you know, and it still goes on in our circles about, well, let's blame Larry for all of this. And really, he was just kind of saying what he noticed about the situation and people took it. In that context. And that's kind of still where it is. What was Nashe's, like, last remarks? Like, friends don't let friends jump on the Tim Leary hating bandwagon or something along those lines. Yeah, but it's the reality of the situation is that, you know, if he didn't arise to that occasion, arise to such a, you know, a cultural icon within the 60s, you know, that's where we were and that's, you know, where it was. And it had a lot to do, you know, with the Vietnam War and that person, you know, that part of the 60s and Nixon was like, oh, shit, like, this is. He's telling people to disengage with our reality of what society should be doing and what is and the war. So, it was propelled by that. Trickster medicine. Yeah, yeah. So, you've been to Horizons a few times. How does this one compare to the previous years? Well, last year it was. Last time I went was the reunion year. So, they tried to pair it up, which I thought was good. They've kind of gone to this clinical Saturday, Sunday is more like plant medicine, you know, hodgepodge-y, different person, interdisciplinary, which I find is a great thing. I mean, I noticed attendance has been a little bit lower, it seems, than past years, but there's so much going on in terms of saturation within the culture, within the psychedelic movement, however you want to call it. I think there's almost an oversaturation of events, where this one, I think, is, you know, it's a really well put together event, but it's always hard to tell why people don't show up in that part of things. Yeah. Awesome. Well, any last remarks? No, not at the moment. Sweet. Well, thanks so much. All right, we're here with the psychedelogist, Leah. We had her on the show, you might remember her, talking about ecofeminism. Hey, everybody. So, what is one takeaway, or one thing that you've learned from Horizons 2017 so far? Right now, I'm learning that Psychedelics Today wants me to just riff it straight up, because I'm like, well, I haven't been to too many talks. That's okay, we're recording. That's cool. So, we just take a deep breath here. No, I know that so far my experience has been so rich by the conversations I've had behind the scenes, and I love how I. And Volunteered both mornings, missed all the talks, and yet I don't feel that I missed out because conversations I had with others spoke to the themes and content that was present and even the controversies that came up. So I appreciate the diverse range of speakers and content at this conference. I think Saturday was a bit more hard science, masculine approach to psychedelics, and a bit more of an industry appeal for the audience. And then today we're getting into, we just had the talk by Nishay, the humanities and psychedelic prose and poetry. And I think we heard about peyote this morning. And then this afternoon, conversations about race and about two different talks about using sacred and indigenous medicines for science. So I think good on Horizons for doing that. The takeaway I'm getting is that this movement is. It's a very special time to participate in this movement. And I feel that without sounding grandiose, we're making history. This will be written. Yeah. So I know you were volunteering a lot. Maybe you didn't get to jump in on a bunch of lectures. But we recently had somebody reach out and said, like, how do I approach this conference? Like, I want to go. I want to learn as much. Like, how do I really navigate this? Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. I think you brought up a good point. Like, a lot of the learning also happens outside the lectures. You have any advice or any comments on that? Yeah, absolutely. Happy to share it. I have not paid for one music festival that I've ever been to. I paid for Burning Man, but everything else I've volunteered for. Haven't paid for a conference. Didn't go. I went to psychedelic science, but I didn't attend the conference. I was in the free marketplace. So there are ways for this to be accessible to you, no matter what you're working with, including if you have transportation issues. You can watch the live streams or the recorded videos. But in terms of getting involved, you look on the website for a volunteer place or you email the info and you say, I'd like to volunteer. When you do that, you get to be a part of what's being created. You get to work behind the scenes and put your effort into the entire thing. And I think even though we're flooded with a lot of social media, following the organizations that you care about and unfollowing the ones that are clogging up your newsfeed and making you not want to look. Right. And then you'll see, oh, there's this event coming up and then, yeah, that's my greatest recommendation. And look for a psychedelic society in your area and see what events they're having, because these big conferences are great, but it's like the community stuff that's smaller, more, you know, round table that can be rich as well. Yeah. You've been to a bunch of conferences and different events. How have you seen this movement evolve? Like, how is Horizons 2017 evolving over time? Because you've been here a few times. Yeah, this is my third year. Cool. Or where do you see this going? I mean, obviously, a lot of people are talking about legalization of MDMA in 2021, but I don't know, like, how have you seen the evolution over time? That's a great question. I think that it's too soon to say what evolution is happening, because I've had such an evolution in my own perspective, and I'm more focused on that. I came into this looking at from a vulgar materialism perspective. Do you know that term, vulgar materialism? I haven't heard of that. I learned that at the Transpersonal Conference. It's when you reduce things down to the pure molecular biological approach, and I know that that's how I came at it the first year, because that's what made me comfortable. That's what I was trained in in school, clinical psychology. And now I see I have a more holistic, more transpersonal lens. That means across the personal and even beyond. So we're talking about interdisciplinary. I say it's transdisciplinary. We're going beyond any sort of science that humans can create to understand these phenomena. Love it. That's awesome. I love you. Thank you, Psychedelics, today. We love you, too. Any last words for folks listening? No, that's it. That's it. All the listeners of Psychedelics today, and you guys have a pretty good. How are you doing? How are your ratings? Pretty good, I think. Mostly one-star reviews. Oh. No. One out of one. Well, listen, folks. These guys do it out of the kindness of their heart, and they're caring for this movement. Pigeons, it's much bigger than all of us, and we know that. And that doesn't mean that we have. We have unlimited resources to put in. So if you can support Psychedelics today or any other grassroots organization or MAPS symposia, please do that. And even just support them by telling your friends. That's all. And also check out your podcast. You launched one? The Psychedologist. Yeah. Consciousness Positive Radio. Where can they find you? Thepsychedologist.com or facebook.com slash thepsychedologist. That's like psychedelic psychologist. Awesome. Thanks. Thanks so much. Here we are today. Cooper Square outside Cooper Union Building with Peter. Peter's an attendee at the conference, and thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. Glad to be here. Just curious about what maybe one takeaway you have from the conference is that you might start thinking about for a few more days. Yeah, I think for me just the idea that there is a lot of people around that are part of the community, part of the tribe, and that I don't have to feel like I'm isolated or. like I can't talk about this with people. Absolutely. Yeah, it is a huge movement, and you wouldn't really expect it. But it is definitely also a subcurrent. Yeah, I'm glad that a lot of people are coming out of the closet, like public figures and whoever. But it's inspiring, for sure. Do you have any actions that might come out of this? I think, I mean, since I might get involved in some of the research in my school because I've seen some of the presenters, that are here, which I didn't even previously know about, so that sort of spurred me a little bit. That's fantastic. I don't know if they can even hear that, but so this is your first conference? Yeah, first one. What's it like to come and interact and like did you feel overwhelmed of like needing to maybe join in a bunch of lectures? How did you navigate this space as a first conference? I think it was a little, I was a little nervous, you know, coming alone, but I think most of the people here are open-minded and, you know, I had some self-consciousness. I'm like, oh, I'm this like straight-edge white guy, like conservative guy, you know? But I think most of the people I talked to are like really accepting. They're like, that's awesome. Like you're different, you know, which I didn't maybe expect, but it's been really good. Yeah. What's it like to be part of like a psychedelic conference? Is that like anxiety of being like, like in that taboo culture? Is it kind of like, oh, I'm kind of coming out of the closet or does it feel good? Like, wow, I've found other people that I can have conversations with. Yeah, it feels great to be around people that like speak your language where you don't need to feel like you're straining to describe something. But yeah, it's for the most part, it's good and it's just a relief to feel accepted by everyone and not Yeah, so yeah, and what was one of your favorite moments? What was one of your favorite lectures? I think by far my favorite was the one on the psilocybin for alcohol abuse because I think they focused on the case studies and like those those direct quotes I get a lot out of those. Yeah, when they describe like in five lines what it did, you know, if it was a lifelong drinker or that I get way more out of that than any of like research graphs and findings. Do you remember like a quote off the top of your head, even if you're paraphrasing it? I think, I mean, I remember one from the some of the videos and it was like some lady was talking about how the mushrooms kind of they were terrifying at first and then it kind of opened her up to something that was like the most precious thing she had ever known and I think one of the other lines she said was like the love, the lessons take root in your heart, which I had definitely resonated a lot with, you know, and you're a grad student, correct? Yeah. Yeah. How do you think you're gonna incorporate some of this into your studies or do you think you can do you think it's I mean? I've been trying to find a way to work it into even some of my counseling classes. It's not easy, but I think if I'm the one to take the first little step, people might be more open. And also getting involved in the research for psychedelic assisted therapy that I might want to go towards, so. Awesome. Any last remarks or anything? Any big takeaways from the weekend? Yeah, I would just say I think it's telling me that it's okay. To follow like what my passions are and what's in my heart, you know, which is big and people in the world sometimes just don't they don't support that and they don't, you know, so that's why it's great to be here. Follow your passions. Yeah, even if it's taboo. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Thanks so much. Thank you very much. Kyle and I decided to raise some funds using patreon, which is a really cool way to support the show because you can choose. To donate a small portion of money monthly for certain prizes. We are allowing you guys access to interviews before they will ever hit the web. So for instance, this horizons episode, they've had that for a few days and I believe there's some panel discussion stuff. We've recorded and made that available. There's you'll probably also have access to some member or patron only webinars. We also have rewards, including t-shirts, stickers, mugs, access to our navigating psychedelics class. And much more. much more. So check it out, patreon.com slash psychedelics today, or you can get a link from our site psychedelics.com. If you are interested in doing legal psilocybin mushroom work in Jamaica with an expert, you really want to go check out Eric Osborne. You can find him at mycomeditations.com. Coming up in late November, I think right after Thanksgiving, you can go down to Jamaica, work with him and do some serious inner work on yourself. Mushrooms do allow really great access to your inner landscape and doing it on the beach in a beautiful environment in Jamaica is a, is a great spot to do it. I really do recommend Eric Osborne and you should check out a couple of our past episodes with him. If you want to get a feel for him personally, I really do appreciate what he's doing and can't wait to get down. Coming up, yeah, this, this November retreat will feature Catherine McLean, PhD and Shane Moss, the comedian. There's also another comedian, uh, don't know the name, but you should check that one out on their site because, uh, that could be really special. Catherine's going to bring a lot of information about psychedelic safety and integration practices. Shane is going to talk at length about his healing process and explorations through psychedelics. The last podcast we did with Shane, Eric helped us there. It was really fun because Shane got into a lot of the, you know, funny, great parts of psychedelics, but also a lot of the, you know, some of the scary parts, you know, having people that have that knowledge available to help guide you through this stuff is, is great. And Eric's been through, you know, he's been doing this for an incredible amount of time. So he's a pro what's the thing, uh, 20,000 hours, whatever that rule is of, uh, you put in so many hours of practice to get to this expert level. He's, he's at about, you know, master level. So, you know, you're probably going to want to check him out. If you don't want to go do ayahuasca in Peru, your first time, maybe you want a shorter flight, from the U S or Europe, and you don't really see the need to go up river in a little boat. Like maybe this is for you. Yeah. Again, micro meditations.com. And you can learn a lot more there. M Y C O meditations.com. If you have any questions about it, you know, feel free to email us psychedelics today, email at gmail.com. Hope you check it out. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.