Ep 193 - "Fungus, Focus & Emotional Resilience"

0:00 Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast? I can't tell you that react how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours. I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose. No, I don't. I didn't. And I am not happy with it. You're going to breathe life into me? Boy, did everybody just hear that? That's a weird one to come swing in on. Was that part of the recording, bro? Yeah. Wow. We're going to leave it. Joel, we're leaving. I knew you were a sensitive character. I am. Very. I get emotional. So everybody thinks that Brandon's like this fire-breathing, hard-ass mofo.

0:44 No, he's just a squishy little teddy bear inside that's going to breathe life into me if I get upset or I get nervous. Let's not get carried away. I have a reputation. I have a reputation. All right, here we are. Here we are. So we've got an interesting show today. Yeah, we're going places. People are going to see a side of Nordike. That's right. They're not really accustomed to seeing. Hey, you know, there's a reality, man, on this topic where... Okay, just... Yeah, don't tell them the topic. Yeah, do we let the cat out of the bag? Mystery. Yeah. So I think there's a reality around this topic. I'm going to let you kind of use the phrase that you choose is this is no longer this. It's not as unspoken or undiscussed in public forums as it certainly was years ago.

1:26 We're entering an era where very high level professionals and those that want to create an exceptionally high level of mental health are experimenting and visiting this idea of hallucinogenics or alt-medicine as a way to create a clear path to health, mental health. You have chosen to walk that path in different ways. And so you decided that you were comfortable to share some of that today, which I'm really excited to get into. If I could just kind of do some stage setting in terms of like, why? Why this topic? Why now? Is that okay if I... Yes. Or will that box you in? Well... Well, if I can, let me also just do sort of an obligatory disclaimer really quick.

2:09 So first of all, we are in the state of Oregon where the things that we're going to talk about happen to be legal. Okay. Yeah. Not legal in all states currently. Yep. And so that's important to recognize. Number two, we're in no way advocating for the use of these things. This is not, it's not a, hey, I do this, you should too. Right. In any way, shape or form. This is informational. It's funny because I watch a lot of YouTube videos. I've educated myself a lot on this stuff. Yeah. And every single time they're like, hey, this is not a recommendation. Don't do anything we're talking about here. This is informational purposes only. So having said that, yeah, if you want to do a little stage study, that's good. Yeah, no, I think that's healthy. Okay, so it's end of the year. We're going to be somewhere around January when you listen to this episode.

2:51 Could be in the next week or two. And so this is a natural time in all of us where we do some kind of self-introspection, I think, of some sort. And often we've had several shows where we kind of deny the idea of kind of New Year's resolutions and things like that. But, and I think we can agree that this is a good time for many people to take a breath and do some internalization in terms of, do I like who I am, where I'm headed, do I do I want a repeat of what I experienced last year, just in terms of our health, our relationships, all the things? And as you and I have been kind of leaning into that and discussing that, we started having some conversations around this idea of emotional stability.

3:33 And actually Chris Williamson, Modern Wisdom, he was talking about this and it's just like, by definition, it's this idea of how fast once you experience something that creates some kind of emotional destabilization, okay? Anger, extreme sadness, disappointment, the things, right? How fast then are you able to come out of that and get back into an effective posture and state of being versus how long these things go on and destabilize you? So simple example, Christmas time. I'm sure many people traveled, went on vacation, did something that was hyped up, right? It's the holidays, we're excited, we're going to go do this Christmas thing. And so you start with excitement and, you know...

4:15 Positive anticipation, good attitude. You're dialed, right? And the first leg of your flight gets delayed, screws the second leg, and now you're sitting in an airport in Boston and trying to figure out what you're going to do to unscrew the situation so you can get where you're headed. Yeah. I guarantee you there's at least one person listening that experienced something very similar. I'm thinking of this summer when I went to Montana for a music festival with Wayne and Hunter and all of the flights going from there to home were literally canceled for four days. And so we rented a rental car and we drove home from Montana. Yeah, it's perfect example, right? So then how long do you carry that out? And how many of us, for instance, in an example like that, end up kind of harpooning the entire vacation because we can't let it go.

4:58 And then that just continues to be the state of mind that we're in. And then every conversation deteriorates, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there's something just super powerful about somebody that has a... a very maybe elastic, right, emotional stability. Like they can just bounce back and come back to it. Anyways, you and I have been talking about this a lot. I actually had a conversation with our leadership team this morning over at FP about, like Wayne even brought up the fact that in the midst of all these things that I have personally going on right now that aren't normal... I've kind of just had a stoic posture and it's been really intentional. Like I'm doing that on purpose. Anyways, I digress. All that to say, there are these different mechanisms, theories, concepts, systems that we can use to create that stability, that emotional stability to give us the wherewithal to be able to do it.

5:46 deal with a circumstance that charges us, fires us up, makes us sad, whatever, but then rebound from that and become effective again as quickly as possible. And I think the reason we have curiosity, or I do, and you actually implementing some of this around some of these alt medicines, is that we are seeing really effective people who suffer from very similar mental conflicts like you and I do, imposter syndrome, kind of a constant state of anxiety around our productivity or accomplishments. And if you don't do something to proactively engage that system, it makes it very difficult to be elastic, to be able to bounce back and have that emotional stability.

6:28 Anyways. And one of the things that we're seeing surface more and more publicly is this idea of people being very intentional and proactive and protective and using some of these alt-medicine methodology to help create that system, right? Yeah. Anyways. What are we sort of hinting at, right? So today, we want to spend some time talking about psilocybin mushrooms. Yeah. Okay. Okay. and the substance psilocybin. And intentionally, we're not, this is going to be a bit more of a flyover. I just want to share my story with psilocybin. And that kind of sounds funny. But yeah, my experience with it, what led me to it, what I feel like the benefits have been, what I've seen in some other friends and people that I've connected with and built community with around this.

7:12 And just to be clear, this is, you're not going to hear something about Saturday night. Yeah, no, this isn't like I've met people. So let me start with my background because I grew up in an evangelical church environment, very serious. And like my dad was the piano player in the church. My mom sang in the choir, sang on worship team. I led worship and sang on worship team and led music all growing up, all through college, actually. And so I just never had exposure to what then I would have just thrown in the general bucket of drugs. It just wasn't a part of my world. I wasn't one of those teenagers who was smoking weed out behind the stadium. That was not my world.

7:53 I wasn't a drinker. I wasn't a partier. I had a great fun life, but it was youth group, church. activities, church camp. That was my world. And so I didn't have any exposure to this. And if anything, there was probably, if you asked me back then, I would have had a very negative stigma associated with, quote, magic mushrooms or any other kind of, quote, drug. Okay. So that's kind of important. The very first time where I started to even consider or think about psilocybin is I started to read articles. I've always, I mean, those of you who follow the podcast, you know, like, Brandon and I are curious cats. We're always learning, listening to stuff, reading things. And so it was probably 10 years ago is when research into psilocybin really started to flourish and was really dominated by soldiers in particular with PTSD.

8:42 That was like the first round and it continues to be a high area of research. And so now this has been validated over almost a decade, but the initial results were coming out was that, I forget the exact number, but some 70 plus percent of these soldiers with diagnosed severe PTSD. Like to the point where suicidal ideation, like all of this kind of stuff, right? Extreme depression. Extreme. And I know- Very, you know, self-destructive behavior. Oh, God. Yeah. And many of us know people, law enforcement officers or military people that have this kind of PTSD, and it's a very scary, sad thing. 70% were coming out as showing essentially zero symptoms, asymptomatic months.

9:26 I want to say as long as six months after a single high dose therapy session with psilocybin, which is typically defined as five dry grams of mushroom. And by the way, I think for context, it's important because some of you grew up like me where it's like no drugs, all drugs are bad. Now, of course, our mom or our grandmother might've been on a... anti-anxiety meds. Those drugs are okay. If the doctor gives them in a bottle, it's okay. But anyway, I know many of you are having a reaction talking about drugs, but it's important. Like these psilocybin mushrooms, they grow all over the world on rotting tree trunks and cow pies. These are not things that people are manufacturing in a lab like in Breaking Bad. This isn't funky chemicals getting laced with fentanyl.

10:10 Just set all of your understanding of that aside. This is what we're talking about. We're talking about mushroom fruiting bodies that grow on poop in a field and in rotting tree trunks. And the meat of that mushroom, five dry grams of it, is considered a high dose or a therapeutic dose. In a single session, typically running five to seven hours, and these soldiers are getting healed. They're coming back in six months later to have a check-in with a psychologist. They have zero symptoms. They're not waking up with night terrors anymore. They're not having crazy outbursts of anger. They're not afraid. Violenced. Violence. Oh my God. Domestic violence is just so prevalent amongst people that have that and other traumatic brain.

10:52 Now, I mean, it's extended now where like they're finding that psilocybin can help heal traumatic brain injuries, fighters, post, you know, athletes and all this kind of stuff is just incredible. So, so the body of knowledge now about psilocybin is a hundredfold what it was when I first started learning about this, but I started to pay attention. I'm like, God, And I think the question that a lot of people asked when they started to see this was, okay, if psilocybin is so almost miraculously effective against PTSD, how can it help somebody normal like me? You know what I mean? And so I couldn't help but think about that. And I've got my own problems and issues. And it's like my wife, I think about 10 years ago when I was first in this, you know, my wife and I were going on 14 years in our marriage. And like many of you, I mean, we're in various ways struggling.

11:33 We had teenage kids, the young teenage kids at that time. Yeah, I guess that's about right. And a little one too. And so lots of stress and anxiety in the middle of the career. And so I didn't really, first of all, I didn't know how to get a hold of mushrooms, right? So that was for the first barriers. I was reading all this stuff, but I don't have the first clue of who to talk to or where to go, facilitate or anything like that. So it must've been years. In fact, I think it's been about seven years ago now. So probably three years pass where I'm thinking about it intermittently or reading stuff. And then a buddy from my church, he just, we were chatting about life and he said, hey, have you followed the psilocybin stuff? I was like, yeah, it's pretty wild. He's like, well, would you have any interest in doing a session? It's like, I know a facilitator.

12:14 And of course, this is also the time where the Oregon Health Authority, Oregon rolled out a whole program for this, right? So it was legalized and then they developed a whole regulatory program. And by the way, most recently, if anybody follows Brian Johnson, I know Watley, Watley and I were talking about this. He's a big fan of Brian Johnson. He's a longevity expert. Oh yeah. He's that guy that he sells the snake oil, olive oil, and he has all these protocols. But anyway, he recently just took his first high-dose psilocybin trip, and he came to Oregon. He flew to Oregon for it. Oh, really? Because it's legal, and you have a facilitator up here. Yeah. Anyway. So anyway, my buddy, he said, hey, would you be interested in that? Here's how it's helped me. Yeah. And I remember what he said. He said, you know what? The nuts and bolts of how he described it to me where he said, look... Sometimes, it's like for a lot of my life, I feel like I've been at the mercy of my circumstances and emotions that I'm just like reacting to life.

13:02 And he's been a pretty successful person. So this isn't some dude that's just some druggy in an alley. We're not talking about playing an Xbox and your mom in a lost basement. No, but he's like, you know, I just, and he's like, I wouldn't have even articulated that to you before I had the psilocybin experience. But he said, you know, there's a couple of things that happened. He said, one, I think I recognize that I get older, that I'm not very kind to myself. And he said, what I discovered, part of it's a product of my home life growing up. There was very low affirmation, encouragement, affection. It was a very tumultuous, broken childhood. And as I've gotten older, I realized, God, I really struggle to extend any kind of compassion towards myself, any kind of mercy. It's very hard on myself, incredibly judgmental.

13:46 And I'm my worst critic. I think a lot of us can relate to that. Yeah. And he says there was two things. And he's like, I also grew up in such kind of constant danger. And so I've had to take care of myself to where I just, there's this reactive part of me that no matter how responsible or mature I try to be, like there's this part of me that just reacts in anger, fear, anxiety. And he said, I think a part of that too is just not loving myself, just being so harsh and critical to myself. And he said, when I had that first high dose psilocybin experience, he said, one of the things that flooded over me, and anybody who's used psilocybin will tell will probably mirror this. It's very hard to describe. in some ways. So what I'm saying to you is just going to sound a little bit trite, or it's going to sound a little bit generic, I guess.

14:32 It's very hard to articulate what the effect that psilocybin has on your brain and your body when you're experiencing it. But the way he described to me was I felt this flood of the feeling that he initially had with his wife when his wife would touch him. And I don't mean sexually. It just like when he first felt accepted, he had this really tough childhood and then he got married, found a really good woman. They're still married today. When he felt love from her, And her affection, something kind of unlocked for him. And when he had that first psilocybin experience, he felt like some version of that 100x, as though he described it, he's a Christian, as just the Holy Spirit just kind of washing over him.

15:12 And he felt that love and acceptance toward himself. And my understanding with this, again, this is not a road I've taken at this point, but certainly keyed in on it and really watching it, especially as ex-military. There's just so much action around this in the kind of post-military space in terms of how public people are being and what they're reaping the benefit from participating in it. Anyways, one of the things I've heard is that it's this very, where I think you and I on a day-to-day basis, we're trying to control our emotional response. We're trying to steer it, keep it at bay, keep it controlled. Whereas what I've heard people reference and what I'm hearing you saying is this idea that it's so at the DNA level, that there's no engineering.

15:59 Like it's a knowing process. It's kind of like when you and I talk about the difference between your mind recognizing something and you feeling it in your guts because you've experienced it. That's what I've heard people say. Yes. It's like you're not proving, you don't have to con yourself into it. No, no, no. It's a knowing, right? It's the other thing that people have said. Okay, so there's a couple things that come out of the research that relate to this. I want to say it's upwards of 90%. I'd have to look at the stat. But upwards of 90% of these people qualify their very first high-dose psilocybin experience, again, five dry grams of mushrooms, as one of the single most important experiences of their whole life. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. And so when you put it in that context, maybe people can start to sort of resonate with what my buddy was describing.

16:42 And then he also said that it helped him see in the experience, because it is a hallucinogenic experience, which is, by the way, very different for everybody who does it. And oftentimes, from one therapeutic session to another, they're going to have potentially a very different experience. But one of the byproducts that he felt like he had was, it was, he got such a broad, expansive view of himself and his life in this six, seven hour experience, that as he came out of it and was no longer affected by the substance, like for months afterwards and over time, it's just transformed him. He describes how he has this emotional margin now. Like he talked about the reactivity, how he just found himself reacting to circumstances and things.

17:26 Yeah. To where now he felt like he had this emotional bandwidth to pause and consider what's going on inside of him and felt a tighter connection to be able to understand what he's reacting to and then modulate his behavior. He described how just radically it's changed his relationship with his wife. And now they have a daughter and I see how they raise him. And he's just such a thoughtful and considerate father and not reactive like he was. And so those were a couple of the key things. And I thought, oh my God, I need those in spades. Because you had actually... spoken this over me. And some people have heard you and I talk about this, that there is a component. I grew up in a really kind of outward facing family, like what other people think of you as paramount, like a reputation and that kind of stuff, like a lot of egoic stuff.

18:13 And I think the byproduct of that for me is that I had a lot of self-confidence. even coming up through the first part of my career, a lot of self-confidence, a lot of people thought like, just really add my shit together. But underneath it, there was this ache of a lack of self-esteem. I didn't think very highly of myself. I didn't love myself. I didn't even know how to, you know? And so when he told me this, I was like, ah, yeah, I could probably use this. and so he helped introduce me to it, and I just, I remember that first experience was, I mean, it was far and away one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had in my life, like, and even still, I still remember exactly, I remember exactly where I was, I remember every sort of major moment, I remember just to give people a little color on just what the psilocybin does, or what it can do, again, every experience that I've had has been a little bit different, and same true of people that I know that use the medicine, I was sitting in front of a fire and this happened to be outdoors and we were in the forest and sitting right next to a fire.

19:14 And so there's trees around us. And part of the visual effect that a lot of people experience with psilocybin is that everything as the psilocybin comes up and starts to hit your serotonin receptors, the visual effect can be where you're actually watching the plant life, the living plants and grass and trees around you start growing before your eyes. And it is one of the most fantastical things I've ever experienced. On my hands and knees, in fact, I remember in the experience, at kind of the height of it, I was on my hands and knees and just had my face in the dirt. I was just laying face down in the dirt, which sounds disturbing, but it wasn't at all. I felt so safe. I felt so washed over with love. And I remember opening my eyes and I looked down in the grass and dirt in the forest floor and things emerging from the forest floor.

20:07 The needles of grass were growing before my eyes. And then I remember gazing up above me, and all the trees had sort of grown. The branches had grown and expanded to create this cocoon around me. And so it was the most bizarre, incredible, weird experience. And then I looked over at the facilitator, and they had a smile on their face because they knew exactly what I was experiencing when I looked at them. It was an absolutely beautiful experience. I would say in the moment, I had been in a process of really deconstructing some of the evangelical Christian faith that I grew up with. And I think probably many people listening, you get to a certain point in your adult life, you start asking some really hard questions, and maybe you start letting go of certain... parts of maybe a religious background and stuff.

20:49 And I'd been in the process of that. And I would not in any way say I've never been an atheist, but I was really just kind of, I would say a blank slate. I was just kind of like reconsidering everything. And that experience with psilocybin, one of the effects for me spiritually was it deeply reaffirmed my belief in God. deeply and permanently in that one of the questions I had once I came out of this experience was, wow, if God created everything, which is the story I've been told, first of all, it's a beautiful gift. Like this is one of the most incredible things I've ever experienced in my life. And why? Yeah. Why? Yeah. Why? And of course I had some answers for why I was, what I feel is the love that washed over me and that my friend described.

21:30 I personally, I think it's possible that that was the love of God that I was feeling. Right. And I, I've known amongst my friends to, I typically refer to as the Holy Spirit. Yeah. I think God can use all things to sort of reach us and communicate with us and so forth. And I think the psilocybin is just one very powerful and mysterious way that I think maybe God works. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Right? And I also understand that some maybe Christian people or other religious people might disagree with that and that's fine. But that was my experience. And so I had that experience and it was so valuable to me that I've basically been on a cadence since then of roughly once a quarter, I'll have a therapeutic psilocybin session.

22:12 And I've been really fortunate to work with some really great facilitators again in Oregon. It's a really burgeoning thing. People fly from all over the world to come to Oregon. Yeah. Like I mentioned, Brian Johnson and his team flew up to Oregon for the live. He did one live. They broadcast it live on YouTube, his whole session. Oh, wow. It's really incredible. Look it up, Brian. That's interesting. Brian Johnson, Mushroom Journey, I think is what he called it. Yeah. But what has it done for me? I think in aggregate over the last several years, it has really, really, really helped me develop a deep connection to my values and to the relationships in my life. It's made me radically more sensitive to the close relationships around me, my children, my behavior with my children.

22:53 My first 10 years of parenting, I really struggled with frustration and anger, irritation, and really struggled to be present with my kids on top of life and church and like all the things. And I found that there's been profound growth in my sensitivity to how others are experiencing me, in particular, my wife and my children. It's given me, like my friend described early days, this emotional margin that is maybe less reactive when I was in my life. more calm in the face of adversity and bad events and struggles. I think it actually has also helped me with my ADD. Everybody who knows me and works with me knows that I still have massive ADD deficiencies, but I think it has really significantly helped me with my ability to hyper-focus and to do that more often.

23:42 It's helped me be less forgetful. And I attribute that to the neuro-generative properties, the effects that psilocybin has been documented as having, right? Are you a business that's under five million in sales and you're just now getting ready to try and scale your company up and hit some of those targets you've always wanted to hit but now you've gotta build a sales team? Or maybe you just hired your first sales rep but you don't really know how to manage them. Like how do you manage, lead, train, develop a sales rep? Floodlight has a solution for you now. So we can actually assign your sales rep a turnkey VP of sales that will help them create a sales blueprint, their own personal sales plan for your market, They'll have weekly one-on-ones with that sales rep to coach, mentor them, hold them accountable to the plan.

24:26 And they'll also have a monthly owner's meeting where they'll meet with you or your general manager and review the progress of that sales rep. Their plan to actual results, what kind of performance improvement they're working on with them. Also let them know, hey, you might, they're doing really well. Maybe we should think of hiring a second sales rep. They're going to have that one-to-one advice for you as an owner or senior leader on the team as well. How great would that be to have a bolt-on sales manager for your one sales rep and it's only 2,500 bucks a month? If you're interested in talking more about that, reach out. Let's grab some time and let's talk shop. Our floodlight clients this last year in 2024 generated over 250 million in revenue. Supported by, advised by, an industry expert who's owned and operated a business just like you.

25:09 So take action. Don't kick the can down the road. Start with our business health and value assessment. And let's unlock the next chapter of your success story. There's even now, like there's research, I was just listening to Paul Stamets, who's one of the leading researchers on this. He actually recommends when people dose psilocybin, he has a whole thing about microdosing psilocybin as well, but dosing it with niacin. Niacin has, if anybody's ever taken niacin, it makes you feel tingly and kind of maybe even itchy all over your skin. It affects your nerve endings. And it can stimulate your greater circulation in your blood. And so he recommends taking that because what it does is it helps push essentially the, this is the theory, that it pushes psilocybin into the extremities of our nervous system and your fingers and everything else.

25:54 And this neuro-generative properties of psilocybin, it can create actual new neurotransmitters. It can rebuild new pathways that they're finding all kinds of healing properties from this function. People that were having numbness and neuropathy in parts of their body take after a high dose of psilocybin, that being fixed in subsequent weeks and months. So it's really interesting, but I think potentially my brain functionally has benefited from the psilocybin. But I think probably the more profound thing that I'm like kind of been excited to talk about is I've had the opportunity through some really close relationships with a small handful of our clients that we've worked with over the years. You know, we get to know people really personally. I mean, we really get to understand their life and what they struggle with both as an owner, but also just in their own personal life and marriages.

26:40 Like we really have built some close relationships with folks. And I've had the chance to share my experience with them. And some have sought out their own experience with suicide. And here's who they are. Yeah, right. Let me list the names. No, but one recently called me up, make sure I redact all the important identifying information. One of our clients called me up and said, hey, Chris, I just want to let you know, you know, a few years ago, you talked to me about, you know, how you would utilize this and your experience with it. And... And my wife had really, really, really been struggling with depression and anxiety. And of course, this is a common story. I mean, how many of like, I know my wife has had her own periods with child rearing and stuff. I was like, oh my God, it's so overwhelming. But just really beyond that, like really severe, debilitating.

27:23 And she sought out psilocybin therapy. And he called me up to tell me, he's like, dude, this has entirely changed our life. I'm so thankful you told me about that. Yeah, yeah. entirely in one session, five to seven hours, it completely rewired his wife's brain. And it was dramatic. It was transformational. And not everybody has that experience. Not everybody has that experience where it's like, oh my God, different life the next day. And I'm sure it was probably more progressive for even them, but it was fast, it was dramatic, and it was durable. Yeah. I think a lot of us have had the experience of maybe working with a marriage counselor.

28:05 I've not really had many great experiences with that, but some counselors and psychologists are really helpful. Some are. But I think what a lot of us find is you kind of cycle back through the same problem over and over again. And maybe it gets a little bit better, a little less severe, whatever. But a lot of times it feels like we do a lot of things that don't really fix the root problem. And that seems to be, and in my experience and others now that I've encountered, different with psilocybin, where there's the potential to actually heal at a physical brain level where these things actually get fixed. Yeah, yeah. You know? I think that's what I've seen and or have recognized when I'm reading on this, when I'm doing...

28:45 curiosity research, if you will. Again, a lot of mine has been around first responders and ex-military, just kind of thinking through some of my friends and acquaintances that had really fruitful military careers and the kind of trauma and battle scars that that creates and what they've done to turn, in many cases, full circle and become extremely healthy after a very long, prolonged period of time where it was touch and go at best. And I think one of the things that you highlighted earlier that I just... Because maybe some of you are like, why this topic? Why bring this up? Because there's a reality that these are the kinds of things when they're not talked about publicly that go on basically unrecognized as a tool that you could potentially explore and put in your toolkit for life success, family success.

29:32 No one, like you said, I'm not telling you to go do this. I haven't done it. This isn't my world. But I think many of us, our lives are shaped often by the things that we're afraid to do versus the things that we attempt and try and experiment and then make a proactive decision post. Like, is this something I'm going to adopt permanently or not? Is this something that I experienced fruit from or not? And if you just think about how often we reference in terms of professional career development, how it's more people are stopped by fear than they are a failure. This is an example of that where we have these pockets, these things that we've created assumptions or stories in our mind about what's right, what's wrong, who does this, who doesn't do that.

30:16 And the reality is that out of fear, I could potentially be withholding from experiencing something that could literally have a radical impact. change in my life for the positive. And so that's why we're talking about these things. Again, it's like, if this doesn't float your boat, great, totally get it. No argument on our part, but and. But also, but I would just say for me, because again, I came from a very, you know, a very religious, spiritual, faith-based background, right? that like the way that these kinds of things were talked about to me were stigmatized. And I've come to believe that they're unfortunately stigmatized. I, like, again, I, for me, I feel like I experienced the Holy Spirit, like the Holy Spirit works on my heart when I have these therapy sessions.

30:56 And so it's, for me, there's a spiritual component that feels very familiar. If not the same way I experienced, say the Holy Spirit in a church service or a, a prayer meeting or something like that. But I want to make some important comments because as I've experienced kind of this world of psilocybin therapy, I know facilitators now, and I really kind of keep up with a lot of the psilocybin research and stuff like that. I'll routinely meet people like, oh, I did mushrooms back in college. And oh my gosh, I had this crazy, it was scary and horrible. And Or yeah, I took mushrooms in high school or something like that. And it was really, it was bad. I had a bad trip or something like that. Some of you may have had an experience like that, or you've heard about them.

31:37 You've read these horror stories. And of course, the news loves to just be the naysayer with these kinds of things. One of the critical things I've learned along the way is that the set and the setting... for which you do psilocybin is really, really, really important because psilocybin is acting on your brain. You're bringing yourself and your own brain to the experience. And it's really important that it's not that people have to come with a really positive attitude and like everything's great in their life before they do psilocybin. Not like that at all. Psilocybin is a source of healing for many people as we've been talking about. You can come to psilocybin very broken, and the research shows it will help heal you of that brokenness, whatever it is.

32:18 But I think a lot of times, if you bring psilocybin into a party setting, an unplanned, precarious setting, it can potentially fuel a very negative experience. Because the substance is very powerful. And I think one of the things that's so powerful about it and so healing about the experience is at a high dose of psilocybin, it forces you to let go control. Like there's five to seven hours where you have to submit to the process and to the medicine as it's working in your body. And if you do that in the wrong setting, it can feel very anxiety producing. Yeah, sure. Right? It can feel very odd and weird. And so I've run into quite a few people and I'm like, well, yeah, but when? And what was the setting?

32:59 Oh, I was at this college party and some dude handed me a handful and I just ate the whole handful. Like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Like, nobody should ever do that. So that's really important. Yeah. It's a very unique substance in that where you do it, with whom you do this, it's why the state of Oregon has all these protocols. Like you have to become a licensed facilitator and there's a set and setting that they're very careful about and they do some pre-work. This is clinical. what we're talking about. It's a clinical approach. But the same thing is true, like the other thing about psilocybin mushrooms is these date back. I mean, the origin story of mushrooms, you could argue goes all the way back to the creation of the universe. This isn't a recent thing.

33:40 And people using psilocybin mushrooms as medicine, not a new thing at all. So this is- Ancients. Ancient practice of indigenous peoples throughout all, literally every culture that has come through the universe has had some form of ceremonial use of psilocybin mushrooms. And we're not talking about the baby sacrifice. I'm talking about communal rhythms. And a lot of times this was done on the seasonal changes. Maturing, yeah. Maturing even. Yep, yep. So rites of passage. So there's many, many documented tribal groups that would initiate their sons primarily with a psilocybin ceremony. And there's other types of hallucinogenic plants that other cultures use that just are unstudied, unlike psilocybin.

34:25 But the point is, is it does require a planned set and setting to have the maximal benefit from it. And so that's just really important for all of you who like, oh, I tried mushrooms and it was crazy. It's like, well, you probably, you had a very different experience than what I have or what others who are using it as medicine have. Like it could literally be the difference between seeing weird stuff and feeling encapsulated in this healing love energy or the feelings I was describing. It could literally be that different. It's like, oh, I saw a monster. It's like, well, okay, your brain, your brain was out of sorts because you were in a weird setting with weird friends who were playing loud rock music. Yeah, just abusing and probably doing other drugs and alcohol.

35:07 Yeah. That's the other thing a lot of people I know when they tried mushrooms, they were also on alcohol. Yeah. And it's like all of us are learning now just how terrible alcohol is for us in a variety of ways. So you can imagine how that might affect people's experience with drugs like mushrooms if they were also consuming alcohol at the time. So anyways, that's important. Yeah, I think that is important. It's interesting too, because I think in general, these topics aren't, I don't know. I think they can make you a bit uncomfortable, but I think again, part of it is just the people that we know, in quotes, that they've done this, talked about it, experienced it around us. In most cases, you are talking about an immature set and setting. You're talking about it being used as a lubricant, a social lubricant or a numbing, not for the intent of finding some pathways towards a healthier mental state.

35:57 And so it's very different circumstances that we're talking about. And I think that that's where all the excitement is, is that People that are well-respected, high levels of productivity and success and influence are now sharing that this is something that they've leveraged to make extreme gains in terms of their personal and professional stability, mental health, physical health, all the things. I had another client of ours, very successful, younger owner that we worked with for a long time, still friends with, that I also shared it with. And subsequently, another one that called me and he was like, man, this has completely changed the way I relate to my wife and my kids.

36:39 Like completely altered. It's been so incredibly helpful for me because I think so many of us are owners in this industry. And I'm speaking to men, but I also realize there's high power women in our industry that are running very successful companies. So just hear me. I'm saying men like mankind. Okay. Yeah. But it just so happens, like, this guy's a dude. But I think so many men in particular, we have, our internal engine runs so hot. We're trying to achieve. We're trying to provide. We're trying to protect our family. We're trying to build a legacy. We're trying to do all these things. We have our ambition. And we spend a lot of ourselves during our day. And we bring our leftovers home to our family. And I think many more of us are starting to recognize the flaw in that.

37:20 And none of us want to be alone on our deathbed. And I think a lot of us are seeing there's this dance between achievement and ambition and still cultivating and growing and maintaining our relationships with our kids and our spouse. So we don't have this trail of divorces and alienated child relationships and stuff like that that is so common. I mean, many of us see it and are a product of it. And are a product of it. And so like this other business owner client of ours, for him, it was a profound medicine for him in terms of just stabilizing and growing his relationship. And I think a big part of it is just helping. It's good medicine for anger and anxiety. Yeah.

38:01 And I would echo that. That is probably one of the most profound things that it's helped fix in me. It's brought down the RPMs a little bit to where I can relate better to my children, my wife when I come home. Whereas a lot of times I feel misunderstood. I don't... I think a lot of us just feel like our kids and our spouse don't get it. They don't understand. And there's a lot of frustration and anger that can just kind of fester underneath that harms the connection that we're building with our kids and our spouse. So that's been a really powerful byproduct in my life from it as well. So I don't know. I mean, is that, what do you think? Is that a good stopping point? Yeah, I think so. What are your thoughts, man? Is there anything else you think we should? Yeah, no, I think this is one of those topics where you almost don't want it to get too overwhelmed by a series of rabbit trails.

38:47 I think, in all honesty, it's just an opportunity that you were willing to share your personal experience with. And for a few people listening to the show, that might give them a door to do something that's so different that maybe it yields an outsized result versus some of the other tactics that they've been deploying to get in control of this. I think if we just kind of tie it back to this comment about the end of the year, this is an interesting time in most of our lives where... You know, for many of us, like 2025 wasn't the year that we're going to probably put up on the wall as MVP for our life. It was challenging at many different levels.

39:27 You know, I think as you start to begin getting closer to that kind of middle age environment, those 40s, those 50s, I think there's a lot of interesting pressures that begin to build up in your life in terms of, wanting to try to take stock. And so if you just kind of think about how many of us are in this place where at the end of the year, it was a long, hard year, you're going into the holidays. A lot of times holidays are places where people have experienced or suffered loss. And so this is compounded by the fact that you're missing or disconnected from a relationship that was meaningful to you. Many of us, again, it's like all these things are active in a place where we're also in our 40s and 50s. And so we have kind of this midlife, process that we're going through.

40:08 And I just think at the end of the day, so much of our battle that feels like something that pigeonholes us or prevents us from finding success or movement outside of a life that we've been stuck in. So much of that is a battle that literally takes place at between your ears. And I think that anything that we can explore that has the potential to have outsized benefits and results if taken seriously and understood deeply before acting, I think it's worth considering and I think it's worth bringing up. Okay, the last little thing I'm going to mention before we end is if you're somebody who is struggling with your relationship to alcohol, a lot of people have found that psilocybin, a high-dose psilocybin experience, can help them cut the cord with their dependence on alcohol.

40:55 And I know, listen, a lot of business owners, not just in our industry... alcohol is the medication of choice. And you know, like we all know that's bad for our bodies. And so if that's a motivation, psilocybin could very well be the answer to you cutting that cord and not looking back, you know? It's interesting. All right. All right, gang. For those that stuck around, thanks for hanging with us. We'll see you on the next one. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever.

41:37 It all helps. Thanks for listening.