[00:00:28] Speaker A: Welcome to the mushrooms, apprentice. The focus of this episode is addiction and ibogaine treatment. My guest is Anders Beatty, who has over 25 years experience in the field of addiction. Anders had his own firsthand struggle with addiction, followed by a transformative treatment with ibogaine. He later became a coach specializing in pre treatment and integration of entheogenic and psychedelic experiences, specifically ibogaine. For the past ten years, Anders has maintained a counseling and coaching practice and is currently studying transpersonal psychology coaching with a world renowned Aleph trust. He specializes in pre ibogaine recovery coaching and counseling, offering a support program that can help people integrate their experience and treatment into an affirming and life changing event. He provides one on one recovery coaching and family coaching, and also preparation and integration before and after treatment. He is the founder of ibogaine Coaching Services and his pre treatment protocol has become recognized as a fundamental component of successful treatment by many of the world's leading ibogaine providers. His website is ibogainecoaching.com dot.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Welcome, Anders. Let's talk first about addiction, and I want to hear your story. I'm always fascinated and inspired by people's life experience.
[00:02:01] Speaker C: What is my view of addiction? I think Gabor mate got it really on the nail when he said, you know, when we're looking at addiction, don't look at why the addiction, but look at why the pain.
And I believe that addiction essentially is. Well, let's put it this way. Young Pueblo said something really, really beautiful, and I have to paraphrase him, because I'm not that clever.
But Young Pueblo said, the only thing I've ever been addicted to is filling the void I feel in my chest with anything other than self love. And the way I look at addiction is that if you've got this void and you feel uncomfortable and you don't know who you really are, and it's really difficult, and I can explain why you have this void a little bit later. But what happens is that emptiness is so prevailing, and it's so overwhelming that I find that my clients and myself included, when we're younger and we feel this emptiness, we look to fill it externally, whether it's through a new relationship or a job, or through criminality or through addiction. But essentially, you know, at some level, addiction is about trying to make yourself feel better temporarily, make yourself feel whole temporarily.
And so, you know, when I. When I asked clients, you know, how did it feel when you first picked up heroin? Or when did. How did it feel when you first picked up cocaine? And invariably, what they go is. Well, it really worked for me. It made me feel fabulous. You know, I could hold my own with the boys at the bar. I could. I could talk to the girls without feeling.
I felt that I had a little bit more control in my life, and it just took me to a better place.
And so when we first pick up these substances, I think it's a perfectly intelligent and acceptable and viable adaptive response to that pain, to that emptiness that we're feeling. And the problem is, is that you kind of keep wanting to go through that door, and you keep wanting to feel better.
And the reality is that after a year or two years or three years, instead of going through that door to get to out of place, it becomes a revolving door, and you get thrown out on the side you've come from. And rather than using these compounds as medicines to make you feel better, the compounds start using you. And that's when you have the psychological addiction, and you're always kind of chasing just to feel better the whole time. And so when I work with ibogaine, it's one thing, you know, ibogaine is an incredible compound. It will take you out of active withdrawal literally overnight.
But I think it's a little bit of a misnomer for people to turn up and do treatments without pre treatment and without integration, because we've got to look at the reasons why you're an addiction in the first place. And why you're an addiction in the first place is because, well, there's something I like to write quite I often share with my clients, and it's something I wrote many years ago. And I believe it's a really nice, concise little sentence about what addiction is. And what I wrote is, addiction is no more than self medicating against a profound sense of inauthenticity.
And that inauthenticity is the thing that creates longing, the loss, that hole in your chest that young Pueblo was talking about. And so for me, a very important thing is to understand why the hole. What's that about? And that's one of the areas that we start to look at in pre treatment.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Okay, so what do you think about?
Well, we talked a little bit about AA Alcoholics Anonymous the other day, and that definitely has its place.
It's successful, a number of people.
Is that something you experienced for your own?
[00:06:42] Speaker C: Well, I was in and out of the rooms for 2025 years, and I kept failing and I kept relapsing, and I had a real problem with that. But by the same token, I can also say there was one time in my life, if I hadn't done 90 meetings in 30 days, I'd probably die.
My addiction had become so terrible.
So in early recovery, I think it's a fantastic place to go to. It offers you community, it offers you support, it offers you a nice cup of tea and coffee and some nice sugared biscuits. When you're in a place of abject terror and you're frightened and you're fearful, and then you've got somewhere to connect to, and I think that's brilliant. But I tend to find that long term, maybe going beyond that initial care, it doesn't actually work for many, many people. And the reasons why is that if you go in, they say to you, well, shauna, you're an addict and you're going to have to be an addict for the rest of your life. And you are going to label yourself as an addict for the rest of your life because you are diseased. And the disease model of addiction has been thrown out the window a long time ago. But that's still what they use.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: Could you speak?
[00:07:57] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I could do. I mean, probably not very well. I mean, it's probably better spoken somebody else's.
But you know, it's, you know, there's this idea that there's a chemical imbalance and you're not, you know, you're diseased. Rather than dis ease that, that is a biomedical problem rather than a spiritual problem. And my belief it's a spiritual problem because you don't have a relationship with yourself.
So let's go back to this idea that they tell you that you're diseased, they tell you that you're a burden on your friends and your family and society. And because of that, in one form or another, we don't particularly trust you, and we don't trust your thinking, and we don't trust your authorship or authority on your own life. So we're gonna give you a sponsor, and your sponsor's gonna regulate your thinking, and it's gonna be based on these twelve traditions and twelve steps that we give you. And then there's that kind of subtext that if you don't attach to our program and our protocol, you will end up in jail, institution or dead. And you need to be grateful for what we're giving you.
And you know, for many of our clients, this external kind of advice and we know what's best for you. These are the very reasons that brought people into the addictions in the first place, because they have no sovereignty and authorship over their life. And they feel disconnected as a result of that. So in many ways I see that Na NAA can for many of our clients it's an extension of childhood trauma anyway.
You know it's the same narratives we will only like you if you behave like this. We will only accept you if you behave like this. We will only be committed to you if, you know you get a lot of clean time and for many many many people it's kind of like why are you treating me like this? Why do I feel uncomfortable? And you'll find that the average addict or alcoholic will want to rebel against being told how to live or what to do.
In my time shown I've had enough white keyrings to pile the Buckingham palace kitchen and I've had an awful lot of coloured key rings which I haven't actually earned but I've gone down there and I've picked them up because there's that sense of shame about who I am and I want to show the world that I'm good enough in their eyes. So I'm living a lie.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: Okay.
I'll just be fully transparent. And I was in AA for 20 years. I came in at the age of 21 and I will say I agree with what you're saying and what I appreciated about AA is the higher power thing that giving your life and your I will over to a higher power and depending on like meetings are different. And I was in Connecticut and there I remember there was one meeting group and they met, I don't know, three or four times a week and they were. They were like holy rollers. They were really intense and strict and I didn't care so much for that group. And then others were much more warm and accepting. You know, I mean it's composed of people so it depends. And you get this kind of group think and again so there's some groups that are fantastic and others that you're like woof. Not into that at all.
[00:12:11] Speaker C: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean I had one example where I'd managed to get some clean time for two to three months and one of the ways I did that was to go out and play golf every day and I was hitting golf balls morning, noon and night and I was getting fresh air and I was talking to people again and I was getting in touch with my body and I was getting into a flow state and I was feeling really well and I had a sponsor who fired me because he felt I was being addicted to golf. Well again this is the problem and you know. Yeah, precisely, precisely. And you know for my addict mind. It was kind of, well, fuck you. Sorry, bad language. And, you know, it was enough to feel so disheartened by that whole process that my fragile, brittle self and that part of me that's in addiction, that part of me that I don't have a real relationship with, I suddenly embodied. And that was the, okay, well, if I'm not allowed to play golf, I might as well use. And that's the kind of thinking you have when you are in active addiction. So we've got to be very, very, very careful around this sort of stuff. But I, you know, I want to add a caveat to this. It really does work for a number of people. It really does work really well. And it is a fantastic community, especially in early recovery. You know, my advice is, you know, take authorship of your own journey and perhaps use the rooms, but do not allow them to become your religion, because otherwise what you're doing is then handing over your power and your sovereignty and your authority to a third party, to something external. Now, the great thing about things like I began is that, you know, that particular journey is an internal journey. That's about you developing a relationship with yourself and understanding yourself on your terms, not looking externally to get fixed, not looking for a magic bullet, but actually doing the real, real work.
And I think that's incredibly important for me. My problem with rooms is that maybe because I wasn't mature enough or didn't have enough understanding or was so desperate to be rescued that I looked at them as my rescuers and then got disappointed by they weren't rescuing me in the way that gave me authority and power.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I could totally relate to that. And I will say I did like and appreciate the fact that it was. And people would stress that, that it's a spiritual program, you know, that is woven in there and it is woven into the steps, which if you do work those steps, they're effective. And again, you're talking about alcoholics and addicts. You're talking about personalities that are rebellious, damaged, whatever the backstory is. Right? So again, it's made up of people.
They've not been professionally trained, certainly not in the way you and other therapists have been. So, yeah, it's just.
It's a mixed bag, for sure.
[00:15:45] Speaker C: It's a mixed bag. But, you know, look, there is things like psychedelics in recovery, which is a twelve step group that actually kind of says, yeah, well, you know, look, psychedelics and enthusiasms are great in helping you move forward in that spiritual component. And if we look at the history of the twelve steps. Bill himself was a great proponent of LSD, and actually.
And he felt that that was an incredibly important component for the spiritual side of the twelve steps. But actually, other people within Na and AA just said, well, no, that's not a route we're going to go down.
Um, which is unfortunate.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: Yes. Yes, it is. I know if that could have been done really well, that that would have been amazing, but that was not the case. Well, what could you talk a little bit about your own personal story, like just your bit about your addiction and then how you found your way to.
[00:16:50] Speaker C: Sure, sure. I mean, I think I'm going to start beginning. I mean, I. You know, look, I. When I was very young, I went to school and, you know, I obviously had ADHD in those days, and I found it very, very difficult to fit in with the system.
And especially at school in the 1970s with the teachers there, they weren't very compassionate, they weren't very empathetic, and they would shout at me and throw my bags, and they were kind of very abusive. And I found school incredibly difficult. And, of course, because I had ADHD, my peers found me a little bit weird as well. So I felt incredibly isolated. And, you know, also coming home, you know, it was problematic for me as well because my parents couldn't understand why I was failing at school the whole time and why I was incapable of getting my.
Incapable of doing my homework and things like that. So I started to feel not good enough. I started to feel that somehow I was letting everybody down. And I was highly, highly sensitive and highly emotional at a very, very young age. And I found that when I was being emotional and I was being sensitive and I was failing the whole time and I was being criticized and I was being scored scorn was being put upon me.
I found that if I showed that I was sensitive or emotional, it didn't really help at all. So I started to pretend I was something else. I became an actor and I tried to be what other people wanted me to be. And by doing that, I had deny a certain part of myself. I had to pretend, you know, to play that role. I had to deny a certain part of my psyche, the vulnerable, frightened, fragile part. So I put on a show. I became an actor. And, you know, it doesn't hurt me. I'm not upset. And when you do that, this kind of.
By denying a part of yourself in order to play a role is incredibly inauthentic. This is where that hole develops from. This is where that kind of the whole. That young pueblo was talking about. The only thing I've ever been addicted to is filling the void I feel in my chest with anything other than self love. I believe that's where our addictions manifest from, is this idea that we start to play a role in order to fit into the environment we're in. A. And we have to deny our authentic self. We have to deny certain emotions.
And as we grow up, we're playing this. Playing this role. But the part of us that we have denied is now sending up signals and it's saying, well, you know, you're not seeing me, you're not hearing me, you're not acknowledging me. And I need some nourishment, and you're not giving me the nourishment I need. The nourishment I need is to be seen and heard and acknowledged and loved and feel compassionate, but you're not giving it to me. So damn you. Damn you. If I'll allay that pain, I'll take that pain away by taking drugs or by sleeping around or whatever. So you're always looking for the fix, that part of you that's in pain. It's really interesting. I mean, addiction itself is, you know, addiction is never, ever, ever the problem. The addiction is the symptom of the problem. And the problem is always the relationship we have with ourselves. And the relationship we have ourselves is based on our conditioning.
And so if your conditioning is. You know, I think, you know, I talk to clients quite often about this, Shauna, that, you know, many of my clients will tell me that the whole of their childhood was essentially this. I think that you should. I think that you should wear these clothes. I think that you should study this. I think that you should tidy your room. I think that you should eat this food. I think that you shouldn't be friends with that boy. I think you should play tennis. I think you should play golf. I think that. I think that. I think that that's what the parents are saying now. If a child hears that, day after day, week after week, year after year, decade after decade, they don't hear. I think that you should. They hear, I don't like you the way you are. I would like you to be this.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:51] Speaker C: And when children and young people say, well, okay, if that's what you want from me, if that's how I'm going to get love from you and compassion from you, well, sure, I'll play that role for you. And when you play that role, you do it at the detriment of your actualizing natural self. And this is where the pain invariably comes from. And this could be a cultural, societal, familial, educational, or religious narrative, or it could be a conjunction of all of them.
I think it's really interesting that we live in a world now that within the western cultural paradigm. Let's have a look at the idea of what a good father is within the north american and western, western european paradigm, where, oh, isn't he wonderful? He works all the hours God gives to provide for his family. But this invariably, if you've got a father who's working 60 to 70 hours a week chasing money and chasing power, but is not available to his children and is not available to his wife, but that is an accepted narrative within culture around business.
It's wrong at every level.
It's not right. You know, these are, these are going to be traumatized children. These are going to be traumatized wives.
But the narrative, isn't he a great father? He provides. He provides. He works all the hours he can to provide for his family.
Does that, does that make sense to you? And I'm putting it that way as a very, very pithy example of how normalized maybe trauma is in our world at the moment, that we just don't see it anymore.
[00:23:41] Speaker B: Yes. Well, I would say especially with both parents working as well, because with both parents working, so you have that expression of latchkey kids, and they basically grow up. And their influences are the television now, it would be the cell phones, social media, and they're missing something that I think is very basic and intrinsic to raising healthy children. Obviously, you need healthy parents to do that.
[00:24:07] Speaker C: Yeah. And, I mean, you need parents who are aware of the fact that in 20 years from now, my work is going to be 90%. It's not going to be addictions to opiates and crack and heroin and meth. I think it's going to be an addiction to mediaev, where children are actually living their lives precariously through a screen. They're not connecting to real life. They're collecting. They're connecting to something completely unreal.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: Well, artificial AI.
[00:24:46] Speaker C: Artificial. Yeah, it's completely artificial. And at some level, they're going to feel completely, completely lost because they're not living life. They're watching life through a screen.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, we're already there.
[00:25:00] Speaker C: We're already there.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:02] Speaker C: I remember reading, I'm already fighting. I'm already fighting with my daughter about how much screen time she can have per day. She's nine years old, and we're kind of like 45 minutes a day. That is it, my friends. They're allowed to do, they're allowed to watch this out there. And then, of course, the utter rubbish and filth and degeneracy that you have no control of, that comes through these screens as well.
Well, that's a really, really worrying.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Yeah. It's a very intense addiction. And the problem is, as parents, you have to be absolutely vigilant and steadfast with children who are little attorneys who will give you every reason why they need to be on that thing. And so it can be. It's very challenging, but again, it's also incredibly damaging. And so that's a really good point. Major addiction.
[00:26:12] Speaker C: And I think a lot of parents don't even see it. How many times have you been to a restaurant where it's a family dinner and I've got three kids and I've got three kids on a mobile phone in a restaurant. Mum and dad, too. They're not talking to each other, they're at the table and they're all living their lives through the screen. And you think to yourself, oh, my God, where are these children going to be in 15 or 20 years from now? Look at the parents. And that's the norm, you know, it is. So often I see a mother or a father who's looking after their child and they've given them a screen whilst they are conducting their life. They don't want to be involved. They just want to shut the child up, shut them out, not be available for them. But this, again, has been normalized within our society and many people do not know the damage that they are causing to their childhood children.
[00:27:16] Speaker B: That's right, that's right.
[00:27:17] Speaker C: It's mindlessness.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: Yes. But in addition, the actual device itself is designed to stimulate the dopamine response. You've got algorithms. And so there is a brain response to this. So it's incredible. I mean, it's like heroin, but it's more. It's stealthy because you don't think of that lept, you know, you don't think, oh, that's going to destroy my life. But in a sense, it really is in a very stealthy way.
[00:27:51] Speaker C: No. I get up in the morning and I have to stop myself from doom strolling. I have to be really, really conscious and mindful because it's so convenient to get on your phone and, oh, look, there's a video here. Once you're in, you're in, and it's very difficult to get out. So I have a very, very specific morning routine, but I'm not even allowed to pick up my phone. I don't allow myself to pick up my phone first thing in the morning until I've had, you know, I've gone into the kitchen, I've listened to a bit of the radio. I've drank my lemon water or my coffee or had both. I've started to get the children out of bed. But the temptation, you know, certainly about three or four years ago, I would just get out of bed, and I would check my emails from work, and I would get onto the device immediately. And I suddenly realized that what I was doing was I was putting on armor in the morning, and I was getting ready for battle straight away. I hadn't even gotten touch with my body or my mind. I hadn't centered or grounded in myself. I was going straight to battle immediately, and I was dealing with that. And we see that a lot when we're doing ivy gain treatments, that people are adjusting adrenal fatigue, their cortisol levels up through the roof. And I think mobile phones has an awful lot to do with that because we are not finding that space to find ourselves in the morning.
First action of the day is to go to battle. Oh, come on.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:29:34] Speaker C: So true. Yeah. And, and, you know, the other thing is, is that, you know, when people do ibogaine treatments, we. We take telephones away from them.
We want them to sit with what's going on, because, you know, mobile phones and social media are incredibly effective at stopping you sitting with yourself in exactly the same way as that coke or crackle meth would be or heroin or fentanyl.
You know, you don't have to do the work if you're doing that the whole time.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: I was just going to add that there's also.
It prevents you from actually these face to face interactions with people. The actual relating human to human eye contact, open, emotional, you know, discourse, intellectual discourse, you know, community. Yes.
[00:30:38] Speaker C: You know, it's really interesting we should talk about this because it reminds me something of, you know, when I. When I was studying counseling at university, and we had this amazing professor there, a guy called James Davis, who's written a couple of seminal books, you know, tracked how modern psychiatry fails us and the importance of suffering and books like that. But, you know, he was talking about on our first ever lesson, I remember, and he said, you know, what is a counselor? What is a psychotherapist? And we all came out with these incredible answers. You know, we really thought about it. You know, we're here to help people move through their pain, essentially, he said, no, no, no, no. He said, this might be a very, very unpopular thing to say with many people, but actually, at one level, what you are as a paid for friend and why is that needed in our society, in our culture these days? And he said, well, if you look at the average british village from the early seventies, it had two pubs, it had a corner shop, it had a village hall, it had a local policeman who knew everybody's name. You had a midwife who knew every single child within the village. You had an active church, you had a cricket club, you had a tennis club, you had a bowls club. That was your average village of three or 400 people in the UK. You go to these villages now, they have no shop, they have no village hall, they have no cricket clubs, they have nothing. These villages have essentially become rat runs, where people leave in the morning, they go to work, they come back in the evening, they park their car, they go into their house, they put a meal into the microwave, and then they go and eat dinner and they repeat this and repeat this and repeat this and repeat this. And nobody is sharing sugar across the fence. Nobody is taking concern for each other. Nobody's worried about old misses Morris down the road. Let's pop in and see her. We don't live in that society anymore. There has been complete and utter disconnect from community, and that's been. That's been taken by social media and television and other media. Now, that's where we get our community from. And it's completely fake.
And so people are feeling completely lost. So, of course, you know, the idea of, oh, I'm feeling lost. I'm feeling out of thoughts. I'm feeling incredibly lonely.
And, you know, we could look at it from Yelom's forgiveness, around isolation, around purpose and meaninglessness and death.
You know, these existential crises.
Our population is in an existential crises at the moment. And of course they're going to turn to pharma, of course they're going to turn to alcoholism and drug addiction and street drugs, because actually, at the end of the day, what have they got? Where do they derive meaning and purpose and community and connection from?
So that's.
[00:34:05] Speaker B: I couldn't agree more, you know, worrying days. I'm so glad you said that because it just seems almost like people are. It's like, oh, no, we got to kind of get you sober, get you back on your feet and get you back to work, back into the factory mentality. And it's like, wait a minute. Yes, that person is hurting and there is work to be done interiorly.
And let's not put too much blame on that person in that we're in a really unhealthy, completely imbalanced, and I would say inhumane commercial culture. Because, as you said, we are communal beings. And I think big cities are really unnatural.
[00:34:54] Speaker C: I mean, maybe the very, very people who are successful in this paradigm are the ones who are mentally ill.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, anybody who's got a kind of semblance of understanding or sensitivity or whatever, you know, the society and the culture that we live in, sickening. In many ways, it makes you ill.
And so, yeah, you know, it's actually the people who survive that and move through it. They're the ones who are probably the ones who are really ill, to be honest.
And, you know, that's how we are now beginning to look at ibogaine and ibogaine treatment. But it's not a quick fix. Wherever I, you know, you fly on a Monday, have. Have I begun on a Tuesday, and you disappear on a Friday and you start work on Monday, because what you're doing is repeating the same processes that put you into addiction into the first place. We need pre treatment. We need the ibigaine. We need aftercare. We need a long landing strip. People need to reconnect to their bodies. They need to reconnect to nature, and they need to reconnect to play, because mobile phones have taken play away from us in many ways. And, you know, we need to create a community where people feel at home and they feel hailed and they feel respected, and there's compassion there.
And, you know, this is on a huge level, this disconnect that people are in at the moment. Really, really huge. And so this is the great thing about magic mushrooms and ayahuasca and I began, is that they actually reconnect you to the real world out there, not the fake world. And if you want to feel alive and you want to feel connect it, you know, find community, find nature, find play. Embrace the opportunity to be on this amazing spinning blue marble that has so much to offer.
And, you know, I say this to my clients. You are a collection of 14.8 billion year old atoms taken conscious form and given the opportunity to go to Earth school for 60, 70, 80 years. Be an awe of wonder of that opportunity. Connect to it. Embrace it. Don't hide away in a phone that's not where it is, and it's not in the bottom of the bottle, and it's not on the end of the crack pipe, and it's not through sucking a fentanyl or patch. But I understand implicitly why people are an addiction.
Absolutely. I think it is a perfectly intelligent and acceptable, viable, adaptive response to the society and culture that we live in. Why wouldn't you pick up coke if it makes you feel better, if it makes you feel a little bit more connected?
[00:38:21] Speaker B: Exactly.
Yeah. As a former coke addict, thank God that ended at 21. But I called it the devil's drug, and all of those substances are really the devil's drug. They seem. They feel so good in the moment, and then they just take you to hell.
[00:38:42] Speaker C: Yeah, but they work to begin with. And the reason they work to begin with is that people are incredibly lost.
They are incredibly effective medicines. But like anything, if we abuse them, they will turn against you.
But for me, I think, you know, and this is a really important thing, that when people come into addiction and they're told that they're disease, they're told that they're burdens, they're told that they're dysfunctional, they're told that they may have mental health problems. They. They're told. And they're subjugated, and they're accused and they're finger pointed at, you know, they're made to feel incredible shame for their addiction. Well, you know, for me, I'm coming from the world. Well, I understand your addiction. You know, it seems obvious to me if you find the story I had, you know, the first time I did cocaine, I did it at a wedding. And I was sitting at this wedding at the back, and I was thinking to myself, you miserable bastard, Anders, you can't even be happy for the people who are getting married. You've just turned up. You are so disconnected from this event.
You're so out of it. And I felt. I remember being at the back of church and feeling such shame that I couldn't enjoy this incredible party, this incredible festival of two people being in love.
And I got offered my first line of coke at that party, and I had a fantastic time. I found myself connecting to people again and laughed and joking and chatting the girls up at the bar and feeling confident with the boys around me. And I knew that this was something that had taken me out of suicidal idolization, out of a place where I was so depressed and so low that I made a decision that the minute I got back from this wedding, I would go out and buy some coke. And I remember thinking to myself, you know, this could be problematic. You might end up in addiction, but I don't care, because at the moment, this is working for me. This is brilliant. This is the answer to the pain that I have been in. And so it was a perfectly intelligent and acceptable, adaptive response to that pain is to go down the Koch route. And I believe that with most people that when they start to use drugs for the first time, it really is beneficial.
But after some time, it starts to work against you.
And I think the important thing to do that is to understand that when clients actually begin, that's the epiphany. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, it does make sense that I use these drugs to begin with. That's a really important point to make because it takes away the shame narrative. Yes, there is a reason why I did this, and it's because I was in profound pain.
I don't know anybody who's entered proper addiction who hasn't been in profound pain of some type or another.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: No question. And we, all of us have been programmed in this society to self medicate or to take pharmaceuticals. I mean, come on. I mean, those guys are the biggest drug dealers out there.
And so it's just been normalized that, of course. Oh, you're feeling this. Oh, just take something. Put something in your mouth.
[00:42:32] Speaker C: We live in a society where you've got children who are ADHD, and I've got no problem with ADHD children at all. I don't see them as a problem. I don't see them as any different to any other child. They're just wired up slightly wrong and, you know, maybe or slightly differently. Not wrong, slightly differently. And, you know, as hunter gatherers, maybe the people who are ADHD are the people who actually really propelled that society forward. They were the ones who were willing to take the risk. They were the ones who were willing to fight off the saber toothed tigers. They were the ones who had a deep and natural connection with nature. And then we're living in a world where those things are not needed so much. And we're expecting a child to sit in the room for seven or 8 hours, aged six or seven, being fed some crap, educational crap, and we're expecting them to be adjusted to that. And of course, they're not. And so we live in a society where we will give those children Ritalin, age seven or eight, in order to, you know, and that's perfectly acceptable. Ritalin is methamphetamine, you know.
[00:43:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. But I have to say, I'm not a fan of the psychiatric industry.
And they seem to come up with these labels which I interpret really as kind of the commercial for then drug that they're going to advise for that newfound.
[00:44:22] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, you know, DSM have come up with oppositional defiance disorder which they can attach to a seven year old. Now tell me a seven year old boy or girl who's not oppositional. In fact, it's an incredibly natural and important part of development is to push the boundaries. But now we've said well, if you're pushing the boundaries, we're going to medicalize you because it's a problem.
Right. And so basically, oppositional defiance disorder in my eyes. And I'm sure there's going to be many professionals who will argue with me about this oppositional defiance disorder for a seven year old is actually being naughty.
[00:45:04] Speaker B: Yes. Yes.
[00:45:05] Speaker C: So now we're medicalizing naughtiness, which is actually a developmental process.
You know, maybe the seven year old who's naughty now we leave them alone and we, we parent properly. By the time they're ten, they're not naughty anymore. They've, they've gone through that developmental process. But no, we have, we have a pharmaceutical culture that will medicalize it, not allow them to go through the developmental process and medicating it before they've done it.
[00:45:35] Speaker B: That's correct. And also there is never ever any discussion about nutrition. And so many of these children, they're starting their mornings with sugar cereals with pasteurized milk and it's just all pure sugar. And of course they can't concentrate in these very artificially constructed classrooms and, but you can make a huge difference with these children through nutrition.
[00:46:00] Speaker C: Yeah, through nutrition. Through omega three. For example, for ADHD, get, get rid of the, the additives, you know, carbohydrates, these complex carbohydrates. You know, there's a whole load of stuff which is not my remit again. But yeah, we know for a fact that, you know, certainly for me.
Um, and, and you know, I do have adhd. There are certain foods that I can eat and they will completely, completely imbalance me.
[00:46:35] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:46:35] Speaker C: And I've got, one of my children is, is attention deficit disorder. And um, you know, um, when she eats sweets and when she has too many preservatives and when she watches too much tv and social media year a very, very dark energy comes out.
A very defiant.
[00:47:02] Speaker B: I mean they're overstimulated.
[00:47:05] Speaker C: Overstimulated. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:47:10] Speaker B: Okay, question for you. Well, I mean, I want to get into, I want to talk about eyebogaine for, for that kind of thing as well, for people who are just stuck. But that's for later. Let me ask you. So when did you find your way to ibogaine. And how did you find your way to ibogaine? And also because you had that experience. It's just so interesting that now you've created this service which is all about that pre counseling or coaching before they go in and then the after. And I wonder if you had that when you had your experience. So be your doctor.
[00:47:50] Speaker C: I did, in a really funny sort of way. I was incredibly lucky to find an amazing provider, and his name was Paul Featherstone, and he did meet the biggest favor ever. He cancelled my treatment for 24 hours to go and said, you're not ready. I don't feel comfortable giving you iv gainshead and a smashed phone against the wall later and. And some. And some cracked and bruised knuckles from punching the wall because I'm a little prima Donna in addiction and lots and lots of tears. I sat down and thought, Jesus, what am I not bringing to this? Why does this guy not want to work with me?
What do I need to own in order to get this treatment? Because I'm in trouble.
And, you know, the interesting thing is, is that I just looked at ibogaine as a quick fix, as a magic bullet that I was entitled to, that I didn't have to do any work, that if I took it, I would wake up as George Clooney and everything would be perfect.
And the reality is, is that I begain is about getting to know who you are on your terms. I always say that I began allows you to become who you are as opposed to who you think you should be.
And I really didn't put any integrity or intentionality or respect or reverence into the process of taking. I began, and my provider saw that and felt that it would be a misnomer to actually treat me in any way. It wouldn't be effective. And unfortunately, within the ibogaine industry, most clinics, I mean, certainly before fentanyl came in, but most clinics, you know, you could phone them up on a Thursday, you could fly in on a Monday, they could give you ibogaine on a Tuesday and tell you to go away on a Friday and feel that they've done their job.
I became some extraordinary compound. Many people believe that it's actually the tree of knowledge from the parable of Adam and Eve. You know, this is an old Testament God. In many ways. It is incredibly conscious and full of wisdom. And, you know, I feel that the clients who put in intentionality and integrity and they prepare themselves and they turn up, even if they're in active addiction, because it. If you're an active addiction, there's still so much you can do to improve the efficacy of the medicine. And I always say to my clients, the amount of intentionality, integrity, respect, reverence and curiosity you put into the process is what the ivy gain will give you back.
And there's an interesting thing about it, because when a client says to themselves, well, I'm about to do this entheogenic, and it's really powerful and really important, and it's not a magic bullet, it's a catalyst for change, and I better step up to the mark and I better put something into the process. Well, actually, they're putting something into themselves for the first time. They're stepping into themselves. They're stepping into a process of healing rather than a process of entitlement.
And I think that's incredibly important.
So going back to Paul, he canceled my treatments. And then he said, well, you studied. He said you studied counseling at university. This is after I did the treatment with him. What I did, what I did with Paul is how am I not owning this? How am I not connecting to this treatment properly?
My mother's swedish and we had a summer house in Sweden. So I went. I flew out the next day to Sweden and decided to spend a month in the forest beforehand to get myself, you know, away from the dealers, away from the coke, away from the crack, get myself eating properly, get myself into nature. And then after a month, I phoned this provider up and he said, well, yeah, now you've actually done something and put some intentionality and integrity into this. Yes, you're a candidate. You're a viable candidate to do ibogaine now. And I suddenly realized that the way I treated myself in the area just before I did I began, was informing how I was going to integrate it.
And so what I mean by that is that I'm a great believer that pre treatment informs your integration, whether you're going to do your integration proactively or reactively.
And it's about getting into that mindset and it's about creating those new neural highways, opening the door for that to occur.
And, you know, if we were working within any indigenous or aboriginal society, you would have to work with the village elders for weeks, if not months, before you're allowed to ingest the medicine. What the hell is happening within the western cultural paradigm where we think it's all about integration? No, the real work is done beforehand.
And, you know, what does Kate Greenway say? Preparation for the ritual is the ritual.
I think that's really, really, really important. Important.
So that's that's an area that I'm really, really, really passionate about. I believe that integration is incredibly important. I believe the psychedelic or entheogenic experience is incredibly important, but the pre treatment is just as important. And we need to put all three together, then maintenance protocols, then community, then people have got a real chance of finding out who they are and who we are underneath our culturing condition. We're all actualizing beings. We all want to reach for the sun, we all want community, we all want family, we all want fun, we all want a connection to nature.
So maybe just Mary, the psychedelic experience or the antheogenic experience is about a remembrance of who we were before the world got its hands on us.
[00:54:30] Speaker B: Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I mean, you're talking also about, these are natural substances. They come from nature herself.
And I see them as emissaries, in a sense, emissaries for our mother and our father to say, hey, wayward children.
[00:54:52] Speaker C: Absolutely. If there was a God or if there is a higher consciousness or a higher power looking down upon us, monkeys coming out the tree and beginning to step stand on our 2ft and they're going, they're interesting. I wonder how we can help them. Are they going to present themselves as a burning bush or a big cigar shaped ufo coming out the skyd? Or are they going to hide?
It's ironic. I want to say this, a mobile phone to a higher consciousness in some plants.
And as we progress and as we mature and as we become something, we find a new mobile phone and we find mushrooms and we find ayahuasca and we find, I begaye and, you know, maybe this is. This is the way that we are supposed to. To grow and become is through these amazing plant medicines.
And it's interesting that plant medicines have, you know, become a pariah with the advent of, you know, certainly within Europe, you know, within the UK, we were a pagana society that had deep and profound connection with plant medicines. And then Christianity came on board and Christianity was saying, well, we don't like you having your own, your own relationship with God in nature. We want to control that for you. And so then plant medicines are something that has taken out the picture and churches come in.
[00:56:33] Speaker B: Yes, well, you said something very interesting about possibly, or the metaphor of these natural substances to the cell phone itself, that they are a form of communication. And I would say the cell phone and I would also say these synthetic pharmaceuticals, you're talking about an artificial intelligence. Artificial compared to mushrooms, ibogaine, ayahuasca, these plant substances that's living intelligence.
[00:57:05] Speaker C: That's living intelligence. And I mean, if anybody, I mean, your listeners who have done these will understand that there's an innate wisdom and consciousness within these medicines. People who haven't done it will have no concept of that at all. But when you've done it, you realize there's something much bigger going on and much more powerful. And of course, the institutions do not want us to have any emotional or spiritual authority over our own relationship with God or nature. They don't want us to do that because they can't control us then. And so there is this kind of big kind of paradigm matrixy thing behind it all and the denial of it. And it's very, very interesting to see what's happening now that MDMA has been, hasn't got the issue of disapproval from the FDA that there's a kickback at the psychedelic revolution going on at the moment, and that's the institutions who are ensuring that kickback.
[00:58:15] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. What a great first hour, Anders. I'm going to, we're going to finish here. I'm going to invite listeners to come to themushroomsapprentice.com and subscribe. And in the second hour, I want to hear about your ibogaine experience.
Clearly. Clearly, it has transformed your life. Like something happened. I want to hear about it, and then I want to get to the deeper nature of your work. So.
[00:58:41] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:58:42] Speaker B: Invite everyone to join
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