8: Psychedelic Confessions: Alejandro Lozano

Joseph Campbell, ‘the mystic swims in the sea where the psychotic drowns’

Graham Hancock
Sasha Shulgin
Rick Doblin from MAPS
James Fadiman

Listen here to our mentioned Ethan Nadelmann episode

Giancarlo

Hello. Welcome to the second episode of the psychedelic confessions. Today, I’m very proud to have my friend Alejandro Lozano. Alejandro was an investment banker in a former life, and he spent the last two decades exploring new economic paradigms, psychedelics, classical tantra, and the challenges of relationships and family life. He’s a dear friend, very inspiring. I often ask his opinion on those matters: economics, family, relationship. I thought that it was a great idea to follow up with him after having had Ethan Nadelmann for the psychedelic confessions at Alejandro has kindly accepted to be open about his personal experience.

I think it is important now that psychedelics are becoming so popular, for people to hear from a personal experience, not just from clinical trials or scientific reports. But from direct experience also, now this medicine that’s so popular we want also to caution people that this is a very mysterious in a way, a compound, and this experience can be compared to going hiking up into a volcano. You would not explore a volcano on your own, you would need to have a guide. And same thing for this compound, you would not want to explore your psyche without someone that can guide. So this is not an encouragement to try recklessly.

Also another distinction that sometimes you don’t find in press and television is that this compound has very different effects if they’re taken in small, medium or high-dose. Also another distinction that needs to be kept in mind is the intention while you do that, the three typical distinctions are the recreational celebratory for healing and maybe say mystical. So I would say four. Like for the Ethan podcast, I would like to structure this conversation going from compound to compound and hear what was Alejandro’s experience? I will also share mine, maybe not for all of them, because I don’t want to repeat myself from the previous compound.

Alejandro

Welcome. Hello. Thank you for having me. It’s good to be with a great friend talking about such interesting subjects. So let’s go!

Giancarlo

And let me read them real quick and then we’re going to one by one. So today we’re going to be talking about marijuana, MDMA, LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, san pedro, peyote, iboga, Kanna, and Mambe. So let’s go. What’s your relationship with the marijuana?

Alejandro

Okay, marijuana was probably the first on that list that I tried it, it started recreationally exploring with friends. And then in Spain, there is a big tradition of smoking hashish and that’s probably the first thing I did and at one point I moved to Costa Rica where there was a lot of marijuana in Spain, it’s a smoke normally mixed with tobacco and in Latin America you smoke on its own. I learned that the mixing creates a very different effect. You got to psychoactive substances, tobacco also being very addictive, but also changing the nature of the experience.

So for me, it was an eye-opener that the marijuana experience I really had not had, I had the marijuana plus tobacco experience. And then in Latin America and Costa Rica and other countries in Latin America, I came in contact with marihuana by itself which created a very different experience. I smoke to relax and to get into this very nice space. Very soon I found out that with marihuana less is more I would smoke every day and then that effect that had attracted me to the plant maybe was not there anymore. Also at times I could notice an effect on my work routine.

I start to see the dark side of marijuana in terms of less initiative, less drive, maybe a more passive attitude towards life and so on. I had a dance with the plant, which soon after I started smoking pot I realized that it could also be a troubled relationship and I needed to keep some distance, so to manage a rhythm. And I heard from some people with much more experience than me that if you want to maximize your marijuana positive intake, or you want to maximize the positive effect of my one? And when I say maximize is to have as much as possible of that positive effect, the most you can smoke is every other day that that will be.

I heard that from someone that had much more experience than me at the time I was in my twenties. And I tried to stick to that, I ended up not smoking during the weekdays because I noticed the fact that my work at the time I was starting a company and I needed a lot of drive. And so I had to learn. There was a learning curve with marijuana in which I had to do less and less of it versus that initial stage in which I fell in love with their plant and the fact that it had me and I just had lots of friends who smoke and we were just smoking all the time. I guess that didn’t work for me long term. So I had to learn to smoke less and less. And now it’s a plant that I do rarely I do very little of. Also because, this mixture with tobacco, which is not on the list, but I’ve had a long and troubled relationship with the plant, which is also a very interesting plant in many ways. I think when mixed with marijuana, the negative effects of both get multiplied and it’s the pull of the tobacco, the addiction of the tobacco mixed with the fact that the marijuana and it doesn’t work for me. So in the last years, I’ve stayed mostly away with sometimes where I do some, but I have to stop soon because I do notice that the effect is not what I’m looking for. But if I had to summarize my learning with marijuana is definitely less is more, it is a beautiful plant, you just shouldn’t do too much of it. 

Giancarlo

Yeah. Graham Hancock says that every plant has a personality. So ayahuasca is the loving mother, the peyote or iboga is the stern grandfather and marijuana is the trickster spirit that tricks you into wanting more and more. So it’s very used to abuse. I know very few people that can really use it without abusing it.

So it’s a tricky one and, and, and since we’re here, I want to share, we had a Santo Daime ayahuasca experience recently. And Santo Daime recognizes Santa Maria as a sacred plant and some parts of the church allow, officially the plant during the ayahuasca ceremony. And so I take a break, I was out of the dome and someone off from your puff of cannabis I couldn’t refuse, but I felt my energy immediately from the ayahuasca energy of being solemn in a way where you feel like being in a church, you feel like you are under the divine presence, the cannabis immediately create the distortion into the trixtory and immediately start feeling with good mood, but with almost cheekiness and immediately I start to perceive the environment rather than environment solemn, where people grow and connect with source. I start connecting with the judgment mind. So I agree. It’s a tricky one.

Alejandro

I have to say with the combination of marijuana and ayahuasca it’s interesting. I did it for a while. I did both together, and a little marijuana before you have ayahuasca opens yourself in my experience, to the experience of ayahuasca quite nicely. So sometimes, our controlling ego, maybe on the way it needs to be overcome to really go in the ayahuasca flow and a little marijuana does help with that. Also part of my experience with marijuana, sometimes it’s my own relationship with the plant where the judging mind comes in because I have an issue with my relationship with the plant.

And then I very rapidly go into, ‘oh, I’ve done something that gets me in trouble sometimes, trouble being not being in the optimal space where I want to be and not having the best relationship I can have with it. And sometimes it’s, my mind also does something similar to that, but I tend to look at it as more like my own maybe a judgment on my inability to get a healthy relationship with the plant, and immediately go into this judgment of myself taking the plant as, ‘oh, maybe it wasn’t not good. I should have not taken it so on’.

Giancarlo

But for me it was the judgment of the environment of what are these people doing? It took away the sacred, that’s what it does to me. It creates some euphoria and good mood, but I tend to press people’s buttons, especially my wife, who once said either you stop, otherwise you are becoming unbearable. But what about MDMA they expect to be legal in America in the next two years for PTSD predominantly what’s your personal experience?

Alejandro

Well I started taking MDMA recreationally and again I went from some early experimentation to then just later a phase of my life, where I started to take a lot of it in a celebratory setting like parties and so on. Again as many other substances it has diminishing returns as you take more of it. I also soon realized I started to feel that with MDMA I was borrowing from the future. I will be in this big state in which I will feel connected to everyone and everything and I will just feel very good about myself. But then a couple of days later I will have a down where the opposite, I will be moody and the opposite will be true.

And I, that, that, again, introduced sort of the limit and how much and the MDMA I wanted to take, I never treated it as medicine, it was really recreational. I just wanted to get high, I didn’t feel I was healing myself in any way with MDMA and then many years later when I had started a different path, a different relationship with psychedelics in general. I had gotten in contact with plant medicine and so on. I had this experience with the MDMA and psilocybin, this very healing, medicinal experience when the facilitator of the medicine said it was going to give us a high dose of MDMA with a high dose of psilocybin in a blindfold setting with music and different types of vibrations and so on. I asked, I said, but are you borrowing from the future, is this really medicine in the sense that it makes you feel a bit better afterwards? Or is it something? And what he said resonated a lot with me and with my experience ever since he said MDMA wants to take you inside but we use it in settings, in social settings where we are constantly going outside where we’re socializing, talking, relating to other people, dancing, lots of stimulation and so on. And in his words, that’s very taxing for the mind. So since that conversation and that experience I’ve taken on a few occasions MDMA by itself, or with psilocybin, in a very calm and relaxed setting or to have a deep conversation with my wife. And it’s been not only a great experience, a healing medicinal experience, but also it has not produced a hangover. It has not produced the rebound effect of a couple of days later. So I do think that in this case as always, set and setting are very important and affect not only the quality of the spirits, but the aftermath of the experience and have effects in the chemistry going on in your brain, during the experience and in the days after.

So MDMA, I think I discovered early as a recreational drug and much later as medicine. And I’ve learned to see its potential, its medicinal potential in the last years. And in my experience, it’s very important to go inside with MDMA to not go outside. 

Giancarlo

Yeah, for me, it was very useful for couples therapy. It feels that it really helps to allow you to see a situation from the other person’s point of view, which can be very helpful in a domestic setting. And yeah I was in Burning Man a long time ago with Sasha Shulgin who sent it that synthesizes MDMA. And he said you can only do it once a year. And then I was a little bit disappointed. I was like, oh my God, is it too late? And then Rick Doblin from MAPS said that to avoid the dopamine depletion, the Tuesday blues, the two days after the experience, you just have to not cope, not dealing with problems, just take a day off walking in nature and that would avoid the serotonin depletion of the two days after. But yes, it’s definitely taxing on your body and you are boring from the future as you say.

Alejandro

I guess we do it once a year and then take two days off. If you go inside, they will be fine.

Giancarlo

So it is not weekend drugs. That’s the message too. LSD?

Alejandro

LSD. I hold LSD very dear with a very important place in my life because I used to work in finance. I started a merchant bank with other partners who are doing lots of M and A and private equity. I was really in that world of making money and chasing success. I was quite young. I was in my late twenties. We were doing very well. We were based in Costa Rica at the time. We were being very successful in the business. And then I had my first LSD experience and there were certain elements that maybe they were taking a back seat, but they were definitely sharing the ride with me which I didn’t find much meaning in what I was doing. I was not asking myself questions about meaning. So it was not apparent to me once I took the LSD, a lot of things happened and a lot of things that were maybe taking that backseat or being somewhere in the back of my mind came to the front and made me take some life-changing decisions.

It also LSD opened widely the doors of perception for me and made me suddenly I couldn’t take for granted lots of things that I had taken for granted, including a material reality of the objective reality outside. It humbled me a lot. I was not so sure of anything anymore. I also had a beautiful experience. I was in heaven, but I also was in hell. I had a very frightening experience too. It was in that sense, a very complete journey in which the best and the worst, the easy and the difficult took place. And I came out of it a changed man. And I also came out of it taking a very different look at my life and realizing that I wanted something else. So that experience was a pivotal moment and it was very instrumental. LSD was instrumental in making me take some life-changing decisions. I decided to leave finance. I decided to retire from the world of finance, it took me two or three years to do it.

But it was out of that experience that I decided I didn’t want to stay just making money and doing deals and mergers and acquisitions and so on. So LSD had a huge impact in my life and it was the first strong psychedelic experience, the first opening of the doors of perception and it also a different Alejandro came out of that experience, I guess. So, very important to me.

Giancarlo

Amazing. Do you remember the dosage, was it a full dose? 

Alejandro

Well, it was a funny story. Somebody had given me LSD paper and it was beautiful, it had a beautiful pink heart and angels. And a very beautiful picture on it. And, somebody gave it to me as a present, someone very loving that was very grateful for something I had done. I don’t remember the details, but it came like a beautiful present from someone, but I had never tried it and I just kept it. And then this friend of mine visited me in Costa Rica. We had met recently, but we had become friends very, very rapidly. And he said, ‘oh if we had some LSD it would be so amazing’. So I have some, so we can take half, and he said no no let’s go for the full thing, so let’s go get another one. And I found myself with him in the streets of San Jose, looking for LSD, not knowing where to look and after some adventures, we ended up with another LSD, but this one was the opposite.

It was very dark and it had a school on it, it was a completely different presentation. One had all the symbols and elements of positivity and love and the other one had the symbols and elements of darkness. I wanted to take my one with a beautiful heart, but my friends said, no, no, no, because then we’ll have different trips. Let’s do half and half. So we take the same. Okay. So I took half and half and funnily enough, I had this heaven and hell experience. I just took a full LSD, probably 120 micrograms, maybe it was 200, I had no idea. I’ve never had, such a strong LSD experience ever again and it’s probably because of that first experience on how strong it was for me. I became very interested in psychedelics. I’ve taken LSD many times after that, but it’s the one substance that I haven’t taken in large doses ever since. I’ve probably taken 120 micrograms. I do a lot of micro-dosing.

I’ve taken LSD many times, but with many other substances, I go very easily into hero dosage and then take a lot just to see what happens. And somehow with LSD, I’m a little more cautious after that first experience.

Giancarlo

So what would you think is the mechanism, we know that LSD like other tryptamines, weaken the default mode network in your brain, which now Neuropsychopharmacology is with these new FMRI machines, right? Functional magnetic resonance imagery. They show that the former network connects these three key areas and is the closest thing to the anechoic armor. So the tryptamines reduce the blood supply so it is like the director of the orchestra of your brain went to bed. So without the tightness of your ago structure.

That’s how you can see yourself outside the rat race of finance, in which way did the LSD show you the limit of that occupation of that life? Can you elaborate a little bit on that? 

Alejandro

I think over the years, through my readings and psychedelic experiences and meditation and so on, I’ve accepted, I’ve taken as my own, the narrative or the view where consciousness is the one thing that exists, the one reality and the brain is a filtering mechanism. And in a way, there will be this absolute consciousness. This mind at large that people refer to maybe as a God, and then, that mind at large can have this experience, the limited experience, the localized experience of any one of us, the egoic experience of, experiencing the world through the sensors and making sense of it.

But that’s a filtering mechanism. So I think tryptamines definitely in my view what they do is they. Take out the filter to some degree, and then you start this expanded consciousness this state of consciousness. That’s what happens when you take the filter out. So in a way that with LSD, that happens too. And I think it completely shattered my previous assumptions about everything that was implicit. My parents were atheists and materialists and science was the ultimate provider of the truth. It’s easy to take that view to scientism and to assume that there is an objective material external world that then just experienced with the senses and with the scientific method you learn about it and you can manage that reality or you can play with it. That first dosage of LSD shattered that, now I was agnostic, I didn’t know. Now I realized that the reality I had a very strong experience in which I realized that what I took as real was being formed in my mind, not outside.

And then, of course, that also guided some grieving really is where I started to come across narratives that describe the world in different terms. And that whole thing, I didn’t come out of this experience thinking I have to leave finance because I had an aha moment in which okay what I need to do with my life is this other thing. It’s just that I came out of it completely not sure of anything, very very thrilled about the prospects of exploring a much wider realm and my previous goals and aspirations, my previous life seemed quite limited, with regard to the enormous potential that had been put on display. Suddenly I could not see life in the same terms as I was, seeing it before. And that led very soon to me wanting to change my life. But it was not that during the LSD experience, I realized that it was wrong to work in finance. No, no, it was just that I came out of it thinking, oh my God, This is so little compared, there so much more, so much more to life and to reality and to everything.

Giancarlo

Yeah. That’s very well said. And I just want to please clarify something because there’s a bit of confusion when you say things like, my parents were materialists. Materialism in this context is not the accumulation of material things is scientific materialism, which is the current paradigm where we believe that consciousness evolved through the evolution of biology, like from a single cell amoeba we became humans and consciousness came as an epiphenomenon in the brain. This is the current view of the current scientific paradigm, which is called scientific materialism, and what Alejandro is doing, and I agree is that the opposite is that no, consciousness did not come from the single-cell amoeba that then develops into a sophisticated brain that created consciousness, consciousness came before matter before the big bang, there was some sort of mind that large, that then out of which care came matter.

I mean, things are not provable on both sides, but I just feel that. A view of reality that can be called either idealism, or this idea of a consciousness that came before the matter has an enormous implication in terms of how you want to live your life, what you think about previous life and cosmo genetic, morphogenetic fields, and telepathy and transpersonal psychology, there is a big impact on how these view of reality can affect your life.

That was great. Thank you. psilocybin you touched a little bit on it with MDMA, but only with mushroom, what’s your relationship? 

Alejandro

I started again recreationally. Someone brought some time, some mushrooms and we took them and it was one of the best moments in my life. It was also in Costa Rica, we were in a beautiful setting, by the jungle with a swimming pool, with great views and a nice group of people. And we were just laughing and having so much fun. And it was incredible also by then I had already had my LSD experience and that this somehow was more manageable, it was a much easier ride, to stay only on the positive, I didn’t visit the realms of hell and it was really nice. So I started to do it, occasionally based more on availability, like how easy it was for me, sometimes I was in places where I didn’t know how to get mushrooms or psilocybin, and sometimes they became available, and then I took them. And again, it was recreational, I think I’ve gotten into these substances, wanting to have fun, recreationally, but very soon, once the doors of perception were open with LSD, I was also an explorer. I wanted to explore these altered states of mind, this expanded consciousness. We’re mixing the two like sometimes we’ll take mushrooms and be dancing at some party on the beach, but sometimes I will take them with just one friend and we will sit in the garden and, and just have a higher dose of mushrooms and go through a more meditative, mushroom experience.

And, I still laugh a lot and we still have a very good time. So for me, it was still recreational, but somehow it had to do more with exploring the realms of the mind, both with mushrooms and LSD over the years. I learned to also microdose on them, versus taking the full amount. I think microdosing is a very interesting way to relate to these substances. Some people present it as a panacea, as the answer for everything. You just have better days and you can have it over and over and over. I think I first explored continuous microdosing for long periods of time, in my experience for me it was better to stop. I think it is very important to touch base somehow because, one thing that has become more important in my life and, and I guess that comes more from my tantric practice achieving peak state in itself is not, is not anymore my objective. We all can enjoy a nice big state, but what I really aim for is changing my default state. And, that’s much harder. You can have a big state every, every week with any of these substances with ayahuasca, and still remain in the same place. Go back to the same, default, with the same issues, with the same challenges. And I think it’s very important in my relationship with the substances, the integration and the long-term effect these things have on me is what I care more about now. And I think, sometimes, microdosing can lead you to, some fundamental changes in your life in the same way that ayahuasca ceremonies can, or you can get the state doing microdosing and having the same life, but with microdosing forever, and then you stop the substance and you’re, you were moody before you’re moody again if you were triggered before you’re triggered again. And when do you take psilocybin or LSD in a microdose, to get less triggered? Nice. But if you stop getting as triggered as before there hasn’t been a change in your life. So now I do use all the substances. I microdose on them. I go on and off on the substances, but I’m always trying to integrate the information I receive or the changes that take place, in ways that allow me to slowly move to my default state. And I tried to be as aware as I can of whether that is happening or not. And what’s leading to the changes I want. And so on. 

Giancarlo

The most common protocol microdosing Salazar bean has been designed by James Fadiman and his protocol is either 0.10 to 0.25 according to your weight, basically, the amount should stop just before you feel it. You should be sub-perceptual every three days for 10 weeks. So I confirm, I agree that it should be a set period rather than not open forever.

Alejandro

With psilocybin I also had another interesting (experience) I once took eight grams, a big, a big dose and, and it was probably the first time that I lost control. I could have ended up running naked through the streets. I was in a forest with friends and that was not a possibility, but I really lost control. I was not in control anymore. And that was interesting because a lot of things happen and I realized after what’s, nothing dramatic or nothing. But I realized how out of control I had been, and that maybe it’s taking 5-MeO-DMT, bufo to not be in control. Normally in any of the experiences I’m in a flow, I’m not in controlling mode, but I’m, I’m there present and what happens. I still have a great degree of influence over what happens with this big dose of my magic mushrooms. I lost it in a way, and that again was a humbling experience for me. It was the first time I felt that way. I could have, if that had happened in a public setting, I could have ended up in, I was really not managing the situation. 

Giancarlo

But did you feel you had an ego-death experience? Did you lose your sense of identity? 

Alejandro

Not that time. I just, in a way I got lost on the trip. I lost the connection to let’s say consensus reality, and I was in a journey. What I took for real things that maybe for outside observers were not real. And I reacted to that reality that only I was experiencing and that was my reality. And there was no breach of the consensus reality that normally I can be having a very strong psychedelic experience, but I still I’m fully aware. Okay. I’m in the setting, this is the result of me smoking DMT or whatever, and it’s okay. Here I got lost in a different reality again, that was a first for me. I said the only time where that has happened and it was with psilocybin. 

Giancarlo

And what was the teaching, when you think about that experience, what did he bring you think?

Alejandro

Well, generally with that experience, and also this has happened, I’ve gone many times, different substances on the list, but, I’ve gone many times to the Amazon to diet on ayahuasca, and other or other plant medicine and, I’ve gone through very strong experiences and one message that I come out of these experiences with is. It’s all the stories you create in your mind, in the tantra they call them the, is a mental construct. So at one point you may be under the influence of the substances, convenes that, whatever is true and to see it so clear and now you’ve connected all the dots and now, oh my God this is what is happening, or this is the way things are.

And then a few days later, do you look at it and you go no, that’s the story. The mental construct I came up with during that experience. But the level of certainty that I had during those moments, those mental constructs I took for reality themselves. And they, they are not whether you take substances or not that learning I’ve taken with me. And I think it’s probably the biggest learning I’ve taken from my experiences with psychedelics is so we don’t see the world. We see our thoughts reflected in the world, and somehow it’s good to remain, it’s a humbling exercise. It’s like, just remember that you are creating the reality that you take for reality. Well, that’s just a mental concept. That’s your thoughts reflected on the perception, it’s your perception and is yeah, but not only perception is the story you’re putting on that perception. You’re creating a story and you’re taking that story for reality. And it’s just a story, whether you’ve taken psychedelics or not, but sometimes with psychedelics, their story, comes this big aha moment. Okay. Now I understand everything. This is, this is the way things are. And then, no, again, there was just a story and, yeah that’s, I guess that was the teaching from, from that. Big experiences with high dosages, but again, I apply it, whether I’ve taken nothing in the last month and I still have this story in my mind of why I’m having this problem with my wife or this situation in business or whatever, it’s just a story it’s not really.

Giancarlo

Yeah, this is a very important concept. Thank you. So let’s continue with ayahuasca. You said you did a couple ofdaime what’s your relationship with ayahuasca? 

Alejandro

I had heard about this substance from friends. I was studying for an MBA near Paris in Fontainebleau. And, I had this Chilean friend whose sister had gone to what years later I realized was the Santo Daime, in Brazil and lived in a community with them smoking pot and drinking ayahuasca.

When I heard that story, I thought it was really extreme. It was this very, very strong psychedelic plant that I felt was like out of my league at the time. And years later, I was living in Columbia spending a lot of time there and a good friend of mine shared with me what I thought was a beautiful story of his first experience with ayahuasca.

And this friend, when he was like 18, 19 years old, he had a very big fight with his father, like a terrible fight, fighting which, um, his father came to tell him something that my friend didn’t hear. And then he reacted, very aggressively towards his father and speaking in a very nasty way to him. ‘What are you talking about? You’re an alcoholic and you’re a failure and this and that.’ And then he left the house and went to a friend’s place after this terrible fight. And then his father died in a car accident two days later. So that was his farewell to his father. And of course he also realized his father was right on that occasion.

It was him that was wrong, his father was somebody trying to help. And his father was not a bad father. He was just human, like the rest of us with his failings. So he had that chip on his shoulder. What a terrible way to have the last exchange with your father had been as bad as it could be. And then your father had died and that was the last memory he kept of his son. He carried on with his life. He married, had a daughter and he had a good life, but, but that was a chip on his shoulder and then in his first ayahuasca experience, his father came to him saying now you have a daughter, now you realize it doesn’t matter. I love you, gave him a hug and they hugged, he said, sorry, he cried. And that was his first experience and when I heard this, I said, I want to try it. And so now I had a beautiful story to take me. So I went with another friend in Columbia to the jungle.

We were in this place in total darkness and there was this shaman or facilitator with a flute that would play the flute every now and then pew, pew, but very little and a complete darkness. I took it. And I started purging like mad both ways, I was vomiting and shitting all night basically.

And then I got a headache and nothing, no insight, no father coming to say anything. Just a terrible headache after lots of time in the toilet?

Giancarlo

You had lost your dad also?

Alejandro

Well, I lost my dad when I was 10, but I was not going to experience anything. It was not what drove me. I just thought, oh, this is very interesting medicine for what happened to my friend. I didn’t have a fight with my father before he died.

Giancarlo

But the idea of reconnecting with him was compelling maybe?

Alejandro

Maybe but no, it was not what was driving me, I guess I just wanted to experience the thing, and the experience was massive purging as I never experienced in my life, and then a terrible headache. So I didn’t understand anything. My friend, I said, ‘whoa, what’s going on? I haven’t.’ And he said, ‘respect that your jaher it’s called jaher ayahuasca in Colombia. Okay. I’ll respect it. But I don’t understand, okay, purging, purging, purging. And this was 20 years ago. So now the use of ayahuasca is much more widespread, now there’s much more literature to reference as the stories of friends. At the time I didn’t have any of that so, it was my first experience and I wouldn’t say it was a positive one from my limited perspective at the time, then I came back to Cartagena where I had my home at the time. And almost everybody I met will tell me, oh, you look changed with a big smile on their face. I felt light, I felt good in the following days. So suddenly I look at the experience, they’re not so pleasant experience, I had had as a really positive experience and I wanted to do more.

Then I came to Ibiza and I started. I connected to the ayahuasca world here in Ibiza, I started to do ceremonies here, second time, it was like big MDMA, like just loving everybody. And the third time I danced with God, I had a beautiful mystic experience that then I had on almost every occasion for the next hundred times or whatever.

Then I started to go into, as I started to drink by myself, I started to go deeper and deeper with the medicine. And I have to say again, if what you look for (in my experience, always) if what you look for is changes in your default state changes, like permanent changes in your life. I think going deeper is better in the sense that it’s better to a few days in a row. It is better to go in a daime you can do many ceremonies once in a while. And that will have less effect. I’m not saying it will not have an effect. Of course it will. But the more, the deeper you go with deeper being, staying longer in the medicine going for more days or dieting, that will probably, I’ve had some very big from the mental changes in the way I’ve seen things in the way. I relate to my wife in the way, after going deep in the jungle for a few weeks. And that in my experience, that hasn’t happened to me in a single ceremony, in a single session I’ve had in a single session I’ve had a beautiful experience. 

I had this big fight with a friend and partner in a business that didn’t go well. And things got complicated both on the business side and on the personal side. And we from a very close relationship we had grown apart and we had a bad fight. We were sort of a divorced and, I felt really hurt. I felt betrayed and hurt, deeply hurt, it was very painful and I was resentful. I couldn’t understand why my friend had treated me that way. And I went into ceremony and I experienced during the session, I experienced the whole thing from his side and I realized everything  I was feeling about him, he was feeling about me and everything I thought he had done to me, I had done to him. So I came out of that ceremony, gave him a call, got together, had him apologize for my part of things. And, somehow that was very insightful and that was a beautiful example of things that can happen to you when you take the medicine. So I think, it was, a very practical and beautiful outcome of that single ceremony.

Giancarlo

I mean, how important is that, right. If you imagine a lot of misery in the world comes from misunderstanding, Because you mentioned dancing with God, that transcendence, mystical experience. I know it’s difficult to put it in words, but can you try to describe that feeling? What does it mean to dance with God? How does it make you feel? 

Alejandro

I guess it’s a mystical experience that is very positive, pleasurable, you’re feeling lots of love, it comes normally with ayahuasca and comes with some beautiful visuals too. And it comes with this sense of complete wellbeing, and peace, and flow, and connection, to everything and being with everything. I realized after using some other substances that they’re still an observer, there’s still a me separated from the world that feels very connected to everything. And its not, it’s not the real experience of oneness is not the, the ineffable experience that you merge with it and then any words you put into it, fail to describe, because words are limited. It’s not that it’s, I call it dancing with God. It’s just a very, beautiful, mystical, elevated experience somehow where I do feel the divine very strongly, but your still the observer, I’m me separated from the rest of the world, having this beautiful experience of connection and divinity and so on. And, for many years I will go almost on every session with ayahuasca I will go there. It will be very rare that I had challenging situations with ayahuasca, it was mostly this dancing with God, situation.

And then lately in the last years it’s become, it happens less. I go there, but to, let’s say a lesser degree and maybe I’m doing a little less of the medicine lately and probably part of the explanation is I’m getting less powerful insights, less mystical experiences out of it, still very nice experiences. I do more and more meditation while on doing ayahuasca. I try to get less carried by my thoughts and be more of observant role. Let’s say the peak is a lower peak than in my initial experiences from my experiences for many years.

Giancarlo

Yeah. Yeah. I have the same situation with ayahuasca. My wife and I, we had a practice for seven years, quite intense. We do two, three retreats per year, and we both had specific conditions to address. And I would say that we successfully addressed them. And now for me at least it’s sometimes more like a collective experience is more of feeling connected to people you love and developing trust, feeding from the collective rather than the personal experience. This is great. I knew that we would have needed more time, but it’s fine. People can pause and come back because, usually we keep it at an hour, but, I think this is going to be an hour and a half, so people can pause and come back.

The next is DMT. DMT is the active component of one of the plants of the concoction ayahuasca that you can smoke. Tell us about your experience with the empty 

Alejandro

My first connection to the DMT was through ayahuasca, thenI smoked Changa for the first time in a high dose. 

Giancarlo

So changa is the mixture between the DMT and some other herbs.

Alejandro

Yes and that was a very intense in order of magnitude, several orders of magnitude, more intense experience than the experience with DMT and ayahuasca, maybe a 20-minute experience or 15-minute experience in which I did travel into other dimensions and met the entities I had heard some friends talking about for so long, but in my ayahuasca experiences, some things could be entities, but you could interpret the experience in different ways and I don’t know if some of the visuals for some of the things that were happening could be interpreted to be entities, but not necessarily.

So with this DMT experience, I did go into another dimension where there were some beings that I could see perfect detail and interact with. And that was profound. That was intense. If I tell this story to my mother, she will just say, that’s another destination. And manybe, but the way I live that experience, I have been in a different realm in a different dimension where there are other beings and I have interacted with them.

I did experience that some of the experiences could be described as having great but frightening potential in the sense that the entities themselves. It was an intense experience to interact with them, 

Giancarlo

But would you say they were benevolent or malevolent? What is the nature of this interaction? 

Alejandro

I don’t know, I think benevolent or malevolent, in my case, in my experience, that will be some judgment on my side. They didn’t display obvious signs of benevolence or malevolence to me. I’ve had the experiences in which the entities seem very curious and were looking at me and exploring me.

I’ve had instances in which some entities that could be part of any horror movie came running towards me and ate me. That I didn’t allow myself, to go into fear and I could just breathe through the experience and juice experience it. But there’s nothing that says to me that was an entity trying to do you harm or trying to steal your soul or trying to all those are narratives and stories. Maybe he was an entity. Just very curious about you that then runs towards you. And because it has many legs and, you know, elements that you see in horror movies, you could see that as an attack, but no. I think another learning I’ve had in these experiences and with people close to me and experiences they’ve had and so on.

Again it’s what you do with the experiences. Like we tend to put labels and we tend to, again, have mental projections and mental constructs on top of the experiences. So if you see something that looks like a spider running towards you, it’s very easy to interpret that as an attack, but it may be an entity with the form of a spider or that in your mind comes with the force of the spider, just running towards you with enormous curiosity. And I think, in this experience, there’s this, I read it in a Joseph Campbell book, but I don’t know who is the originator of this quote, ‘the mystic swims in the sea where the psychotic drowns’, I think at the end of the day, one thing that I found very useful for me is to breathe and remain centered through these experiences. When we talk about heroic doses and we talk about very intense experiences, I think it’s a good idea to just witness them and not identify with them. Not identifying, not let your mind put the stories on top of it that then you take for reality, just go through it. And by the way, that’s also good advice for life in general. So if you can see this as a training sessions in which then the things that happen in life that sometimes are more challenging than others. Well, also try to be centered, try to breathe and try to witness what’s going on. 

Giancarlo

Yeah, that’s very useful. There are lots of life lessons here through the lines of the psychedelic personal experience description. The distinction between malevolent and benevolent. It’s so radically put in our Western psyche from religion, right, to have the devil and the angel. That’s a very interesting realm to understand and add those entity independent centered beings that they’re just other dimensional or interdimensional  that there all the time and we can not only access them when we are in the effect and can our relationship with them. Improve humans affair. 

As you know, a dear friend of ours is now sponsoring a clinical trial where he persuaded a prestigious university psychedelic laboratory to inject a healthy volunteer with DMT for a long time, with an anesthetic machine. So it’s not just a shot of, like an injection the last 20 minutes. It can be up to an hour or two hours. In a future episode, when the experiment starts, I’ll tell you more about it. But you know, some people believe that there are definitely entities out there and like in the movie Arrival, then it will send us this big, like octopus, like entity that not only they were benevolent, but they actually help Earth to avoid the third world war right in the movie. So that’s definitely interesting. And our friend says, how’s it possible that NASA spends, I don’t know how many billion trillion to explore and kaleidoscope machines and big observatory that costs billions. And then don’t even try to explore more connections with entities through these compounds.

But, we’re getting there. Okay. Just to stay in the family of DMT, there is another type of DMT called 5-MeO-DMT. Which comes from the poison secreted by this toad, from the Sonoran Desert. So basically you scare the toad ejects this liquid, usually on a piece of glass, then you let it dry, you scratch it. And again, like DMT you smoke it. How is that different from the entity DMT and how was your personal experience?

Alejandro

Well again with DMT, no matter how high the dose i’ve tried. I was still there to have this experience.

Giancarlo

With entity DMT?

Alejandro

With normal DMT and MDMT is the correct name with  5-MeO-DMT, which comes, from the secretion, the poison, of this Sonoran Desert toad, but can also be found in plants in the Amazon. They take it as, they call it in Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil. And this one has a different quality. There is a threshold experience. Like if you take in a small amount, it will induce some meditative state. If you go above a certain threshold, it will induce an ineffable experience. This one the server disappears, let’s say you merge into the source or whatever. Again, whatever words we lack words because words by definition create a duality. And this is a non-dualistic experience for sure. I’d say that’s the strongest experience I’ve ever had. I had this very dear friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer and at one point the part he was doing all the conventional Western medicine treatments, but he was also doing lots of alternative treatments, some poison of some scorpion somewheres, and as part of this alternative treatments, he did a very high dose of kambo, this little frog in the Amazon that has very beneficial effects in your immune system.

And it is not a pleasant experience. You go to fall sick when you get the poison of the frog. And he did a very large dose, so he felt really, really bad. And he came back from that experience and I’ve seen the face of death and I didn’t like it. He came horrified by the experience. Months later, before buffo, before 5-MeO-DMT had arrived in Ibiza and other places. He told me he had had this experience with buffo in Mexico. And he said, remember I told you I had seen the face of death and I didn’t like it, now I have seen the face of eternity. And it’s awesome. It’s great. So again, well I want some, and I tried it, shortly afterwards. And, wow. I guess if I came back to life for a single day with a memory of this life, to a desert island, and I could only take one substance with me, that will probably be it because it’s the one substance where I guess I’ve seen the face of eternity and I’ve merged with the source and whatever words you want to throw at it.

This still is ineffable, you cannot describe it with words, but it’s a very interesting experience also because you come back from it and in the coming back, for me, I had no doubt, no doubt whatsoever in my heart that this reality, we live in was the illusion and that I had been in the true reality. And again, a reductionist materialist scientist would say they were hallucinating. Okay, fine. But, I know in my heart and in terms of subjective experience, I know I’ve been in something that is more real than what I experience everyday. And I’ve seen very clearly as this reality was formed on top of that reality. Reality is the illusion, I guess. I lived through that. So the learning that came with that, the profound learning, I also very interestingly, because with all these substances, I think it’s like the speak beyond. Like they let you glimpse other realities, other ways of understanding reality. And a lot of people say, okay, but you can achieve the same with 20 years of meditation. And it’s true. And there’s probably, I would even say a better quality of achieving certain states of mind, certain states of consciousness through meditation without the use of any substance.

There’s something probably good about that versus the use of the substance. The beautiful thing in my experience is these substances. When I’ve, had this limited, short experiences of something beyond, I’ve come back, wanting to meditate more. And, somehow I don’t see either or I see the substances constantly reinforce my practice and they tell me when I go with the ayahuasca, with the bufo, with the DMT, I come back, I have to meditate and I do meditate more. So in a way if we were able to teletransport ourselves, with some substance to the top of the Himalaya’s to Mount Everest, to the peak top and observe the world from there. But there is some quality to actually climbing the mountain that you’re missing with that experience.

Yes, but now, because I’ve been there for a few seconds, now I really want to climb that mountain, and I think that’s definitely what’s happened in my life. And in that sense, I don’t see one thing excludes the other in any way. So the bufo experience, the 5-MeO-DMT experience, has been probably the most transcendental experience I can think of and it’s made me meditate more, be more conscious of my breathing. 

Giancarlo

Amazing. Amazing. Yeah I got goosebumps, when I was listening to you because I had a similar experience, actually. I think we were in the same room. I also felt someone said it feels like touching the heart of God and I also had the most beautiful and important moment of my life with 5-MeO-DMT, or I felt this infinity of compassion and forgiveness, I think is the closest thing to heaven. I couldn’t speak for several hours after that. And then also, at the end of the oldest integration, there was something a little bit more practical, but still very useful that happened to me. Like it happened to you. I had also had a business disagreement with a friend about building something and in that moment I completely saw the whole thing from his point of view.

And that also facilitated the reconciliation. Okay peyote. 

Alejandro

Okay. I’ve had a few ceremonies that I found beautiful in every way. I feel it to be like a great heart opener and probably more grounding than ayahuasca, but in many ways, a similar nature, like you can, less peaceful maybe in my case. But, ceremonies that are medicinal that make you feel better afterwards in the following days. For me that’s one easy way to know when we’re talking about medicine versus drugs is whether is it addictive? In the sense that it creates craving for it and the medicine should not.

And also is how do you feel afterwards? Is it, do you need to recover from it or actually you come out a better husband, better father, better friend, better partner and so on. And I think in that sense it is similar to ayahuasca. In its ceremonial settings, in which, you come out better and there’s healing involved and so on. And also with peyote, and the cousin of peyote San Pedro that also has mescaline as one of the alkaloids involved. I like to microdose on them. I’ve also done some recreational use. I think some people reject or dislike the use of sacred plants, for recreational purposes. I don’t subscribe to that, I respect that view, but I think, at the end of the day, the experiences are so much nicer to use these substances for recreational purposes than to use the ones accepted by society at large like alcohol.

I think nobody sees a problem with drinking wine or mezcal or vodka or whatever, in the celebration of a birthday and say, well, I can take a little peyote, I can take a little mushrooms or I can take a little whatever and be there connected and enjoy it. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. And I do practice that a lot. 

Giancarlo

Yeah. I prefer the word celebratory rather than recreation. So that word immediately makes it more acceptable. Next one on the list is actually San Pedro, so maybe you can continue to elaborate a little bit on that?

Alejandro

Well, somehow San Pedro I experience as a more gentle, them peyote somehow that word comes to mind, but I wouldn’t be able to elaborate too much on that. It’s just words. But I do use it a lot in microdosing, in sub perceptible microdosing. I take very little, so little that I don’t really notice it but I do feel it has a positive effect. I feel also, I don’t know, it’s just a feeling. I don’t have the science to back it up. But I feel this is very healthy. I will take a supplement or something, but again, it’s not based on some specific knowledge that I’ve acquired that shows. Or I am sure there are some, going around. I mean, and I’m sure, all those alkaloids, because in the Western world, we tend to identify these plants with a single active ingredient. And normally it’s the most active one, the one that is most noticeable in this case, mescaline and with these plants, it tends to be the most psychoactive one. But I don’t know if san pedro and peyote have maybe a hundred or over a hundred alkaloids, that all of them something in your system in subtle ways, probably in your consciousness too. So I do have this feeling. My body tells me that, san pedro to take a few drops of san pedro concoction every day or many days is healthy. But again I do it in a dosage that is sub perceptual. Definitely. Sometimes, maybe I want to do a walk in nature and I take more and then perceive it. And it’s a very gentle heart opener connecting to everything type of, spirit or vibration.

Giancarlo

Okay. Yeah. I did my first San Pedro ceremony a few months ago and it was very disorienting. The facilitator said that the first time is usually a little bit like that. I felt, first of all, you had to drink a lot, like almost two and a half liters of this water infused as San Pedro. And then I had some strange, strange vision. Someone said that there is something grotesque about, about San Pedro and there was something confusing, little bit also sexually dark. Like it reminded me a little bit of LSD in that sense. And then I’m so used to do the ayahuasca in a in a close ceremonial setting where you can’t really leave the circle where you’re guided all along from beginning to end. Then that was the nature of San Pedro, the facilitator said go and walk in the forest, and come back. And it was very free and I felt a little bit like a loss of guidance. Then I was a bit cold, then I was unhappy with the quarter where we were supposed to sleep. So that’s, again, it’s important, the set and setting of where are you mentally? Are you going to be comfortable? If you start including expectations, it can be a disturbance, but I’m looking for the second round and maybe we go together? Iboga?

Alejandro

Iboga is probably the strongest experience I’ve had other than buffo in the sense, and the strongest one by far, but like an order of magnitude, a stronger or more intense, where the server remained, where I was there to spring something. I took, heroic dose for the first time. I went to a place in Mexico that specializes in the treatment of heroin addicts, by providing what they call a float dose, a very large dose of Iboga and Iboga being the active ingredient. I went, because I wanted to explore and have an experience with the medicine. I realized, I’ve done it a second time here in Europe people that come from a governance tradition, while this one was not linked directly to its African origins. And, it’s been a lower dose and it’s been a more manageable experience. My first experience with this float dose, it was just as strong as it could be and the visions and they were as real as any experience you can have, us talking now here, and very intense, all sorts of things happened and it lasted 24 hours.

And, it was very interesting. Again I had some experiences that could be conceived as frightening, like a tarantula only centimeters away from my face, hanging from the ceiling in perfect detail. I could see the mouth of the tarantula move and the legs and everything. And, many things like that and I gave this an example. I somehow had been primed to see spiders because somebody had described the experience to me and had mentioned a spider. So that was the word that would come to my mind when iboga. So I asked the facilitator will I remember who I am, all the time through the experience and what I’ve done, that the fact that I’ve taken iboga and they say yes, and then I said, well, then I just need to remember to breathe and be centered again, because you know, if it’s me experiencing, if a big dragon comes or any type of monster or a big tarantula or whatever and you remember that you’ve taken iboga and that in this case, you are Alejandro under a big dose of iboga, then just have to keep calm. 

If you forget, then it can be really scary if you identify with it and then you think you have a tarantula, a real tarantula centimeters away from your face. I did remember all the time I did manage to keep my cool, let’s say, and it actually felt quite empowering. I felt really good about not being afraid of such a vivid, realistic tarantula so close. And that this is only an example because for most people it will be very easy to visualize the situation with a tarantula, but all sorts of things happen. Some of them made sense, some of them could be very frightening. And, at one point I asked the medicine to show me my fear. And, I was presented with the image of a man coming over my wife. My first reaction was to think it was a lover, but then he attacked her with a knife, and then my elder son came to protect her and was also stopped.

But the medicine made that image blurry and small while all the other images were crisp clear. So I found the spirit very protective. So very vivid images, very protective spirit. I think iboga also connects you to your body or it puts your body in control and I think we know in our bodies, which some people would say we know in our hearts, the answer to all the questions we ask, but the mind comes along and distorts that answer. And sometimes we don’t get to the true answers that our bodies know about, because our mind provides a different one or provides a story that takes us in a different direction. And I feel in my experience with the iboga. For example, I like coffee, but coffee doesn’t do me well. If I drink coffee, it upsets my stomach.

I like it a lot, so many times I’ve been tempted to drink coffee. And then I try not to remember that tea suits me better. After iboga, if I look at the cup of coffee, if I think about a cup of coffee, my whole body contracts. I couldn’t even if I wanted to take one, I think its like my body rejects it. Same thing maybe for cigarettes, if I’m smoking cigarettes at the time, it’s my body that reacts. It creates a for heroin addicts, which is one of the strongest addiction, if not the strongest addiction possible, it creates an addiction interruption window of months in which they just don’t want heroin, their body rejects the heroin.

It’s not without any withdrawal symptoms without it’s very powerful medicine that, in my case, I’ve always fantasized about the beautiful life I could live if I woke up early naturally. I’m more of a night person, I always suffer. It takes a big effort for me to wake up early and it’s unpleasant. I can do it, but it’s unpleasant. I always fantasize, well, how nice it would be if I just woke up naturally at 6:00 AM every day, just open my eyes and be, and after my first imboga experience for the next five, six months. And that’s what happened. I will wake up at six in the morning, 5 :30/6, I’m completely awake and energized. And then at 9:00 PM, I will be falling asleep. I couldn’t operate. I will just fall asleep, completely, and will sleep really really well for many months. It seems some metabolite of iboga stays in your liver for a few months. And that’s the time this affects this physical effects happen, but they’re really, really positive in my case and in all the stories I’ve heard. They’re just really positive effects in the sense that your body, you will be naturally in the place you want to be with regard to all the substances and all the foods and all the, your volume will be in control and keeping you away from the things that don’t do you any good and making you perceive the things that you good, so beautiful medicine.

Giancarlo

Amazing. Listening to you, I remember again, once more, to what extent this medicine, these plants are extremely important to develop an harmonious art of living. Now everybody’s talking about the medicalization of this medicine for PTSD, depression, anxiety, and of course, addiction and of course that’s very important, but you don’t need to have an addiction or an anxiety or depression issue to enjoy this medicine.

As you heard from Alejandro in all these different cases, to what extent it helps refine relationships with the loved one, relationship with your body, relationship in community. And okay, we have the two last ones, and then I’ll let you go. We have Kanna.

Alejandro 

Kanna I came in contact with it only a few years back, it’s a flower from South Africa. I took it the first time in pills where it had been mixed with some other things that you can buy over the counter legally in supplement stores and so on and produce this very intense sort of MDMA like effect, but a fully medicinal in the sense, then the next day you felt really, really good.

And two days later, three days later, and I was shocked because it was beautiful. It came from some guy out of LA that had done some alchemy with it. And it was hard for me to believe that they had not put MDMA or other substances into the pill because it felt so good. And so similar then I a couple of years later, a friend connected me to some very high quality Kanna because it’s legal, you buy Kanna over the internet, normally it will come in powder and I did, but you know, the effect was not anywhere close to the effect I had had that first time. And then this friend connected me to this like really, really nice Kanna in liquid form. Just kanna no other additives, but in order of magnitude better in terms of the experience than any other kanna I’ve tried and it’s really, really nice.

It connects you, it’s a heart opener again, it can be sensual in the same way MDMA can be, it gets into this nice spot. It’s a really good for sex or intimacy. It’s a subtle effect. It works better on an empty stomach. The effect is reinforced by a cacao, food and alcohol specifically killed the effect. And if you try to do more, just start to become nauseous. And so there’s this sweet spot in which just a little, you put a couple of drops in there, your tongue, and it’s very nice. And again, it shows how much medicine there is out there. And how little information or how our culture is being monopolized by alcohol in terms of mind, altering substances.

Alcohol and caffeine really are the two accepted, and then there are so many other drugs that are nasty drugs or drugs that bring a lot of trouble with them. And that leads me to the next one because generally speaking I see cocaine as not having a very positive effect on the people that take it even while on the drug, which I find interesting because when people take heroin they have this extremely pleasurable moment and then when the effect runs out they want more and hat creates all sorts of problems. But with the cocaine, I constantly see around me of people taking it becoming less interesting than two minutes before they took it. And it’s not a drug that I think is bringing a lot of benefits to society and to the people that take it. On the other hand the coca leaf, the coca plant is revered as one of the master plants, the most medicinal plants, same level as ayahuasca. And interestingly enough, tobacco in the shamonic cultures, in the Amazon and these, really, really amazing, beautiful medicine, with lots of physical and psychological positive effects, it gives you energy makes you eat less, it makes you listen just to compare with effects of cocaine and I’ve taken it and I enjoyed taking it a lot as mambe where they mix it with something to bring the alkaloids out, normally some ashes or some crushed shells but its the coca leaf in powder form. And some other element that helps bring the alkaloids out. It is a beautiful, beautiful medicine.

It helps you. It helps centering. It helps listening. It helps connecting. It gives energy. A session of a conversation with friends doing mambe, can be beautiful. In this, in many of the tribes that use it, they will get together and take mambe and discuss all the things that needed to be discussed in the community. And you can see how people are doing the mambe and then somebody talks and maybe talks for 15 minutes. And when that person finished talking, everybody else continuously in the mambe. Hmmm. Hmmm, like meditating on what has been said for five or 10 minutes of silence, and then somebody will go, ‘okay, what I think…’ And then they continue, how different that is from people in our society. We’re always waiting for the other person to breathe, to step in because instead of true listening, we’re like making the answers in our head to what is being said and mambe helps with that. And now look again with technology and a reductionist approach with taking from that beautiful plant, a very powerful, active ingredient will mix, it will process it with all sorts of chemicals and come out with something that has lost the magic along the way, and the health benefits. And it’s just this big, upper, ego boosting, substance. So it’s funny that this is one of the few plants that are illegal around the world, the plant itself. Not only is that extremely disrespectful for the local cultures that have used it medicinally and socially for thousands of years, but I’m also very shortsighted because it is a very powerful medicinal positive thing to bring into our diet. And somehow we in the Western world create this technology driven spinoff that is unhealthy and dangerous, and then we make illegal a plant. Which just making plants illegal should be ‘Who are you?’ or something like that. But anyway, that’s a, that’s a different subject.

Giancarlo

Yeah. Amazing. This has been super interesting. I mean, I can’t help to add one last remark, which has to do with something we’ve been talking about; when you have a health care system for profit, a healed patient is not a good customer. So I think that that’s why some of these plants are illegal.

I really want to thank you because. The objective of this podcast is to take off the stigma and help people understand this psychedelic medicine, these natural plants, or even lab compounds, that have similar effects. I think that there are a lot of possible applications of this compound for wellness, for art of living, for life design. And so thank you for sharing your wisdom and your knowledge. 

I want to invite you again, to discuss about tantra possibly with your wife. So I have to do my homework. I have to read the book that you recommended and then we’ll meet up again. Is there anything that comes to mind that you want to share with the listeners that are curious about this medicine and maybe want to ask you, okay, I haven’t done anything yet. Where should they start? Something like that? 

Alejandro

Well, I think these substances to different degrees, but they’re not to be taken lightly, they are very powerful substances that should be dealt with, with respect and humility. And I think it’s the same way, there’s some extreme exports. It’s not only okay, it’s great to do them, but we have to be respectful. You have to be careful. It’s good to be in the company of more experienced people, set and setting are extremely important. And it’s also the dosage that makes all the difference.

It’s good to get used to, to treat it in the same way. Okay.  If you want to do parapentin (paragliding), or do you want to do parachuting or surf with big wave surfing or something? Okay. Let’s start with the small wave. Start with someone that knows how to surf well and learn. Most of these substances they have an inherent goodness about them. In the ancestral cultures that use them, they believe, in the case of plant medicine, they believe plants have a spirit and a spirit time in ambulation. That means plants have an agenda, plants want things, and these plants are benevolent spirits.

And these plants generally will help you and will provide, yes, they will be a positive force in your life. Just understand that we’re talking about a lot of things that sustain your current identity and your current life may be challenged or shattered by these experiences.

And that’s not always easy to integrate. And so I will urge caution at the same time that I have to say I’m a big fan of what these substances can bring to us as individuals and as a collective. 

Giancarlo

And so start with a small wave, take the gradual aspect and see you soon, guys. Thank you for being here.

Alejandro

Thank you.