Psychedelic Confessions Christian Jochnick

15: Psychedelic Confessions: Christian Jochnick

We are honored to host Christian Jochnick as a guest on the Psychedelic Confessions series.  Christian is a venture investor, a regenerative farmer, and a friend. He is dedicated to exploring and discovering new ways in which we can live better together with ourselves and our communities. An experienced psychonaut, he is passionate about the intelligent and sustainable use of psychedelics.

Giancarlo and Christian dive deep into Christian’s personal experiences of ten compounds, the differences between natural and synthetic substances, and the importance of cultivating a positive relationship with the medicines you choose to use.

Christian shares the personal teachings he received as a student of Ayahuasca and the Santo Daime tradition. He sheds light on the true value of using psychedelic medicine to develop discipline as well as to celebrate life, connect to each other and to nature, and their role as teachers and guides on the path to self-discovery.

Go to the full transcript here

Full Transcript

Giancarlo: Hello, welcome to the fourth episode of The Psychedelic Confessions. Today, we have a friend of mine. I’m a big fan of Christian Jochnick, he is a venture investor, regenerative farmer, and psychonaut with a passion for exploring how we can live better together with ourselves and each other in nature. I feel so much resonance for this. I think that would also be my bio!

Christian: [laughs] 

Giancarlo: Yes, I want to remind our listeners that we’re going to go substance by substance, and the objective of this special Psychedelic Confessions series is for experienced people that have been doing these compounds seriously and with respect for many years to share their experience from a personal point of view. Real experiences and now, as you guys know, psychedelics are becoming so popular, there are ceremonies left, right, and center, and sometimes, these compounds are misused. It’s a pity because with the right guidelines they can be so effective and so powerful, not just for healing, but just for life and wellness. As Christian said, “To become better at living together with each other with nature.” Okay, so, let’s jump straight in. Welcome, Christian!

Christian: Thank you, Giancarlo. So nice to be here. 

Giancarlo: Nice. So, we have 10 compounds today. It’s the usual suspects. Let’s start with cannabis.

Christian: Cannabis, I have a long history with cannabis. I grew up in Sweden and in Sweden, drugs have been very stigmatized for a long, long time. There’s been a lot of fear-mongering around drugs. I was definitely a victim of that. I was very fearful towards drugs and substances. Quite late into my life, late, talking about late teens, 18, 19 when I first smoked. I think maybe 17. I had a funny start with cannabis. I got a lot of anxiety, a lot of paranoia. I didn’t feel very good, but I kept hearing what everyone was talking about how amazing it was. I kept pushing myself to break through that phase of it and I did. I developed a very healthy relationship with cannabis. Of course, it was the first few years, when we were just driving around, getting stoned, and smoking all the time. I think the first thing I discovered was maybe not the healthy side. It was this notion of stagnation, seeing a lot of my friends not progressing in their life.

Giancarlo: How old were you?

Christian: This was maybe after high school, just when you get into your early professional years when you get your first job. I could definitely see –

Giancarlo: After college?

Christian: No, after high school. 

Giancarlo: Okay. 18.

Christian: Yeah, 18, 19, 20. I remember we would sit every day at someone’s house smoking weed, playing poker, playing FIFA, and it was nice. But two things that came out that were cautionary were: I saw a lot of friends stagnating in their development. I got a job in an interesting organization working with youth. I moved to another part of town and my life really took off. I kept smoking every night, I came home from work, had a joint and so on. Then five, six years later, I remember coming to my friend’s house, and looking around, and the same guys doing exactly the same things four, five, six years later, and it just was so clear that Cannabis can really hold you back and take away this drive, and take away this curiosity, and you can easily get stuck in pattern.

Another thing was this notion of like, “Hey, guys, should we go to the movies? Yeah, amazing. Who’s got weed? No one’s got weed. Okay, let’s skip the movies.” Then all of a sudden, you cannot enjoy anything in life without smoking a joint. This was a bit of a warning sign for me. These were things that I kept paying attention to. But for me, I had this really profound experience with cannabis early on when I began my professional career. I remember going to work and getting stuck in a relationship, and situations, and issues, and then I came home at the end of the day, and I smoked a joint, and then I realized, “Wow, this situation I experienced today, there’s a whole different perspective to it.” 

It unlocked many things on a much more subtle level, on a much more personal level, where I for the first time experienced my ability to change my perspective on a situation and see how that can unlock blockages in your life, everything from relationship blockages to professional blockages. It became a tool for me to challenge my assumptions about my thoughts and my reality.

Giancarlo: Yeah, maybe there’s also a little bit of an effect of moral prioritization. I felt that when I would use it for conflict resolution with my wife and it really –

Christian: Very helpful.

Giancarlo: There is a sense of expansion of consciousness.

Christian: Yeah. It’s often referred to as Santa Maria, Mary Jane. Cannabis does have a feminine spirit somehow. I think for men, at least for myself, for example, I always had my best conversation with my mother when I was stoned. In the beginning, I was nervous talking to my mom when I was stoned. After a while, I realized, “Oh, I want to call my mom” so I smoke a joint –

Giancarlo: Yeah, you are more patient.

Christian: -and then I call my mom. You are more patient and more tuned into the subtleties. I could see myself notice small details and objects in the house. It tunes you into a different perspective that I think is more feminine.

Giancarlo: Yeah. There was an article in The New York Times actually, and the title was “When a backache improves your parenting skills.” Because someone went to a doctor for a backache, and he got some edibles.

Christian: [laughs] 

Giancarlo: He said, “Yes, the backache went away, but it was incredible how the relationship with my young kids improved in terms of the time I would spend with them drawing and doing things.” Before the edible was like, “Okay, Dad can we do something?” “Okay, here’s the iPad.” Now, “Let’s draw together, let’s play together.” So, that’s definitely for sure.

Christian: The danger, I would say with Cannabis, though- [crosstalk] 

Giancarlo: Yeah, let’s go to danger.

Christian: -is that it’s very easy to get stuck in patterns.

Giancarlo: To abuse.

Christian: The good thing is that I don’t experience a physical addiction. For example, I smoked weed every day for seven years and then I met my partner. From one day to another, I stopped because I came home every day, and by the time I used to smoke my joint, I got on Skype, and I didn’t want to be stoned and clueless in our conversation, I wanted to be sharp and witty. So, I just stopped and it didn’t even reflect on it. From one day to another, it disappeared from my life. But on the flipside, it’s also very easy because when I reintroduced cannabis in my life, it was very much like a weekend thing, and then it became an evening thing, and then it became an afterwork thing, and then it became an after-lunch thing, and then before you know it, you’re waking and baking. It creeps into your life. 

I think in relationship – the only thing I can recommend to everyone is to be very attentive to your relationship to cannabis. I think one thing that I perceive in my relationship to cannabis still today, some of my best ideas come through cannabis when I change my perspective and it opens up, but I get stuck at the high-level thinking. As soon as you get into detail, it becomes difficult to pay attention. And not only when you’re stoned, but in your day-to-day life. When I get into a pattern of smoking daily, I get drawn to thinking about new and exciting ideas rather than going deep, and dealing with the details, and implementing. Actually, it creates a quite a lot of issues in my life because I keep jumping from idea to idea, and then I create a lot of ideas and start a lot of processes but without anchoring them, and going through the details, and making sure – it can create a little bit of an unstable- [crosstalk] 

Giancarlo: Environment.

Christian: – unproductive environment where there’s a lot of talk and a lot of ideas but very little actually happening.

Giancarlo: Yeah, and the collaborators get confused on the priorities.

Christian: Yes. 

Giancarlo: Very good. Let’s jump on MDMA.

Christian: MDMA, I was very resistant to MDMA. I heard from people that once you’ve taken MDMA, you don’t want to drink anymore and as a good Swede, I’d love to get drunk when I was younger. I was rejecting it because I didn’t want to lose my love for alcohol.

[laughter]

Giancarlo: I never heard of that, that’s so funny.

Christian: It was quite funny. And then when I had it, of course, it opened up, wow, it was just these feelings. I think most importantly, going to a party, and enjoying it, and really being present, and remembering the next day. I know about the Tuesday blues and so on. But at least the hangover was not the type of hangover that you get from alcohol. I could feel that for me it was a revolution in enjoying celebration. For many years, I was a big fan of celebratory MDMA use. I had a fond relationship with it. Actually, I remember being in this town here, in Ibiza, taking MDMA, and then I smoked a nice charas joint, and then I went on the dancefloor, and just went inside, and just finding this very clear channel of not just amazing, beautiful, constructive thoughts coming from the heart, but also, this feeling in the whole body that just made me feel very connected to myself, and to my heart, and to the people I care for. I would start to go through my life on the dancefloor almost like what I experienced later on in life in ceremonies. I think that was maybe my first ceremonial experience with it, when I tuned into that mind space of connection. I had some profound experiences of MDMA I will never forget…

A lot of people talk about the capacity of MDMA in couple’s therapy. Even though, I’ve never used it intentionally for couple’s therapy, I remember, me and my partner, we were at space, and we came in, and we had a moment there where for one and a half hours, we just started talking, we were standing in a corner, and we were just talking about really the early formative months of our relationship, and really opening up and sharing some core vulnerabilities that were so obviously creating barriers in our relationship. We are not together today, but that opened up a whole new phase in our relationship that led to marriage, and led to two beautiful children, and to many beautiful years together. 

I really can see that without that experience, I’m not sure we would have arrived where we arrived and I’m eternally grateful for it. From that moment on, it’s just so obvious how this compound can be very, very constructive for any form of relationship process, whether it’s a business partner or whether it’s a wife. I’m sure with your children, when they grow older, and you want to revisit childhood, traumas, and blockages in relationships, there’s no doubt. I really salute Rick Doblin and MAPS for opening this pathway for MDMA to get a formal role in our society, because I think it’s going to have a tremendous beneficial capacity for healing and progress.

Giancarlo: Yeah. For me, the clear thing was, to what extent it would allow me to see whatever dispute, whatever misunderstanding there was from the other person’s point of view.

Christian: Yes.

Giancarlo: It’s almost like magic.

Christian: Yes, absolutely. This letting your guard down –

Giancarlo: Feeling vulnerable.

Christian: – and just expressing yourself from the heart and not from the mind, I think it does that in a brilliant way.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Let me ask you something a little bit outside of the experience of the medicine more into your investor knowledge. Now, MDMA for PTSD will go in Phase 3 trial this year, and then hopefully it will be available to licensed therapists to buy it, and then to give it to their patient. But how much flexibility would therapists have, in terms,  do they have to be only PTSD to start with or it can be couple therapy?

Christian: No, this is a very technical question –

Giancarlo: Yeah.

Christian: – and I don’t have the technical answer. But from my experience, there is something called an off-label prescription. They will not be able to advertise for anything, but the approved registered condition, but they can recommend it or if you ask for it, they can offer it. I think there will be an off-label path that you can explore. So, I’m sure it will open up the potential to use these compounds in more areas. I mean, especially couple’s therapy, conflict resolution, and beyond post-traumatic stress.

Giancarlo: Yeah, and they’re going to have another hundred million patients.

Christian: Yes, absolutely. 

Giancarlo: Very good. That’s very interesting.

Christian: I think my relationship to MDMA today has become less and less. I am less attracted to it today. I think it’s inherently a depletive compound and you can feel it. I’ve never really suffered from the Tuesday blues. I’m relatively stable in my state of being, I don’t go much up and down typically. It’s never been like, “Oh, I suffered two days after, but I can still feel it in my body that this is not a healthy process if you do it too often and if you do it too much.” I think every once in a while, maybe once a year or-

Giancarlo: Once a year.

Christian: – twice a year, I take a little shot glass of MDMA at a party and if it’s combined with other substances. But typically, what you see here in the parties.. Yeah, well, but I think in our community, when I have a party and when I serve it, then typically it’s like, “One chupito is 1/16th of a gram. It’s a very, very low dose. I think this is something with all compounds you see over time you need less and less and less is more. I think this is really something that we are discovering more and more. If we just look at our circle of friends, if you look at the amounts people took 10 years ago and the amounts people are taking today, it gradually gets less and less because you don’t need as much as you think you do, and dosing is everything, and it really makes the whole difference. 

Giancarlo: Yeah.

Christian: A tiny bit of MDMA can unlock something. A little bit too much just takes away the vibe, and everyone is grinding their teeth, and waking up the next day feeling depleted. I’m very cautious with MDMA as a substance. When I do take it I take it in incredibly small amounts just as a little supplement.

Giancarlo: Yeah. I was at Burning Man  with Sasha Shulgin  many years ago and he told me, “This is something you can do once a year.” We’re like, “Oh, my God.”

[laughter] 

Giancarlo: Okay, so, Psilocybin.

Christian: Psilocybin was my first psychedelic experience, and I was about 18 years old, in Koh Phangan.

Giancarlo: Big dose?

Christian: I have no idea. I ate an omelet for breakfast and then I walked up the mountain. It was one of those glorious days in nature. It was not very trippy. It was not visual at all. It was very physical and I just had this profound moment when I was just looking out over the ocean, and laughing to myself, and just repeating to myself, “It’s so simple, it’s so easy. It’s so easy, it’s so simple.” I was just laughing. I can’t remember what it was. That was so simple, but it was just – it’s a feeling that I’ve been carrying with me. I remember so clearly that I had this feeling that I felt excited like an eight-year-old boy and wise like an 80-year-old monk at the same time. This combination of being able to hold those two dimensions at the same time, this curiosity, and excitement, and a childlike exuberance together with this calmness, and stillness, focus, and attention and to be able to hold those two perspectives in the same moment-

Giancarlo: Beautiful.

Christian: – just expanded my capacity of what I can feel, and how I can think, and how I can live. I think there’s definitely a pre and post psilocybin for me. And then, I obviously wanted to share this with my friends back in Sweden. We had a few moments out in the archipelago, beautiful moments together with friends in nature. It was a stark contrast from the horror stories I’ve heard growing up about people going to Amsterdam, taking mushrooms, and then freaking out, and lying under a bed, and being traumatized for hours. 

Giancarlo: Monsters.

Christian: I think this is very clear for everyone today, but you can never repeat it often enough. It’s like set and setting and dose is key for any psychedelic experience. The only thing I can say is, “Be in nature, be with a small group of friends, be with people that you trust” and then everything is.. and someone said, “You can always take more, but you can never take less.” And so, build up slowly and see where you arrive stage by stage. But yeah, psilocybin really opened up this in me. I don’t think I appreciated it at the time, but it’s been staying with me ever since that moment. It really shifted my perspective on myself and my self-identity somehow.

Giancarlo: The advice you have for someone that wants to try it, is first of all to find a facilitator or a guide or someone who had experience with this compound, who maybe takes just a little bit, and is there to hold space to make sure that it’s there to provide for basic needs, if you’re cold, if you’re hot, if you’re thirsty, and just give you the sense that you’re taken care of. That’s a psychological set.

Christian: Look, yes, if you want to go for a big dose, then what you describe is the way to go. I do think that there’s an entry level that is totally doable. We talked about it the other day actually. I think actually, it’s better that you give yourself the trust than that you have a facilitator that you don’t trust. Trust is the key for any psychedelic experience.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Maybe they’re not just the two options. 

[laughter] 

Giancarlo: Maybe we have the option that you have a facilitator that you trust.

Christian: Of course, of course. But I think that what you need to trust is you need to trust the environment and the space that you’re in. If you don’t have a facilitator, be very careful about dosing. 

Giancarlo: Start with one, two grams.

Christian: Yeah, or even less, just start to experiment – 

Giancarlo: Familiarize yourself.

Christian: Yeah. Familiarize yourself, start with small doses, and grow it from there. What you’re looking for is a big transformational experience, don’t try to take a big dose by yourself. Find a facilitator that will hold the space for you. If you don’t have a facilitator, but you have access to psilocybin, it’s totally cool to do it with your friends but make sure that its friends that you truly trust, make sure that you’re in a calm, safe environment, ideal in nature, and be careful about dosing. Build it up slowly and familiarize yourself. That’s my recommendation.

Giancarlo: Because for the true transformative experience, what the neuropsychopharmacologists found recently with this new fMRI machine is that the psilocybin reduced the blood supply in these three key areas of the brain that they call the Default Mode Network , which is the closest thing to your egoic armor. When the blood supply is reduced in this area – this system is weakened, Michael Pollan says that it’s like: “The director of the orchestra of your brain falls asleep.”

Christian: Yes. 

Giancarlo: So, now, the brain, all the different departments, your sense of self-esteem, your patience, your anger, your jealousy, all your different rooms in your brain are now free to express themselves. In that moment, there is the transformative potential, where you can feel like you never felt before and you can really reinvent yourself. So, what is the threshold, when does the director of the orchestra fall asleep? Is it going to be when you take two grams, he is just a bit distracted, you take four grams, he is just snoozing? And at seven gram you fall asleep and the brain is really free. You know what I mean? I’ve been listening to Stan Grof. He gave a great interview with Tim Ferriss . It’s a great entry to the Stan Grof world, who is the grandfather of psychedelic therapy. If you listen to that podcast with Tim Ferriss, he says that, “Now, psychedelics are very fashionable and popular, but at too low of a dose.” Stan Grof says that, “If you want the transformative effect, you need to go for the big dose, but not alone.”

Christian: There’s definitely something to it. But I don’t think that everybody necessarily needs a big dose. At some point in your life, you should definitely experience it but this should really be done in a very controlled environment. I do think that there is some truth to what he says. Obviously, he is very qualified to make that type of statement. There’s something about the peak experience and the ego dissolution that helps you break through from one state to another. But I also think that there is a tremendous amount of value to the small dose experiences as well. If you know that there is something deep that you need to resolve, if you feel that there is something that is in a meaningful way holding you back from feeling good about yourself and you know that there’s an obvious trauma sitting there, then, go for the big dose, but really be very careful in the context that you take it, and make sure that it’s an experienced facilitator, and make sure that you feel comfortable with the space and the person. If there’s even a shadow of a doubt, then, wait till you…

Giancarlo: It’s not going to go away.

Christian: No, this is really the key of everything. As long as you trust the environment, you can brave anything that arrives.

Giancarlo: Nice. Thank you for saying that, Christian. Next compound on our list is LSD. That’s a big word.

Christian: [laughs] LSD, it was interesting because after my early experiences with psilocybin, I had almost seven years where I didn’t smoke cannabis and I didn’t take any psychedelics until I visited Amanda Fielding at Beckley. We smoked and it was my first reconnection to cannabis, and it’s my favorite form of cannabis, Indian charas. It was just like, “Wow, I missed this so much.” And then she opened up my door to LSD, and to this whole world, and it completely transformed my life. She really gave me a platform in many ways, and we’ve been very close ever since, and I hope that she feels that I’ve contributed to her path as well. But really, Amanda facilitated an incredible expansion for me in my relationship to psychedelic compounds.

When she started talking about it, it was just so obvious, because I had the psilocybin experience and I knew that this is going to be a key part of healing in the future. And LSD, I’ve never taken in a ceremonial context. I’ve never taken it with a healing purpose. I’ve actually only done it recreationally and not heroic doses. It’s a funny one. Many people had LSD as their big breakthrough substance and breakthrough experience. But for me, it’s been a much more gentle relationship. Very nice and very playful, but it hasn’t had this deep profound effect on me as for example, ayahuasca. But I love it. I think it’s an incredible substance. The first part is that it’s measured in micrograms. The physical impact on your body is very, very limited. It’s very precise, and very direct, and it lasts very long. I think the future of LSD is as a micro-dosing substance. It’s perfect for micro dosing. I think it’s going to be a big compound for the older population. I think in palliative care, for example, aging.

Giancarlo: Interesting.

Christian: Precisely, for the reason that it’s so precise, your body needs to process very little material. It goes straight to where it needs to go and it lasts for a long time. This is really where I see LSD’s future. I don’t see it as the macro dose substance of choice. I don’t see it as the healing transformative compound of the future. I think there’s other compounds that do this in a much more effective way than LSD. Big dose LSD is probably going to be more linked to big festivals and big celebrations. I see it more as a celebratory and micro-dosing compound on it.

Giancarlo: There is a book now by Christopher Bache , LSD & The Mind Of The Universe , where he’s been doing high doses of LSD for 20 years, like three times a year. He did end up exploring another world where ultimately there are super humans. His idea is that when you have a big dose and you go on the other side. When he would then go take the same dose again, he would basically go back to where he left the first time and after several sessions, he was no longer a visitor of those realms, but like a resident.

Christian: Oh, wow.

Giancarlo: Yeah. I’m listening to it right now and that’s also interesting. Daniel Pinchbeck in the third Psychedelic Confession episode was saying that, “LSD is the only one he feels that is a little bit “immoral.” He doesn’t maybe feel like he has the moral support of the other medicine where there is a feeling that everything’s going to be okay.

Christian: Alejandro Lozano was speaking about cocaine versus mambe. I think this is a good analogy. If you take psilocybin versus LSD, LSD is very much something that is developed in a lab. The concentration of the compound is extremely high. I do feel that you don’t have this connection to nature as you do in the plant medicine world. It’s very difficult to reach those concentrations with psilocybin. You need to consume an incredible amount of mushroom to arrive at a 700-microgram dose of acid. But with acid, you can go so much further, because you can process it. I can definitely see how that is and I find there is a difference between plant medicines and chemical compounds. 

Typically, when I use psychedelics for any reason, I like to stay with one or the other. If I’m in a celebratory context, I like to stick with a combination of, let’s say, MDMA, LSD, and ketamine and not include psilocybin or San Pedro. But either go chemical or either go plant. Although, it’s interesting – It can also balance the LSD by introducing something that is connected to nature. But for example, I like to mix LSD with Mezcal. I think Mezcal gives this very profound, earthly connection. When I put them together, it just feels good. There’s nothing scientific about it. I just feel that they compliment each other well. But there is something to that, that it is immoral. I don’t know if I would call it immoral. You can appreciate nature on acid, but it’s not the same as feeling a connection to it as I feel with the other psychedelics.

Giancarlo: Yeah. It’s interesting. This topic of synthetic versus natural, because you can recreate natural compounds, you can also make synthetic psilocybin.  Jeremy Narby told me that some scientists brought synthetic psilocybin to Maria Sabina, a curandera, and she said, “Yes, there is spirit.” [laughs] 

Christian: I believe that there is spirit in everything on this planet. But just look at cannabis, when you talk about full spectrum cannabis versus isolated THC compounds –

Giancarlo: I know, that’s for sure.

Christian: – and LSD doesn’t have the entourage effect. Even though LSD clearly has spirit and psilocybin clearly has spirit, you receive a much broader spectrum if you take the natural compound.

Giancarlo: Yes. I just want to say that Amanda turned me onto LSD also in Sicily. We will put this info in the footnotes, everything about Amanda Feilding, and the foundation, and everything else. This is very interesting. I think we are hopefully helping lots of people with a lot of confusion around this compound. Okay, this is a big one for both of us. Ayahuasca.

Christian: Ayahuasca completely changed my life in such a profound way. I’m eternally grateful for having the privilege of encountering this spirit and it’s so hard to begin with Ayahuasca, where do you begin. And ayahuasca is like all the other compounds and pretty much everything in life, it’s not one thing, it’s a tool. Depending on which setting you experience ayahuasca, which intention you experience ayahuasca, you’re going to achieve different things. The way I experienced ayahuasca and met ayahuasca was through a facilitator that had trained many years with the Shipibo tradition, and then switched over to Santo Daime, and worked many years with Santo Daime, and then created his own design that was very much focused on nature.

He speaks a lot about inner and outer transformation, or inner and outer restoration. Compared to many other traditions you usually have the ceremony at night time, he often facilitates in daytime and often takes you out in nature, and lets nature be the shaman rather than him being the shaman. He does it in such a beautiful and graceful way. I didn’t really have a big profound experience.

Giancarlo: The first time.

Christian: I listened to Alejandro’s podcast last night and I remember him talking about his first experience. It was a lot of physical purging but then perceiving the change in the weeks after. This is how it was for me. 

In the ceremony, I did not have big visions or transformative experiences. I didn’t dance with God, I didn’t face my fears, I didn’t experience ego dissolution. It was much more of a frequency and an energy. This frequency and this energy have pretty much guided my life ever since. Every time I have a ceremony with ayahuasca, I reconnect to this frequency and this frequency is harmony. When I come back into life, I become much more attentive to frequencies and become more and more clear to me that everything carries frequency, everything has a vibration. You drink too much alcohol the next morning you wake up and your body’s shaking. When you’re angry and you’re shouting, your body starts shaking. It’s a frequency. Every word that you say, every thought that you think carries a frequency and a vibration. 

What I think ayahuasca does in such a beautiful way is to harmonize your frequency. When you come back into life after a well-facilitated ayahuasca experience, you can pick it up in your day-to-day life. For example, I stopped drinking Coca-Cola from one day to another. I drank Coca-Cola every lunch, every dinner for years, and then I was just like, “Wow, this doesn’t resonate with me anymore.” You can start to feel like, “Oh, wow, this relationship doesn’t make me feel good. All of a sudden, I started to make decisions in my life based on frequency and vibration rather than logic and thoughts. So, I would still use my mind to come up with ideas. But rather than thinking about if this is a good idea, feeling how that makes me feel, and having this frequency and vibration of the ayahuasca as the reference of where I want to be in peace and harmony.

I’m just fascinated. I’ve drank ayahuasca now for almost 10 years and had many, many, many, many ceremonies. I’ve seen people go through all kinds of challenges, and processes, and difficult nights, and I still haven’t seen anyone that has not arrived at a good place. You talk about ayahuasca as the grandmother and the grandmother spirit. The grandmother can be very tough on you. It can be very direct with you, it can make you face what you need to face, but your grandmother loves you and she will never let anything bad happen to you, and she will always bring you home to shore at the end. There’s something just remarkable about ayahuasca.

When we’re looking at psilocybin, for example, now, there’s a wave of psilocybin left, right, and center, these facilitators that are creating their own ceremony designs. Last summer, I think we saw a lot of this in Ibiza. It’s not a ceremony, it’s not a party, it’s somewhere in between, it’s not micro doses, it’s not full doses, but it’s still big doses. It doesn’t always end up in this end point where everyone feels that you have arrived at shore. I think we cut our line, our lineage. Usually, the elders give us this perspective and this framework for us to handle life and handle reality. We cut this in Europe. We killed all the shamans, we stopped the lines and traditions. I think we still have –

Giancarlo: We don’t have this respect for the elders. 

Christian: Yeah, and we don’t have this framework. I think you just see it. There’s a lack of discipline in our cultures. We struggle to be disciplined with ourselves and we abuse almost everything that arrives into our society. Just look at tobacco, look at coca. It’s not just master plants and sacred plants. Tobacco is the most sacred plant of them all in ancient traditions, in Latin America. But here, we’ve abused it with devastating consequences. The same with cocaine. And pretty much everything that arrives into our culture, we abuse it. From sex, to work, to sugar, to alcohol, we have a fundamental lack of discipline.

I think that ayahuasca arrived to teach us this, to educate us. It’s remarkable because with many of the compounds, you can learn how to handle them. But with ayahuasca, I’ve seen people that have been drinking ayahuasca for 20 years, and then they arrive at one ceremony, and they’re on the floor, and completely out of control, and cannot hold themselves. This is the thing with ayahuasca. You can never become complacent with ayahuasca. Every experience is unique, every ceremony is unique. If you stop paying attention, then you will struggle. This is why, in ayahuasca ceremonies, people treat them with a significant amount of humility, and attention, and respect for the process, and the compound that you don’t see with any other psychedelic substance. Pretty much every other psychedelic substance has also become a recreational substance. Ayahuasca has not. You never meet someone in a party that says, “Oh, I just took a chupito of ayahuasca,” because it’s so unpredictable. 

It’s forcing us to develop discipline in a way that no other plant medicine or psychedelic compound has done. I see that almost as its role –  to educate ourselves on how to not just treat psychedelics and ceremonies with humility, attention, and respect, but to treat life with this level of attention and humility. I’m following the tradition of Santo Daime more than any other tradition even though I’ve had other experiences. But for me, this is really an education. I go there to train my capacity to hold myself, to keep myself centered, to keep myself calm, to keep myself attentive to the subtleties of life. For me, there’s been no greater teacher than ayahuasca in that sense.

Giancarlo: Amazing, amazing. Great sharing. You were saying that, that feeling of coming back home that you have in the morning with ayahuasca is rare to have with mushrooms, for example. But don’t you think that is mainly due, because of the guidance, and the facilitator, and the format of beginning, middle, and end of the shaman taking you there?

Christian: No, absolutely. This is how it arrives to us. It arrives with a lineage, with knowledge, with tradition. Then the unpredictable nature of it makes people attentive and honor this design, if you like. This very much contributes to this outcome that you have an arc, that you have a journey that has a beginning, and a middle, and an end. I think we will over time learn how to use this knowledge for our native compounds, like psilocybin, for example, here in Europe. But there is something – Psilocybin does not arrive with this structure to enable us to hold the space. It’s not educating us in the way that ayahuasca is educating us.

Giancarlo: Yeah. It’s coming with the morphogenetic field, like Rupert Sheldrake would say, of thousands of years.

Christian: Absolutely. 

Giancarlo: So, you go into that space.

Christian: Yeah. And also, the unpredictability, again, I think this is one of the most incredible things about ayahuasca is the integration circles after when you sit – It’s so important and sometimes we forget to do it and I think it’s important to always do it, and honor that space, especially, when people are there for the first time because there’s something incredible. When you have 20 people, 40 people who have taken the exact same compound, the exact same dose, in the exact same setting with the exact same music, and then you listen, and the experience there – 

Giancarlo: Radically opposite. 

Christian: Yeah, radically. No experience is like another. This is the beauty of ayahuasca, that it’s so diverse and multifaceted. It can take you to so many different places that it’s profound. 

Giancarlo: So, would you say, you have it like, what, three, four times a year?

Christian: I would say that in the first few years, I did maybe one retreat a year and I didn’t get any visions. I am not a very visual person. Some people have told me “Your third eye is closed.” It’s something that I want to work on, but I was really frustrated about this and I was like, “Why am I not receiving the visions.” I was begging for them to arrive. I started to go into my ceremonies with the same intention, surrender, surrender, surrender, surrender. And then I started to surrender in life, and then the visions came, and I realized it was not about surrendering in the ceremonies. It was about surrendering in life. 

I would say today, I’m a student of ayahuasca, and in particular, a student of Santo Daime. I tried to drink maybe once a month. I don’t recommend that. When the moment arrives, when it feels good, have an experience with ayahuasca and see how it makes you feel. I think it’s definitely something everyone should do at some point in their life. I think it’s very good to have an annual retreat where you revisit and reevaluate your life, and see where you are, and see where you are going. And then for certain people it can be useful. It could be a calling to go into it, making it into your spiritual practice. But I do think that if you are going to make ayahuasca your spiritual practice and something that you regularly do, it needs to come with a set of discipline because you can experience anything in the ceremony. It doesn’t matter unless you’re able to integrate that and ground that in your life.

For example, in the Santo Daime tradition, there’s a significant amount of focus put on the diet, for example. There’re many different reasons why the diet is important. But one of the reasons and one of the key reasons is that ayahuasca is very difficult for your body and especially your liver to process. If you drink regular ayahuasca, and you continue to eat red meat, and you continue to drink alcohol, you are overloading your liver. If you want to make ayahuasca a regular practice in your life, you need to be much more attentive to what food you eat and how much alcohol you drink. Another thing is also the grounding and Santo Daime, core part of Santo Daime is meditation practices. You see it in most of the Daime communities that have been successful and achieved longevity is that there’s a core meditation practice that comes with it. 

People talk about it a lot. I don’t think people talk about it enough. It’s really about what you do in your life and I think Alejandro explained it beautifully in his talk. It’s about increasing your baseline. This is about all psychedelics. When you look at the graphs from, for example, psilocybin studies, it’s very clear. You have a baseline, you have the psychedelic experience, you get an elevation, and then you slowly revert to the mean. The key is not how far you can go and how high you can go in the psychedelic experience or how much you can elevate yourself. It’s about can you increase the baseline? How do you increase your baseline? For me, I’ve been following the frequency. The frequency in terms of food, this frequency in terms of substances, how much alcohol I drink, how much coffee I drink, but also, the frequency in your relationship. Do you have toxic relationships in your life, do you have work that is giving you a lot of stress and anxiety, do you have unresolved issues? And slowly, slowly – 

Giancarlo: Lack of purpose.

Christian: – you need to start resolving these things in your life. This is what’s going to make the change in your life. The racing of your day-to-day state of being and this is key. If you don’t focus on this and if you don’t compliment an ayahuasca practice with daily rituals if you like, so, for me, my life really started to change when I implemented a daily morning practice. Every day, I bring myself back into this place of intention, connecting to my heart, connecting to my physical body, bringing my mind down, reminding myself to calm my mind, reminding myself to be grateful, also, physically stretching my muscles. I know where my stress goes. I need to stretch these places of my body. And then, these are the things that ultimately make the changes in your life, not the peak experiences.

Giancarlo: Amazing. That’s beautiful. But so, there are two metaphors that I keep on hearing. I think one was Alan Watts , who said, “Once you get the message, you hang up the phone.” And then I think Jeronimo told me that, “The psychedelic experience is like the boat that takes you on the other side of the river but then the journey continues on foot.” 

Christian: Yes. 

Giancarlo: But me, and you, and many people, we know and we respect – we tend to keep on checking in with the medicine. What do you say to people that say you should do it once because you get the message once and that’s it?

Christian: I think you need to be committed to a continuous process of evolution. Evolving your way of being and increasing your well-being ultimately. For example, for me, a regular Santo Daime practice, this space gives me once a month, a place where I can come back to myself and where I can have an inner journey, and reflect on where I am with my relationships to myself, relationship to my friends and family, where I am in relationship to nature, and slowly identify things that I can do to put myself closer to a state of continuous well-being. 

If you can have a recurring practice that takes you to that place through ayahuasca, that’s great. But it cannot be the only thing that you do. If you think that this is going to be sufficient, then you are not achieving what you want, I think, ultimately. I organized an ayahuasca ceremony halfway through 2020. In the middle of the first year of the pandemic, I did it in Sweden with one of our friends, and I brought all my friends from Sweden together, and then we had this one ceremony, and then a few months later, I was really reflecting, “Well, what did we do here, what did we achieve?” I spoke to them after and they said, “In the middle of this endless state of uncertainty, and fear, and confusion, and restrictions, “there was this space, where we were just together.” I can describe it like a Tesla super-charge to the heart. It just filled our heart space coming together like this. I think you can never  –

It’s always going to be important to arrive back into that space. If you come together a few times a year in a celebratory ceremony, where there’s room and space for process as well. But where the key focus is to harmonize your frequency as a group, connect to your heart, connect to each other, and just remind yourself of that space. I think that’s absolutely something that I encourage everyone. If you have access to this type of ceremony or this type of space, it’s not something that you do once and then you don’t have to do it again. It’s something that is definitely beneficial but it all comes back to what’s the intention. 

For me, the Santo Daime is a spiritual practice. It teaches me discipline, it helps me, I come into this space, I sit up on the chair, I don’t cross my legs, I look up into the light, I follow the hinário, I sing and all the waves keep coming at me, and I focus on my breathing, and it helps me to prepare for when the waves come in life. The light comes, the joy comes, the excitement comes, the fear comes, the sadness comes, everything comes and it hits me and I’m practicing my capacity to hold my center and keep my breath calm. I went through a separation last year and I could really see like, “Wow, this gave me the tools to wake up every morning and center myself.” When the sadness came, and when the pain came, and when the fear came, I could hold myself and it was very much linked to my experience with Santo Daime giving me these tools. This is a spiritual continuous practice.

And then, you have the more dietas type of ceremonies, where you go for multiple days. Alejandro spoke very beautifully about that. When you can go really, really deep into the nuances of your life, and your being, and how you relate to yourself, and how you relate to others, you can really have a reset of your life. I think that’s very beneficial and that’s something I encourage everyone to do once a year. Really have a deep dive and check in with yourself. And then you have work like Matthew and The Temple Of The Way Of The Light. This is surgical ayahuasca. This is the next level. This is about dealing with ancestral trauma. This is dealing with deep, deep, deep blockages in your life. And this, I think, yes, that type of experience. I’m not sure you need it regularly or frequently. This is something that you do. It’s like open heart surgery. 

Well, Santo Daime is more like your yoga practice or your therapy session. It really depends on what you are looking for. Are you looking for an annual reset, checking with yourself, making sure you’re on the right path? Or, are you looking for a spiritual practice that helps you develop tools that you can use in your day-to-day life, to stay present and stay calm, stay focused and stay attentive? Or, are you trying to resolve a deep personal trauma? Depending on what you are looking for and if – What I describe in my relationship to Santo Daime, you can get this from many other places. You can get that through yoga practice, you can get this through meditation practice, and it’s not either or and this annual check in, you can get this from Vipassana or silent retreats, where you really get space to go deep over an extended period of time, a week or 10 days. So, it all comes back to what are you trying to achieve. Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, you need to find the right modality.

Giancarlo: Amazing, amazing. We spend a lot of time on ayahuasca. I knew it. Okay, then, let’s put them together. San Pedro and peyote.

Christian: San Pedro and peyote, I have a deep, deep appreciation for both of these. The same person, who introduced me to ayahuasca (from the Andes in Argentina) developed a way of working with San Pedro that I think is just remarkable. He calls it “Solar Rotation”. Basically, you have a large concentrated dose. He cooks the San Pedro almost like they cook ayahuasca with three reductions over 10 hours each. It’s a very concentrated tea that you drink, and it’s a high dose, and it’s very similar. With both San Pedro and peyote it’s like the hangover comes first. The first hour or two can feel quite unsettling.

Giancarlo: It’s true.

Christian: Physically, your stomach. Also, you can feel a little bit queasy, and uneasy, and – 

Giancarlo: Disoriented. 

Christian: – disoriented until you arrive at what I find to be just an absolutely blissful state. Some people can experience visuals, but this is not the norm. Typically, it’s not a visual psychedelic. You won’t have visions really. It’s more a physical experience and a state of complete presence. I catch myself sometimes in these solar rotations and I’m like, “I’m not feeling anything.” And then I’m like, “Wait a minute, I’ve been sitting on a rock in the forest for five hours now and I’m loving it.” So, of course, I’m feeling something because I could not just walk out in the forest, and sit for five hours, and feel amazing about it. I think the clarity of thought is just remarkable. Very, very beautiful. I have a deep appreciation for San Pedro. Peyote, I’ve experienced it in the Native American traditions in a tepee. I think it’s a beautiful, beautiful community ceremony. It really connects you with the heart in a beautiful way and I love how they are opening up the space for everyone to contribute in terms of prayer. It really helps to form intentions. Intentions coming from your heart, and sharing those intentions with others, and really grounding those intentions. 

I think anyone that gets a chance to sit in a tepee ceremony in a Native American tradition should really do it. I think there’s a few ceremonies that I’ve seen that connect you to the forces that govern our existence, the forces of nature in a better way than they do. I find them beautiful and profound. And then I think that’s also a very good entry into psychedelic ceremonial experiences. If you’re a little bit nervous about ayahuasca and big psychedelic visual experiences then this is a good starting point because you can have processes in these types of ceremonies as well, but they are not as overwhelming as typically as ayahuasca, for example. And then, but obviously, San Pedro and peyote have also become used recreationally and I resonate with Alejandro there. I enjoy it a lot. I tried to use it both as a micro-dose and also for celebrations. I think it’s a beautiful celebratory compound. 

Giancarlo: Exactly. The word celebratory is better than recreational. 

Christian: Absolutely. I think it’s beautiful. I often serve it at gatherings to celebrate and I think it’s beautiful. The challenge with peyote which I think is very, very important for everyone to appreciate is, there is scarcity, and there is abuse of the source, and we are diminishing the sources, and it is problematic. You have traditional plantations. People that have planted and managed cultivation of peyote for hundreds of years, and that are now being abused by people that are going out, and for profiting, harvesting. Peyote is very delicate. It takes a long time for a peyote button to mature. And then depending on how you harvest it, it’s either going to regrow or it’s not. There is a huge increase in the demand of peyote, which has led to a huge increase in “pirate harvesters” that go out and harvest plantations that are not their own and harvest it in the wrong way. It’s really one of those negative externalities of the increased use of plant medicine you see with ayahuasca as well, where we are depleting the sources from the native tribes, traditions that have been using these compounds for many, many, many generations. It’s problematic. 

I definitely, as much as I love peyote, I recommend anyone who lives in Europe to go for San Pedro because San Pedro grows here, it grows in abundance here in Ibiza, for example. You can just throw a peyote on the ground and it will grow, you don’t even have to plant it. It’s incredibly resilient, San Pedro. I really recommend everyone to use San Pedro. If you’re going to use peyote, really make sure, ask yourself, “Where is this coming from?” Ask questions about how it’s harvested, what’s the lineage and ideally make sure that it’s linked to either Native American church or tribes in Mexico that have the right relationship with it, and harvest it with the right intention.

Giancarlo: Yeah. Thank you. Very important advice. Okay, we are reaching the end now. We have the last compounds that we can also clump together, because they’re from the same family. DMT and 5-MeO-DMT.

Christian: [laughs] 5-MeO-DMT, I have experienced it once and it was not a good experience. I didn’t have the full experience. I was at Burning Man, I was alone at Burning Man. I had taken acid before. I was walking past the friend’s camp, and then I knocked on the door of a dome, and they just dragged me in, and there was this group of Upstate New York alternative circle sitting there, enjoying this ceremony, which was beautifully facilitated, I have to say. The woman who facilitated it spoke beautifully. It was me and another person sitting next to each other, and they used this volcanic vape, and I inhaled it, and halfway through the inhalation, I could already feel the compound coming, and I just got this flash of my child and this sense of like, “Wait, where am I, who am I with, what is this?” I just started to freak out. I could feel the force of the 5-MeO coming and I was pushing it back. It was okay. I didn’t have a negative experience, but I just didn’t feel safe enough. 

Giancarlo: How much LSD have you taken before and how many hours before?

Christian: Maybe two, three hours, I’d taken maybe 50 mcg or something like that. That’s not a great place to start.

Giancarlo: Yeah. One at a time. 

Christian: Yeah. But then I never reconnected with 5-MeO. I think two things that have cautioned me with 5-MeO is, I’ve seen two types of facilitators that make me a little bit worried. One is the “macho” type. For me, I always get worried when I’m around macho energy, because macho energy pushes the boundaries and typically makes us take unnecessary risks. I just don’t feel comfortable in that space. So, that has put me off. I’ve also seen a lot of inexperienced facilitators. With ayahuasca, there’s a tremendous amount of discipline. If you arrive at an ayahuasca ceremony that is well held, you typically have people with 10, 15 years of experience, and a tremendous amount of discipline, and training that goes into it.

Giancarlo: Integrity.

Christian: But with 5-MeO-DMT, oh, I’ve seen these facilitators were like, “Wait a minute, where did you get your training from and how long have you been doing this?” “Oh, yeah, I’ve been serving for a year.” Then I’ve seen quite a few examples. One, which is a unique kind of facilitator developing an unhealthy relationship to the substance and losing themselves. This is not something I’ve seen with any other compound and also people that really have struggled to integrate the experience. On the flipside, I’ve seen and heard so many remarkable stories that few other compounds can generate this… Arguably, no other compound can take you to the place that 5-MeO can take you, too.

Giancarlo: So fast.

Christian: And I do think that in the psychedelic drug development world, the value of the peak experience is something, there is a strong hypothesis around that. The ability to overcome a state of depression is very linked to the scope of the experience. I do think that 5-MeO can take you to a place that few other compounds can take you to. I’ve heard so many beautiful stories, but that is also why I felt very good about what Beckley Psytech is doing and invested a significant amount of my money into Beckley Psytech. And a lot of my time is also into it and we’re using 5-MeO and I think 5-MeO for this reason. The reason why so many people are comfortable facilitating, I believe is that the experience is so short and it’s one on one. If you’re going to hold the space with ayahuasca, 20 people for six, seven hours, it’s very difficult to do and you need a lot of training. 

To hold one space for one person for 20 minutes, it’s much easier to do. But it’s so important that it’s done right. That’s why I think there’s a great role for 5-MeO in a clinical setting, dealing with very, very difficult mental challenges. I do think that for certain people and certain processes and challenges, 5-MeO can be extremely useful. I haven’t found a space where I feel comfortable to take it yet, because I’m sure that moment is going to come one day, but I haven’t arrived there yet.

Giancarlo: Yeah. And what about the traditional DMT from Chacruna, mimosa from the plant kingdom?

Christian: No, I haven’t actually experienced the natural DMT like changa. After that 5-MeO experience, I went to another camp where I had friends that are like.. . The camp that facilitated the 5-MeO is beautiful people, I know them, but it didn’t feel like my tribe. And then I went to another camp that was really my tribe, and then we smoked 5-MeO, and I went all the way– [crosstalk] 

Giancarlo: The same.

Christian: No. No, sorry. DMT.

Giancarlo: DMT. 

Christian: And then I went straight to the peak experience and that was beautiful. I think the peak experience can be useful for very specific intentions, when you need to go from one place to another when you need to leave something behind. But for me, the most benefit I received from these compounds is not necessarily inside the peak experience. It’s on the way up and on the way down. In the ceremonial context, where you’re really given the space to go deeper into your feelings, go deeper into the state. I think, for me, it’s an interesting place to go and visit, almost like entertainment, but I haven’t found it that useful as a healing process. I’ve never really been attracted to going back to it to be honest.

Giancarlo: Yeah, DMT is mostly used when people have a desire to connect with entities or as our friend calls them “independent sentient beings”.

Christian: Yeah.

Giancarlo: There’s a lot of literature. The verdict is out if it’s a projection of your own imagination or they’re really independent sentient beings that not only they are independent, but they might even help us with human affairs. 

Christian: Yeah. 

Giancarlo: That’s a big question. Yeah, I think for the – 

Christian: Did you want to cover ketamine as well? 

Giancarlo: Sure. 

Christian: Because this is one of my– I love ketamine. 

Giancarlo: Sure.

Christian: Well, ketamine is the ugly duckling of the psychedelic family.

Giancarlo: A little bit.

Christian: It has a lot of issues attached to it. You can develop a destructive relationship to ketamine, but it is also a profound compound and it – [crosstalk]  

Giancarlo: For depression, right? 

Christian: Well, you have the peak experience of ketamine for depression, which creates about a two-week relief of acute anxiety and it’s very useful. If you’re in a state where you are, “Okay, I’m suicidal” and you’re at going through a really rough patch, then the way that the ketamine clinics works, you go in there, you have a high dose, and then for about two weeks, you have a relief from that hole that you’ve been in. 

Giancarlo: This is in America. In America, it is legal.

Christian: In Europe as well. Actually, you have it in the UK, you have it here in Spain. It’s coming more and more. But I’ve actually enjoyed 

Giancarlo: Sorry, Christian. In this medical setting, okay, maybe there is the suicidal crisis and the two weeks relief, but this protocol usually allows for a reduction of pain for a couple of years from pain and depression after a set of injections.

Christian: No, not really. 

Giancarlo: Not really?

Christian: It’s pretty short lived. The way that ketamine came through the clinical trials, the regulatory framework was not a continuous improvement of your condition. It was for short-term acute relief.

Giancarlo: Oh, like for an emergency.

Christian: Yeah, emergency. I haven’t invested in any ketamine clinics. I think there’s a lot of sharks coming in there. I think there will definitely be a lot of unethical operators in this space and it’s going to require a lot of discipline for those who work with ketamine to do it right. Because at the end of the day, it’s never about the peak experience. It’s about what the peak experience allow you to change in your life to improve your situation. If you come to the board of a company, you say, “Hey, guys, I figured it out.” 

If we complement this experience with a community platform for people to stay engaged like AA or with therapy, or with diet, or with yoga or meditation, then we can actually extend people’s need to come back from two weeks to four weeks. The consequence of that is like, “Well, that’s a great idea, but you just increased our costs and slashed our revenues by half.” It’s not something that necessarily is going to be an easy sell. That’s going to require brave operators to really believe in the long-term efficacy is going to make the difference. In the long-term, the people that can give the best healing outcome are going to survive. But in the short-term, the ones that are going to make the most money are the people who are going to milk the symptoms rather than being focused on improving the baseline. That’s why I think there’s going to be a lot of sharks around the ketamine space. But I also do think that ketamine is celebratory.

Giancarlo: For you personally, what was your experience?

Christian: I had this experience with my family. We were sitting after dinner, after a board meeting, and there was some very formal setting, and they were all talking about their holiday experience, and they said, “Ah, well, we were heli-skiing, and we were skiing off pace, then they were talking about how dangerous it was, and how avalanches were happening, and people crashed into trees. People die in this context. 

And then they came to me and I was sitting there, and I was looking around, and I had been to Freaky Farm the week before and had a big party and they said like, “So, Christian, what have you been up to lately?” I was like, “Ah, fuck it.” I was like, “Yeah, this weekend I took lots of acid and then a bump of K, and it was just the most amazing thing. They were like, “Whoa, what are you talking about? What’s that acid, LSD? Oh, ketamine.” They started googling it on their phones like, “Horse tranquilizers. What are you talking about? This sounds crazy.” They were all in shock and I was like, “Look, guys, you just been talking about heli-skiing. This is absolutely dangerous. Would you recommend someone without the appropriate experience to go heli-skiing? Absolutely not. That would be a crazy thing to do. Super dangerous. It’s the same thing with drugs. I wouldn’t recommend anyone to mix MDMA, LSD, and ketamine unless they know how to use these compounds. Everything is about timing and dosing. 

For me, my favorite way to celebrate, in a party, is for example, what I love is a little bit of mezcal, a little bit of acid, building up my –  [crosstalk] Yeah, well, 20, maybe three, four times. You kind of work your way up towards a hundred over an hour, an hour and a half, and then a few hours in a bump of K, but really a bump, not a line, but a bump and then it activates the psychedelic effect. The way that ketamine and LSD are together they create just an incredible space.

Giancarlo: Because the ketamine is dissociative.

Christian: Yeah. Well, first of all, it brings everything here. It’s almost like you take a big umbrella, and you just bring down all the colors of the LSD, and it becomes very present instead of being these abstract visuals, they become very present. Then I think it numbs the fingers somehow and it’s something with the energies. All of a sudden, you kind of melt together. If you want to do this, it really needs to be a small gathering, like not a thousand people, a small party like 30, 40, 50 people, and only people that you feel very, very comfortable with because you arrive at a very vulnerable state. But it’s such a blissful and beautiful state. It goes so well with music, with dancing. It just melts the whole dancefloor and energetically you like – The energy just transfers from person to person and you build this beautiful collective vibe. With it, you can have a little bit of MDMA as well, you have the heart, you have the visuals, you have an energetic melting pot on the dance floor, I think it’s absolutely beautiful. 

You need so little. Just two, three shots of mezcal, two three micro-doses of acid, a little bump of K, and the experience is very big, but the amount of substance that you have actually taken is very little and you wake up the next morning, and you feel amazing. This for me, I don’t do it very often these days, maybe once or twice a year, but I think it’s a wonderful celebratory way of using K, and it goes very well. But K is a companion substance as much as its own entity. When you combine it with alcohol, it acts in one way, you combine it with cocaine, it acts in another way, you combine it with MDMA, it acts in another way, and with psychedelics, another way. I think the psychedelics and the K combination in the right forms, either on a small dose in a party setting or John Lilly who did these 400 mics of intravenous acid, and then a huge amount of ketamine also intravenously, and then into a floatation chamber for hours. He was describing the most remarkable states of psychedelic experiences. I think that marriage between LSD and ketamine is a really beautiful one.

Giancarlo: Amazing. Christian, we’re very grateful. 90 minutes, perfect timing. I really want to thank you for your candor and honesty. I remember 10, 15 years ago, there was still so much taboo. I think a conversation like that, public conversation could never ever happen. I think we should really salute the researchers, and the scientists, and the policymakers that we’ve been fighting to integrate this compound. I really respect the fact that despite your ayahuasca practice as almost as an existential companion to live a fuller, more centered life, then you’re very open about the celebratory aspect, which is done with the right knowledge and tools like you do, it can be much healthier than a night at the pub when people drink like 10 pints. 

Christian: [laughs] 

Giancarlo: So, thank you very much. Anything you want to leave us with?

Christian: Yeah, I just want to leave everyone with an organization called Eye Seers. I think the work that they are doing is just – 

Giancarlo: Yeah, we had Jeronimo Mazarrasa on the podcast. 

Christian: – amazing. Yeah, I think the work that they are doing is really, really remarkable and very, very important. I know that Jeronimo, this year is going to give birth to his project. I think there is so much knowledge and wisdom in the ayahuasca community. I think by organizing ourselves, and organizing the facilitators, and really starting to understand these processes better, and start to build a relationship with regulators, I think it’s going to give so much value and credibility to society. So, I just want to give a shoutout to Eye Seers, Ben and Jeronimo and the whole team. They’re doing amazing work and I’m a very proud contributor to their journey.

Giancarlo: Absolutely. I concur and we’ll find on the show notes everything about Eye Seers. Thank you, Christian. 

Christian: Thank you, Giancarlo