Jeronimo Mazarrasa

38: Psychedelic Confessions with Jerónimo M.M.

We are delighted to welcome Jerónimo M.M. back to mangu.tv for an episode of psychedelic confessions. 

Jerónimo is the social innovations director for the ICEERS foundation, his work is focused on integrating plant medicine into western society. He is fascinated by the fact that the same plants can be a blessing in some communities and a curse in others, and works to safely integrate medicinal plants into western civilisation with the same value and respect as in their cultures of origin. 

Jerónimo speaks about his introduction to the world of mind-altering substances, the first of those being cannabis. He discusses the positive impact this had on his creativity and the moment the rose-tinted spectacles fell off, so to speak. He then delves into MDMA and LSD, with stories that follow a similar suit of awe and then eventual disinterest before reaching Ayahuasca and Coca leaf in their indigenous contexts, which led him to the work he is doing today.

Giancarlo and Jerónimo discuss mystical and transformative experiences.  Jerónimo talks through personal experiences and discusses how looking at the culture of origin for psychedelic medicines can help to unlock their most beneficial and least harmful uses.

Go to the full transcript here

Full Transcript

Giancarlo: [00:00:00] Hello. Hi, welcome back to this new episode of the Mango TV podcast. Today is one of my special format, which is the psychedelic confessions. We have back to the podcast, Geronimo Mazzarasa, dear friend and in first mentor in this world of plant medicine. He produced a documentary called the jungle prescription 15 years ago.

When all the experts were very young and, and with the black hair I’m not going to read your bio recently. [00:01:00] I got to be bored about reading people’s bio. So I’m asking, can you introduce yourself in two minutes? 

Jeronimo: Yes. Hello. Thank you for having me. Giancarlo. Glad to be here. I am. My name is Geronimo Matarazza and I am a social innovation director of the ICRS Foundation.

Social means groups of people and innovation means new things. So my job revolves around getting groups of people to do new things. In this case, the focus of my work it’s the integration of plant medicines and plant medicine practices into Western societies. Now, obviously these practices are not new, they’re very, very old, but they’re new for us.

And this is where the innovation part comes in. I’m particularly fascinated with the fact that when we look at the, at the cultures of origin, these plants are very much revered, respected, and, and not only that, they have a very valuable space in the society, you know, I’m talking about. tobacco, coca, ayahuasca, peyote, [00:02:00] et cetera.

But up to this point, or up to very, very recently, every time that these plants had arrived outside of the cultures of origin and they came to us, instead of becoming the same blessing that they were for the cultures of origin, they became quite of a curse for us. And you can see this with tobacco, with coca, with many things.

So I’m fascinated by the fact that the same plants Can be blessings in some societies and courses and others and I’m trying to think about as these plants arrive to our society how we can make them more of a blessing and less of a curse and if we And I would like to a lot of my work has to do with thinking of possible futures or imagine possible Possible futures in which these plants are not only integrated in our society so they can be practiced safely and legally But also they become, you know, as beneficial for us as, as we can see they are in the cultures of origin.

Giancarlo: Amazing. And for people that want to know more about what Geronimo just described, there is the first episode with [00:03:00] him where he goes a little bit more in depth about cultural appropriation and themes like that. And also he mentioned IC years and we had Ben Delonan, which is the founder and manager of this foundation charity.

to educate and facilitate the integration of this medicine in the West. That you can also check on the Mango TV podcast. But now we are here for confessions. So we want the raw personal experience around this medicine. You know, as I always say, there is a lot of information about psychedelic, but I feel there’s not enough.

personal recollection. You know, how was it for you? How did it make you feel? How did it impact your life? How did you integrate this download to your life? And, and, and so we’re going to go chronologically substance by substance, like we’ve done for so many psychedelic confession. So we discussed a little bit already.

So for you, the first mind altering substance was LSD. How, Oh no, first [00:04:00] cannabis, cannabis. So how was your encounter with cannabis? Was a love of her sight describe it in details how it make you feel and everything 

Jeronimo: I would I would I would start by saying that you know, perhaps I wasn’t the the usual candidate for For illegal drugs In our society.

I was I was sort of a good boy. I got good grades I’ve always been kind of a nerd not much of a rebellious type and generally sort of on the straight path. So I arrived to cannabis, I think, kind of late compared to other people I know. And 

Giancarlo: how old were you? 

Jeronimo: I was like 17 or 18. And and what it, and, and, and what it did was, you know, which I think this happens to everybody is, is the first thing it does is to realize that what you have been told.

By the news media and by the, you know, by all of these, you know, this, I’m talking about the nineties, you know, [00:05:00] I was living in the United States, just say no to drugs there. All of these things were very strong, very, very, very big part of the, and he was also in the midst of the crack epidemic. I was living in DC which is, you know, particularly sort of, and this was very, very present.

So, you know, there was this sort of mainstream narrative around how evil and dangerous and these substances were. And how toxic and, and then of course, when you tried yourself, the first thing you realize is you haven’t been told the whole truth. It’s not that these substances don’t have their dangers.

Of course they do. And then they’re powerful substances and all powerful things have dangers like a backhoe or like a fire or like a knife, but they can also be incredibly useful tools. So you know, the first thing that surprised me also, like I said, from a very sort of, cause I came from a very sort of nerdish approach.

Was just how much I was learning how much I was learning about things. I [00:06:00] didn’t know for example music became you know, I, I suddenly found myself with this ability to sort of listen so intently to music and pick out the different instruments and realize what the structure of the song was and how things were built and what was happening next.

And it seemed like I had never quite heard music like that before. And so the things, things were opening there, things were opening. And then I would say, you know, the other thing that opened at the, at the, at the social level. Is that you sort of joined the secret society suddenly of people that know, and this makes for all sorts of social opportunities, new friends, new conversations, new research.

So that was the other thing that sort of, it opened me to sort of, it’s just, you sort of walk through the secret door. 

Giancarlo: Just with cannabis, just with 

Jeronimo: cannabis, because then you join this sort of part of the world where like, you know, people, the people that are taking cannabis is sort of hide to do it is they were hiding to do it, but then there’s so many of them and then they live sort of part of the lives where in [00:07:00] front of so many people, they act like this is not happening.

And they’re so, you know, all of these very normal, productive members of society actually had a parallel secret life. And yeah. That was, that was very yeah, for me, very engaging. Very, very, very, very, very interesting. So I became, you know, fascinated with the topic. Like I’ve become in my life fascinated with many topics.

And I’ve just sort of gone deeper and deeper into research and reading and All of these and, you know, cannabis sort of opened that door, 

Giancarlo: give you like a sense of belonging, 

Jeronimo: you know, it just, it just opened the, it was, it was like a whole other, you know, dimension of life and living and experiencing the world that I hadn’t imagined existed.

Suddenly it was opened and I became very, very interested in this. 

Giancarlo: So like a way to maybe being more empathic to connect with people or more. you know, heart to heart, seeing them on a different light as a human being, [00:08:00] more, more vulnerable, more impassioned empathy, but also an increase in creativity.

You think 

Jeronimo: increasing creativity, of course, yes, with you will get so engaged with, you know, any of these activities as you were working or doing or cooking or Or making music or anything. So it just, it just, it became 

Giancarlo: It increased, it increased the senses. But so what is the downfall? What is the cons of this medicine?

Jeronimo: The downfall for me, you know, I, I, I sort of realized and this was, you know, I became quite, you know a regular user and this went on for 10 or 15 years. 

Giancarlo: Even in the morning? 

Jeronimo: No, no, no. Only on, at the end of the day. At the end of the weekends and stuff. I mean, I didn’t find that particularly, obviously, first of all, it’s not, it’s not, it doesn’t help with work unless your work is individual and creative.

I think generally speaking, it’s sort of it because it makes small things so interesting and powerful. It can be quite distracting. So it’s very useful for certain types of things that require concentration. [00:09:00] But if you have to, you know, manage many things and, you know, then, then, you know, again, different people that I had a friend who was studying engineering and he would smoke a joint and, and, and study physics.

You know, this was beyond my. My understanding how he could do that, but some people, some people also can. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. Also eating sometimes it, it, for so many, for many people, it creates a sense of you, you, you imagine outcome that are not happening. You you know, I, as you know, I had a problem with cannabis and, and I was smoking earlier and earlier during the day.

And you go like, you know, in a, in a, in a, in a wishful thinking approach and, and in business, you just project your enthusiasm that is not there, you know, there is a little bit of a sense of a booster. 

Jeronimo: Yeah. And this was my big sort of realization. Like I say, it became, I don’t know, 10, 15 years later, I was, I remember I was, I was, I was in the back of the car.

Of a car and some friends were driving and I was, we had smoked and I was quite high [00:10:00] and I was, I was lost in my mind in this reverie of things and thoughts and, and suddenly I realized, you know, I’m, I’m in this place and this is what I’m thinking about, but actually I’m sitting in the back of a car in sort of fetal, almost like fetal position and this is what I’m actually am.

I’m just a quiet person in the back of a car lost in his own mind reveries. You know, like suddenly I was able to see myself from the outside. I will, I will bring here the traditional cultures because they’re always an inspiration for me because they have had much longer relationship to these things.

So they, they managed to sort of you know, increase the benefits and lower the harms of these by default because they had to live with the substances and survive with them. In Morocco, where smoking hash and hash came later, but you know, especially cannabis, kif is, you know, very, very old tradition.

There is a, there is a sort of social norm that is not, it’s, it’s not considered okay for young and [00:11:00] very young people to smoke cannabis. This is because they say it makes them distracted and it makes them lazy. And young people should work. And then as people get older, the sort of social permissivity about using cannabis gets higher and higher and higher.

And then when you’re an old man, you can smoke all the cannabis you want. 

And 

Jeronimo: nobody, nobody and that’s because when you’re an old man in Morocco, very often you’re sitting outside your house staring into the street. And that’s what you do most of the day. And of course, for this cannabis is perfect.

Cannabis is perfect. So there is again, you know, powerful substances require an adequate context, a wrapper, an envelope that will actually, you know, put them in a place where they become useful to the society instead of, instead of And when you look at the traditional cultures that have a relationship with this, you always find that this sort of knowledge, this wisdom, these best practices are already there.

So that’s what I would say about, about, about cannabis, the [00:12:00] people that have been using it the longest, they really appreciate it, but they understand. that there’s better times and better places and better circumstances to do it than others. In India, where hash is, you know, very, very popular or, you know, has a very long history.

It is used as a meditation tool. And this is also very, so, you know, shadows and, you know, and people who basically their entire lives have to do with, you know, engaging and And, and, and, and, and relating to your inner world and to your thoughts and, and you need to be in a state of presence and you’re practicing this thing, then in these circumstances also it becomes very, very useful.

But it could be that, you know, if you’re in the, in the moment where you’re running a business and you’re talking to, you know, 50 people all the time, perhaps, perhaps coffee, it’s a more, it’s a more, it’s a more indicated helper for those circumstances. So, you know, when, when one thinks of these. Of these plants and substances as, as not as drugs, but as helpers, [00:13:00] then you understand that there’s, there’s certain places where they help best and certain places where they don’t help at all.

And then you can begin to make informed decisions to really, you know, get, get, get the benefits and minimize the harms. 

Yeah. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. But so I remember once you told me that your father said that there’s two types of smokers, those that can’t stop and those that can continue. When did you decide that you could continue, you could not continue?

Jeronimo: It was very, I don’t, I don’t remember the exact date. I don’t, I don’t feel that I left, that I quit cannabis. I feel cannabis quit me. So in that sense, it was very, very easy. It was not a conscious, it was not a conscious decision. It was not a matter of will. It was not, it was very, very easy. It was this, it was the same experience.

The experience hadn’t changed at all. But I found that I stopped enjoying 

it, 

Jeronimo: perhaps because I’d overdone it and it had been in too many places, in too many circumstances. So you know, the, they, you know, there are some, somebody also told me that when [00:14:00] a person starts smoking cannabis, because it makes everything a little bit different, a little bit more interesting, and the same person stops smoking cannabis for the exact same reason.

Yeah, 

Giancarlo: that’s well said. You know, Graham Hancock says that every plant has a spirit and a spirit has a personality. So. The, the, the, it was cause the, you know, grandmother was like, you know, loving grandmother and he bogus the stern grandfather and the peyote, whatever the funny uncle, but cannabis is the trickster and, and it is a jealous trickster.

So it’s it, you know, it gives you the illusion that it helps reducing the anxiety, but sometimes the anxiety is caused by the withdrawal. So it tricks you in believing that, you know, you need it. And then, and then, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s jealous in the way that it’s very seductive and it’s very easy to, to abuse.

I know many people, I wouldn’t say most of them, that they think they’re using, but really they are abusing. Then they will say things like, oh, but I can stop anytime. [00:15:00] Okay, great. When was the last time you stopped? 30 years ago. So, anyway, that was very well said. Thank you very much. So, the second compound we’re going to discuss is LSD.

How was your encounter with LSD? 

Jeronimo: I mean, you know, we, we, we have a long history going all the way to the fifties and sixties that, you know, you know, LSD is a, it’s a, it’s a, there is a before and after in most people’s lives out of this, it, that’s what it, it, it made this, you know, a tremendous.

cultural revolution in the 60s. You know, it’s it’s it’s a it’s a very it’s a substance that will definitely 

Giancarlo: change your understanding. He will change 

Jeronimo: your understanding of things of yourself and on reality. Now, 

Giancarlo: for you personally, 

Jeronimo: for me, it was like one step higher on the same thing. You know, like I said, you know, I was never, I don’t have, I don’t have a very like addictive or, or like sort of, you know, this sort of personality that always wants more, you know, with alcohol and with whatever, you know, [00:16:00] but I’m very interesting, very interested in learning.

So, you know, with the thing, the thing with LSD is that I always felt after an LSD. Night that in the morning I had learned something very, very important that I couldn’t have learned it any other way. And this, because I’m a nerd, became fascinating for me. You know, I, I, I, I tried to, you know I, I, I was, I, I kept going back to it.

And it was also the beginning of my interest in the history of these compounds and I began to read more about the history of, of, of drugs and the history of plants and what happened with LSD and, you know, all the, you know, shamanism, the origins, all of this. It was, it was, it was, it was the beginning of, you know, a wormhole.

Sort of a research were home wormhole, which is my nature to sort of pick a topic and just go into it. And, and LSD definitely provoked this, this, you know, tremendous interest in this. And at the same time, I could tell that some nights were better than others and some nights were kind of [00:17:00] stupid.

And, and some nights I felt like it just been a waste of time sometimes. And that, and that there was actually, it wasn’t just. the substances. And it wasn’t just me, but it was a whole set of circumstances that would, you know facilitate or not a process of learning or a person or a process of personal growth.

And this also was always very present in my, in my quest. 

Giancarlo: Do you remember your first time? 

Jeronimo: Yes. I took it with my cousin in Amsterdam and we were How old were you? We, I was like 19 I think. And we, it was a 

Giancarlo: big dose. Do you remember? 

Jeronimo: It was big enough, and we, we, we were, we were, we were trying, we were trying to make it to Vle Park and we were gonna spend the day there, and we never made it to Vle Park.

We stayed in a much smaller park on the way to Vandal Park. And we just sat in the grass. It was a beautiful sunny day. And, you know, we didn’t move. You know, we weren’t capable of doing much other than just sitting there and staring at each other in disbelief and just sort of, you know, yeah. [00:18:00] 

Giancarlo: But, you know, Stan Grof that you know, he, he, he was the first one that was sent a batch of LSD from Sandoz when they discovered who has been supervising thousands of LSD session, who’s considered one of the Godfather of.

Of LSD assisted psychotherapy, he says that the real benefit starts, you know, in high dose when you have a you know, ego death. When you have a psychological death. Have you ever had one of those? 

Jeronimo: No not, not, not with LSD, but I would say, you know, Stan Grof had a had a psychiatric hospital under his care.

So he had 24 hour watch, he had doctors, he had, you know, padded rooms. So he had a very, very different context where you could give people very, very high doses of LSD and they could do an ego loss and you could just sort of bring them back and care for them. The way I was doing it, you know, in parties, in the street of Amsterdam, in a concert, in whatever, I think it would be a really bad idea to do it.

And as I’m, I’m glad I did, I never went that [00:19:00] far and I’m glad I didn’t in the sense that you know, because the context was not right. Yeah. And for people who have accidentally overdose or taking really large doses and LSD in very public places with not the right support, it turns into an absolute nightmare, an absolute nightmare.

Have 

Giancarlo: you heard about this professor of theology from middle America called Christopher Bush? You know, he wrote this, it took for 20 years, high dose LSD, like two, three times a year. And then he wrote this book which I don’t remember. We’ll put it in the show notes. And he had like, you know, he says that once you take high dose LSD and you go on the other side, you know when you do it again and again, so regularly, you basically are accepted.

You know, you become a resident of this realm. And so he has been, I went to, I didn’t read the book, but I, I assisted to a comfort to a talk by him where. He said that he was really, you know, connecting with the future of humankind and, and he saw the future [00:20:00] of the superhuman, he calls it, and it was, it was, it was very touchy and I always been tempted to, to, to do the head, the 300, 400 microgram.

And and see and and, you know, go on the other side because you know, that’s what all the intellectual and and and and writer and philosopher from Aldous Huxley and that they talk about, you know, or they talk about the, you know, the door of perception and the other side and, And yeah, but I, I always chickened out.

Are you curious to do a high dose in a control environment? 

Jeronimo: The thing is, this, this for me is the shamanic path, you know, that’s, that’s, that space. I, in my understanding that he’s talking about, this is, this is you know, similar to, you know, shamans would tell the same story. There is a reason why in, in those, in, you know, in indigenous societies, there’s only one or two shamans.

Because that, that path, you know, going to that place and then being able to come back and it requires a level of discipline and a [00:21:00] level of sort of you know, 

Giancarlo: training, 

Jeronimo: training. Yeah, it’s like running. It’s like running a marathon, right? You have to be in shape in order to be able to run a marathon and get and get and get healthier by doing this.

If you’re not in proper shape, then you’ll twist your ankle. You know, the marathon will not. So yeah. In later in life as I became, you know, closer to shamanic practices and I did a lot of Thetas and a lot of retreats and you know, I’ve, I’ve a number of times I’ve gotten closer to sort of the edge of that.

Sort of, I would call it, let’s call it the shamanic realms, or you can call it the other worlds or whatever. And every time, I made the conscious decision that I didn’t want to go there. Because that’s not, that’s not what I came looking for in these plants. I came looking for, you know, self knowledge, self healing.

I came looking for keys to this reality. I’m not that curious about the astral worlds. I am, I have been with a lot of people and spoken to a lot of people through the years that are, that are, that delve in those [00:22:00] worlds. It is, they’re not making stuff up, you know, I, the, the experience they describe are real.

There’s no doubt in my mind, but again, for myself, you know, again, I think the useful question is why, you know, what, what is your, what is your purpose? What is your objective? Why are you going there? Why are you trying to get out? Because, because it’s like, you know, if you imagine, if you make a metaphor of another environment, like say whatever, the North pole or the jungle.

You know, of course you can visit the North Pole and you can visit the jungle, you know, but why are you there just to watch? Are you trying to learn something? Because these are environments that have very sort of rigid laws about what you can do and what you cannot do. The dangers are very real. You know, the jungle can be a very welcoming place if you know how to survive there or it can kill you very, very quickly if you don’t know what you’re doing.

And the same goes for the North Pole and the same goes for these places. In my understanding, the sort of that other place, the sort of the shamanic realms, it [00:23:00] comes with its own rules and it comes with its own you know, yeah. And I don’t know this, I don’t know those rules. So why would I why, why, why would, you know, the curiosity, curiosity is not, is not enough.

You know, I’m, I’m, my, my curiosity, the conversations and the stories I’ve heard from other people are enough for me to sort of think, okay, I get that. I’m not going there. 

Giancarlo: I see. This is so interesting because this is a very current topic for me. You know what, what I call the other side, you know, can be a different realm, like, you know, the North Pole of the jungle with their own set of rules and danger and, but can also be a mystical experience.

It can also be an experience of, of, of divinity. But then at this point, I feel that why would you go and, and, and And have a connection with divinity, with source, with some sort of cosmic design, I think [00:24:00] because he would enrich you and he would complete you and he would maybe even help you with your healing.

I mean, having a metaphysical experience, which is the experiential understanding of a grand design of mind, mind, the spirit, the spirit, the spirit, but so I, I find it very powerful. if anything else, extremely beautiful, reassuring. I, you know, I did, as you know, the last 10, 15 years, a lot of psychedelic experience.

And, but I had maybe two mystical experience, one with the favorite DM, favorite meal DMT, where I went to heaven. And it was a little bit fleeting, but you know, that sense of, compassion and, and, and, and love. And, and, you know, for the first time, I think in my life, I felt really whole. I felt really accepted a little bit.

What you were saying about [00:25:00] cannabis and your peer, you know, a similar sense of belonging that is extremely therapeutical. And then again, recently with the the three hours, all the tropic bread work, I went through the portal and I was on the other side With spirit with with this. It’s it’s it’s it’s like a force.

It’s like an energy which is associated with a sense of all and gratitude and respect and honor and and belonging and it just give me such a power in continue to help others. It gives a sense of purpose and meaning. You know, it’s funny because, you know, people think that I’m such a big expert on psychedelic, they invite me to podcasts, but I just starting to explore the high, the, I don’t know how high those, but I’m just starting to understand, you know, the ego that the, the, the metaphysical, what does a [00:26:00] metaphysical experience really means?

Jeronimo: Yes. I mean, I think that’s what we’re all looking for. When, when I, when I spoke about semantic realms. I meant and other dimensions when, when one encounters other beings that seem to have, you know their own agency that, that, that, you know, have conversations with you or offer you things or, and, you know, and this, this is what I meant by the shamanic you know, I think what you described is still at the, at the edge of the personal realization.

You know, it’s, it’s, you know, a friend of mine, there’s someone I learned a lot from said, you know, the, the, the, the, the thing is in that other world, there’s very useful stuff for your life. Now, the, the, the art of this is how you bring that that is in the other world into your everyday life because that’s the objective.

If you go every once in a while when you need this and you reach to that, and then you bring these to enrich your everyday life because we are. [00:27:00] Incarnated bodies in a material world that is very, very stubborn. You know, it doesn’t, there’s this, this sort of consensual reality is quite stubborn, right?

It doesn’t go away. And what can you do that will help you with these, you know, stubborn part of reality that it turns on itself when the idea is, Oh, I found such wonderful things there. I have to be there all the time. Then you’re, then you’re inversing the actual order and 

Giancarlo: then 

Jeronimo: it just becomes an endless quest to be in that place.

And then of course, then, then your material. So you know, of course on this, this, this, these experiences are very real, very powerful, but there’s two things that I think, you know, there’s sort of a focus in our culture, you know, also in my own process on, on these experiences. And I was missing big, big chunks of something that is, again, very, very.

Stark, very black and white in traditional cultures, which is like one, what are you going to do with this? 

Giancarlo: Information. 

Jeronimo: What are you, what are you going to do with this information? What are they going to [00:28:00] turn into? And second, and I think this is the hardest part for us. Is that transformative experiences, you know, are, they’re not so hard, you know, with, with certain drugs, certain substances, you can do it even with certain fasts, with certain retreats, you can make somebody have a very powerful experience.

However, and this is, for example, indigenous cultures, initiation rituals, you know, they will take kids into the woods and they will, they will, they will, they will go through some terrible ordeal, you know, and, and in this experience that they have, they become, they have to reach for their own strength, their own resources, and they return a different person.

But they don’t stay a different person because they had the experience. They stay a different person because everybody in the community recognizes the experience that they have had and they change their relationship to them. And this is the part that we are missing in our culture. If you don’t have a community that is witness and that acknowledges the fact that you’re having these powerful experiences and that you’re now different.

If [00:29:00] your life outside of the experience you had pretty much remains the same because you’re not making any changes and because the, the, the society around you are not recognizing the changes in you, then 60 or 70 percent of the power of these experiences is lost. It just sort of slides back into normality, you know, and this is, this is the part where we are, I think, very new at this.

Yeah. And, and making mistakes and, and focusing on things that are not necessarily the most important. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. So let’s leave that for the ayahuasca section because I will still try to keep a little bit the psychedelic confession format. So we spoke about LSD. Did you give goodbye to LSD? With cannabis or it’s something that you revisit once in a while?

Jeronimo: Yeah, once in a while. I’m still, you know, I find it and it always made, I have an injury on my back and it always made it hurt and I find that that [00:30:00] always returns. So it’s, I’m not, I’m not it’s an amazing compound, but really what happened to me was that when I entered I began to visit indigenous communities and see that.

Everything changed for me. But before, before that, what came, what followed the, the LSD was, you know, the nineties electronic music and MDMA. MDMA. 

Giancarlo: That was a good segue. Okay. And let’s talk 

Jeronimo: about MDMA. You know, why, why, what can’t you say about MDMA? I mean, it’s, it’s I only recently learned that the way MDMA works is not by making you love everything and everybody and yourself, which is what it felt like, but actually it, it works by taking away fear.

And when fear is gone, then love follows. So for me, the encounter with MDMA. You know, and I was, you know, going to clubs and electronic music, and I was living in Amsterdam, was very much a ball of love. Suddenly I met this group of people and we were going out and we were taking MDMA and [00:31:00] we were just, you know, hugging each other and nonstop.

We were just like a ball, you know, we’re just sort of ended up just, just, just a, just a paddle of people in a couch. You couldn’t, you know, you wanted to be as close as everybody, as to everybody as you could. And he felt so good and we were all so nice to each other and so happy being nice to each other.

And the music was so good and, and it was just, you know, so when I, that, that, that was, that was, that was a very, very beautiful, very healing place for me in ways that I didn’t realize at the time. Perhaps because I’m, because I’m so intellectual. But I remember when I first came back from the Netherlands, you know, a very old friend of mine said, you now like yourself.

And I thought, well, I had never been aware that I didn’t like myself, but, but I trust I very, you know, this is a very old friend who knows me very well. And I, I trust, you know, I very much trusted her opinion. This. In a big sort of summary, you know, I would say it was the [00:32:00] effect that MDMA had not just on me, but on many of us, you know, it was, it was, it was healing from that aspect, you know, people have always said, and are also saying now, you know, MDMA is being used to to treat post post traumatic stress disorder.

It’s possible that many of us were self medicating for this. Now, the part that I was Sad or, or that made me a little bit sad is that at the end I found myself in a very repetitive place where we just go to the clubs and take these things and then dance and say hi to people. And, and, and all you were, all we were doing is we were locking each other in dark rooms, in dark basements, listening to the repetitive music and sort of bumping from each other again.

I had this experience of what does this look like from the outside? Like the cannabis when? Yeah, and, and what does it look like from the outside? It is a bunch of place in a dark room. They can’t really talk because the music is so loud and they just, they’re smiling a lot and feeling good, but they’re sort of bumping into each other.

And also there are different stages of their experience because people were taking [00:33:00] the pills at different times. So there’s never sort of, you know, there’s some moments of collective, but in general it’s sort of disaggregated. And I thought a lot about, you know, how the early days of MDMA. People thought that this would be an amazing tool for, for you know, for, for, for couples therapy for people who had communication problems and all of this.

And it absolutely is. And yet it seemed like this part was being lost. The part of the physical contact or the getting a massage and all the wonderful things you can do at MDMA instead was reduced to, you know, just go to a club. And, and which is again, nothing, nothing, nothing wrong with this. But I thought, you know, in, in you know, there’s in the, in the Pacific Islands, there’s kava kava, which is, you know, it’s a sort of a slight calming as a calming effect.

It’s not very big, but it’s that you definitely feel it. And you know, when people are having problems and they’re having, there’s, there’s arguments and there’s problems in the community, the two people that are arguing kava together. And then with a third person [00:34:00] there, try to work their problems out. And I thought, how come this is not more present with MDMA?

We have this amazing tool here for when people argue, you know, and this happens in interpersonal relationships all the time. It would be so easy to say, hey, let’s meet at my place. Let’s both take MDMA and see if we can talk about it again. Yeah, but 

Giancarlo: people do. I mean, in Dallas, it was legal. You know, a couple of therapists would use it.

They would say, you know, don’t get married under the influence. And then, you know, there is a lot of underground couple weekend where you know, they, they receive couples and then there’s actually a questionnaire before, during and after and with my wife, actually we, we, we, you know, we did it like almost once a year now we haven’t done for a while because I feel things that, you know, we have less issue.

Now we know each other better. But Back then it would be like a major reset because you would see the whatever discussion, whatever difference we would have, we, you would, I personally have my experience was that I would see it from her point of [00:35:00] view and it really increase empathy and bonding. So I was wondering when you were like, They came to me with your friends and you were saying you were getting so close and loving each other.

But then this increase, this increased feeling would not translate after when you guys were sober with that same pack of dog, you spend all night hugging. Then the relationship was improved after, or it was back to 

Jeronimo: base. Well, I mean, this, this, this is the thing, right? This is the reason why there was these teachers that said, don’t get married until six weeks after ecstasy, you know, in the early, in the early eighties in the, in the college campuses, you know, when ecstasy was still legal.

And this is the thing. And people, you know, somebody told me recently, no, I mean, I don’t like to take ecstasy because when I take ecstasy, I always end up falling in love with the, with whomever, whatever girl I’m talking to. And I said, but this is not a problem of ecstasy. This is a problem of what company are you choosing for this very special experience, right?

This is what rapper are you doing? So now you have a substance that will make you get incredibly close. You [00:36:00] know, and you can have an experience of, you know, real intimacy, you know, if you do it with your wife, you know, you will have something that, or someone you’re very close to then he will take, he will take it to the next level of possibility.

But if you do it with a total stranger, you will get the intimacy, but then the next day you will regret it and think that it was all, that it was all just the effects of the drugs, you know? So you want to, and that’s what you want to. Avoid, or I try to avoid, I try to avoid situations in which the experience will be diminished.

Yeah. 

Giancarlo: So because people who you want to increase the ratio can be a friend can be, you know, 

Jeronimo: so again, there is, there is, there is a, there is a, there is a better and worse times and places and ways to do these things. Yeah. And this is the part that I’m constantly sort of fascinated with. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. I can, I see, I see a consistency in your approach also to be mentioned that I don’t know exactly the function in the brain, but it managed to separate the memory from the emotion attached to the memory.

So for PTSD people come from the war. [00:37:00] They’re now able to relieve the traumatic event, be able to process it somatically without the, without the strong emotion. Without the fear. Without the fear. Without the fear. That’s what what you’re saying, without the fear, it’s a fear blocker. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Very interesting.

Yeah, I mean, for me it’s the, they call it the, the Tuesday Blues, right? The down in serotonin started to be, that started to make it not worthy. It was just becoming harder and harder the two days after. But Rick Doblin once told me, listen, it gets only bad if you want to cope, if you take this two days after, you know, just no phone, no email, you don’t have to cope with anything, just walk in the forest and long bath and listen to music, then it’s, then you don’t have the down.

And it actually is true. I tried once. 

Jeronimo: And, and, and it’s true, I was, I was surprised, for example, that they were, they were thinking of giving MDMA in hospice care. So to people who had like terminal cancer and stuff. And I, and I talked to the [00:38:00] scientists and I said, look, you know, I think this is kind of strong physically in the body to give to somebody who’s very old or very weak.

Like when they have like a terrible crash three days later. And he said, look, I’m convinced, you know, 80 to 90 percent of the crash has to do with the fact that people don’t sleep. That they’re mixing it with alcohol, smoking, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And actually, and that the substance is not very pure, pharmaceutical, and, and this is what, and that they try to get on with their lives that, you know, the mid actually in, in those contexts, in, you know, sort of a hospital context with a person with a pure substance and you do it during the day.

So the person sleeps at night and you don’t break the sleep cycle and stuff. He said this thing about the Tuesday blues doesn’t even figure. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Is becoming now. I think they’re doing stage three trial in America and they expect to be able to prescribe it legally as a medicine together with the With the, with the [00:39:00] psychotherapy.

Jeronimo: It’s unstoppable. 

Giancarlo: The, the, what, the legalization of MDMA? 

Jeronimo: The eventual integration of these substances into our societies because they’re simply too useful. They’re simply too useful. Yeah. Nobody, nobody, nobody’s gonna go back. You know, nobody, you know, at least, at least not the people that know. You could, you could ramp up the war on drugs all you wanted.

You could make the penalties so much worse. People would still be doing this because it’s, it’s too, it’s too useful and too important in their lives. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Okay. So that’s the big one. That’s the love of your life. So tell us about the relationship with ayahuasca. How did it start? How is he evolving? 

Jeronimo: Yeah.

So, so basically, you know, these, the, the, the MDMA and the clubs and the electronic music and this was the nineties and that, that, that took a good 10 years of my life. And at the end he was getting repetitive and he was getting boring and he was always the same. And I begin to see myself from the outside.

And it didn’t feel like I was learning so much and, you know, all of these things. And then I was collaborating, I kept [00:40:00] researching, and I met I met Mark Ellum, with whom I made the documentary, and the Ayahuasca documentary. And he had been working on a documentary, he’s a filmmaker, about traditional plant use.

He’d been in Mexico. So when we met, we had, we talked for hours. We took mushrooms, we went rollerblading, you know, we got along very, very well. And at this point, I was taking a year off from work. I was taking a sabbatical and I said, listen, I’m taking a year off. Let’s go back and do it. I will, you know, I’m very interested in this.

So which year are we now? This is 1999, I believe. Yeah. 1999. And and then, you know, so like six months later we were in Mexico. He had already recorded with the witch holes and with, with Maria Sabina with mushrooms. And the idea he had at this point was to make one film per plant 

Giancarlo: already back then.

Yeah. 

Jeronimo: And, and, and at this point we wanted, we went to look for salvia divinorum and what was left of traditional use of salvia divinorum in Oaxaca. [00:41:00] We didn’t find very much at that point, the type of work that we were doing looked very much like archaeology. You were looking for the last remnants of, you know, cultures and practices that you could see were much bigger before, but that now were reduced to very far away, very remote communities in South America or in Mexico where it still survives.

We didn’t find much, and it was not mushroom season, we were in the Oaxaca Mountains, but instead what we But we ended up having a session with with with with with a local curandero, a shaman, and what he gave us was ololuiki seeds, which are the sort of morning glory seeds. That’s the morning glory seeds have a substance that is a precursor to LSD.

It’s called LSA. Actually, it’s not the seeds that have it, but a fungus that grows in the seeds that is related to to ergot. That’s why, that’s why it’s there. But that was my first experience in sort of traditional shamanic, you know, South American [00:42:00] context. So, you know, we, we, we took these plans and and you know, first of all, I would say about the effects, the effects were not very big compared to other things that I had taken.

I wouldn’t say it was a very strong psychedelic experience. There was a lot of body load. I was feeling very bad and sick and stuff. And also, my stomach, my back began hurting like hell, the injury. It was also high in the mountains during the night. It’s humid, it’s cold, we were sitting in not very comfortable, you know, chairs, etc.

But we were sitting in front of the altar and It was just the three of us and the indigenous man, Don Eligio, begins to go in this sort of trance and he’s talking and he’s singing and then he would stop and he would look at me and say, now is your turn Geronimo, what do you want to ask God? Why are you here and what do you want, what do you want to ask God for?

And then he will go quiet and at this point, you know, people who are tripping will, who know tripping will understand this. I went into the [00:43:00] mind loop. I’m like, what does it mean? Like, what do I have to ask? And why am I here? And who is God? And do I even believe in God? And why would I ask God if I believe in God?

And when was the last time that I had God’s phone? And this turned into this just, and I just went, you know, I couldn’t answer. I was just going, just, and he would just go back to his. thing, you know, and then again, he would ask me, and then again, I would go into this total. So this was already pushing me in a, in a direction where I’d never gone with these substances to wonder about, you know, so many things.

And at the same time, my back was hurting more and more and more and more, and it got to a point where I was literally seeing Like this, this animal with very sharp fangs biting in my spine, like, ah, just like just driving this, it felt like that. And it was, there was a point where it just hurt so bad. It hurt so bad as the night progressed that suddenly I knew what I wanted to ask God for.

And then, and then I raised my voice and I said, ayuda! [00:44:00] Which is help in Spanish. And then suddenly this man and his son who was there just mobilized themselves and they took me to the, to this cot and they lay me down and they started like pressing and squeezing in different parts of my body and they wrapped me with this mix of lime and, and, and and tobacco, which has just set my whole body on fire.

You know, so everything got really, really confusing. I was suddenly very, very far away from my home in a very, very strange place in a very, very strange situation. And these two people were doing things to me that I couldn’t even, you know, begin to understand. But in the middle of this, you know, absolute madness, you know, I had this thought that was like, okay, I don’t know what the hell is going on.

I really don’t. But it looks like they do. You know, they are doing things they looks like they know exactly what they’re doing. So I’m just going to put myself in their hands and I’m just going to, you know, they, I’m just going to trust that these [00:45:00] people know what they’re doing because I for sure don’t know what to do now, you know, and that was the, and that was the beginning of a sort of a very long lifelong fascination with.

Exactly this, what they seem to know that they’re doing that we don’t know what’s going on, this, this, this thing, you know, and, and it was, it was a before and after because as fascinated as I’ve been with these substances and as much as I’ve been able to have moments where I contact their potential, I never been in, in in an environment where actually all the incredible power of the substances was was sort of driven, funneled into the idea of healing.

This was not, you know, had been in parties. It had been about fun or about listening to music or about talking to friends or about fixing. You know, having deep conversations, blah, blah, blah. But it had never, I never been in circumstances where the, the, the, the, the, the, [00:46:00] the, the issue, the, the, the intention was directed towards healing and, and, and, and, and the knowledge to, and this really, you know, I, I remember I woke up the next morning, you know, and, and then, you know, when I realized all this, I felt very, very white and very, very stupid.

And I remember the interview was recorded with a man before her. And all the stupid questions that I had asked for this documentary and just how I was trying to poke at something, you know, that I couldn’t even begin to understand, you know, that I just, I had, I had no clue. I was so embarrassed at the way we had shown up there with our cameras and the way I just sort of engage these people as they were sort of humbly trying to explain to me something that I couldn’t even begin to see.

You know, and you know, when all of these pieces sort of click together I would say that that was sort of a, yeah, that was, there was a beginning and there was a before and after in my life after that night. And it was the [00:47:00] beginning of a very long relationship and a very long process. First trying to see and experience and understand just what is it that traditional cultures know about these things.

And then trying to see through my work with the ISIS foundation, just what parts of it, you know, can we learn from and be useful for us without going into this terrible place of taking things that are not ours or trying to copy, you know cultures and practices that, that are, that are, that are culturally and territory based.

Giancarlo: But, but so this this shaman and this morning glory, what’s the active component and which tradition are there. 

Jeronimo: This is the Mazatec. This is the Mazatec tradition is very rich. They have, they have more plants other than mushrooms. Mushrooms are seasonal. They’re not all year. So they also work with salvia.

They also work with them. They showed me, they showed me, they also work with morning glory seeds. They showed me several different plants that they also work with that are not, you know, not as powerful as mushrooms. But, but [00:48:00] again Like I said, the power was not in the, in the substance that I took, but in the context and the wrapper and the intention of what was being done there.

Giancarlo: And so you were fascinated about understanding what they were doing. And but do you remember, do you remember the effect on you? Did they heal your backache? 

Jeronimo: Yes. Yes. I got better. I threw up. I mean, you know, all sorts of, all sorts of things happened that night. And when I woke up the next morning, I felt so absolutely.

Wonderful. You know, in this afterglow of just having touched something so human, right? And this is, and this is, and this is the other thing about it that like everything that I had witnessed and I had experienced far from seeming, you know, some sort of like, you know, strange, you know strange traditions and superstitions of primitive people, you know, engage, engage with, you know, with psychoactive substances.

In fact, where, you know, [00:49:00] the opposite, it was a highly developed science or art, you know, or a mixture, a strange mixture of both, some sort of empirical art around how one work with the strongest plants in nature and the deepest parts in people, and how you could combine these things and make it create a 

Giancarlo: relationship 

Jeronimo: and a container And a vehicle to make this not be just an interesting night or a great party.

But actually something truly transformative. 

Giancarlo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that that start your love affair with these practices and when was the first ayahuasca ceremony? 

Jeronimo: So, you know, makes we were, we were, we were in Mexico for three months the way the way we would do it. And it was a lot of fun. I would recommend anybody does the same if you have the time that you say that you’re making a documentary and that about about any topic that you find interesting and that you take long.

And that you just have the [00:50:00] first contact, which is what we did. Usually we had the, we knew who, you know, we had three months and we knew who the first person that we were going to talk was. And then we would go and interview that person and we would ask, you know, well, should we talk to? And they said, Oh, you should see whomever.

And we would take a bus and go to see that person that that person will get you in touch with another person and then another person. And at the end of three months, this incredible trip had configured itself 

Giancarlo: where you just 

Jeronimo: Talk to so many interesting people and have experiences and yeah, so first was Mexico and then we got together again three years later.

It was two thousand and three. So no 

Giancarlo: ayahuasca on the first. Not yet. No, that 

Jeronimo: was Mexico. That was Mexico. And it was the, it was the ololuiki. And and then you know, we said, okay, what should we do next? And Mark said, I think we should do ayahuasca. He had, he had tried Ayahuasca at this point. I hadn’t.

And there was very, very little online about it. It was mostly about the Santo Daime. There was a very, very little information. 2002, 

Giancarlo: 2003 now. 

Jeronimo: 2002, 2003. So we went to Brazil [00:51:00] and you know, first we went to Lucid Daro. Lunas was Itasca. He invited us. That was the first contact. So that was the contact that we had.

So the first person that gave me Ayahuasca was Luis, Luis Luna. Thank you. Wow. Thank you, Luis. Look what you started. . Look what you said in motion. And and, and my first, and in my first Ayahuasca experience, you know, two very. Sort of words just sort of popped in my head in the midst of, you know, of the effects as, as, as I begin to very, very strongly feel the effects.

One was this, the concept of mother, which I must say hasn’t, hasn’t come back. Just this word popped out in my head, mother, like this is a mother. And then the other one was path. And I saw, I even saw like a path. Going into some woods, you know, and that, and that, and that was the, and that was the beginning of and it was basically love at first sight, I would say, you know, that was the beginning of, you know, 20 year old relationship with ayahuasca very, very, and [00:52:00] we’ve gone through all the stages of a relationship, you know, we’ve had the romance, then we’ve had the disappointment, then we have the return, then we had the like working with from different, you know, it’s a, it’s a, it’s, it’s a, It’s a very long and very deep relationship.

It’s still surprising me. I, yeah. The thing that blew my mind about that trip in Brazil was that while what we were doing in Mexico looked like archaeology, we were trying to find something that looked like it was on its way to disappear. Ayahuasca in Brazil was the farthest thing from it. It was a booming, thriving culture.

Thousands of people, you know, the Unión de Vegetal, the church Unión de Vegetal has 20, 000 members. You know, the Santo Daime temple was full. This was not at all you know, something that was in danger of disappearing. Quite the opposite. This was very alive, thriving, and expanding. So, you know, we started, we started with the churches and we visited all three [00:53:00] churches at Louis Luna.

We made friends with Benny Shannon, who wrote an incredible book about ayahuasca sadly kind of forgotten nowadays. I think it’s a really, really important, beautiful book. Do you remember the title? Of course. The antipodes of the mind. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. We’ll put it on the show notes. 

Jeronimo: Yeah. The antipodes of the mind charting the feminine phenomenology of the ayahuasca experience.

And he was a, he’s a. He’s a Israeli academic, the sort of polymath, speaks seven languages, but he was a, he was a professor of, of of cognitive psychology who came to Ayahuasca very late in life and who had no experience with drugs. And then he became fascinated. And after 13 years wrote this book that is really a love as an academic is a solid academic piece and a love letter to these all at the same time.

It’s a really beautiful book. And where he attempts to do something that seems impossible, which is to make a map of everything that can possibly happen to you if you drink ayahuasca. That’s what he called charting the phenomenology. And you say, okay, that’s impossible. And then he goes and he does it in [00:54:00] one book.

It’s really, really astounding standing piece. And also because it’s full of like personal remembrances and stories that he heard from people. It’s really, like I said, it’s, it’s, it’s a love, it’s a love story. 

Giancarlo: But let’s, let’s, let’s let’s hear more about your personal experience. What was this? Why do you, what was this name, this word mother?

How do you interpret that was a sense of being taken care of being protected, being nurtured. 

Jeronimo: It’s hard to tell. And it doesn’t, you know, I would say that, you know, the, the, the, the, the word that I absolutely can speak to or relate to, you know, and maybe this mother will have to come back or it’s something that is working on his path.

And this is really, this was like that. I went on that path. I took that path. This was This is a path for me. And it’s been a lifetime path. I, I, you know, in terms of, you know, for, for your psychedelic [00:55:00] confessions in terms, in terms of, I’m trying to think of, you know, because I’ve, of course, drunk ayahuasca hundreds of times.

And so many things have happened. So you know, I’m trying to think about, okay, can I pick two or three experiences that were really, really significant. And I’m, I’m a little bit hesitant because the most, the most significant experiences I had, you know, the, the really two or three most significant experiences are also very sort of intimate, you know, it’s, it’s, and I’m not so sure that this stuff.

It’s, it’s not, it’s not that it shouldn’t be talked about, but that it, that, yeah, but I will get started and, and let’s see, let’s see where, where we get having, having said that one, one of the most significant experiences I had. Came when I had already been on this path for six or seven, maybe 10 years 

Giancarlo: But just to ask you a [00:56:00] little bit more color on the word path.

I mean, do you had a sense of the destination? It was just an intuitive understanding that this medicine make me feel things make me learn things about myself that I mean, it’s definitely a path of self improvement. 

Jeronimo: Okay. Then I, no, what happened was that my life changed around that, that was the path.

So, you know, when, when, when, when I, when I arrived in Ayahuasca, I, I, I found myself in this situation in my life. What I basically after very promising beginnings, I’d gotten stuck. So, you know, I did very well. I’m the university, good grades, blah, blah, blah. I got a good job was making lots of money. I was a network engineer traveling the world.

You know, and then I decided this is not what I wanted to do. And I didn’t want to be, I had a good career, how I wanted to be, you know, a network engineer, but that’s not what I wanted to do. So I took two years off with all [00:57:00] the money I made. And theoretically in this in this year, I was going to figure out what is it that I really wanted to do.

I went, I started with the documentaries, that’s when we did these travels, and then I spent all the money, I went back to Madrid, and actually, I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to do at all. I had an idea of what I didn’t want to do. I sat down and I tried to write my CV again, to try to get another job as a computer engineer, and I just couldn’t do it.

So, I didn’t do it. And then, I fell in this sort of vortex, you know, or a spiral. Where I was partying a lot with a lot of very nice, very interesting people. My life wasn’t going anywhere, most of theirs wasn’t either. That was also part of all the partying, you know, and this just sort of, I just got, I’m taking shit jobs here and there because I didn’t, I was waiting for the real thing.

And this wasn’t it, and this wasn’t it, and this wasn’t it, whatever was it that the real thing was. [00:58:00] And, okay, this is, this is nice and interesting, and it’s classical in your early twenties to be confused and not know what you want to do. But this, this went on for like six years, and as it slipped into my thirties You know, and I still, I was, I had gone from promising young man to cause a family concern and and no attempts of pushing or cajoling me could get me to like, you know, make a commitment or a decision or, or, or whatever it was.

And I only had a clear idea of what I didn’t want and no clear idea of what I wanted. This just got worse and worse and I began to feel quite bad about everything. But I didn’t know how to get out of it. I was sort of trapped. And at this point, you know, there was the first trip with ayahuasca. And then on the second trip in Peru, I heard about the dietas.

Now, the dietas is a sort of, it’s a sort of it’s called dietas, diet, it means diet. But it’s basically some, you know, traditional Amazonian, it’s a big part of traditional [00:59:00] Amazonian medicine. It’s actually much more important than ayahuasca. That’s also something that we don’t see. 

Giancarlo: It’s a tradition of vegetalismo.

Jeronimo: Vegetalismo. So in the Dietas, you basically, it’s a retreat. You spend, you know, one week, two months, three months, seven months, it can be very long. Basically in isolation, in a hut in the jungle, you’re alone. Your, your diet is very restricted. You cannot eat any salt, any sugar, any spicy food. The list is very long.

There’s all sorts of restrictions and you’re taking plants that are given to you by this healer. So when I was there, you know, I’m Sometimes just one. Sometimes just one. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: That is picked by the shaman according to your resonance. To your 

Jeronimo: need. Yeah, exactly. So it’s, it’s, it’s a big, and these plants are psychoactive, but in a very subtle way.

They’re not hallucinogens. They’re not, they do have effects on, on, on, on, on your body and your mind. But it’s not something that is very, very However, in the context of the dieta, they become very, very So, when I was there, we were doing research. I was still recording interviews, and I met this Catalonian pharmacologist who was doing [01:00:00] his thesis on dieta plants, which are many.

And we, I went with him, and I met different people that he had been interviewing for his research. And I heard about this deta, which is called the de de palace, and that’s pa means sticks. And it’s basically a diet where they, they basically cook together, you know, two to, to 20 different trees, bushes, you know, that’s what they’re called.

Sticks. You just cut the whole branch and chop it in pieces and throw it in the pot and you boil it and you end up with this very thick, sort of brown liquid. And this is what you drink during the deta. Now in those societies. They did the Palos Dieta when people were feeling weak, when they needed to get strong and sometimes for things like, you know, everybody there had to do two years of mandatory military service.

And for them, it was very, very hard. These were people from the jungle. They were considered, you know, there was racism in Peru, and it’s the military, and it’s two years. So they got, the treatment they receive is really rough. So before they go in these two years that are gonna be very difficult, they do [01:01:00] one month palo dieta to get strong and to get ready for this.

And then when they return after two years, then they do another month palo dieta just to sort of clean up and get strong again. And when I heard about this, I thought, oh, this is exactly what I need. Because it was beginning to look that what I was doing was not staying free, but actually rejecting commitment.

I would not commit to a job, I would not commit to a profession, I would not commit to a woman, I would not commit, because I wanted to be free. To, that wasn’t clear what I wanted to be free for. And at the end, my freedom had become a sort of museum piece that I was keeping at all costs. By not taking a job, by not taking this, it was, it was maybe pathology, but I wasn’t doing much with it.

Yeah. So I thought maybe this is what I need. I need, I need a Palo theater to get strong and just come back and just be an adult. I’m 33, it’s time to commit, get a job, get a woman, settle down, you know, these things. And that’s what I thought. [01:02:00] That was sort of my plan. Basically, that’s exactly what happened.

I, I won’t, I won’t go into the details there. The s very long, there’s some diaries we can put the link. 

Giancarlo: Which tradition was that? 

Jeronimo: This was, this was, this was in the upper jungle. This is La Mista tradition. Which are where, where which? Lata. Lata exactly. Where, where, where. The S are very, very strong. And the palace and Ayahuasca considered one more pa.

They know they don’t have this sort of, they don’t put it in a pedestal at all. They consider it one more purge in a very large toolbox of plants. So what happened was that. My life was changing in this path. And so that the path that I followed was how can I continue to learn and use, you know, these plans and be in relationship with these plans in order to, you know, get out of all of these holes that I managed to get myself into all of these things in my life where I’m stuck.

So that went, that went, it worked out fantastically. You know, I went, [01:03:00] I did that dieta. When I came back, it was horrible. I spent three months in the jungle and when I came back, it was horrible. Everything was the same. I went into a deeper sort of crisis about nothing has changed and I’m still stuck. And then suddenly.

Four months later, everything began to change. And I found a job that I loved in a fantastic place. And, you know, nine months later, you know, I asked my girlfriend to get married and then she got pregnant. And then one year later I was married and married and with a kid and with a job that I really liked and I was, and I was still.

And, you know, going deeper and deeper on my free time and on my vacations, I was returning to the jungle. With the same tribes? Same people, yeah. Doing more, doing more dietas and also I kept recording for the documentary, recording more interviews. I kept researching all of the anthropology, the history of all of these, which is absolutely fascinating.

How the jungle got colonized, where these things came from, how these things move from place to place and, and even became sort of, when done all sorts of other wormholes, like why in the dieta no salt, what is it with [01:04:00] salt? Which groups know salt and not, what are the, what is the role, the role of salt in society, which is absolutely fascinating.

You cannot have an agricultural civilization without a source of salt. So salt is, you know, as we understand sort of urban civilization and salt go hand in hand. And this is why when indigenous people take you to the jungle, they take the salt away because there’s something, there’s something biochemical that is also happening there.

But if there’s something, there’s something about. It’s a long story. So my life changed and I went in this path and I was very committed. And then something like, I don’t know, 10 or 12 years into it, I was in the jungle drinking ayahuasca with this indigenous shaman. And then that night I had like a crisis of faith.

So, you know, I started feeling the effects and I started feeling sick and then I thought, why? Why am I doing this? Like, do I [01:05:00] really actually enjoy this? Like, I’m feeling terrible right now. The same 

Giancarlo: feeling of looking from outside like the kind of beast. And my stomach 

Jeronimo: is squeezy, and you know, and I’m just sort of like and just this sort of, because you know, ayahuasca is not, you know, it’s a, it’s a, 

Giancarlo: It’s not a walk in the park.

Jeronimo: I think, I think the main difference between ayahuasca and other psychedelics is that other psychedelics like mushrooms and are very much working on the, on the, on the mind, on the mental. They don’t have much of an effect on the body, but the ayahuasca, because it’s the DMT plus the beta carbolines, the effects that it have has on the body are just huge.

So the body is being engaged. And that’s what separates it from other psychedelics and that’s for me what makes it really powerful because again, I had an issue of too much mind and, and, and, and a plan that would, you know, make sure that the body was present, was very useful, very important for me. So I was feeling because the, 

Giancarlo: because the, you know, now we know and Gabor Maté is a big, proponent of this idea that, you know, the body [01:06:00] keeps the score, the body knows the somatic, the third millennium is maybe the millennium of the body and, and, and how we have been separated from this the Newtonian Cartesian way of living. And so, yeah, I never thought about that. 

Jeronimo: So I was feeling horrible.

And and, and then suddenly I found myself doubting, like, why do I drink ayahuasca? Like, I don’t even do I like this. Like, it’s always, it’s often so difficult. Do I even like this? And then suddenly like the entire experience stopped and I felt that I was being, that I was like, took step away from me.

Yeah. I was sort of waiting for me to decide well. Do you? Do you like this or not? 

Yeah. 

Jeronimo: And then I went into this. Well, maybe I don’t like this. Like, you know, and also, you know, it’d been a difficult night that I was, I was sort of, I went into the cynical place. Like suddenly the shaman seemed to me like just one more guy singing not so well.

And the whole, and you know, I thought that I had had some visions that, that later I found, but then I realized that it was all just my [01:07:00] head trying to Pulled together threads and stories and narratives. And suddenly the whole thing just seemed like, like, like collapse. Like maybe this is the end. Maybe it’s been a good 10 years with traditional Amazonian medicine, but today is the last day and I’m going to move on with my life and, and and and, and, and thank you very much, but I’m done with this.

And this, this became, you know, a real issue. 

Giancarlo: A why, why? Maybe it was true. Maybe it was a, you know, 

Jeronimo: so I was, so as, as I was trying to think, you know, about this, and I was even sort of, because you know, sometimes with ayahuasca you can ask questions. Yeah. So you can I ask, I was asking Ayahuasca like, is this, is this it?

Are we breaking up? Is this, are we over, you know, is it, is this over? You know, and I was, I was sitting down and I suddenly I saw myself like I was sitting down and I was at the, and in front of me there was this giant foot and this foot led up to this gigantic woman and this gigantic woman was poking me with a giant finger on my shoulder and saying, Hey, this stuff that you’re asking me.

That’s for you to decide. Don’t ask [01:08:00] me, are we breaking up? That’s for you to decide, you know? So it was a terrible night. Very, very difficult. And then when did you decide in the morning as, as the sun came up? You know, I found myself, I had a, a wedding ring and I was playing with it and I often used to play with, with my wedding ring.

And I was playing, I was playing with this, and I suddenly found myself holding this ring and making a promise. And I promised that I was always going to protect these plants and the people and culture from where they originate. And this was something that came out of, you know, my own going through the experience and coming out and the whole difficult night and realizing, no, absolutely.

This is the process. I’m still in process. I’m still working with the plants. This is exactly, you know, and not only that, I am fully committed to this. 

Giancarlo: I see. It was one of the typical things. We go deeper or we breaking down. It’s a gap. It’s 

Jeronimo: a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it was, it was a [01:09:00] leap of faith or it was a crisis.

Anyway, that was just something I did that night, and then I didn’t think about it very much. Then six or seven years later, I, I, I did a theta, and then at the end of this theater there was an ayahuasca ceremony, the last ayahuasca ceremony. I came pretty tired. It’d been a long, hard diet. I was not really, again, even in the mood during ayahuasca to have a long night and all of this.

And and you know, they served me the cup and when I drank it immediately, and sometimes this happens. Immediately, I knew that, you know, every once in a while, you know, you have, you know, lesser ayahuasca experiences, and sometimes you have really strong ayahuasca experiences. And every once in a blue moon, you have a really, really strong ayahuasca experience.

It’s sort of magic. It’s not so, it’s not tied to dose, really. It’s not tied to, you know, some, of course, more bigger cup usually is more, but [01:10:00] not even. There’s something strange about ayahuasca there. You cannot. There’s no mathematics to this. Every once in a while, every once in a while, you will have, you know, just one hell of a night and you don’t know why.

And, but you know, you know, soon. And I knew very soon, like, Oh shit, that this is going to be one of those nights. And and I was not up for it. You know, I was trying to like, Okay, let’s relax. This is because when I have those nights, the physical experience is very, very strong. And I ended up just sort of twisted like a pretzel is very, very difficult.

Hyperventilating my whole body goes numb and then goes to sleep. I mean, you lose You lose. I’m very glad to be sitting in the dark in a room while somebody is taking care of me and nobody can see me because, you know, I turn into this shit turns into, I don’t know what to call it. You know, the child of the exorcist.

It gets quite intense. So it was beginning to happen. And my, my, my, my, my, all my sort of limbs were sort of contracting backwards. And I was beginning to get really, really rigid. And this [01:11:00] terrible sort of beating Pulse in my stomach and my whole body was falling asleep and I felt like I was about to faint.

And I was thinking, you know, okay, we know, we know what this is, you know, and then when this happens, it’s like you can’t resist, you can’t hyperventilate, you can’t, you can’t go into fear, right? You just have to sort of like, just surrender, breathe slowly, don’t freak out and don’t try to welcome it. You have to welcome all of these negative sort of effects because otherwise you’re, you’re going to hell.

So I’m very concentrated just trying not to lose it. When suddenly I hear a voice and the voice is now pay attention because this is very important

and then I saw the wedding ring and the wedding ring had like a, like a, like a, like a band, you know, sometimes in flags you see that there’s like a sort of a [01:12:00] lace that has words written in it. It was like one of those things. It was like a lace with words written in it and it was wrapped inside the ring and it was hanging off the ring.

It was the wedding ring with this sort of lace with words. And a voice said, You made a promise that you were always going to defend. These plants and the people and culture from whom they originate. And, you know, I was sort of, I had to think about it for a second. I was like, I did. Do you now confirm this promise?

And I had to think about it for a second as well. And I said, um, sure, yes. And suddenly I was back in my body. The room was completely back to normal. All my physical effects had disappeared and I just come back from, I don’t even fucking know what to call it, this sort of game of thrones, whole way of, you know, indigenous people would say the house of ayahuasca, probably [01:13:00] so.

And everything had gone away, all of the physical effects. So it almost felt like in order to reach that place, You know, I had to be, my body had to be, my physical body had to be twisted into, into this sort of, I don’t know what to call it, vibrational shape, figure what, where I could just just access that place for, you know, 30 seconds, you know, and I came back and I thought just, you know, 15, 16 years drinking, you know, for a 30 second audience.

Giancarlo: But so, so this message, where do you, did he come from? a part of you that was activated or did they come from an independent sentient spirit? 

Jeronimo: What do you think? This is the big question, right? Nobody knows this. This is the big question. My answer is it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t, it doesn’t matter because it can be epistemological.

It doesn’t, it doesn’t matter. If I went to the home of your hair. [01:14:00] And I made a promise in front of Ayahuasca herself. Or if, because this was really important for me, my subconscious conversation with whatever, I was making this promise to myself, and I was doing that, you know, in front of whatever I held most sacred, and it was presented to me symbolically.

It really doesn’t matter. What really, and not only it doesn’t matter, by trying to discern this, you would go crazy and never, and miss the point. 

Giancarlo: Miss the point, because you need to 

Jeronimo: basically act on the message. Exactly. What are you going to do about it? What does this mean and what are you going to do about it?

Because it’s meaningful regardless whether it’s spiritual or subconscious. It is still equally meaningful in a very personal way, right? So, I would add, I would add one more sort of layer for people that, that, that that know ayahuasca and, and, and and and know this, and it’s that somebody who I respect very much told me that that.

No messages that come from, you know, this [01:15:00] person would call it the spiritual world ever come in the shape of an order or a command. So if you feel that ayahuasca is telling you something, then most likely that’s you having a conversation with your ego. However, if you find yourself in a very strange place and an option is presented before you.

That’s the realm of the spirit. So for me, this is also very important that, you know, the first promise I made it out of my own free will, this is something I did because I wanted to at the end of a long night and then seven years later. What I had was an option, not a command, not a, I have a mission for you.

Hey, you have to, no, no, no, no, no. Do you confirm or not? Because you can. So I was even going, it was actually a second chance. It’s like, do you want to back out on this promise? Or do, or, or do, or do you want it to confirm it? So you know, I think we’re getting to the [01:16:00] end. I will, I will close up with a summary.

Giancarlo: Before you summarize, I just wanted to, to go a little bit deeper on this concept of it doesn’t matter, you know, you said ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you believe that that’s the spiritual realm or is your higher self. 

Jeronimo: It’s not, it’s not that it doesn’t matter. It’s not the most important question.

But 

Giancarlo: let me ask you this. Okay. You’re clearly aware about the debate in physics about, you know, mind and matter. Now, is it the brain that creates consciousness? Or is a preexisting consciousness that can be cosmic that created the humans and the brain. Which one you think it is? 

Jeronimo: The thing is, I don’t see that I You’re not interested in it?

No, I’m, I’m very For, for me, for me, the, the, the interesting question with these plants is this, and this experience is not what, what are they? But what are you going to do with it? 

Giancarlo: But intellectually, the origin of consciousness doesn’t. You interested you so much. 

Jeronimo: I even have problems with the, with the whole, I’m [01:17:00] not even sure when this whole consciousness debate already loses me.

So I’m, I’m, I’m very mental, but very practical. 

Giancarlo: Do you consider yourself a spiritual person? 

Jeronimo: Yes. 

Giancarlo: Do you feel, do you think there is life after death? 

Jeronimo: I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out. 

Giancarlo: Do you think spiritual do you think a spiritual practice helps with healing? 

Jeronimo: Only if done correctly, 

Giancarlo: but, so, okay.

Can you elaborate on that? 

Jeronimo: Because it’s like all tools, you know, like the plants, like fire, like the knife, like everything else. There’s a, there’s a way where, where it can open doors and, and increase, and there’s a way where it can just be a distraction, a bypass and, and spiritual material or, or even just a sort of loophole, you know?

or escape from, you know, deep childhood, whatever traumas that lead you to, you know, all of all of that is playing at the same time. You know, we’re, we’re caught in this dimension. [01:18:00] When you say 

Giancarlo: you consider yourself a spiritual person, that means that you believe on a. On a, on a, on a, on a design, on a cosmic design.

I mean, what does it mean to be, what does it mean for you to be spiritual? 

Jeronimo: Once, once, once I got, I got in this terrible fight with a, with a, with a in the jungle with a, with a seminary student that I met. He was telling to be a Catholic priest. And I tried to explain to him that I had reached the conclusion.

That the truth was not a or not a, that the truth was a and not a are truth at the same time. So that God was real and God was just a projection of human imagination and that both things are true at the same time. And he was real and he was, and he was nothing but a projection and that the, the, the spirits that the shamans talk about, they are true, absolutely.

And at the same time, they’re nothing but figments of our subconscious blah, blah, blah, And this drove the priest absolutely crazy. 

Giancarlo: cultural background [01:19:00] is producing this belief of what you just described. Obviously, is it God is true and at the same time not true. It’s like Ramana Maharishi, non dualism.

Jeronimo: I have no idea. I don’t I don’t I don’t know how I don’t know how I arrived to this, but this seems to me to be like the integrating truth. And this is and this is this is also how I this is also why I avoid these discussions because They’re absolutely true. Both of them. I mean, there’s a very interesting sort of reading of all of the experiences with plants from a purely psychological reading and what they’re saying is true.

And then there is a sort of a spiritual, astral, energetic reading of it. And it’s also true. And both things are true at the same time. So what I try to do in my own process, because at the end, that’s all that matters, is not that I convince anybody or that is what, how am I going to live? You know, how am I going to live?

It’s, it’s, it’s. Is that I go back to that question instead of getting stuck in. But [01:20:00] is it this or is it that? Well, whatever it is, I still have to choose. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Okay. What I’m trying to ask you here is you know, you said that. You know, the ultimate truth can be A and B at the same time. A and not A. A and not A at the same time.

But then when I ask you, are you a spiritual person? You say yes. Yes. But so what does it mean? 

Jeronimo: I don’t know. What, what, what, what, what does it mean? I, I. For you. 

Giancarlo: For me. Since, since, since it doesn’t mean existence, belief in existence of spirit. 

Jeronimo: I know, I believe in spirit and I also believe part of what we call spirit is completely just sort of projections of the, 

Giancarlo: you put part.

So there is a spirit bigger than us. Yes. I know. Okay. But so that acknowledgement is what I think is useful for leading your life because then ultimately you feel closer to your fellow human being. Ultimately you feel closer to the biosphere, to the ecosystem. You feel [01:21:00] you have purpose. I think it helps to live a meaningful life being, you know, being aware that I would say consciousness came before matter.

You would say an understanding of spirit. 

Jeronimo: Yeah, no, absolutely. And what’s really important for me, much more, much more than consciousness, because I have problems grappling with this. It’s meaning, meaning as a concept is incredibly important for me. The crisis that I was having where I couldn’t choose a job and I couldn’t have everything to do with meaning.

You know, this, this, this, this for me is absolutely, it is the, the, the the skeleton that holds life is meaning, right? And I. into it that there’s an order and of meaning 

Giancarlo: and 

Jeronimo: this is what I call God, but because my intuition is so poor, you know, and I’m only literally [01:22:00] just sort of grappling at the edges, you know, of it.

I try not to. Not to think about it so much, but to ask myself the question, how do I align with this? How so how do I get myself aligned with this order that starts in the physical? Yeah, and then and then goes to other levels. 

Giancarlo: And how do you do that? 

Jeronimo: Drinking plants, drinking plants, talking to people and also, you know, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a 

Giancarlo: respecting your vow with the plant, helping with ice years.

Jeronimo: mean this. Yeah. I mean, I, I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t close, but this was before I became a full time employee of, of, of ice years. And now. So very much, you know, this, this, the promise that I made has turned into, you know, quite a big job that I, that I tirelessly work at through my work in the ICS foundation.

Giancarlo: Very nice. That was very interesting. We still have a couple of [01:23:00] substance that maybe we can touch quickly. I just mentioned all the three of them, San Pedro, tobacco and coca leaves. Do you have any personal memorable experience you want to share? I 

Jeronimo: mean, most memorable, I would love, I would love to tell a coca story.

Yeah. I was lucky enough towards the end of the documentary project, you know, the wonderful thing about making documentaries, I worked in four. What’s the access that they give you and, and the places that you can go. And then on this last project, this was for me, the real sort of coming of age trip in the Amazon, because this, this, this time I really went to one of very far remote indigenous community that you very traditional that you couldn’t reach except by a small airplane and that you would never be able to visit if you didn’t have the proper permits and the proper access.

Giancarlo: What’s the name of the place? 

Jeronimo: It’s in the river Piraparaná. They were Barasana people. So this is the big Tucano complexes. I mean, I can talk about this for hours, but it’s the Vaupés, it’s the Colombian, it’s the Colombian Vaupés. [01:24:00] But over there, you know, we were staying at the big Maloca, which is astoundingly large.

And it’s the Malocas that you see in the Rachel Dolmatov books and the pictures. From the 40s and the 60s. And every night the men gather to after work, they gather to to do mambe, which is the coca powder which they prepare. And this is a, you know, the, the, it was, we were all sitting in the dark on this very, you know, just a small flame, very, very large maloca.

And then first they would bring the baskets of coca leaves that had been freshly prepared for freshly picked. And then they had to be, they had to be dried in this, in this round earth thing. And that took a long time because you have to dry it but not burn them. And you have to be moved all the time.

And the entire place fills with this delicious smell of toasted. Coca leaves, you know, and then they’re put into this giant thing where they’re beaten up and brought. I mean, the entire process from leaf to actually, you know, a ball of mambe that we could have takes about two and a half hours. And through this year, everybody’s talking and [01:25:00] people are commenting and they’re doing rape and then, and then, and then finally the ball arrives.

And you just, you know, you fill your cheeks with this thing that tastes delicious. It’s like spirulina. It’s freshly made. I mean, I can’t even begin to, you know, how good this is. And and then because of the way it is, you know, there’s again, the wisdom in this is that it is slow released. It keeps all of the incredible amount of vitamin, there’s more calcium than milk in, in, in coca leaf, there’s more vitamin D than, I mean, it’s insane how, how healthy it is.

And you’re keeping all of that and also the way, the way that you put them in your cheek, this means that the release of the cocaine. You know, it’s actually very, very slow. So you never go to those places Western people do, which is like, you know, you know, snorting cocaine up your nose, which is the equivalent of drinking pure ethyl alcohol instead of a beer.

It’s like, why would you, you have wine, you know, why would you drink pure alcohol? It’s stupid. Just, you know, and wine tastes good and same [01:26:00] difference. And this would take everybody to this place of quiet, relaxed attention, which is also the opposite of what you associate with cocaine. And then the, the, the issues of the day would begin to get discussed and they would just go around very slowly.

And it was incredible how I was astounded of how well I was listening. I didn’t know this experience, 

Giancarlo:

Jeronimo: didn’t know this experience of actually really being able to listen quietly with no anxiety, no desire to say anything back, no judgment, not just listening. And that’s what they were doing. And what they’re doing is they’re building consensus.

They’re coming to the agreement as a community of what went on. I went, and everybody takes a turn to speak and everybody listens intently. And this goes on. And I was so again, we should go into 

Giancarlo: the parliament, the Congress, 

Jeronimo: again, you know, I had, you know, the, the, the, [01:27:00] the, the very powerful feeling that this was one of the most civilized things.

That I’ve ever seen, you know, far from being, you know, an odd practice of a faraway tribe that anyway, you know, that was not part of civilization, whatever. This is what real civilization looks like. And amazing, 

Giancarlo: amazing. So to conclude if someone had a similar experience than you and want to dedicate their life to help those plants, what would you recommend them to send a CV to you?

Do I see ears? Or to just 

Jeronimo: keep following the path. I mean, what can I say? I cannot, you know, I, I didn’t many of the things that have happened to me found me 

Giancarlo: because you were ready to leave because I 

Jeronimo: was already in the right position. So, you know, that’s also what I would say, you know, and, you know, I, I, I, I, I left that out of the story.

But, you know, my collaboration and ice years [01:28:00] started completely organically. They call for me and then they call for me again and then and then and then again. Here I was, so you know, I, I cannot, I, I of course take credit for my efforts and for and, and, and for, and for my career. But I also understand that I didn’t, that the most important things that happened to me were not exactly my decisions, you know, that doesn’t mean that I’m free to not take any responsibility.

I had to own everything, but the most important things that happened to me were not exactly decisions that I took. 

Giancarlo: So there is something about being open in receiving. You know, like more maybe with your body, try to lose, you know, be less intellectual about things. 

Jeronimo: One, one person who I love dearly that died recently, who taught me a lot about this, she put it in terms of transparency.

She said that you have, and this is a person that was very much in the spiritual understanding of things. She said, you have [01:29:00] the messages and the, and the learnings that come from the spiritual world. And then when they come through you, it’s like a window. And then if the window is dirty, you know, the light just doesn’t get through the same and the message gets twisted.

So very often people will get. Valid insights from Ayahuasca and they get twisted by their egos and manipulated into something else. So the work is not, you know, how do I understand what, what I was saying, but how do I become transparent enough? How do I get out of the way so that, so that you can really be guided.

How do you do that in instead of, instead of following the, the, the, 

Giancarlo: how do you clean the windows? Meditation. Yeah. Practice of presence with, 

Jeronimo: with vieta, with this, you need, you need to, you need regularly to break from life. Yeah. And take the time where you can listen, you can listen to yourself, and you can listen to other things.

That for me, is the vieta, you know, I do them every year 

Giancarlo: because. What I think dirts in the windows [01:30:00] is your reactivity and your triggers 

Jeronimo: and your ego, everything memories, 

Giancarlo: reactivity and triggers are rooted in childhood trauma. Gabor Mate will say, so you need to do some work on that, 

Jeronimo: but also, but also your desires and your secret hopes and aspirations and your ambition.

You know, all, all of the, you know, your, you know, how do you want to be seen and perceived by others? blah, blah, blah, blah. This is 

Giancarlo: personality. Or reaction to trauma, you want 

Jeronimo: to be seen both and then it depends for some people, more trauma for some, for other people, compensation, overcompensation, you know, under compensation, you know, some people want to hide for all the wrong reasons.

And some people want to, to, to be seen for all the wrong reasons. Yeah. 

Giancarlo: But so can you, can you invite people? To join the data center. Is he open to the public? 

Jeronimo: I’m very private. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a small organization. They don’t need more people. You’re, you’re going to have to need, I mean you’re going [01:31:00] to have to, everybody’s going to have to find their own path and that’s half the fun 

Giancarlo: and that’s half the fun.

Jeronimo: Yeah. So, but I would, but I would say is that, you know, if you be careful with your car mechanic and you’re careful with the lawyer and you’re careful with your doctor, be very careful with your shaman and your traditional doctors, you know, look at them, ask questions. Are they young? Are they all, do they look experienced and most important, you know, do they look like they care for you?

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah, the problem is that, you know, for car mechanic and lawyer and et cetera, you have Yelp or something, but there is no Yelp for shaman yet. But anyhow, if people are serious about wanting to do a data, do the research. Start asking and you’ll find, you’ll find the right 

Jeronimo: place for you. Because again, it’s the circumstance.

Do you speak the language? Do you speak Spanish? Have you been to the jungle before? Can you be, you know, are you afraid of bugs? You know, all of these things will very much, you know, change your experience. There’s not, there’s not a one size fits all advice that can be given other than [01:32:00] from the place where you are.

What does it look like to, you know, to spend some time alone in the middle of the jungle? And then if that seems a bit iffy, then maybe you should go to more commercial, you know, established centers that are near Iquitos, which is a number of them and they’re very well established. And if you say, no, I’m asleep, I sleep outdoors all the time, whatever, then maybe you can just go and find somebody in a, in a more remote community, but it depends on the person.

Giancarlo: Fantastico. Thank you very much, Geronimo. I think we have room for a third episode. Thank you very much for your time and your knowledge and your wisdom and for respecting your promise 

Jeronimo: Thank you. Giancarlo. Always a pleasure to be here Thank you

Coca Zunaray Zunarayente Coca Zunaray Zunarayente Coca Zunaray Zunarayente Coca Zunaray [01:33:00] Zunarayente Coca zonada, it’s zonada and tea. Coca zonada, it’s zonada and tea.