My guest today is 17 years sober. But her sobriety didn’t start with a surrender. It started with a dare.

Kat Courtney is a shamanic practitioner with over 20 years of experience working with ayahuasca and ibogaine, a lineage-trained facilitator who completed an 8.5-year apprenticeship, and the co-founder of Base, an ibogaine treatment center in Mexico. She grew up the youngest of five in Montana, watched her father’s alcoholism up close, and swore it would never happen to her. It took about eight years of quietly building her life around what was in her liquor cabinet before she admitted she was wrong.

Plant Medicine Didn’t Fix Her – It Told Her the Truth

Kat first encountered ayahuasca in her early 30s, following a boyfriend to a retreat in the Amazon with zero intention of addressing her drinking. What she found instead was every layer of self-hatred she’d ever buried – surfacing before she even drank the medicine. “If there had been an Uber that would pick me up along the Amazon River, I would’ve called it,” she told me. The retreat owner, who would later become her first teacher and spiritual father, looked at her and said, “You’re perfect for this work.”

She didn’t get sober that trip. Or the next several. It took two more years of back-and-forth journeys to Peru, slowly building a foundation, before the medicine finally outmaneuvered her. Ayahuasca issued a challenge: “I bet you can’t go three months without drinking.” Kat, competitive and still not ready to call herself an alcoholic, took the bet. She won – and when she tried to celebrate with wine, it tasted like glass shards. She poured out every bottle in her house that night.

“She tricked me into sobriety. I didn’t intend it – but I couldn’t go back.”

Why Integration Is Everything (and Most People Skip It)

One of the most important things Kat said in our conversation is that the medicine isn’t the cure. It’s the opening. “You can get a clean slate from these medicines,” she explained, “but then it’s what you do with it that matters.” Without integration – the ongoing work of processing what the medicine unlocked, building new habits, and showing up for yourself consistently – most people default right back to factory settings.

This is why she’s so passionate about ibogaine in particular. Unlike other plant medicines, ibogaine occupies the same receptor sites as opiates and alcohol for one to three months after treatment – meaning clients aren’t just getting a psychological breakthrough, they’re getting a physical window of freedom from cravings. “92 to 98% of no more cravings,” she said. That’s not a cure. But it’s a genuine launchpad.

The Danger of Sitting with the Wrong Person

Kat trained for over 10 years before working with clients independently – 8.5 of those years in direct apprenticeship. She’s clear-eyed about the risks of the expanding psychedelic space: good intentions don’t equal safe containers. She quoted Carl Jung: “We can only meet someone in the depth of consciousness we have met ourselves.” If a facilitator hasn’t done their own deep healing work, even the most well-meaning guide can cause harm.

She was equally frank about the drug-medicine matchup: ibogaine works powerfully for opiate and alcohol addiction but doesn’t address methamphetamines the same way biologically. Psilocybin mushrooms are the most forgiving option for those who don’t align with other medicines. Ayahuasca, classified as an MAOI, can be dangerous in combination with SSRIs and antidepressants. Knowing these distinctions – and sitting with someone who knows them too – isn’t optional. It’s essential.

Recovery isn’t a single event – it’s a practice. What Kat’s story shows is that healing is rarely linear, often unexpected, and sometimes arrives in the form of a dare from a plant medicine in the jungle. Whatever path you’re on, know that the work is worth doing – and the right support can change everything.

Action Items

• Look up Kat Courtney and Base ibogaine center at plantmedicinepeople.com before making any decisions about plant medicine
• Before pursuing any plant medicine experience, ask how long your facilitator has been practicing and what their training involved
• Start a morning check-in practice: before touching your phone, ask yourself “How are you doing this morning, kiddo? How are you really?”
• Add a nighttime ritual: name one thing you did today that you didn’t think was previously possible, let go of one thing your body is carrying, and celebrate your best win of the day
• Try Kat’s mantra: “This is to me, from me, with love” – say it when you drink water, before a workout, before anything meant to care for you
• If you or someone you love is dealing with opiate or alcohol addiction and conventional approaches haven’t worked, research ibogaine as an option – especially its effect on post-acute withdrawal symptoms
• Remember: the medicines don’t fix you. They open a window. What you build in that window is what sticks

Resources Mentioned

• Base Ibogaine Center (Mexico): plantmedicinepeople.com
• The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
• End of Your World by Adyashanti
• Lucid Living by Tim Freke
• Adyashanti meditation series on the Waking Up app

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transcript:

Kat Courtney

[00:00:00] Kat, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me. Been looking forward- Yeah … mm. This was a long time coming. I, I think we both had to reschedule. But like you said, uh, divine right order, divine right timing, I think you said, so I love that. Um, I like to start the podcast out with a fun little game I call the lightning round, but it’s actually really slow.

Um, no pr- no pressure. Um, so when you think back to your recovery journey, however you define that, some people define their recovery s- journey starting when they start thinking about it, some people… N- so however you define it, um, when you think back to the beginning, were there any books that really helped you along the way?

Yeah. I approached it from the spiritual lens, so the classic Power of Now by- Yeah … Eckhart Tolle, uh, [00:01:00] Adyashanti’s End of Your World, like these beautiful spiritual voices that helped me to sort of see the bigger picture were really important. Another gentleman named Tim Freke wrote a book called Lucid Living that really, really gave me hope that there was a way out of the darkness that I was in back then.

Yeah. I was doing a little research. Is he… Does he facilitate retreats for you guys? So we are doing one together for the first time. I’ve been to his retreats, which don’t, like, involve the plant medicine that I work with, and now we’re gonna co-create one in, in July, which I’m, like, ecstatic about, ’cause he was a hero of mine and now he’s become a friend.

I’m like, “How did that happen?” So- Isn’t that amazing? Yeah. Yeah, that’s very cool. That’s very cool. I love that. Um, excellent. I always… I’m such a nerd. I love books and podcasts and you, you know, t- uh, teachers. I love teachers, so- Same … I’m a content- Same … [00:02:00] consumer, so, uh, I’ll, uh, leave all of these in the show notes.

I actually really love Adyashanti has a meditation series on the Waking Up app. You know, that’s- So good … he’s all good. Like, I could just listen to his voice for days. It’s just so- Yeah … it has that resonance of just being heart connected and really you can feel he’s sincere in what he’s conveying. So yeah, he’s one of my favorites.

He’s so practical, too. Um, I loved how he really gets into… It just, for me, meditation, um, was sometimes a struggle, and I hear that people struggle with meditation a lot, and he just has a very, um… I don’t even know how to put it. Like, just a, he’s a good translator. For me. Yeah So that I was able to start the practice, not the perfection, but just the practice.

That’s it. Yes. Yeah. Permission to be human in it. Yeah. Hmm. I think [00:03:00] people get confused about what meditation is, you know, supposed to be experienced. Um, people think that I’m supposed to clear my mind for a certain period of time, and they feel like if a thought comes in, they’re not doing it right, which is…

How do you describe it? An effort to be present. Like- Hmm … an experience of presence, which very often is present to the thoughts in my mind. You know? Right. Like, I don’t know how to silence that thing most of the time. It happens every now and again spontaneously, but I can’t force it. Yeah. So it’s just an exercise of being really present to all of the complexity of our consciousness.

Yeah. I love in his, some of his meditations, he allows for, like, oh, if a dog starts barking, you hear a car alarm go off, it’s just all part of the experience. Yeah. Yeah. Being spacious with it. That’s what I have learned, too. Like, we can’t control these things, including our thoughts, so just- Yeah … let, let them flow.

Yeah, [00:04:00] control. What a, what an illusion. Yes. Um, do you have… I, I would imagine you have a lot of mantras and ideas that, that help you. Um, I was curious if there has been a consistent one throughout your sobriety, your recovery journey. There is one that early on I adapted into my self-care practice, ’cause I am shamanically trained, and in shamanism, intention is everything.

Like, the intention that we bring to something. So I had this idea early on, even, like, when I drink a glass of water, if I can remember to say, “This is to me from me with love,” that I’m always emphasizing I’m doing these things because I love myself. Otherwise, like meditation, yoga, all these things can be kind of robotic, and if I’m not bringing intention- Yeah

to it, I’m not really getting the most out of it. So to me from me with love is something I have [00:05:00] said probably a million times or more to myself, sometimes many times a day. It’s just one of my favorites. I’m gonna totally use that today. It’s not trademarked, so it’s all yours. It’s not trademarked. Yeah.

Love that. Yeah, intention is everything. I was thinking about it this morning. I was like, “Oh, what is my intention for the podcast today?” Because a lot of people, you know, um, in the recovery community, like the idea of plant medicines are kind of controversial, especially in certain communities that pr- that advocate abstinence.

However, um, I’m pretty open-minded. I’m not your typical… I don’t follow any kind of particular- dogma, so to speak. There are certain… I, I love the 12-step program and all that, but I’m sort of an and girl and, and, and I have to be very careful with it. Like, so, um, we’re, we are going to be talking about plant medicines.

I’m not a doctor. I don’t play one on the internet. I will just speak my own personal experiences, and I’m so [00:06:00] curious about yours and what you’ve seen. Um, and I was telling you before that it shouldn’t necessarily be treated, uh, as a last resort. Like, for some people it’s, um, it just, it just sort of depends, and I’m gonna ask you your opinions about and what you’ve seen with things like that.

Um, but I was thinking about, like, what was our intention for today and, yeah, and really my, my heart-led intention is to just present some information, and I feel like people that are gonna click on this episode and hear it, it’s because there’s some sort of calling. Yeah. Mine is the same, just the desire to share paths and opportunities for those who are called to it.

It’s what we’re- Yeah … talking about today. No path is for everyone, right? Mm-hmm. I completely understand the space in recovery where it’s like we don’t wanna do anything to alter our consciousness ’cause it feels too much like what it is we’re trying to heal from. I get that, but then there’s lots of us whose lives were saved [00:07:00] and sobriety was- Yeah

achieved because of this process. So allowing both of those perspectives to be valid is really important to me. Yeah. I, I just celebrated 32 years of sobriety, and the only thing that I know for sure, thanks, is that I have no idea what’s right for anybody else. Exactly. That’s the only thing I know for sure.

And I have had, um, my son has given me permission to talk about this, but it saved my son’s life, and so it’s very difficult for me to y- you know, to… Listen, I, I’m not somebody that sort of ignores anything that is healing for somebody, but this, this is really… And I’ve talked about, you know, plant medicines many times before, but you and I are gonna talk about ayahuasca, ibogaine.

Um, I’m always really interested in how these medicines can heal self-worth and sort of reset our nervous system, those… So we’ll be talking about all that stuff. Um, but sorry, I [00:08:00] totally, uh, detracted from our… Um, I told you this lightning round was slow. Perfect. I just have a couple more questions around that.

So, you know, you’ve been, uh, in recovery. Is it a, is it fair to say recovery or do you, do you call it sobriety? I call it recovery, yeah. Yeah. Resonates with me. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, recovery. So, um, do you have, like, a regular self-care routine that you practice on a daily basis, weekly? Yes, yes. And really things go sideways when I don’t do it.

So I have a morning ritual that really just involves checking in with myself, like not grabbing my phone or my computer, and I have a altar, my special place that I sit at. And the first question I always ask is, “How you doing this morning, kiddo? Like, how are you really?” Mm. ‘Cause it’s amazing how we don’t check in with ourselves when we get into the autopilot of all of our responsibilities of our lives.

So that’s, that’s how I start. And then I always have an hour window where I can do yoga, I can [00:09:00] meditate, I can sit out in nature and watch the sun rise, ’cause I love to watch the sun rise. I can do whatever I feel called to around what I need, but the first thing is to really just check in and see what it is that my body, my spirit, my mind, what- whatever part of me might have a request.

So I ask that, and I’ll journal a bit to try to tap into that more, uh, and then just kind of am fluid from there of what feels good. The only rule is it’s self-care. It’s not gonna… I’m not gonna plop down and start engaging with email and the world. I need 30 to 60 minutes that’s for me, and then off I go on my to-do list.

And then at night I have a, a ritual for my nervous system. It feels really good to do this. Like, after doing stretching and just the things I do to, to prepare to go to bed, I check in around three things. Number one, what did I do today that I didn’t think was previously possible? So something that happened that an old version of me would say, “No, you can’t do that.”

There’s always [00:10:00] something where I’m like, “Oh yeah, I used my voice in a way that I would’ve thought was impossible before.” Number two, whatever it is that I can tell my body to let go of, that she doesn’t have to carry anymore. You know, judgment that came in that day or heaviness, whatever it might be. Just an invitation for my body to let go.

And number three, celebrating the best win of the day. And these are the things that I think of as I’m falling asleep, of like, “What is the thing I was most excited about today?” I just try to enter into dream space in a really positive way, and that’s how I bookend each morning and evening. I love that.

Listen, the… You, you got me with the, you know, celebrating wins is something that we don’t naturally do with the mind’s negativity bias. We’re trying to always solve problems. We don’t spend enough time really checking in with, like, what went right. And in my mind there’s, like, 1,000 things at least, that go right- Yeah

every single day, and we don’t ever- Yes. We just naturally vec- vector to [00:11:00] whatever we felt we made mistakes around, whatever’s heavy and difficult. We have to work hard to really have a relationship with things that are positive So it’s, I don’t bypass the accountability of things that I’m doing- For sure

but I make an effort to celebrate the wins, ’cause that’s important. It’s so important. I love that. That’s a great… And I love that you sort of frame it around 30, 60 minutes in the morning. I have gone through phases where my morning routine turns into another to-do list, another… And it c- and you could take all morning.

Yeah. That doesn’t feel good. That’s why I don’t have… I used to kinda try to be more structured, but I’m a Gemini. I’m like, I need diversity. So I, my only rule is that I do things that are for that self-care. Mm. But it’s not like meditate at 6:00 AM and then work out at 6:30. And it’s like, I just kinda let it flow, and that way my mind feels like there’s an agency of choice- Yeah

and that it’s not this rigid have to. Because I don’t like that feeling of I’m doing it ’cause I have to. [00:12:00] That’s, that’s pr- defeats the purpose. Yeah. It’s so interesting because any time we sort of introduce this idea of have to or should, it creates internal resistance. Exactly. It’s so self-defeating. So I love the, uh…

I have a friend that calls the self-care pro- like, she has like a self-care smorgasbord. Like, there’s, she has a, like 50 tools or whatever, and she’s like, “Yeah, 30 minutes, three things. Whatever comes up is good.” I love that. Yeah. But I like the nighttime ritual too. I might have to try this today too. I’m creating a to-do list, a self-care to-do list for myself.

That’s fine. What is one thing you wish you knew when you first started on your recovery journey? Um, I really wish I knew the, truly the importance of consistency. Mm. Like, again, being a Gemini, I’m kind of all over the place, and if I had known like the things we’re talking about now, that I could be consistent in a [00:13:00] way that also had fluidity, I wouldn’t have had all these stops and starts in terms of trying to create healthy habits.

I, ’cause I knew consistency… I, I guess maybe back then I framed it as discipline- Mm-hmm … and I don’t really respond well to discipline. Uh, I needed different language. I needed different approaches to showing up for myself, ’cause the, the rigid sort of masculine way didn’t work for me, and then I would feel like something was wrong with my brain, with how I behaved, and I would go back to old patterns very quickly, and, and without the sort of permission to kind of find my way, to do it my way.

Uh, so I wish I had, I had somebody who had given me that permission to figure these things out earlier on. I was trying to duplicate what worked for somebody else, and, uh, it took me a while to find my groove. Yeah, it does. We have to try on different things, especially like w- in the beginning when, when you don’t really know what you’re doing.

It’s like, well, my wa- my way didn’t work, so we gotta try on a few different things. But the, and [00:14:00] the idea of discipline sounds so attractive to me in so many ways, but it does- have the underpinnings of should and have to- Yep. Yeah … which create the resistance, which, yeah. Right, which I can’t personally maintain long term.

But if, once I- Mm-hmm … reframed it out of, out of consistency of, of choice, like your friends, like smorgasbord. Mm-hmm. Once I reframed that, it was like, “Oh, I can do this. I can show up in different- Yeah … ways every day.” And that really started the momentum of consistency, because it wasn’t what I thought it was.

It wasn’t the rigid discipline. Yeah. Isn’t that funny? Like, there are so many things in life that are not what we thought they were gonna be. Most things. Most things. Mm-hmm. But you gotta try it to find out. Yeah. Well, thank you for, thank you for playing along. Um, and I’m so curious kinda how we got here, and I was telling you before we hit record that I’m always so curious about people’s, you know, like how they [00:15:00] grew up, what their family was like.

I often ask, you know, “What did Dad do for a living?” ‘Cause oftentimes that, that says a lot about, like, the energy in the household, you know? So feel free to just share whatever, where- wherever and whatever makes sense to you about how you grew up and kinda when you started using and all that. Yeah. Well, I grew up in a pretty normal household, which means it’s abnormal.

Yeah. My dad was the auditor for the State of Montana, was gone most of the time, also an alcoholic. Okay. My mom was a at-home mom, but, like, very detached. She just… I was the last of five kids, so it was just kind of like, “Hey, just-” She was tired … yeah, and, “Don’t get into any trouble,” and like that’s that. I didn’t have a lot of structure and consistency.

Ah, yeah. There’s, like, a, a lot of where that, that challenge came for me later on. And I grew up in the mountains of Montana, so I had a lot of nature, which was my, my, my safe place, my sanity. [00:16:00] If I had grown up in the city, I think I probably would’ve self-destructed, ’cause I would’ve had too many things available too early.

So- Uh-huh … I grew up in a nice contained environment where, uh, I didn’t have a lot of, of temptations early on. But I did have older brothers and a father who had, uh, alcohol abuse, and I swore, “Never me. Never me. I’m not gonna do that,” ’cause I just saw how destructive and painful it was. Um, so yeah. And then off to college, uh, at 18, wanted out of the house as f- I think I…

My parents told me I tried to run away the first time when I was five, and they asked me where I was going, and I said, “To a city.” Any city- Mm-hmm … right? ‘Cause I just felt even though that was the right environment for me to be from a safety perspective, I felt really bored and really confronted ’cause it, it’s not where my soul wanted to be.

So a g- Can I… And I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I’m c- so curious about how did, how, what was like the, what was the energy like in your home? Like, five s- like, being the youngest of five, [00:17:00] especially when you mention older brothers that were drinking, did you feel safe in your house? Were you ignored? Were you…

How, how were you treated? Yeah, good question. So I was the one child my parents wanted to do it right- Mm-hmm … because they saw… And I was the youngest by six years. My, my closest sibling is six years older. Okay. My oldest is 14, 15 years older. So, like, there was a very high degree of pressure on me that I had to be successful, that I had to, to go to college to do all the things that, you know, my, my other siblings went into the military.

They did really admirable things, but- Mm … my father wanted the doctor, the lawyer, like, something amazing- … to be proud of, and I was the last chance. So there was a lot of pressure. There was a lot of love, too, but- Yeah … wouldn’t say that I felt safe because I learned early on I was the pr- proverbial black sheep, you know?

And I knew it as a little kid. I [00:18:00] could tell I was different. And so I learned early on it was not safe to be authentic, so I became the quintessential people pleaser, just always trying to give my parents, my siblings what they wanted so it didn’t create conflict. Because my perspective, my truth did not match theirs, and they were all pretty aligned.

They seemed to think similarly, so I felt like an alien. So I wasn’t unsafe in a physical way. I felt really unsafe in that I can’t be authentic. And so I really, I started becoming what I would later label as a liar. I had to be inauthentic- Mm-hmm … to feel like I wouldn’t be cast out of the family, and agree with things and say things that was not at all sincere.

Right. I, I mean, that’s survival. Yep. You know? We have to be able to blend in. That feeling of being othered is so common. I, I, listen, I feel like that’s part of the human experience. Like, I, I bet if we interviewed your [00:19:00] siblings, they probably also- Right … felt, felt like that’s the kinda… But it’s w- when you have evidence to point to, like, “I am not like these people,” like at five years old, you’re like, “I gotta go.”

Yeah. Yeah. I wanted out because I, I think I really wanted a chance to get to be who I was. Yeah. But then I lost myself, and this is really what, what brought me into substance abuse early on, is like when people would give me a compliment, my internal voice would be like, “Yeah, if only you knew.” ‘Cause I wasn’t- Mm

being authentic. I didn’t- No … grow up being allowed to be authentic. So that became- Yeah … this really deep story of self-hatred, of like, “Well, how can people like me? They don’t really know me. I’m a fraud,” basically. So that- Yeah … was like the base wounding of what made me indulge in substances to numb out, to like just not have to deal with that voice.

And did that start in college, or was that in high school? It started actually later. I mean, I dabbled [00:20:00] a little bit, but I was a good girl. I was, you know- Yeah … good, straight-A student and like- Oh, my goodness … had that pressure of- Yeah … I gotta be a, a… I gotta make something of my life. So it started really in my early 20s, and by then I was, uh, almost out of college.

I was paying my way through school. I was working at Disney, actually, disney.com, and the brand, the advent of the internet. Oh. So it was fun. It was also no- none of us knew what we were doing. Um, and it was around then where I’m like, “Ah, I can go out and party and have, you know, a drink or two, a tab of ecstasy,” whatever.

It was like innocent blowing off steam. ‘Cause I wasn’t- Yeah … gonna become an alcoholic ’cause I grew up in it, so not me. I’m not doing that. Right. Yeah. Until, until stress hits. Yeah. I mean, listen- That’s when it happened, yeah … alcohol is addictive and, and so if you kinda ha- We call it the crazy star chromosome in our family.

We you know, if you have it- Yeah … you don’t really realize it until you start doing [00:21:00] it. So, you know, they say that, you know, when you start using, like it’s fun, fun with problems, and then it’s just all problems. Did that, does that storyline sort of fit for you? It sure does. Yeah, yeah. Because of course it started not being fun, and then I started noticing that my life centered around, um, what was in my liquor cabinet, what am, what…

And it, and it then extended, can I sneak out at lunch and have a margarita? Like, just became the center of my life. And I was always functional. I never slipped into it really deeply damaging my job, but I was getting there. It was getting there- Mm-hmm … ’cause I started having physical issues and horrible headaches, which was probably dehydration and all of these things I was doing to my body.

But yeah, it was a… It took about eight years total for me to realize, like- Uh-oh, like I’m in trouble. Although I would have never admitted it back then. Oh, yeah. Not for a [00:22:00] second, you know, ’cause I was still basically functioning. But yeah, but, but alcohol was a constant. It got to be that way. Yeah. When did you start realizing that maybe this was a problem that you needed to do something about?

Well, you know, probably in and out of acknowledgement of that. The denial was such a force. Mm-hmm. Uh, I’m a smart girl. I knew, but I wasn’t ready to admit it. And it was, like, around age 30 that I got an invitation to sit with plant medicine for the first time, and I had zero intention of addressing… I wouldn’t even call it alcoholism at that point.

Zero intention. Yeah. It was like, “Oh, that sounds fun. I’ll go have an adventure.” It was that experience that got me very clear of, like, you’re an alcoholic. You have a problem. This will kill you. Like, and I was also bulimic. Oh. I was also doing all- Wow … kinds of other things that were gonna add up very quickly.[00:23:00]

Um- Mm-hmm … and that already were starting to show the cracks of, like, I can’t, I can’t sustain this forever. Um, but yeah, so I didn’t have a come to Jesus moment until I, I drank plant medicine. That’s amazing. Um, let’s sort of… Listen, everybody likes to hear about the gory details, and you can share as much or as little as you want.

You know, I’m, I’m pretty much an open book, and I was one of those that I knew for a long time, like I, I did not, when I drank and use, I did not act like my friends. Like, there… I went to an extreme, and I was experiencing, like, uh, you know, did you ever ha- like, you probably did. Who di- who didn’t? Those mornings where you wake up and you’re like, “Oh my God, what was that all about last night?”

Like, why… I would explode and just the next morning be so shocked at my own behavior. Did you have some of those experiences too? Yeah, so much shame, and just kind of even the denial of that, of like, ugh, the feeling of how bad it would be- Yeah … [00:24:00] but also just kind of wanting… I didn’t know what to do with that, and that just adds up of like, who is this person?

‘Cause yeah, I would go home from the bars and continue drinking, and knew that my friends weren’t, knew that, that they weren’t- Mm … sneaking out at lunch. Uh, I had all kinds of, of sneaky ways to get alcohol into my system, and I knew that wasn’t normal. And then the shame around just the overall behavior.

Yeah, I think that’s partly what feeds the addiction is that, like, just pain around how we’re behaving. We can’t process that, so I kept drinking just to try to medicate. Yeah. Did you try to stop on your own? Yep. Yeah, many times. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe, I mean, ’cause it would start occurred to me, occurring to me that I didn’t know the last day I didn’t drink.

Like, I couldn’t- Oof … conjure that up. So then that would scare me, and I’d be like, “Well, I’m not gonna drink for a few days.” And you know, I maybe would last a day or two, but it was never anything substantial. Yeah. [00:25:00] And that’s probably where I really knew I’m in trouble. I can’t control this. But I just wasn’t ready to accept that.

Yeah, I think that was one of, probably one of the more painful experiences for me is wanting to quit, like being so resigned, like committed in the morning, being like, “I’m never doing this again,” you know? Just, I’m never, like, just feeling so terrible about how I behaved and then swearing it off. But by the end of the day, I just had no, nothing in me.

Like, I’d lost the ability to decide whether I was gonna do it or not. It was just happening whether I wanted it to or not. Yeah. Yeah. And it was exhausting, that constant negotiation in my mind. And finally I’d just say, “Screw it. I’m just gonna have a drink,” you know, just to take the edge off, and it never was-

never was that. But that, I, that was the hardest part about addiction for me is that constant negotiation. Mm. The mind constantly saying, “Let’s have a drink. Let’s have a drink,” and, and yeah, you just, [00:26:00] you just give in. It’s exhausting, it’s so frustrating, it’s discouraging. You, like, break down your own self-trust.

That’s, that’s the hard part. And then lo and behold, a invitation to do plant medicine shows up. Is that… Was that… Did you stop after that? Oh gosh, no. Oh. No. Because I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to. It, but it did wake me up. So yeah, I followed- Okay … the guy I was dating to the jungle. He’s like, “You wanna go do this adventure?”

And I didn’t know it was going to be a spiritual process. I thought I was gonna go have a fun trip. Oh, yeah. But as soon as I got there, I was like, “Wait, hold on. I don’t feel like this is fun.” And it was the owner of that retreat center, who would later become my first teacher and, like, spiritual father, like, he saw me.

Oh. He goes, “All right, you’re perfect for this. Hang in there.” ‘Cause if there had been an Uber that would pick me up along the Amazon River, I would’ve called it. It was like this, all of [00:27:00] my self-hatred, everything came to the surface before I even- Yeah … had plant medicine. And that’s when he was like, “You’re perfect for this work.

This is exactly what happens. You, you’ve gotta feel this and move through it.” And I didn’t want to. Mm. But I, there I was. So I had an incredible wake-up call. But no, I wasn’t ready to stop yet. That would take another couple of years. Okay. Yeah. S- There, there’s that idea that you have to feel it to heal it.

And what I would tell people about these experiences is that it’s not fun, it’s not a good time. Like, it bring… They say that it’s like 10 years of therapy in a night because you’re actually, it unlock… Like, however you locked away your trauma, like, it opens Pandora’s box and it all comes out. That’s right.

You know? You, it, you feel it to heal it. So, okay, so you didn’t get sober after that. It took a couple years, did you say? Yeah. It took a couple years. There is something magical about a two-year period once you’ve recogni- Like, that, that’s what happened to [00:28:00] me, is I had this horrible night and I started questioning my alcoholism.

Took me two years of negotiating, trying to moderate, shooting all my angles, coming up with all my best ideas before I finally surrendered. What was that two-year period like for you? So I did a lot of back and forth trips to Peru, to the Amazon, to work with, with ayahuasca, to keep getting pieces of the puzzle.

Mm-hmm. And then, you know, probably six, eight months in, then realizing, “Okay, I gotta show up in my daily life. I need a foundation. I need the sorts of things that I just mentioned earlier. I need-” Mm-hmm … ’cause back then there wasn’t any integration specialist with these experiences. That’s wild to me. I was kind of, uh, just finding my way through blindly, like no clue what I was doing.

So it took me longer because there wasn’t any precedence, at least that existed in our modern world, right? How long ago was that? [00:29:00] 20 years ago Oh, geez. Yeah, yeah Yeah For that, yeah, yeah. And I remember googling ayahuasca, there was like one article. Now there’s a billion, you know? So Yeah It, it- There’s a lot of information now

I just didn’t have any model for what this should look like. So I started- Mm-hmm … realizing, oh, I, I didn’t call it integration, but like I need to do something with this information. Mm. And, and then it was a trick from ayahuasca that she, ab- about a couple years into me building a foundation, she gave me a challenge, and I say she because she feels very feminine to me.

I hear that a lot from people, that ayahuasca is- Yeah … like this feminine energy. Very maternal, just a really amazingly wise- Mama Ayahuasca I hear … Mama Aya, yeah. And she, she tricked me, basically. She’s like, “I- … I bet you can’t go three months without drinking.” And I was like, “I bet I can.” Like, you know, just was- Yeah, yeah

gonna take this challenge, and especially because of my reverence for that medicine and the process. And she was [00:30:00] like, “Promise me.” I said, “I promise, three months.” Three months later, I did it successfully. I threw myself a party of like, “Oh, I’m gonna have some alcohol and celebrate.” And Arlene, it was like I drank glass shards.

Like, I put it in my body and immediately felt like I needed to vomit. Like, it felt like poison. Wow. And I recognized in that moment, like, she tricked me. She got me to totally detox. I… And so instead of having a party to celebrate that I was back, I had a party to pour out all of the alcohol in my home. I was like, “I think I’m done.”

And that- Wow … and so I got tricked into sobriety, basically. I didn’t intend it, but I couldn’t. Like, and I tried one more, one, maybe two more times after that, “Oh, I’ll just have one drink with my friend.” It felt awful. Mm. And it was like, I’m, I’m done. I’ve, I’ve gotta actually identify now as somebody who doesn’t drink.

Yeah. And that’s began that process of also still dealing with the [00:31:00] mind that was constantly, like, wanting to negotiate, but that was when I got serious about it, of like, I, I can’t do this anymore. Yeah, so you’ve been abstinent from alcohol for how many years now? I mean, we’re going on s- 17 years. Yeah. Wow.

Okay. It’s so interesting to hear how people have different ways of sort of coming to this conclusion. I feel like the testing the waters, some people call it relapse, like that’s a pretty normal experience where it’s like, “Can I? Yeah, no. No, you can’t.” Sort of like good news, bad news. But I feel like abstinence is actually way easier than moderation.

It, it is way easier. I tried moderation here and there, so it… I’ve had alcohol in that period, but it’s been a long time now because I just… Even one drink makes me feel awful. I’m like, “Why am I doing that?” I’m just not doing it anymore. Yeah. ‘Cause that, it, it… ’cause it also brings in the [00:32:00] negotiation again, and I’m just done with that.

I just have no desire to waste more of my life force on negotiating something I don’t even like anymore. I don’t. Yeah. It’s just the smell of it, all of it, I’m done. I don’t need it- Yeah … anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I agree- Yeah … abstinence is easier. Yeah. They say that people have to sort of like come to that conclusion of can I or can I not?

Yeah. And yeah, so. Yeah, I’m a no. I’m, I’m good. Like, I- That’s a no. Yeah. Tell me, everyone’s gonna wanna know what the experience of ayahuasca is like. I- you know, that’s like the first thing everyone… You know, there… And there’s a, there’s a couple of fears that immediately come up when c- contemplating this thing.

One is they’re afraid of the actual experience, like it scare- it sounds scary, ’cause it’s not a good time. It’s like it unlocks all your stuff. It, it’s like purging on so many [00:33:00] levels, right? Right. Physical, emotional, spiritual, mental. It’s unlocking all the traumas so you get it out of your body, like the detox, detoxing.

Um, and then, uh, people are afraid that it’s not gonna work. So let’s address both of those there, right? Okay. I mean, one, the experience, even after 20 years of working with ayahuasca, I’m still nervous. There’s still anxiousness because it’s, it’s the unknown. You know? I don’t know what’s going to happen.

And also the piece around it not being a fun time, yeah, I mean, there can be moments that feel amazing and fun, but it’s work because it’s about feeling and processing things. Now thankfully, it, that h- part has gotten easier because I am not so repressed. You know? I- You process a lot by now. Yeah. Yes. And so when I hit these parts of myself that still feel contracted, it’s not like a volcanic eruption like it felt early on.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It’s, [00:34:00] it’s still not fun. There’s still lots of pain and suffering and all of that, but it’s, it’s more like, I call it more like a pebble instead of a boulder. Yeah. We had big old boulders in the beginning, and that was really intense. So it’s always the unknown, but you learn to trust yourself in terms of being able to navigate that because here I am, lots and lots and lots of ceremonies later, and I’m alive and thriving.

So, you know, that gets mitigated. The respect of the unknown is important, but it’s, you don’t need to fear because we’re stronger and more capable of feeling and processing this than we could ever imagine. It’s actually easier to finally get in the flow of letting the body do, do what it does naturally, which is to feel and process things, like trauma is inevitable in our lives.

So that part- Like, it really for people who are new to the process, what you wanna make sure is that you’re sitting with somebody that really feels safe and experienced, that can hold space, and I call it bringing somebody from hell to heaven. That’s when- Mm … [00:35:00] I had 10 years of training in this process.

And in a nutshell- 10 years … yeah. That my apprenticeship was eight and a half years. I worked with somebody- Wow … else for a year and a half. So that’s, in a nutshell, what I learned to do, is bring people from hell to heaven. Like, and so that is possible. If you’re sitting with somebody who knows, like, you know, the depths of that and, and how…

I always imagine myself with a hat with a light on. I don’t know where we’re going- Mm … but I’ve got a light on my hat, so come, let’s find our way through the maze. And- Yeah … yeah. And so that, that part is, is navi- it’s, it’s able… Your, you can navigate it in the right hands. The is it or is not going to work question-

really depends on our commitment to showing up for the, the consistency that we are speaking about, you know? Like, ’cause the medicines aren’t cures. They don’t fix us, because we’re not broken in that way. We’re human. Mm. We gotta feel, we gotta… We’re always [00:36:00] gonna have curve balls in our lives, so we have to learn practices so that we can actually process things as they happen or near to it, rather than contract and repress.

And ’cause if you go back to doing that, yeah, you’re likely to go back to some self-destructive behaviors, whatever we’re trying to heal. But if you learn to show up for yourself step by step, and know that it won’t be perfect, there’s no such thing as perfect, uh, then it- It’s practice … is possible. It’s practice.

It’s, it, it has to be. You get a clean slate sometimes from these medicines, but then it’s what we do with it that matters. Yeah, I think that is the… Like, I, I’ve, I’ve heard of people that, um, for instance do ketamine therapy, but then they don’t have, like, um, the integration afterwards, and I’m like, that, I don’t know that, I, I don’t, I wouldn’t say it’s pointless, but that’s really missing, that’s really, like, missing the launch pad Yeah Right?

Like [00:37:00] you have, like you get primed, you’re open, you’re… Wherever you’ve locked away your trauma, it gets unleashed, and now it’s like, you know, there for you to work with it. But if you don’t have, like, the integration piece to pr- like, continue to process it. So that what we’re really talking about is not just behavior change, but how we experience our emotions.

I feel like behavior change is huge. Like, pe- people wanna stop being self-destructive, they wanna… Like, make, everyone wants to make progress and grow and evolve. It’s really frustrating to be sort of stuck in the same patterns over and over again, like picking the wrong partners or picking the wrong business ventures.

Do you know what I mean? It’s like, it’s, it’s tough to be stuck in cycles, and I feel like this could be, like, a hard reset, but without the continued, you know, safe maybe person. I feel like body doubling, like coaching, integration, it’s like [00:38:00] body doubling. It’s like g- uh, just having a safe space to, like, continue to process out loud.

How do you, how do you think about the, um, integration piece? Well, I, I… What you’re naming, I completely resonate with. It’s the most important piece. The most important, because our allopathic model in the medical space- What’s allopathic model? Allopathic is, is the, is the name for our Western medical, uh- Oh

structure, and it means to attack the disease. That’s what it means. Mm. And- Attack … the allopathic model also makes us think that, oh, take this pill and your symptoms will be gone. It will fix it. But it does address symptoms, it doesn’t address the root cause, which is why most of us are still sick.

Narrative. So this shamanic model is let’s get to the root and feel it- Yeah … and process it, and then create behaviors, lifestyle changes that supports our new state. But it’s work. Whereas we’re, most of us are trained to [00:39:00] think, take the pill, it will go away. That’s not what plant medicines do. Mm. They give us an opportunity to have neuroplasticity, to have this window of like, ooh, it’s easier to create new habits.

Yeah. That’s what integration is about. So yeah, these ketamine centers that don’t prioritize or even offer integration, it’s reckless because it’s passing this false narrative of take this and you’ll be fixed. It doesn’t work that way. Mm. Yeah, no, so this sorta leads me to think about not all… You know, plant medicine’s not a panacea.

It doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s also we have to consider the, um, aftercare. So I don’t mean to p- pick on any one process, like ketamine or anything like that. Um, what I’m really thinking about is- the whole package, the whole integration piece. It’s, like, cool to open up Pandora’s box, but if you don’t have a way to sort of sort through it and, like, establish some sort of system or [00:40:00] practice, then what happens is we go back to default factory settings.

It’s like I always equate it to exercise. Like, you could go to the gym every day for a year and be in amazing shape, but if you stop doing the thing, like you go back to factory settings. And I feel like the same- Really fast … thing happens in our minds. Our neurology is actually sh- as we grow up, gets hardwired.

And so all these practices, the, the plant medicines, the integration, it’s all… Yeah, you’re right, it is work, ’cause it takes conscious effort to, like, take specif- what we’re talking about is taking actions, specific actions to lead to certain outcomes. Um- Yeah … hopefully ultimately to lead to sort of a peaceful, intentional, like you said in the beginning, you know, it’s all about intention, an intentional way of living.

And without the… You know, it’s like soap and water. It’s like y- you, you really need both. So yeah. Yeah. Well said. It’s really important. Well said. And you know, w- [00:41:00] with, with medicines like ayahuasca, ibogaine, they give us this clean slate. Let’s use alcoholi- alcoholism as an example. It’s really hard to get people to prioritize the work that you’re naming because when they come out of these experiences not wanting to drink anymore, you feel amazing, right?

Yeah. Oh my gosh, I don’t have the craving. But then my job in- I’m done. … to go, “Yes, it’s fantastic, and if you don’t take advantage of this window, it will default back to factory settings.” Yeah. Like, the way you worded it is perfectly. Because what happens then is the reason why we were turning to a substance to numb out comes to the surface, Pandora’s box.

Yeah. And that’s, that’s a wonderful opportunity to work with it, but it doesn’t go away just because suddenly we don’t have cravings anymore. Those things need… And, and it’s not gonna go away in a single six-hour ceremony either. Like, it can… You can get the valve open so things are starting to [00:42:00] flow, but yeah, that’s the work of now we gotta be with those emotions, ’cause it, it…

The, the addiction was never the problem. It’s- It was the solution. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It’s the pain underneath that, the trauma that needs to be dealt with. And so yeah, otherwise- Yeah … we will go back to the old ways. And so that’s why integration is everything to me. Okay. It’s like that’s the make or break.

Yeah. I have a friend that, uh, reached out to me recently that shall remain anonymous that has a daughter that is, you know, using meth, and I’m wondering if you feel like there is a difference between the kinds of drugs. Like, I would consider alcohol a drug. Do you f- like, there’s people that, you know, are on heroin, on meth, on fentanyl.

Um, do you feel like it matters what they’re on? I- I- is the plant medicine still activating sort of the same, um, uh, gateways? I don’t, I don’t know what the [00:43:00] right word is, but mechanisms to release the trauma. So- So does it really matter what the drugs are? It does, because each plant medicine accesses different entry points in our bodies.

Interesting. Okay. So for example, like, ibogaine works for opiate addiction and alcohol, but it does not work for methamphetamines Oh, really? Okay … way of keeping the body. And there are places that will say it does. It doesn’t from a biological standpoint. It can from a psychological standpoint potentially.

Uh-huh But it doesn’t do the same thing, uh, for meth addiction that it does for opioids and alcohol. Uh, and then like ayahuasca, there are a lot of combinations of drugs that are dangerous with ayahuasca, ’cause if ayahuasca was classified as a pharmaceutical, it’s an MAOI. And so there are certain drugs and medications that counteract what ayahuasca does, so that medicine isn’t always an option.

Yeah, so you can’t be on, uh, antidepressants, the- Exactly, yeah … what, what is it? The, uh, [00:44:00] SSRIs, can’t be on SSRIs. SSRIs and MAOIs, basically anything antipsychotic, antidepressant, any of those, ’cause it can- Okay … it can be deadly actually in combination. Rarely, but can- That’s terrifying … yeah. But then you look at, like, mushrooms, psilocybin, they’re really forgiving.

Like- … the biggest issue with a lot of drugs and, and medications with psilocybin is it can make it harder to open up, to really- Yeah … have the journey, but it’s not physically dangerous, ’cause they work in a very different way. So it does- Okay … matter which medicine. Some are aligned better with what we’re dealing with than others, and some are even dangerous.

So that’s why it’s important to be sitting with somebody that has that expertise, that can ask those questions and make sure- Yeah … that what each person is working with, that it’s safe and efficient, that it, it will work. I think it’s terrifying that there are so many people that are claiming to be, like, trip sitters or whatever that really don’t have the experience.

And I feel that way with, like, sober coaches, you know? Someone that’s two, three years sober think they can go get a certification [00:45:00] and be a sober coach. It’s, it’s, uh, if they’re good at marketing, you know, they can actually do a lot of damage. It… There’s that saying that visibility beats ability, and that’s what scares me a lot of times about people that are good at marketing who are wanting to help people but don’t actually have the experience.

And I feel like that is one of the problems that people considering plant medicines are facing, is they really need to be, um, looking for somebody who has long-term experience and a lot of training, not just somebody who has, you know- Has a good rep on social media Yeah. And, and those people often have good intentions, but, like, what is the Carl Jung quote?

That we can only meet someone in the state of consciousness what we have met ourselves. Like- Ooh, I love that one … so if, yeah, if somebody hasn’t really been through the depths of their own healing and established a [00:46:00] stable maturity with that process, even if they’re well-meaning, it’s dangerous. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah So for coaches, integration coaches, psychedelic guides, all of it, yeah, you gotta make sure that they’ve been around the block many times. Many many times. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a really good point. What is the, uh, plant medicine that’s good for methamphetamines and…? Yeah, good question. I would say mushrooms would probably be the safest way- Safest

to go. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, ’cause they are so forgiving. I’m not a mushroom facilitator, so that’s not my area of expertise. Okay. Yeah, that is the space that I recommend anybody that’s working with something that is, um, that I know doesn’t align with the medicines that I do work with. Okay. And send them to somebody who’s well advanced with mushrooms and, and to, yeah, find a safe space there.

Yeah. That’s really important too. I appreciate that you have a lane that you’ve blossomed in and s- And not to, to pretend that’s all the lanes, ’cause, [00:47:00] yeah. Right. Right. Heck no. It’s good to specialize, I think. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, what kind of prep work does somebody need to do before they prepare for this type of journey?

Is there… Do you work with people doing, um, what do they call that? Like, the prep sessions? Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s basically what I call it. It’s like- Okay. Okay … plant medicine preparation. Yeah. Yeah. It, it, it’s… it depends on the intentions that they have- Okay … what it is that they’re working with. Um, but regardless- What…

Sorry to interrupt you. What are some of the common intentions people have? Is it… It’s… I can’t imagine it’s just always, like, “I wanna stop drinking,” or whatever. Like, I, I would imagine a lot of people are coming into this process wanting to build confidence, to heal trauma loops, to improve their self-worth.

What, what kinds of things are people coming to this process with? In a general sense, the most common thing is trauma healing of some sort. Trauma healing. Right? Yeah. Uh-huh. Even people dealing with [00:48:00] addiction, that’s what we’re getting to. Uh- That’s what it comes … the Ibogaine center that I co-founded last year, that’s basically what we do, is we say it’s a trauma center that uses plant medicine.

Because- Okay … that’s what healing is all about, is getting to the root of either the complex or the acute traumas, or both, that we have dealt with. Um, and having an opportunity to get that sort of clean slate, like actually get to the root of it. So most of the time it’s people in varying degrees of, like, wanting to get to the heart of what hurt them, you know?

Mm. Also, the, the part of, of the integration, the homework, is the insight, like, “What do I have to do differently?” You know? ‘Cause, ’cause we can’t just stop at trauma work, because then what comes after, you know, healing from trauma? We get a little too attached sometimes if it’s about trauma, trauma. Yeah. So part of my job too is to also say, “Okay, as you move through trauma, layer upon layer, what are we moving towards?

What is it- Yeah … [00:49:00] that you wanna co-create in your life? What are your dreams that maybe got buried because you didn’t think they were possible?” And to start, like, the fun part of, like, stepping into more of what the dream life might look like one step at a time. So- Yeah … laying intentions and, and preparation around both of those things I think is really important.

I heard a term recently that sounded kinda invalidating, but now the more I think about it, the more I’m like, “Yeah, that’s a thing.” This idea of wound worshiping. Like, people get- It is a thing. Mm-hmm … so, like… You know, and I, I feel like I’ve gotten lost in that myself too, like this idea of trying to fix or he- heal something.

Like, “Oh, there’s something wrong with me. I need to fix something. Something needs to get healed. I’m stuck in this pattern in this area of my life. I need… Something’s wrong. If I’m, if I’m stuck in a pattern, something is wrong. It came…” Do you know what I mean? It’s like, “I gotta figure it out, figure it out, heal it,” and just this constant seeking and searching, and it’s [00:50:00] like you could get lost in that for dec- I feel like I got lost in that for decades.

And we need to normalize it, I think. Like, I use nature- Yeah … as the model for everything where I feel maybe I’m doing it wrong. Nature- … is constantly in cycles. We don’t plant- Yeah … a seed and expect that seed, like, “Chop, chop,” you know? “Grow now,” like, “Come on.” We, we- … allow for time, and I bet that seed feels stuck at times ’cause it doesn’t- Yeah

grow immediately. So to normalize the fact that we’re not always supposed to have all the information, feel like we are, you know, moving forward. Like, I think of it too in terms of duality, is like if, if I need to know more about hot, I’m going to have to know more about cold too, right? Mm-hmm. So if I want more clarity around how to heal, I better get used to also being confused.

It’s gonna go together. So if I wanna move forward, I also better be comfortable feeling stagnant at times too, and [00:51:00] not fall for the lie that it’s permanent or that I’m doing something wrong. There it is. It just- Yeah … it’s just all of us go through it, so, like, why do we think there’s something broken? You know what’s so funny is I have been hearing conversations around imposter syndrome, where people feel like, “I must be doing something wrong.

I, I, I don’t, I’m not there yet, so I can’t share what I’ve learned.” And, and, uh, somebody pointed out to me that people that are trying something new, that are stretching beyond their, what they know, um, that is a sign, like feeling like an imposter is a sign that you’re actually growing, and it’s like a good trail marker that you’re on the right path.

Yeah. It’s not a bad thing. Ayahuasca taught me that. Ayahuasca taught me that. It was like, “Ooh, you’re confused. That means you’re pushing on-” Yeah … “what you previously know. Oh, you think you’re imposter, an imposter. That means you’re doing something that is out of the box. You’re stretching.” Yeah. Like, to celebrate that [00:52:00] rather than to feel like there’s something wrong, that m- yeah, that means we’re trying to grow.

That’s awesome. Yeah. The feelings are very similar, you know, of, you know, w- I’ve had many years of feeling inauthentic, right? Like, trying people-pleasing and trying to fit in and things like that, feeling like an imposter. So it feels very familiar. It, it se- you know, like it rhymes, it, it, from being fake to trying to grow in a new direction.

It kinda seems similar. Yeah. So it’s nice to have, you know, community is a big part of healing and recovery too, is having people around you to be like, “No, I think you’re on the right track. You know, I, I know you. I know your patterns. You’re on the right track. This, the intention feels authentic or true or right, however, loving.”

Yeah. Yeah. That’s essential, that we have people in our lives that [00:53:00] have the right to reflect their truth- Yeah … about how we’re showing up. Yeah, it’s- I love how you said that, the right to reflect. Yeah. Yeah. ‘Cause everybody has an opinion, but not everybody has the right to… But I don’t give everybody in my life permission to do that.

Right? ‘Cause it’s not everybody that I trust that’s gonna do that with love and good intentions, and that I think their judgment is spot on. Exactly. But the people that I do trust, they have full permission of like, please tell- Please, and then, and then it’s reciprocated. Like, can we have that relationship where we can kind of say when there’s broccoli in my teeth?

Like, tell me. Yeah. You know? Like, if my ego is, is, is either grandiose or deprecating. If it sounds- Yeah … like that’s what I’m coming from, tell me. ‘Cause it’s another, it’s an Adyashanti wisdom, like don’t trust the mind. If your mind is trying to tell you a story, get a second opinion, ’cause quite often that is not the truth of things.

So it’s so important that we have people that we trust to reflect [00:54:00] as best they can the truth. Yeah, that is so good. Gosh, I feel like we covered a lot of ground. Was there, was there anything that, um, we should have talked about that we didn’t? Was there anything important that you wanna discuss? Well, the thing I wanna name about ibogaine in particular that is- Mm-hmm

so powerful and special for people dealing with opiate addiction, cocaine addiction, and alcohol addiction, is that it’s the only medicine, at least that I’m aware of, that the doctors I work with that are aware of, that actually pushes through post-acute withdrawal symptoms, which is the reason why we relapse.

So it occupies the same opiate receptor sites that these medicines do, and it, and it works with dopamine and GABA the similar way that alcohol does, and it occupies that for one to three months after we take it, which means that we have this window of not only opportunity to do the, the new behaviors that we were speaking of, but we’re not craving the [00:55:00] drugs or the alcohol.

And ayahuasca’s amazing. I love her. She saved my life. But ayahuasca doesn’t do that, and nothing else does. Nothing. So it… ‘Cause people dealing with opiate addiction in particular, man, that withdrawal is so… It’s, it’s apparently the most brutal there is. Yeah. Right up there. And that’s partly what makes this medicine so incredible, that it actually mitigates that.

And so that really gives people an opportunity to succeed. ‘Cause if there’s people out there listening of like, “Well, I can’t integrate because even, uh, if I have a great experience with the medicine, I’m going to be in withdrawals,” ibogaine absolutely cuts through that. You know, we typically- That is wild

92 to 98% of no more cravings. Yeah, it’s incredible. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, I think that’s what gets a lot of people is the cravings, especially like alcohol. I’ve, I’ve worked with many people who just, you know, can’t get, can’t get the [00:56:00] sobriety ’cause they can’t get past the cravings. Yeah, and that’s a physical thing that is very- Physical

real that we can’t think our way through. So ibogaine in particular is just the game changer for people dealing with that because then you don’t have to navigate the actual physical cravings. You can get down to the negotiation of the cycle. And really actually have a chance to create some new patternings.

So that’s what makes it the game changer, and it’s, it’s why, you know, in America there’s a lot of narrative around getting ibogaine available for people with addiction and for veterans dealing with PTSD, is it gets to the heart of things. So- Yeah, I saw a- I don’t know … a, uh, I saw a Sean Ryan interview. I think he did ibogaine.

He had terrible PTSD from being in the, in the military, and I… Is it true that it’s a longer experience, like 10, 12 hours? Yeah, it is. It can be even. We keep people, we call it our cocoon, the room where we do the treatments. Mm-hmm. We keep [00:57:00] them in there for 24 hours, and we’ll bring in food and whatnot. But it’s a long experience.

I mean, it’s short in terms of thinking of the grand picture, but for a, a psychedelic medicine, it’s one of the longest experiences. Yeah. It sounds like a marathon, like- Yeah … like you can run a marathon and I don’t know how long marathons are, but six hours or I don’t know. I don’t either. I don’t run those.

But they seem like a really long time. I know it’s, like, in a day you gotta run it. I think people do them in hours, you know? But, um, yeah. I’m not those people. Yeah, I don’t run unless someone’s chasing me. So, but yeah, and when you think about, you know, 10 years of therapy in a single day, let’s say, it seems like a good, a good trade-off.

Very interesting. Thank you so much for spending some time with me to, to talk about this. I’m such an advocate of, you know, whatever helps people to heal at the root, at the root cause. [00:58:00] So, um, I’m gonna leave links to, um, your website and all the ways that people can get ahold of you, but, uh, what is the name of the facility that does the ibogaine?

It’s in Mexico, is that right? It’s in Mexico, yeah, because of legal. Base? Yeah, Base, which means truth in the Bwiti tradition where this medicine comes from. So it is the medicine of truth, so we, we got permission from a African tribe to name, uh, ’cause we’re white women that run it. We got their permission- Oh

to use their, it’s their sacred word. It’s like amen or aho. Uh- Oh … it’s really special, so that’s why we named it that. Mm-hmm. That is beautiful. Well, Kat, thank you so much for joining me. I’ll leave links, like I said, to all the things, and just thank you so much for the really important work that you’re doing.

It’s a, uh, it’s really needed in this world, and, and I’m glad you’re there with all your experience to- Well, thank you so much- … facilitate … for being such a beautiful messenger for, you know, all the paths of recovery. I really appreciate your work too. It’s been an honor to be on your- Thanks … podcast. [00:59:00] Yeah.

Thanks so much. Where is my off button? There we go.