Can psychedelics heal trauma and help you live your best life? – with Matt Zemon

Are psychedelics the answer to all your limiting beliefs and other mindset blocks on your personal development or healing journey?

On the podcast today, we have Matt Zemon, who is here to walk us across the bridge between skepticism and curiosity on the topic of psychedelics.

Matt's path from a conventional Midwestern life to bestselling author came at the hands of a profound awakening with the aid of magic mushrooms. Like many of us who grew up with a certain set of beliefs, Matt's transformation happened at the crossfire of cultural expectations and his own curiosity. In this conversation, he illustrates how the power of psychedelics realigned his life with his truest innermost needs and desires.

Our discussion with Matt isn't about advocating for escapism but embracing a holistic approach to awakening your personal gifts. We delve into the ancient lineage of psychedelics, what happens in the brain when on them, and how Matt sees this window as an opportunity for self-reflection and renewal. Matt's expertise underscores the potential these substances hold for reframing our mindset and nurturing a sense of empowerment.

We wrap up with an exploration of the diverse ways Americans engage with psychedelics, from the clinical confines of ketamine therapy to the sacred circles of church-based practices. Matt and I unpack the importance of safety, informed consent, and personal agency across all models of psychedelic interaction – and all holistic wellbeing practices, including breathwork, meditation, and other mindfulness practices that are becoming more mainstream.

MEET MATT ZEMON
Matt Zemon, Author of two best-selling books: Psychedelics for Everyone: A Beginner’s Guide to These Powerful Medicines for Anxiety, Depression, Addiction, PTSD, and Expanding Consciousness and Beyond the Trip, A Journal for Psychedelic Preparation and Integration. 

Matt has seen firsthand how psychedelics have helped people from different walks of life, and his goal is to "normalize" the conversation and reduce stigma. He wants to support others to “Reclaim Their True Self” with the aid of psychedelics. With an MSc in Psychology & Neuroscience of Mental Health, Matt co-founded various companies dedicated to improving mental health and well-being using the power of legal psychedelics. Matt loves to share his journey with psychedelics and mental health, myths and rumours around psychedelic medicine, and how psychedelics can play a powerful role in healing, connection and self-improvement, both for the people who choose to use them and for those who do not.

Get Matt's book: Buy it here

Transcript

Jen Liss: 0:00

Everyone welcome to the podcast. Matt Zeman, hi Matt.

Matt Zemon: 0:04

Jen, nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jen Liss: 0:06

I'm so thrilled to have you here and supporting yourself before we dove into. I'm sharing this because I think it's so important for every single person who listens. Before we dove into this conversation, you said you know what, can I go grab some tea? I said hello, yes, Go grab some tea, and I'm celebrating the fact that you asked for that.

Matt Zemon: 0:25

I appreciate you understanding and making room for that. Yeah, much appreciated. This will be a better podcast because of this tea.

Jen Liss: 0:33

Right. We just we don't do the things that will support us so often because we feel like we have to do it a certain way or that we need to show up for people in a certain way. And so thank you for letting me bring up that example, because I just think it's it's really, really important that we start to ask for that and we can just like go from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing and not pause and say you know what? I need some tea.

Matt Zemon: 0:57

Well, aren't we taught from an early age that we're taught both to give up our agency and to please others that are that we don't know what's what's right for us, or we don't know as much as others do, and our role is to make them feel comfortable, happy, maybe even more so with with with women than men.

Jen Liss: 1:15

And it gets interesting.

Matt Zemon: 1:16

I think we we we grew up in this culture of people pleasing and we don't really spend a lot of time. Well, what do I want and what will make me happy versus what are my teachers or my bosses or my doctors or my parents or my spouse? What do they want? Yeah it's nice to be able to take a moment to look at what's important to us, to me.

Jen Liss: 1:36

Yeah, that idea of agency isn't something. I don't even know that. I think I had to look up that word. Wait, what does the agency? That's not something that we ever talked about.

Matt Zemon: 1:48

No, there's no class in fourth grade about you. You have the right to. You have your own agency to make your own decisions and we don't do that we don't talk about it. Yeah speaking of agency.

Jen Liss: 2:02

Yeah, right, I mean speaking of which you agency. What you're here to talk about with us today are psychedelics, and not so long ago, even saying that word would just it would make most of us kind of like either snicker or cringe, and it's less so because of people like you who are out there talking about it and sharing about it. Why is this something that you have found your way to? Why are you, why have you found your way on this podcast today to talk about this?

Matt Zemon: 2:38

In a million years. I never thought that I would be talking about psychedelics and talking about drugs openly, professionally. No, I was a non drug user non, I'm not a huge drinker and some friends invited me to a guided magic mushroom experience and it changed my life. I reconnected with my mom, who died when I was 22. She was 49. I felt this incredible sense of safety and love. I was like, wait a minute, I don't feel like that normally. What's going on? How am I living my life? I realized I was scared of dying. I realized I had narrative on top of narrative that just wasn't true, that I'd been telling myself. And I left that experience and said I need what the hell was that? And I needed to know more.

Matt Zemon: 3:24

And I went back to school to get a master's in psychology and neuroscience because I couldn't read a friggin medical paper. I didn't know, I couldn't read any of this stuff, hadn't taken a science class in 30 years. And then I started traveling the country and then other places and experiencing psychedelics by MD's and PhD's and Titus and Shaman and exploring consciousness and kind of going back to agency, seeing that, yeah, what I want matters and that I'm capable of way more love than I ever thought I was capable both of giving and receiving, and I don't have to be stingy with that and I could understand that we are not separate in a part and that we are different waves in the same ocean, but we are connected, deeply connected, and it's been an incredible journey and I think it ties back to this podcast the idea that when the time comes, when we stop our breathing, that we can go. That was an amazing friggin life, amazing, and I was not living in what I now know to be my authentic, amazing life, pre-psychedelics.

Jen Liss: 4:32

Yeah, oh my gosh, there's so much to dig into. I want to. I'm putting a pin on safety.

Matt Zemon: 4:37

We're going to come back. We totally come back to safety Risk reduction. It's important to talk about.

Jen Liss: 4:43

Yeah, let's talk about that. But first I want to know. So you say, this is not something that I ever thought that I would do. I'm from the Midwest, I'm from Wichita, kansas. It's not small town, biggest city in Kansas.

Matt Zemon: 4:56

Most of my family's St Louis. I can relate to Wichita Kansas.

Jen Liss: 5:00

I feel that with you and I also. That's why I invited you on this podcast, because I'm like. You're like what we would call in Kansas a regular guy like a regular guy Like you're not the kind of person who I would expect to get on a podcast interview with. And you say I just came back from ceremony.

Jen Liss: 5:19

And I was doing breathwork and I was doing all of these things. When you very first had that experience. What was your experience of dipping your toe into the world of interconnectedness, the world of wellness, the world of looking at these things that you do now like breathwork and such? For the listener who's like, okay, all of this sounds kind of weird and we're gonna dig into like why, psychedelics, like how it works on all of that. But I'm curious about your journey at that point. For the listener who might be at that point and is curious.

Matt Zemon: 5:54

So for a psychedelic, I had dipped my toe into things like meditation and download on a headspace or Sam Harris's app or Calm, and I was awful, I couldn't do, I couldn't do 10 minutes Like I just couldn't. I didn't get it, I didn't like it. I tried, I tried journaling. I certainly love some of the positive psychology things the University of Pennsylvania is great with gratitude journals and training the mind for the positive. But the world of breathwork that you can get into a non-ordinary state of consciousness by using your breath no, I didn't believe it, didn't know about it. Sound healing what do you mean? Sound healing what are you talking about? That there's energy. No, energy is electricity. I plug into the wall. There's no, I just didn't understand any of it.

Matt Zemon: 6:40

And psychedelics opened my mind to there might be a lot that you don't know or I don't know, and that has been. So then coming out of that and being like, well, what is yoga? What does this mean? What is it really? Is it about? I thought it was just about pretzel, twisty things. No, it's about energy and it's about chakras and it's about focus and it's about awareness and okay, that's really interesting. And then understanding that sound is vibration and vibration can make us feel different things and it can be incredibly powerful to move that energy up and down and around and through the body and the breath. By focusing on the breath we can remember how important it is, the amazing it is to be alive, and how we can clear out all the other things and realize that we are not our thoughts but we can be aware of our thoughts as they pass through. And again, simple techniques but powerful lessons in all of these different modalities for me, but it's been a journey and I was not open-minded to these things Again, pre-psychedelics.

Jen Liss: 7:48

Until you had that experience. Yeah, and that experience changed.

Matt Zemon: 7:52

I mean, it changed everything. When I was there and my mom showed up and I was like, pull a string from her to me, to my children, I was like, okay, she's not gone, she's just in this other place. And for when she died I gave up on God, there's no, god there's no, this is not possible. And all of a sudden I was like, oh, I can see how this can be, I get it, I get it, and it just felt good.

Jen Liss: 8:24

That's the thing. It just felt good. That is what I come back to all the time. Is that realization that we're choosing to feel some way. A lot of us in this world we've been raised to choose to feel bad. That realization was huge for me. I remember I was on a hike out here in Portland and I remember I was going up this hill and I was breathing so hard and I was listening to something that somebody said and they said you're either choosing to feel bad or you're choosing to feel good. And that landed in my gut so hard, like, oh, I'm choosing to feel bad, I could choose to feel good. Why am I not choosing to feel good? It was this whole line of questioning. You're so right that we get to have that experience. Breathwork has helped me to get to that point. Where do you feel like psychedelics fit in? You have a book where you talk about psychedelics being for everyone. Do you feel like it's something that everyone should be doing?

Matt Zemon: 9:23

Absolutely not. But before I comment on that, I want to stick with what you just said, because it's so beautiful and I think for me, almost worse than choosing to feel good and choosing to feel bad is choosing not to feel. And as a workaholic I could hide behind spreadsheets and tasks and berry feels. Oh, tuck this, deaths and sadness and other little tea, traumas and things, tuck them away and just not feel. And I love feeling. But then we get to the suffering as optional. There's no need for suffering. There's. This is an abundant world, this universe is taking such good care of us and there's, there's just no need. We can, we can trust in that process, we can trust in that we're going to be, we are OK, we're going to be OK and as long as we keep breathing, we get to experience this and the suffering is optional.

Jen Liss: 10:24

It's absolutely beautiful. A lot of us are choosing suffering without knowing that we're choosing suffering, just selecting it every day.

Matt Zemon: 10:33

So to answer your other question, no, my book is called Psychedelics for Everyone, but I don't mean that everyone should take a psychedelic. There are people who have or taking certain medications, or have particular family histories or personal backgrounds where it's just not safe, and that's OK. What I do mean is whether psychedelics are for you or for someone you love, or maybe just to get. So you have the information, so it changes the way you vote in the next election, which Oregon has led the way with. It's important and we have 50 years of propaganda that we have been told. So we all grew up in this. Just say no generation. We're told that all drugs are bad, they're in a fryer brains, we're going to get addicted. Nothing good can come of this. There's no medical use. That's a lot of programming, which is why when we, for many people, when we talk about drugs, we immediately go bad, psychedelics, dangerous, and we don't have the information to to make a rational, reasonable response.

Matt Zemon: 11:31

There's a beautiful study by Dr David Nutt from Imperial College of London where he said let's forget for a moment how drugs are classified and just look at a bunch of drugs for harm to self and harm to others. Cool On the far end of his spectrum. On his chart, the most dangerous drug for self and others it's a 72 is alcohol, and you work your way down. And tobacco is like a 55 and you work your way down, down, down, down, down, down, down down. The far right hand of his chart are mushrooms it's a six and LSD is a seven and MDMA is a nine. So you talked about safety before. All these drugs have dangers. Of course they do, and when we talk about relative risk, something to keep in mind and again, 50 years of propaganda to keep this in mind and also hold the first part it's not for everyone, and doing them without understanding what you're taking and what your particular prescription supplements history is can be dangerous.

Jen Liss: 12:32

Yeah, Thank you for that explanation, and that's wild. There is a lot more talk about alcohol and how it harms the body and, of course, you know we talked about this at the very beginning, like we're in the beer community, my husband and I Something that he actually makes he actually makes whiskey but I've been partnering with a local organization here, a local business, where we've been bringing in she's calling it tapping in and it's bringing in mindful modalities and just that idea of balance and loving the things that you love. While bringing in, we can all be all around healthy and still love the things that we love, and maybe that eventually shifts. So I think it's important this message that you share that it's possible for everyone to enjoy it and experience the benefits of it, but it's not necessarily like the thing that everybody should be doing, which is also something that I'm passionate about.

Matt Zemon: 13:28

And I just want to reiterate it's balance. You can absolutely enjoy whiskey and beer and other things in balance, and there's a lot of our society that doesn't do it in balance. You can enjoy, you can take a set of minivine and have a good experience, and yet a couple hundred people a year die of a set of minivine overdoses. So there's balance for everything and there's a time and a place for all things, yeah.

Jen Liss: 13:55

OK, so I'm curious if you can share how psychedelics work, like, how does it work in the body? What is actually happening when somebody takes magic mushrooms? And also are you talking about?

Jen Liss: 14:07

the magic mushrooms that, like one time my husband and I, when we very first got married, some kid that he worked with brought over a baggie of mushrooms and they were the nastiest looking things that I've ever ever seen in my life and tasted. They did not taste good and we all had an experience. Is this what you're talking about? Is it the same? It is Well my be, but yeah, and it's the same in terms of substance you can, there are things you can do to disguise flavor.

Matt Zemon: 14:30

But yeah, in terms of substance, mushrooms or mushrooms, they're grown all over the world, in every continent except, I think, antarctica, and they've been around for a long time which people don't realize. There are cave drawings in Africa seven to 9000 years old, of like of a mushroom shaman. There are, there were shaman up in Siberia which is burned all throughout Europe for using different psychedelics. We have certainly the indigenous cultures of North America, central America, south America, and I bring this up to tell, to remind us all that we all have a psychedelic lineage, regardless of where we're from. It's not just the Native American people or the African people with Ebola, it's all of us have a lineage and something to think about. And yes, they, they are not the best tasting tried deliciousness, but they can give good experiences.

Jen Liss: 15:20

Yeah, yeah, and that happens in the brain when we take one. What happens in the brain? So?

Matt Zemon: 15:25

I'm going to do a super high level answer. That is not that. That is generally speaking. There are differences between different psychedelics and some of them work slightly differently, but, breaststrokes, the first thing that happens is your, your default mode network, your, your inner narrator, is quieted down. So think about that voice that's telling you Jen, all the time you need to work harder, you need to do more, you're not good enough, yeah, be better. It turns that down. When that comes down, it feels like the weight of the world is lifted off your shoulders and when that narrator stops, you can start processing differently because the world gets quieter. The second thing that happens is neurons that used to fire fire again together.

Matt Zemon: 16:12

So as we get older, we literally start pairing down our connections in our brain and we literally start thinking the same way over and over. So we get these repetitive thinking patterns and an extreme level. That can look like autism, it can look like OCD, but for many of us it's just. We get quote set in our ways and there's a biological reason for that. Well, the psychedelics put a fresh coat of powder on the mountain. We start skiing all over our brains again and we remember oh, I don't have to think the way I've been thinking. I don't have to think about this problem the way I've been thinking about it. I don't have to think about my spouse like I've been thinking about it. I don't have to think about my boss or my children or myself or my traumas or my anything. I can think about these things differently. That's super powerful and that leads to these incredible insights.

Matt Zemon: 17:02

During these psychedelic experiences, many psychedelics turn off shame, blame and guilt. So, with those emotions gone, we can look back and say, oh, my role in this particular situation really was this. No bad me, that's just what I did. Okay, and I did it with less awareness that I would have liked to bring that brought to that situation. Or I did that with all the information that I knew at the time, or I created that situation, not intentionally, not to hurt anybody, but it did. Okay. I see it now and that's okay. So that happens.

Matt Zemon: 17:39

And then your brain enters a period of neuroplasticity. So think about when you're a kid and how fast you can learn new things and kind of slow down as we get older. Well, for about four weeks-ish, following a psychedelic experience, your brain's got that plasticity back. So then, if you wanted to incorporate some other modalities. I want to incorporate breath work into my life. I would like to incorporate journaling. I want to train my mind for the positive. I want to set new boundaries. I want to reimagine what my life can be In that phase of neuroplasticity is a really amazing time to do that and people work with coaches or therapists or church groups to optimize that period of time. So at a high level, those are kinds of the things that are happening in the body with a psychedelic that fresh coat of powder that really connects with my brain.

Jen Liss: 18:31

It's like, oh, it's clear and now I can go and form new paths. So thank you for that. And that helps not just with speaking of psychedelics. I think about it in terms of I teach creativity classes and have supported people in being more creative for a long time, and some of the things that we do and I've even shared these exercises on this podcast is things like close your eyes, okay now.

Jen Liss: 18:54

When you open your eyes only see the color red, okay, now, close your eyes again. When you open it, look around and see things in the room that are the color blue. I didn't mean only see, but look and see those colors. And what that's doing is kind of like cleaning that slate that you talked about, those repetitive things that we just see every day because the brain is so smart, and it's like, no, you only need to walk to the computer and sit down and stare at it all day, and now you need to get up and get a drink of water or a go pee or whatever you know. It's like that's all you need to do because it's so efficient and that's what our brain does. So what you're saying is that it just clears some of those, puts it clears it puts that fresh coat of powder and then you can go in and you get to choose. Now you're seeing the choices instead of simply following the brain's path.

Matt Zemon: 19:37

Yeah, I think you just said that really well, and I think I'm gonna say one more thing then, based on what you just said when all these things are happening in the brain during this process and you can make these choices, I believe you're also remembering that at our core, at my core, at your core, you are this beautiful, loving, powerful being and that everything beyond that is just a story. What's my name, what's my culture, what's my relationship with my family, what's my education, what's my job? But at our core we're the same, and remembering that and getting to feel that in this journey is so powerful, because then we can start unwinding the narratives that don't serve us, and then we can I mean again, the world's open. What do you wanna do? You can do anything. What do you wanna do? And then, how are you gonna do that? But we're not carrying around this baggage of, well, I can't do this because this person won't let me. It's not really true. What do you really wanna do? How do you go? Do that? Anything's possible.

Jen Liss: 20:50

That voice, that voice in your head, is the one that's constantly telling you that you can. So in positive intelligence coaching, we call that the judge. It's this voice that's constantly chattering. So what you're saying to connect some people who might have heard of that kind of therapy, or like, when you name your brain, it's quieting that down. And I about came out of my chair when you said like at your core that's my belief too Like we are sparkly balls of light. That's what I call it.

Matt Zemon: 21:16

I think we are sparkly, glittery, magical. Yes, I like that. Snow globes on the inside.

Jen Liss: 21:21

Exactly. It's just, it's so beautiful and so magical and once you tap it, there's no forgetting that. So, psychedelics, you're saying that that is like a way to feel that, and to feel it in such a way that you can't forget that that's what you are.

Matt Zemon: 21:36

Yeah, that's very true and it's a different type of knowing Like we can be told in our Midwest Catholic upbringings. We can be told we're all brothers and sisters.

Jen Liss: 21:47

How'd you know? I was Midwest Catholic, exactly.

Matt Zemon: 21:50

We can be told these different things. It's another thing to feel that we are brothers and sisters, to feel that we are connected, to feel that we are. We are not separate and apart from nature. We are part of nature and just different. And then, once you see it, you can't unsee it, can't unfeel it.

Jen Liss: 22:12

It's true, that's, that's all truth, everything that you said, which sounds bat shit to somebody who hasn't felt it.

Matt Zemon: 22:24

But I.

Jen Liss: 22:25

I mean, I am kidding, but I'm also not, because I know the person, who I Was when I began this journey, and anybody who's listening to this podcast has been following some kind of breadcrumbs.

Matt Zemon: 22:35

They've had something they've had something Listening to this podcast, if it's, if they've been listening this long. So you might be being judgmental, but why are you still listening? What's going on? What are you curious about? What are you waiting for permission from one of us for to go take what action? Something's calling out to you. So what? What's holding you back? Listener.

Jen Liss: 22:56

So true, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Matt Zemon: 23:00

I am.

Jen Liss: 23:01

It's so fun to talk to you. I have a question for you just regarding because I think it's a question a lot of people have I think what's the difference between psychedelics and anti depressants?

Matt Zemon: 23:11

Oh, this is a great question. So so many things so I don't know where to start. I'm gonna start with, philosophically, what are anti depressants meant to do? They're meant to numb the pain. They're meant to stabilize. They are not meant. They're meant to be episodic for some period of time. They were never intended to be a decade or 20 year solution. Where you set it and forget it, there's a West, the the challenge with anti depressants, many challenges. It can take weeks before you find out if it even works for you. If they don't work on the majority of people, they only work in like now, a 40% at best of the population. Huge side effect profile. So everything from weight gain to let the G, to sexual dysfunction. I was just looking at a paper um Yesterday where upwards of 73% of certain anti depressants, of people who take certain antidepressants of sexual dysfunction, they're not telling people that as they're prescribing these medicines. That's a big, that's a big side effect.

Jen Liss: 24:14

I'm seeing so many commercials for, for hymns, by the way, exactly my husband and I like every comedy we watch. That's all that's like. That's the, that's hymns, ads, and that's funny.

Matt Zemon: 24:28

Yeah, suicidal ideation is another side effect. So people get on these medicines. They get addicted to these medicines. They're not really with a provider who really wants to get them off the medicines and they've loot. They forget that they don't need. They might not need the medicines. Now if you do need the medicines and they're working for you, that's amazing. I don't want to push him anybody, but there's a large portion of our culture, of our society that's taking these medications kind of blindly and they're not working. And the episode that caused the depression or the anxiety or the, the grief, has passed and it's time to get off.

Matt Zemon: 25:05

The other Philosophical thing that our society is quick to try to stop you from feel. So I'm, my husband died and I'm feeling sad. Of course you, and Maybe you should, and maybe that's okay now, of course it's not okay if you're gonna throw yourself off a building. It's not okay if you can't function. Take care of your kids and go to work. Yes, but within a bound that the feelings are our feelings are our bodies, instincts, it's our bodies, way of expressing, of expressing before words can are there for us. So we are so quick to stop the feeling that we don't um, yeah, we don't get to solve the root, we don't get to move through the process, we don't get to process it all the way.

Matt Zemon: 25:54

I Think, with psychedelics, what You're choosing to take a medicine at a moment in time, that is not a cure for anything. Upfront, it's a catalyst, it's a, it's a glimpse into yourself. It's a chance for you to do inner work, to dive deep and and with that inner knowledge, in your own agency, in your own power, you can see the world differently. You can come out of that experience and then you can choose to move forward the way you want to move forward without being dependent on a medicine To keep your equilibrium. You're dependent on yourself to keep your equilibrium and then you can choose again to adopt things like breath, work and running and sleep and water and those things to To help keep you stabilized. So yeah, wildly different philosophy behind antidepressants and Psychedelics, and they work. Again. We're seeing studies for depression, we're seeing studies for anxiety, or six days for OCD, eating disorder, substance use challenges, autism, all sorts of things. With psychedelics, that um is Is thus far showing higher rates of efficacy than anything we've ever seen.

Jen Liss: 27:07

It's fascinating to look at the history too. I've gone down some rabbit holes with it. Out of curiosity, I still, for the record, have not tried it since that one time, and I probably will sometime. Just that one mushroom journey, yeah, that's since that one mushroom journey.

Matt Zemon: 27:22

Mushroom journey where you're not like the taste.

Jen Liss: 27:25

Yeah, I stared at my own pupils dilating for an hour and that was or hours Probably, I don't know.

Jen Liss: 27:31

That's all I remember about it. But for I went down a rabbit hole on the history of it and it's really fascinating what happened in the 70s and the way that we went toward, which we're not going to dive too deep into that. But if I say this so that if anybody is genuinely curious because I was about what happened, because that's also when so much research went into anti-depressants went, went away from embodiment work, went away from the feeling, went away from psychedelics we demonized a lot of that stuff and we went into this, the drugs that kept us from feeling. And so there's been if anybody listening is kind of like there's been this transition because there's been a lot of research and awareness that is showing that what we're doing isn't working Pretty obvious to a lot of people, and so that's where some of this has kind of started to have its its growth and people like you talking about it and doing it. So thank you for that. Do you have anything to add to that before I move on?

Matt Zemon: 28:30

Two quick things. In the psychedelic space, what we say all the time is feeling is healing. So we are. We definitely encourage people when they're, when they're in these medicine states again, whether the medicine is provided in a medical environment or spiritual environment doesn't matter have the experience you are needed to have, and maybe that means a lot of crying, maybe it means a lot of laughter, maybe it means movement, maybe it means stillness, maybe it's feeling great pain. All of that's okay, all of that's needed and and it's part of the process. Second thing is drug use for grownups. If you're interested in this topic, we don't need to go into it today. But Carl Hart's book, dr Carl Hart from Columbia, drug Use for Grownups fantastic book, talks about the whole history of of of the controlled substances act of 1970. It talks about the history of criminal law against disproportionately against black and brown people and it talks about addiction and the myths around addiction and it and he is a seriously respected scientist, professor, father, husband, and he admits and I sometimes do drugs and it's fascinating.

Jen Liss: 29:33

Yeah, thank you for that. For that book recommendation, we'll be sure to put it in the show notes that, if anybody wants to click it right beside your book.

Matt Zemon: 29:40

My book has some of this information as well.

Jen Liss: 29:43

Yes, check lots of it out. Thank you so much for that. And if anybody's we've got anybody curious enough that they want to try it where, how do you recommend that people try it? Is it possible for everybody in every state? You have to go to another country. Here in Portland I went to a comedians on mushrooms event where comedians did their regular sets but on mushrooms.

Matt Zemon: 30:04

So it's very accessible here. It's really interesting. All right. So there are three ways that people meet psychedelics in America today. Some choose to meet it in the medical model, which means I want to have a diagnosis of some sort and I want to have a clinical experience of some sort, and typically that means ketamine, and that's beautiful.

Matt Zemon: 30:26

Ketamine is a disassociated of anesthetic. It is about an hour long experience. You can take it in a clinic with an IV or a shot, or you can go even at home and take it with a sublingual lozenge. What I was telling you about the two second thing on ketamine is just know what you're getting into. Ask your provider. Are you going to provide preparation, intention setting, are you going to help me with integration? Do you provide music? What do you do so that you can fill in the gaps for the things you're missing? There's a range of ketamine providers, some who believe it's just a biochemical experience and they're going to hook you up to an IV, take your vitals and send you on your way. And there's others who believe it's a biochemical, psychosocial, spiritual experience and I think they're going to treat you more gently. The price is not that different. So buyer beware. So that's a medical model Coming soon, hopefully.

Matt Zemon: 31:16

Mdma will hopefully be re-legalized this year and then maybe psilocybin in the next couple of years. The FDA has given a breakthrough therapy designation. The work that it's being done with psilocybin for end of life depression anxiety is so beautiful. So all that might be available in a medical model. Others want a decriminalization model. So this is the libertine. No adult should tell another adult that they shouldn't put nature in their body. Okay, I get that philosophy and there are decrim nature chapters all over America. The other part, the other side of a decrim argument is I can't afford the medical model and I need access. I want to grow my own mushrooms and I shouldn't have to pay X amount of dollars to have a medical experience. I should be able to do this myself. So for access purposes and for philosophy purposes, decrim is important. In many cities across America there will be chapters like a psychedelic society of Wichita. I'm not sure there is one at Wichita, but there might be. There might be.

Jen Liss: 32:21

There's some underground.

Matt Zemon: 32:22

Yeah, and you'll find decrim people there and you'll find medical people there, and it's okay. That's a good way to find those people. Or look up decrim fill in the blank your city and see if there's a chapter there. Great way to meet people who are passionate about that cause. Third way is the church model.

Matt Zemon: 32:42

There are somewhere we don't know, between 200 and 2000 psychedelic churches in America and these churches are operating under the religious freedom restoration act. They're saying look, we have a constitution at a national level and most of us at a state level that says we should have no prohibitions on how we practice our religion. And these they actually stop. They don't even say psychedelic, they use the word sacrament or entheogen. These entheogens have been used for thousands of years in ceremonial settings. We all have a psychedelic history. So I'm choosing to use these entheogens to connect with my sacred, to look into myself, to explore this, this spiritual being that I am, that's now embodied in a physical flesh, suit for this, for this manifestation, and it's. I'm practicing this as religion.

Matt Zemon: 33:37

And there's, again, a range of churches. Some do ayahuasca, some do psilocybin, some do multiple sacraments. Most of the ones I work with work with sassafras, which is also known as MDA, sometimes MDMA, sometimes psilocybin, sometimes bufo, lots of different medicines, but there's a range of church out there and again these psychedelic societies or typing in psychedelic churches or the decrim things. You'll find them. They're out there when you start asking and they'll find you and again, lots to be aware of. What's the similar questions that you'd ask a medical provider who's gonna be in the room? What are the rules? What do you do for music? What do you do for preparation? What do you do for integration? Where do you get your medicine from? I like it when they have some type of informed consent. I like it when they do a health intake of some sort to make sure there's no contraindications. I think those things are really important in the spiritual model, just like I think it's important in the medical model that they embody some of these spiritual best practices.

Jen Liss: 34:39

Yeah, it comes back to that word that we started with, agency. And then I'll add a second one that I didn't learn in fourth grade discernment.

Matt Zemon: 34:48

With agency and discernment.

Jen Liss: 34:49

And really we have grown up in this model of trust, the people who are telling you what to do, and so then we don't ask some of those questions that you're suggesting like, well, what feels good to you, do you want to have that informed? Like, what do you want, what is the experience that you want to have? And we just don't often ask that of ourselves. So I appreciate that you bring that up. It comes back to safety, which we put in it.

Matt Zemon: 35:17

It comes back to safety and I can't stress enough if you haven't done this and you don't know what a non-ordinary state of consciousness is, just imagine yourself just turned on, like everything is off for six hours and you are laying there and you are vulnerable. You are vulnerable to noises, you are vulnerable to language and thought, you are vulnerable to physical touch. So, keeping yourself safe in any of these experiences it can be a medical, it could be a psychedelic tourism. I just booked somebody booked a $6,000 trip to Jamaica. It can be.

Matt Zemon: 35:52

There's lots of trips coming to Portland these days with people doing this. It could be a church model. You need to keep yourself. I think it's important that we keep ourselves safe. So, finding practitioners that understand that and that put things in their container to keep you safe oh, we have male and female facilitators, so that's great. We have musicians in the room Great. We have sitters in the room Even better. Multiple eyes to make sure you're safe in that experience. Multiple. You talked about having this experience and not really having an environment that was really designed to help you enjoy this experience. Well, if you can control the music and you can control the sound, you can make sure kids and dogs and other people aren't interfering, you have a chance to go really deep, and Johns Hopkins research says that if you control the source, the set and the setting, the probability of a truly bad trip is very, very, very low.

Jen Liss: 36:49

Yeah, thank you for that. I think that gives a lot of people who are considering it some food for thought about what they would do for themselves when it comes to safety. I think it's my belief that we live in a world that we don't think a lot about our own safety, like our own actual physical safety, like we think about vigilance, like hypervigilance, and somebody on the outside might hurt me, but we don't think about our inner state of safety, and that is what has impacted us being so vigilant. So I think about this a lot and, as a breathwork facilitator, it's so important. I think it's the paramount thing. We have to feel safety in order to really truly access that brilliance that's in us. In order to maintain that access, we have to have that safety. So I think it's really powerful that that's something that you're so focused on and that you really think is a cornerstone of that work.

Matt Zemon: 37:45

Yeah, super important. No, I love what you just said, super important.

Jen Liss: 37:48

Yeah, do what do you? How could people work with you? Is it simply buying your book? Do you have other ways that people could work with you if they're curious?

Matt Zemon: 37:57

Yeah, so if we could work with me in different types of ways. Some people want me to be a speaker at their conferences. I do that all over the country and they can book me at matseamancom. Others want to have more of a conversation and see where might be a place that they could fit in, and I'm always happy to do those, like all discovery calls, and they can go to my site and just book a discovery call and talk about. We'll talk about like what are you interested in, what are you looking for and what are you concerned about?

Matt Zemon: 38:26

I do direct people a lot to a guy named Dr Ben Malcolm, or spiritpharmacistcom. He is a farm D who specializes in psychedelic pharmacology and what I tell people all the time is go to him first and do your own medical intake from somebody who has nothing to sell you besides information, and he'll look at your background. He'll look at your drugs, he'll look at your supplements, he'll look at your mental history and then he will give you some advice as to what psychedelics might or might not be a good fit, what things you might want to be aware of. What I like about going to him first before you sign up for a retreat or a ceremony or a ketamine package is.

Matt Zemon: 39:08

They all have an inherent conflict of interest in your intake. So get your information and you, and then you have all the information to decide OK, I still want to do this rate, then book your, whatever they will do another intake, but you at least know whether this feels right for you. So that's something else we talk about, and we talk about kind of what are the things to be, to be concerned about and to ask about on this journey? And of course I have my book and of course I have there's a journal called Beyond the Trip which, if you have found your way to the medicine, I do recommend. It helps with preparation up front and it helps with tracking your journeys when you're doing your medicine and it helps with the integration process for a month following your ceremonies.

Jen Liss: 39:53

Beautiful. Well, we'll put all the links in the show notes so that people can access everything that you have linked to the book, matt. I have one last question that I ask everybody on this podcast when do you see the magic in the world? Oh my goodness.

Matt Zemon: 40:06

Where do I see it? Where don't I see the magic? It's a. I see it everywhere it's, it is. It is such a ridiculously beautiful world that we live in and we can hold. I can hold the concept that not everything is as I would script it and not everything is OK, but it can still be perfect and we end, and the things that aren't, that our bodies are drawn, that I'm drawn to work on, if I'm doing it, because I truly think I can see a way to make this even more beautiful. That's, that's the body's instinct, the body's way of driving in that direction, and I think that's powerful and I think all of us listening to what's that energy in our body telling us is so much fun. So, yes, I guess the beauty is everywhere, everywhere.

Jen Liss: 40:53

Your why is so clear? Because you missed the perfect opportunity, Matt, to say the magic is in the mushrooms.

Matt Zemon: 41:00

But I don't, but I also. But you know, it's so funny because it's the. It's so funny. I have this discussion with my wife a lot, where it's like People think I'm talking about psychedelics. Never, psychedelics is just, it's just the entryway to a conversation, but it's always about mental health and empowerment and creativity and and that, that inner beauty. That's what I mean. That's at the end of the day, that's that's where we spend most of the time. It's like do you remember? Do you remember how beautiful you are? Do you remember how amazing you are? That's that's what we're talking about.

Matt Zemon: 41:34

And how do we get back into that state of of operating from position of power, operating from not fear, operating from remembering that we can't fail? The only time we fail is when we stop breathing. Until that time, we are learning, we are healing, we are growing and we are moving forward. We might fail at a task, and that's OK, that taught us some other lesson, but you can't fail at life. And when we know that it changes every interaction, oh, maybe I don't want to do this. Well, it's going to have this ramification. I can live with that ramification, but I can't live with is the feeling of doing that. Ok, great, ok, great. I just went on a rant in.

Jen Liss: 42:15

It was a beautiful rant, but I mean, I think, everything that you just shared, there was magic, and it's just so obvious that you are really passionate about this, and thank you for coming on and sharing it with all of us who might have needed to hear what you just said, because we do need that reminder every single day, because, you know, we might be able to use psychedelics sometimes to turn off the judge, but it's still there and it's helping us. It's helping us to act, to do things in this. You know very 3D world that we're living in, so we we need it and we'll forget, and so thank you for being such a powerful reminder for all of us today.

Matt Zemon: 42:55

Well, Jen, thank you for doing this conversation and bring all this energy and magic to this conversation. They're really. And the heart dress. I really appreciate you and the hearts for February.

Jen Liss: 43:06

Yeah, for anybody not watching on YouTube. I'm rocking some hearts, as is pretty normal. Thanks, matt.

Matt Zemon: 43:15

Thank you.