Inside My 72-Hour Psychedelic Iboga Therapy With Julie Piatt

34:03So she reached out to me sort of after the first day to let me know how you were doing. And she was like, you know, he's in it deep. He would run away if he could, but it's doing exactly what he needs, exactly what is meant for him. And then the first thing that you said to me when we talked when you came out was you just kept talking about the relentless stimulation and just how it just went on and how time was stretched. And I had heard this from the other people that had experienced it where they thought it was like a 72-hour experience and it's not. I felt like I'd been there two weeks. I mean, the first night, it just went on forever.

34:44And then it must have been, I don't know, 7 a.m. or something like that when it starts to calm down. And not for nothing, all of your motor skills are impaired. And of course, at times you have to get up and go to the bathroom. You can't even really stand up. My hands were shaking. My teeth were clattering. There's buzzing in my ears. And somebody would have to walk me to the restroom and then I would have to lean on the wall. You can't really steady yourself at all. It is complete derangement for 72 hours, essentially. And that first night was just extremely, extremely difficult. In the early hours of the morning, I remember being very nauseous and being told that I should take another spoonful of this stuff so that I can purge.

35:35People are throwing up. I hadn't thrown up. You need to purge and you'll really get it out of you. I just couldn't imagine taking another spoonful of this stuff. I was so overwhelmed. It's so powerful. There's a reason I now appreciate why it's called the Mount Everest of psychedelics. It was just like a building had fallen on top of me. And it didn't have maybe part of the benefit and sharing the psilocybin experience is that this was entirely different. There was no sense of oneness with the universe. There was no heart-bursting sense of universal love where death and birth and all of these things are happening, at least not on that first night.

36:24It was confrontation. It was hard. It was just pushing and pushing. And in the music, there's like this tick, tick, tick, tick kind of sound that just felt like it was gnawing on my brain and it wouldn't stop. So it was very torturous. There's one piece that I forgot that I left out after I had locked in on my intentions when I was writing this letter that I shared with you, to you and the kids. I went outside, there's an outdoor deck at this place, and it's dark out and I'm just laying down and I'm looking up at the stars, and I see the constellation with the three little stars that are in alignment.

37:20Orion. And I'm like, oh, that's Orion's belt. And I'm just staring at Orion's belt and I think, what is the significance of Orion's belt? I didn't know. So I pulled out my phone and I looked it up. Can I read you what I wrote down? Please. What I discovered? Please. So Orion's belt represents divine alignment between the physical and the spiritual realms. It represents transformation, a cosmic pathway to higher consciousness, and the divine feminine power. I love it. How wild is that? It's wild. And one of my youngest memories with my father was of making a constellation box out of a Captain Crunch cereal box and blacking it out.

38:17and my dad used to take me as a little, little girl on our balcony every night and we would look at Orion's Belt. In addition, Orion's Belt is connected to the pyramids, the Great Pyramids, and the Giza Plateau directly. So that's a beautiful connection and verification of you and me and our alliance and being together, and that's profound. That's beautiful. I was going to ask while we're on this, I would really love for you to give voice to the offerings that were offered to this feminine spirit, to the spirit of the plant. Because I feel that we are all spiritual beings in this human experience, and especially with men, to recognize what that is.

39:13Don't gloss over the offering. What is the offering? What did you offer? How was that prepared? Well, that could have gone better because I wasn't told that I needed to bring some kind of talisman to make an offering until I was already on the plane to the place. So I didn't consciously choose something in advance. I just had to go with whatever I already had on me. But I realized I had a few totems in my backpack, so I called you and I was like, I have this and I have this and I have this, like what should I do? And I had this walnut that I remembered you gave me and you were giving out, I think we were having a party and you gave them out to people, but I couldn't remember the context of it.

40:03Do you remember now? I forgot. And then you told me on the phone and then I forgot again. I facilitated a fire ceremony during which a feminine being came out of the fire. So a being in the fire. And those were the walnuts that were the prasad of that fire ceremony. So I would say - The point of the walnut is - The point of the walnut is that this walnut is activated with your truest intention, your truest heart intention. That is, the fire witnesses it, and it's the group in the community that then adds energy to it. So the fire is seen beyond worlds, so it's opening to the stars, to the celestial realms.

40:46And so the walnut holds the totality of the fire that was lit that night, and you're supposed to keep it very, very preciously and only eat it or offer it at a very potent time. so i would say that you were completely prepared and that there was great intention behind that and just because your your personality didn't prepare you were definitely right all right well that's good to know because the walnut was what i had and the walnut is what i offered it's kind of amazing um so that was friday and then saturday time bent all day and i couldn't move i just laid on that cot the entire day. I wasn't sleeping, but I wasn't awake either.

41:34I don't really know what happened. And I still don't really know what happened on Friday night. People are like, what did you see and what happened? And I'm like, it was just this experience that I can't put words to, but also I don't have crystal clear memory of, which also fucks with me and my desire to intellectualize it because I want to say this happened and then this happened and that led to this and then I had this epiphany and it just didn't operate like that for me and it's been a process of understanding that I got out of it exactly what I was supposed to get out of it even though it didn't deliver what I was attached to it delivering like I wanted those you know very specific visuals and those sorts of things.

42:22But the TLDR is that I did get everything I needed to get out of it and it's been the greatest gift that I could give myself. But back to the timeline, like Saturday, I just basically was flat out on my back the entire day and hallucinating and unable to move and unable to stand up and walk around. And you're not really eating either other than little bites of fruit now and again and some water. You're nauseous. And the whole thing kicks up again Saturday afternoon. And it's like round two. You start dosing with this stuff and the crazy music starts up again. And I'm just like, I don't know if I can do it again.

43:05And And the difference being that it then softens and this next phase of the hero's journey in our kind of travels upriver in Apocalypse Now to discover Colonel Kurtz is this rebirthing process where you kind of go through the birth canal again and you reparent yourself into the perfectly parented. child who is unconditionally loved and supported throughout their life. And that was an incredibly emotional experience for me and very meaningful where all of this started to kick in. And so it goes all night and culminates in the morning with some verbal cues through that process. And I just remember my heart bursting open and just feeling so grateful to be there and to be having that experience and also being completely deranged and not knowing what's going on and kind of being just out of my body completely.

44:22And Sunday morning turns into Sunday afternoon. And again, it's so difficult because the relationship with time is so fluid. But the final piece, and there's lots of ceremony going on and there's sound bowls and all kinds of other stuff, but this whole experience crescendos with this connect with your inner child experience once you've rebirthed them, where you're guided through this process of like drawing that young person towards yourself and reassuring them and telling them how amazing it's going to be and like how you're there for them. And you're basically becoming the parent to yourself as a child.

45:16And it seems so like to talk about it, like it seems so dumb, you know what I mean? But like in the process of doing that, like I felt so vulnerable and open and loving. And it was really profound for me, really profound. And the kind of crescendo final piece that ties it all up in a bow is this cacao ceremony that one of these women administers. And this is where all my baggage comes up i'm like you know as people who've been in this wellness world for a while right like i've heard a lot of like oh cacao it's so sacred and the cacao plant and like we have to revere the cacao plant it's so powerful and my cynical skeptical mind is like come on you know it's like it's hot chocolate that's what we're dealing with here right like like let's not get too crazy about it.

46:22And so there's a lot of talk about cacao is really powerful and this is how we're sealing this vessel. And a lot of people get really emotional when they drink cacao. And I'm like, no, I'm just going to like, yeah, we'll see. Right. And I say that only to say that I sipped this cacao and I just immediately burst into tears. That's so good. Was this filmed? No, thank God it wasn't filmed. And I left on Sunday evening to go stay in an Airbnb for a couple of days and to kind of get back into my body. And I was having hallucinations for like three days after that. And I wasn't able to sleep that Sunday night really, but I woke up rested nonetheless.

47:19And one of the most amazing things happened on Monday morning because of the heart implications of this powerful compound, you can't take any stimulants leading up to it. So I hadn't had coffee since I think Wednesday prior to the experience. And I'm somebody, like I'm such an addict. I'll just reach for anything to like take me out of the moment. But coffee is something I can't go a day without. Like I couldn't tell you the last time I didn't start my day with a cup of coffee in the morning. I don't drink it throughout the day. And I'm pretty strict about just having one in the morning. But I need that one in the morning.

48:01And so when Monday morning, it's very strong, but I was very much looking forward to that Monday morning of reconnecting with my favorite thing to do first thing. I brew it up. I take a couple sips of it. I'm waiting for the kick and I'm not really feeling the kick. And then I'm realizing like I'm not even really craving it. and I just dumped it out and I was like wow that has never happened and that's something I didn't expect out of this experience I had heard like oh this is helpful for people with addictions but that was a very like palpable specific and immediate like like benefit of this experience and like I said, like an unexpected one.

48:59Shocking actually to me. Now that doesn't mean that I've quit coffee, but I have reduced my intake significantly. And so that has been one interesting experience in the aftermath of this. And I would say that in the days and in the weeks, so now we're coming up on like five weeks since I've done this, That I do feel different and I do feel better. And that's not to say that I've been cured of all my demons and negative thought patterns and behaviors. But I would say that I'm better. And it's been revelatory in many ways. I feel more grounded. I feel more patient. I feel more able to be present when I'm consciously trying to be.

50:04I feel less hypervigilant. I'm not always looking for the exit or the way out of an experience. My foot isn't always tapping. I don't have the same sense of urgency. There's just a general feeling of greater calm and an appreciation, I think, of what's really important. Things like joy and gratitude, while not my constant companions, I feel like are more accessible to me and a little bit less fleeting. but I think the best sort of metaphor is that it doesn't feel like I'm walking around with a backpack full of rocks all the time. Like I've set the backpack down and I pick it back up and I'll walk around with it.

50:59But then I'll realize like, oh, I don't need to walk around with this and I'll put it back down again. I think that's the best way of describing it. But again, that's my interior experience. And more important to me is how I'm showing up for you and for other people. So you're the arbiter of whether or not this has had any impact on me or my behavior in a positive way. It's been profound in many ways, incredible. Like in one aspect, one perspective, you feel reborn. You feel like not you, like not the old you. You feel evolved. And I've had a few experiences with you that are literally the first I've ever experienced being your partner of over 25 years.

51:58we were talking about it and it's what it is is it's it's in your presence so what i identified it as is that the old you even in a condition of helping me you came with that backpack of resentment of being put upon of i don't really have the time to do this i don't really want to do this i wish she was smarter about this why isn't she smarter or why doesn't she know all these kind of things and even though you were you wouldn't say that ever and I think like many women we can feel about you know you know many levers of of energy that's very readily available to us so I always felt that separation and we did a couple mundane things together.

52:53And it was shocking to me because we don't do any mundane things together. And I said, I'm going to the car wash. And you said, I'll come with you. Just that statement. I'll come with you to the car wash. That was already, I was like, whoa, he'll come with me. So we went and then you chose the wrong car wash. You directed me out of where I was going and had me go to the specific car wash that was completely swamped. And then after we got trapped in the line, we discovered they don't clean the inside of the car. They only clean the outside. And the old you would have been completely incensed, especially if I had chosen the car wash to go to, but you had chosen it.

53:40So that helped. But we just went through it and you were just present. And then we got out and we just vacuumed the car out. Like we each had a hose and we were vacuuming this car out. And then we went to get some food and you looked at my post and you said, can I look at your phone? And I said, yes. And you took it and you said, you know, I wouldn't do this like this. I would change it. Could I change it? Is that okay with you and you changed it and you reposted it. And then we went to the movies and we were lying in the reclining seats and your face was so close to mine. And you weren't telling me anything.

54:23It wasn't anything amazing. It was not an amazing fancy date. It wasn't a big gift. It wasn't a big letter. You didn't write me a book. You didn't do something amazing. You were just there with me. and I felt like you were telling me your secrets and like I was the only person in the world. And I was overcome with emotion and the movie was really sweet. This had nothing to do with the movie. And I felt like, oh my goodness, what if we don't have enough time together? And I had never felt like that about you. and so it is simply in the presence it's not what you do what you achieve what you get what you grab what you present as it is the resonant tone of the presence that the feminine is desiring in the deepest part of her heart.

55:29And that is a shift that I think gives us hope as a couple that have been together for 25 years of what is the evolution that is possible. like it's it's profound and we both feel this it's as as if I feel we're on this spiral of time like we started off and in the young days that we were together we were creating we were raising our children and making art and music and movies and you and I were writing together and we were doing many things together and then the life got big and it separated us by the things you know you were achieving that that overarching drive right just took over and now i feel like the spiral has come around and we've been given the blessing of this awareness and this opportunity of a next evolution of creation.

56:36It almost feels as if the timeline has folded on top of each other. And now we get to begin again with all this history. And so thank you for being open, for having the courage. It's a Herculean thing that you did twice already. It's not easy. So thank you for doing that and for being open and to being available on the journey to continue to explore. And I don't think it's meant to be transformed all in one go. I think it's a journey. It's a journey of discovery. and it doesn't have to be all or nothing all the time. It just has to be cherished, revered, honored as really the most important thing.

57:35Yeah, I think one of the things that has weighed on me in the aftermath is the weight of expectations. It's sort of like, okay, I'm going to go do this. But if I come out of this and I'm not like, quote unquote, like fixed and I'm still me and I'm not like living up to whatever like expectations I've placed on myself or you have placed on me, like, well, he's going to go do this and this is going to like solve this problem and we're going to, it's going to improve our marriage. And if I don't show up for that or I can't live up to that, like then like either the experience failed me or I'm failing the experience and by extension failing you and everybody else.

58:28I get it. But I guess maybe that's a lens that you're looking at it still as an achievement. Yeah, but that's the whole paradigm. And so like shedding that is part of this integration process. it it's essentially like i mean the most kind of basic analogy that i can make is it's like rebooting your iphone you know when your technology gets buggy and you just unplug it and plug it back in or you turn it off and turn it back on and suddenly everything's working again this feels a little bit like that like there's clearly new neural pathways that are that are being like grooved and they're overriding some old patterns but it's not like an immediate fix like i'll find myself just you know doing things the way i always did but i have you know like an awareness like oh i'm doing that thing again like i can stop and i can like take a beat and like reassess and i would say in addition to like the coffee thing one of the bigger realizations has just been an awareness of my inner monologue, like this idea that there's just a fight club going on in my mind all the time.

59:41And I think this is true for, if not a lot of people, like most people, my negative self-talk is incessant. It never turns off. More often than not, I'm self-identifying with it. I confuse it for being me. And I take action based upon what it's telling me. And that is creating my reality and it's spilling into all the people I interact with and the consequences and results of the actions that I take. But the simple awareness of when it's happening and the ability to redirect or to just put distance between you and it, to mute it a little bit here and there has already been like massive and cool Just to be able to be like, huh, that's curious that that guy in my head is saying that thing again.

1:00:30And like, I don't have to, it's like all these, these are all things I know. I think part of the hardness that I've placed on myself has to do with just this heightened self-awareness of all of this because I've been in so many therapeutic programs for so long and I host this podcast where I have all these people come on and I read their books and I know all of it. You know, Arthur Brooks has been here three times. He's basically saying, here's your dilemma. Here's how you solve it. He's only one of many, Gabor Mate. In fall of 2015, I flew to Vancouver to spend an afternoon with Gabor Mate over a decade ago, long before he was as well-known as he is now.

1:01:21And he did what he always does where he flipped the tables on me and it turned into basically a personal session where he was just dissecting my soul and immediately identified then, here's your malfunction, here's your dilemma, here's what you need to solve it. It all goes back to early childhood, blah, blah, blah. You can listen to that episode. I think it's from October of 2015. In any event, when that was over and we were done recording and we were saying our goodbyes, he said to me, you know, I take people through these psychedelic experiences and I think you would really benefit from this.

1:02:02Like, you should really think about coming with me. And at that time, I was like, no fucking way. Like, I can't. That's too much. That's too scary. I'm in recovery. You're supposed to be this addiction medicine specialist guy and you're telling me I should go take drugs with you? It didn't compute then. I was not ready to hear that. And I still don't know that ayahuasca is the right thing for me. But the point is that this has been pointed out in my path for a long time. And it took me this long. And maybe I needed to do everything that I did to mature to the point where I was ready to have these experiences.

1:02:40But it's been very meaningful. And it's been kind of littered with these magical synchronicities. As I mentioned, when I was on the plane to go do this, I watched this Netflix documentary in Waves and War. very moved by these veterans and their personal testimony and how significantly it had positively impacted their lives, repaired marriages, put them back with their kids, made them productive members of society. I mean, these were people who really struggled to just function in daily life, like right out of a scene from The Hurt Locker where Jeremy Renner is walking in the grocery store and he just can't even figure out what to put in the cart.

1:03:34And I remember I was still in that Airbnb in the aftermath of this experience and I called Tyler, our boy and my producer. And I said, I watched this, I had this experience, I told him about it and I said, I watched this documentary and there's this guy and his wife, Marcus Capone and Amber, who are essentially the protagonists in this movie and we need to get them on the podcast and tyler was like i've already been in an email chain with like in before even i had done this thing there was already a dialogue that was happening about having them come on and i was like that's unbelievable like the timing of that and sure enough they came they did the show recently that will come out after this episode.

1:04:25And you were here for that. And it was just beautiful to meet them and hear their experience and how they have turned it into an act of service to help other veterans and to feel like the support from that. But I said to Marcus, he's like, how's the integration going? And in these experiences, you will hear time and time again, it's all about the integration. It's all about doing the work and the aftermath. It's all about those months after and making sure that you're very intentional about that phase of life. And I'm all about that, but I'm like, but what is it? What am I supposed to be doing?

1:05:06I feel like I could benefit from a little bit more guidance in that regard. And so Marcus offered to put me in touch with an integration coach, which I still need to follow up with him on that. So I'm excited about that. But that's also part of the achievement brain. I want to ultraman the integration. And I talked to the woman who oversaw this experience for me. And she's like, it's just a subtle thing. I told her what I was doing. And she's like, basically, you are doing it. And remember, the spirit animal of Iboga is the turtle. It's all about going slow and slowing down. And as much as I am prone to urgency and I'm rushing around, it's been a reminder that that is a facade because ultimately I am like the ultimate tortoise.

1:05:57I'm the guy who doesn't slow down and never quits and just keeps going, whether it's Ultraman or taking 10-year blocks to achieve anything. I know how to be the tortoise. And the tortoise in the long game always beats the hair. Like the hair can't beat the tortoise. And so it's about like really channeling or embodying this like my tortoise energy. I'm still myself. so we watch it together and and my awareness when i saw that documentary was that the demons that you are battling are no different than the demons that those men have and i know that that's like a weighty thing to say but marcus actually and amber actually address it the brain the human brain organizes trauma in the same way like you can't say somebody's trauma is more severe than another person's trauma.

1:06:52And one of the things that was really beautiful to witness was their transformation in their marriage and how it's completely given them a new life, a new relationship together, and also to learn that he had done it six times in eight years. And so it's a process of evolution. It's not about getting it right. It's not like if you get it a switch flicks and then you have it It's a process of becoming. And also, as with all things in life, we don't get to say what the outcome is. It's having the courage to be open to see yourself intimately at such a level that it risks everything else. and I'm not asking you to stay in this marriage with me so that we can have a specific outcome.

1:07:51I'm asking you to be courageous enough to be so intimate with me that we see the truth of who we are and then we can decide moment to moment to moment if we wish to continue creating life together in this manner. It's the intimacy that there is no outcome. Whatever is revealed will be shown. And it's beyond the human being or the personality. It is from the great one that is animating us.

1:08:29Why is that so provocative? I don't know. It's not provocative to me because I want - To me, it's like, whoa, you know, it still is like, like intimacy is scary. But I say it is a divine privilege. It's a privilege to know oneself at that level. And it's a privilege to know the partner that is my beloved in this lifetime. What else is there? You know, I'm not with you because of a paper or because we said it was so or because there's some project or there's a structure in society. I want you to be with me because you love me, because you want to be with me. And you sent me a text shortly after the journey.

1:09:22And you said, I love you. I really, really love you. And I replied, what a beautiful message. please tell me exactly what it is you love about me which i interpret as a test and you're like and then i see you later and you're like okay that wasn't a quick answer but that's what i'm saying yeah that's the opportunity i mean what why what else are we doing you know it's and so that it you can't get iboga right um obviously you know more than me but it met you at the appropriate level and manner and variety with which you ordered for yourself at your highest level and again um some of these moments have been the most beautiful moments that i've seen with you And so I'm very grateful and extremely grateful to this group of women that I don't know.

1:10:27And when you speak to me about them, I feel as if these sisters, these priestesses, these guardians, they held you in community for me in a way that I couldn't. and and that's a very powerful force and you know i have thanked you know our mutual friend and we've had long talks and exchange and i've recognized her and honored her and there's others that i don't know that were there that held you and i want to acknowledge that as the feminine, we have powers and forces that have been hidden and suppressed for thousands of years. And it is coming back, you know, the gifts that we have to offer. Yeah, it made me think, like, just those women were so powerful and held such an extraordinary, energy for this that i just thought like the world would be so much better if like women were running things like it just it just you know the way that men operate is you know when you just look at history you know and everything that's happened it all tracks back to men acting out on their childhood wounds for the cause of property and prestige and status and power.

1:12:12And the energy that I experienced with these women was the opposite of that, like the antidote to that. I really struggle with this word journey, such an annoying word. It's so loaded with baggage, but it was a journey and within that journey contained like all of the journey of life like it is this hero's journey you know this is like this three act thing where you go through these various stages that mimic the arc of an entire life so that you come out of it on the other side back to where you started, anchored in what's really important. And although it didn't have that experience of ego dissolution and oneness that psilocybin had, it did deliver on that idea that ultimately at the end of the day, after you've gone on this entire journey of life, it really just boils down to your capacity to love.

1:13:27How much love can you give and receive? And that's the only thing that matters. But your capacity to give and receive love is a function of your capacity to love yourself. And I would say that my life is one of not being able to do that, of being very violent to myself and living a life in which I'm constantly punishing myself and judging myself and unkind to myself. and if i want to be able to love you and love my kids and love my life and receive love from other people it begins and ends with my relationship with myself and my ability to demonstrate that for for me which sounds selfish and indulgent but ultimately isn't it is an act of service on behalf of other people as much as it is an act of honoring yourself.

1:14:36It's the highest act. That's it. And I think I could talk more about this, but I don't know that there's anything more that needs to be said. I'm grateful for having undergone that experience. I'm grateful for you supporting me doing it. It was an incredible gift that I gave myself and you helped me to give myself and that the people who oversaw it gave to me. And I want to be able to give it back to you through how I show up for you and through my behavior. And again, I say that as somebody who is not advocating for other people to do this. Not only was it the Mount Everest of psychedelics, it was like climbing Mount Everest without an oxygen mask or a winter coat.

1:15:32It was extremely, extremely difficult and not for the faint of heart, figuratively and literally, actually. So if this interests you, and I'm talking to you, the audience, please research it extensively and consider it with great deliberation before you decide to do it. What I shared is simply my experience. No matter what, if you end up doing this, your experience will be different. I can almost promise you that. But I will say that it's been profoundly impactful in the immediate aftermath. And time will tell how it will impact me in the long term. But more will be revealed. And I'm happy to share more at a later date.

1:16:24It's beautiful. So thank you. Thank you. And I love you. I love you. I love you so much. And how many ways? Someday I'm going to tell you the ways. Tell me exactly the ways. But I'm not going to do that right now. I'll do that later. All right. Podcast done. Namaste. Peace.