Patrick Cox | “Psychedelics in Ibiza Changed My Life”

25:37And I always stayed at the Shinjuku Park Hyatt. It's where they filmed Lost in Translation. Oh, of course I know it. Absolutely. You have to. It's a fantastic hotel. And that is so iconic, that film. Yeah. Well, that was my life. I mean, you know, you talk to someone, the person would answer for half an hour, he tries to answer, he said yes. I was like, it took half an hour? Like the translators just cut out whatever was deemed offensive, whatever they didn't want you to know. So after years of work in Japan, I found an Italian Japanese girl that we hired to be a translator. And she would talk to me in Italian so that the translators didn't know what she was saying because it was the only way of actually having a private meeting because everything was so highly controlled and so staged, managed.

26:22And then all of a sudden there was a new person in the room. I bet he talks Italian, doesn't he? Like, how do you know? It's like, hmm, I wonder why you put him in the room. But because I stayed there all the time, we used to go up to the top floor and just have the most amazing meals. I still drank alcohol then. They had an amazing wine cellar. They had – I'm a huge meat eater, beef, beef, beef. So they had beef from all over the world. And this is way before restaurants. Wagyu beef. Yeah, but this cut from New Zealand, this cut from here. Now that's kind of standard places in London, the cut, this, that, whatever.

26:53But back then in the 90s, that was really to curate where all the meat came from and everything. and the views. And then they had the jazz bar. Remember, that was a big part of the movie. The movie, yeah. Yeah, so I would always have jet lag. So I'd be up at 3 a.m. in Shinjuku or in Harajuku going bowling, listening to Madonna in a bowling alley playing at 3 in the morning because you were just so wide awake you couldn't sleep for the life of you. So that place was just – I really felt – it was the 90s. My whole career was exploding. I really felt like I'd arrived. And great. Great restaurant, great food.

27:28Yeah. Very good food. Great wine. Do you go to the south of France when you stay with Elton? At his, but we don't very often leave the house. Because whenever I'm there, I stay at the Colôme d 'Or every summer. Right. We go to Le Petit Maison. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's always in there. Yeah, yes, yes, yes, yes. So I was going to say, is that one of your favorites as well? With Nicole. With Mad Nicole. With Mad Nicole. He gives you a glass of champagne and then drops it. And the waiters are straight behind her, mopping them up. But the most amazing food. Yes, yes. Very simple, but very delicious.

27:56Yes, and truffles with everything. And jacket potatoes with pots of caviar thrown on top of it. Yeah. I love that. Absolutely love that. So let's go on to the next travel secret, which is what is your top travel tip or your best travel secret, which you might not want to tell us. I mean, there are no more secrets. Everybody does everything. And there's so much, you know, so much is diffused out there. But I guess my travel secret is sleep. Is sleep. If you go on a long distance flight from me, don't expect riveting conversation because I get on. I personalize the space all around me. You know, I've got my earplugs.

28:33I've got my face mask. And then I always travel. I guess this is my travel tip with a very, very, very fine cashmere throw. I'm a mouth breather. When I fall asleep, my mouth hangs open. There's nothing worse than walking by with some of their mouth drool coming out of their mouth. So I cover myself completely like a dead body, like a shroud. in my thin cashmere thing. And I'm under there in my blankie. I can smell my dogs on it because they lay it and everything. And I'm just in heaven. I remember flying to Singapore with someone and like, you know, ding, 20 minutes before we landed, I sat up and he was like this.

29:07He'd be drinking the whole flight because I'm never traveling with you again. You slept the whole way. Really great story is I used to go with David and Elton to the Oscars every year, not to the Oscars. To their party. And I might have been partying very late the night before I got on the plane. And I got on the plane, BA first class back in the day. And it was all stars, except for me, obviously, in first class. And Angelica Houston went up to David and goes, is he alive? And she goes, I think we should get a mirror. He goes, he's not moved once. And David's like, no, that's Patrick. And she's like, no, he's literally not moved.

29:45It's an 11-hour flight from Heathrow to LAX. So they had to calm down. Angelica Houston had to put something to prove that I was still alive. That you weren't dead. A complete stranger. I've never met her in my life. And she's like, that boy's not moved. And I used to have all the time, I'd have the stewardesses going, what pill did you take? Yeah, what did you take? I was like, no, no. You can just do it. Yeah, because it was the only place where my phone wouldn't ring back in the day. You couldn't get online. Nobody would bug me. And that was so rare because when I ran my company, I worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

30:21There was always somewhere in the world that was open that had a question or whatever. And I always took it because that was the way I was. I was a workaholic. So in the airplane, it was my zen moment. Perfect. Actually, a long flight's perfect for that. Yeah. And I very rarely eat the food, very rarely have anything to do with anything. They're like, you might as well travel in the economy. I said, yeah, but I wouldn't be laying in a bed. And I wouldn't be stretched out. I'd be like this over the person next to me. Yeah, like you did nothing. You just, I don't care about the entertainment. Don't care.

30:47Have you got a brand of cashmere wrap that you use? Or did you make yourself one? This is, I think I bought it with Elizabeth and Arun in India at the Oberoi Hotel. Oh, yeah. There's all those gift shops. It sells cashmere, cashmere, cashmere, cashmere, cashmere. So it's got a little bit of embroidery on it. It's not a chatouche. No, no, I don't think it's a chatouche. No, no one's ever stopped me with it or anything. though. Because they're illegal now, aren't they? They've been illegal for a long time. Oh, have they? Yeah, they've been illegal for a long time, yeah. But it's just a very fine cashmere blanket and taupe.

31:21Never lose it. No, no. I left it on a plane once in India. Did you get it back? And I ran back across the runway and got back on the plane because you couldn't in those days. There weren't as many control. It was just sitting there stuck in the seat. It was after I got it, the day I got it, I left it in the seat because I forgot about it. So it was meant to be, and it's got all your doggy smells and everything. Yeah, it's got holes in it. When I'm sick at home, I wear it around my neck to just keep me, you know, if I keep my neck warm, I feel good. Actually, it must have been great going to India with Arun because he was Indian, wasn't he?

31:52Yes, yes. So he is. I missed the wedding because I got run over by a car in 2007. I spent several weeks in a hospital. So I made it to the English wedding, but I was really unwell and I was on morphine. and then the next day they were all flying to India and Elizabeth just said, can you? Are you sure you can deal with this? We're going to be on elephants, this, this, this. I was like, I don't think I can do this. So I missed the Indian wedding. But then like two years later, I went out with Elizabeth and Arun and we kind of reenacted. We did Jodhpur and Jaipur and we got to see everything where it had been.

32:25Did you love it? Yeah, I love India. I love India. I'd really like my new spiritual self to do a more spiritual trip to India. Because, I mean, with the runes, you know, showbiz friends and everything, you know, we're in Mumbai and they're like, this guy's Tom Cruise's India. And I was like, I don't want to meet Tom Cruise. Why do I care about India's Tom Cruise? I mean, sorry, India's Tom Cruise. I was like, means nothing to me. I want to meet an Indian guru. Yeah, I want to go on a trek and I want to go to this and I want to go to Ganges and I want to do all that sort of stuff. But that's the new me, so it'll take a while for everyone to adjust to that.

33:01So you will do. I want you to tell us the story about, you see, Miyake and tuna. So way back in the day, this has got to be, Tyler Brulé was my boyfriend, 91 to 97. So it's about 95, something like that. I was a really early Amon junkie. I got introduced to the chain by Tyler because he was writing about them. And I went to like almost every single one because I went to Japan four times a year. I'd always break it up by stopping somewhere on the way. and so this one Christmas Tyler and I were at the Amanwana on Moyo Island the tented one yeah Princess Diane had just been there for like a month like a few weeks before maybe months before and because of bad weather on Lombok and in Bali we were there for three weeks no one really came in no one really came out so it was just this community of people that we got to know and it was really quite beautiful before things got vulgar may i say in a lot of the luxury travel world it was a certain type of person that traveled and paid that money that was i don't know they were intelligent and open there was an australian family that were there that had a child that was neurodivergent and it was beautiful we'd say you guys go we'll just take care of him and you'll be taken to the beach and play with him and things like that there was a german i guess industrialist husband and wife and we went tuna fishing out on the boat one day and did deep sea fishing and everything um it was just beautiful and then we caught all these tuna that were like 15 kilo or whatever and we brought them back and then we gave them to the whole resort there only were about 15 people because nobody could get in so they were half empty at christmas and this japanese man came up to me and bowed deeply and said thank you that was the absolute best sushi i've ever had in my entire life.

34:48And it was Isimaki, who I didn't know. He didn't know who I was. It was just a food moment and a gratitude moment. And it was so beautiful. How wonderful. And were you meant to be there for three weeks or you got marooned there? We were at least a week longer than what we wanted. But it was magic because we were sitting on the base. I don't know if you've been to Moyo Island, but it's not really a beach because it's more like, it's almost like it's on a lake. It's not on the sea, but it's, you know, it's rocky, whatever there's just so much wildlife and there was this whale that just kept doing these big breaking and splashes and dives and they're all the locals like there are no whales here that whales got lost it shouldn't be here um so it just was there for a couple of days going back and forth and back and forth so me being me i had one of the locals to take me out to the whale and and i jumped over the side into the water with the gorillas and there was like a 14 foot white manta ray playing with the whale which we could never see because it was actually underwater.

35:48So I'm in the water, my boyfriend's in the boat going, get out of the water. And I never, you couldn't really see anything once you were in the water, but you could feel when the whale went by you because there was a suction, which is quite dangerous because if you get sucked against it, the barnacles can like rip you and everything, which didn't really happen. But I could make out this gigantic manta ray. There was the whale, obviously, you could feel it the presence of the water and everything um and then they made me get back on the boat the next day the whale figured its way out or left but it was a really beautiful magical experience that holiday probably one of my favorite holidays because it just it had no rhyme or reason you could sleep you could do whatever the hotel had all these plans they didn't do any of them because there was nothing to do yeah that's amazing what a lovely story and it takes us beautifully onto your most poignant travel memory.

36:37I guess my most poignant memory is going to go back to the Gabon again because it was at a key time. It was 2008. I just lost my brand. I'd just come out of being in therapy and doing the Hoffman process and all sorts of things. And to just be in the presence of these animals that did not care that you were or used to be Patrick Cox, they just vibed on you by what was in front of you and what you were giving to them that day a gorilla you got really well got along with really well one day the next day would completely ignore you and one would walk by and thump you as it went by because it was annoyed with you because for something you'd done whatever it was just what I needed I was craving connection and reality and it was just so beautiful the silence the way they talk almost telepathically to each other I guess They're all tiny signals that we don't pick up on.

37:33But that to me was really important to me to realize what's important in my life. Because as a child, I was always obsessed with animals and I was going to be a vet. That was it. And then at the age of 15, 16, I discovered disco and drugs. And your creative side. And my life went another way. And through times and therapy and everything, they talk about the path not taken. And I was like, well, I can't really become a vet at 50. It's a little bit late to start that. But it made me realize that that's really super important to me, that animals are a huge part of my life. And I got back to the UK and I got an English bulldog and then I got another English bulldog.

38:16And now where I live, I have animals and where I'm going to go, I hope to open an animal rescue center. So that was an amazing connection. And then there was an eco moment of shame. we had a wildlife photographer with us and we were out um and there was a whole bunch of butterflies flying around and they're doing something called puddling is where they land and they somewhere where there's a lot of minerals and salts and he said to me and he goes well he goes you can cheat which we've done for documentaries you just need to pee on the ground he goes because the air will be covered with butterflies i went oh shit so where we were staying um was just shacks on the side of the river and because you heard the river run all night.

38:56You had to pee all the time. And where you went pee was where the butterflies were. Well, no, it was just a kind of a hole in the ground, but there could be an elephant right there because the bush is so thick you didn't know it. And I got really tired of walking all the way to this hole in the ground. So I started just peeing through the window, out the window without going anywhere. And he's telling me this story. I'm like, oh shit. I said, I got back to my camp that night and my entire shack was covered in butterflies. My eco shave that I'd been peeing out the window. Oh, that's so brilliant.

39:29And all these butterflies were like sitting there going puddling. Oh, that's hysterical. That whole getting back to nature and finding yourself takes us beautifully onto your travel journey. I would love to hear your travel journey. so I'm glad to use the word journey because my journey has been an inward journey and what you're talking about the changes in my life and everything so I'm after the demise of my company I spent about 10 years in the UK trying to figure out what I was doing next what's next what's next what next there's this saying life's in two accidents about surviving the intermission and I was very much stuck on the intermission so in 2017 I picked up everything and moved to Ibiza and started a new life.

40:12The only problem is this jerk called Patrick Cox followed me. And I was like, oh, you know, I was doing a geographical. I was trying to run away from my problems, but my problems were me and my problems followed me. And some friends introduced me to psychedelics and I had an experience smoking bufo, which is toad, which is the secretions of the Sonoran desert toad, which live in Sonora in Mexico. And in this secretions is the strongest psychedelic known to man which is 5-M-E-O-D-M-T and I thought I'd get emotional when I think about it. I had an experience, my breakthrough experience and it was the most beautiful experience of my entire life.

40:52I was an optimist who became a realist who slid into being a nitalist and this was the return of being an optimist again. It's the return of seeing there was hope for me, seeing that there was a future. So my journey was inward. And the toad is the, now it's extinct, isn't it? No, no. Is it protected? It's protected in Mexico. Only indigenous people are allowed to touch the toads and milk them. And the milking process, the animal should not be harmed. It should only be done by indigenous people. Unfortunately, it's on the border with the US. It's cartel country. There's all sorts of things. You know, Mexico has a lot of violence and gangs and things like that going on so unfortunately that's going on also there is a pure molecule that was synthesized by humans by scientists in 1935 and I think that will be the future of the work with this medicine I took part last year in a psychedelic drug trial at Imperial College London being administered with the pure molecule 5-MeO DMT it has probably the most applications potential applications of any of the psychedelics because it lasts 15 minutes.

42:03So it can work within the parameters of a psychotherapy session or a psychiatric work session where, you know, if you take acid, you're talking like eight to 10 hours, you're talking mushrooms, you're talking at least six hours. MDMA therapy, you know, again is, and that's why these therapies cost a lot, 20, 30 ,000 for them. But hopefully with the advances and hopefully with legalization and liberalization of laws and everything people will be able to do this um work with 5meo dmt but to me it it um just changed everything it was a place of um unconditional love peace acceptance um and i realized i did have a future and what i did didn't define me and i could look back with kindness at my past because before when people came up to me and would have a patrick cox moment i just feel so like a fraud because I was like well I'm a failure I mean I lost it you know I blew it and everything and now I can appreciate the great things I did do during that and then I can get on with doing something else which is this yes tell us about this because obviously with the psychedelics as well as the fashion brand which you'll talk about you're actually aren't you now doing it for people when they come to you yes and you're helping them through that journey yes in a very um safe environment.

43:24Tell us a little bit about that. So I would call myself a toad facilitator. I work specifically with toad. I don't work with other substances. I don't serve people mushrooms or this or that. I would never call myself a shaman. My teacher, who was Colombian and indigenous, he didn't call himself a shaman. He said shaman is lineage. Shaman is your father, your grandfather, you this, this, this. I worked with him for a year. And then after working with him for a year doing toad maybe once a month getting deeper into the medicine trying to it's like peeling an onion you go deeper you go deeper you go deeper trying to figure out things in my life it's like a psychic reboot it's like unplugging a tv and plugging it back in so everything you've learned in your life that you've been told by your parents your teachers whatever you're ugly you're stupid you're fat you're thin you're this you're not good enough you're not good enough you're not good enough all of that drops away and you see yourself as you really truly are which is a perfect light being um and it's so liberating to have that moment to just know that you're not defined by your past and to make peace with that so i can say to you in all honesty despite my sometimes violent childhood despite all the thing this moment is perfect so everything that happened in my life was meant to be and was perfect because it brought it brought me to this moment that took a long time to get over the anger of losing my brand to get over the anger towards my family to get over the anger of all sorts of things that's amazing but now I can say that with all honesty you know but it's not a panacea you have to work on it you have to every day wake up and choose to live in the light um you know it's not like ding you're fixed but it is amazing how in one 15 minute high dose experience you can can do that change everything um and then you've done the brand around that well so my teacher um very sadly he asked me to well he asked me to continue his lineage um he knew he was ill um he had pancreatic cancer and he died at the age of 49 in 2021 and he on his deathbed said you're not going to be happy until you make peace with your creativity he said i've seen you he said if someone walks up and tries to compliment you or just mentions shoes or clothes you'd have to walk out of the room he said you're just not interested you're shut down and he said you you're not going to be truly happy till you make peace with it.

45:35And so that was the birth of what I call my brand, Doors of Perception, which is off the famous Aldous Huxley book, The Doors of Perception, which he wrote on mescaline in the 1940s. And it was the first psychedelic book. And it's all about the new word for psychedelics is entheogen. It's what the legalizing world is trying to use. Because psychedelics, the word has a lot of baggage. People think of hippies soaring themselves a lot of windows and stuff like that. So entheogen comes from the Greek, reveals the God within. So we're not talking about people running around a field in Glastonbury and having a great time, which is all valid, but we're talking about deep, healing, meaningful work in a ceremony situation.

46:15So that's what I call what I do. I call it entheogenic apparel, feel-good fashion, consciousness-raising clothing. So it's something with a meaning behind it. The whole world seems to be going nuts about psychedelics right now, so that doesn't hurt my message at all. There seems to be a mushroom amongst everything I've ever seen currently. So that doesn't hurt at all. But there's a message behind it. It's about the discussion between about mental health and wellness. And that's what the ethos behind the brand is. Everything is sustainable. Everything is embroidered on the island of Ibiza where I live.

46:47Because I spent 20 years Monday to Friday in Italy. And I had this gigantic disconnect from my life. and I was just constantly searching for connection through drugs, through this, through that, through whatever. I was just trying to constantly find a way to soothe myself. And now I found it, you know, it's what I wanted. It's what I thought. It's through animals. It's through nature. It's through connection. And what apparel have you done? So you've got a lovely t-shirt on. It started with one sweatshirt, which has 40 eyes on it. It has 40 hours of embroidery to do these 40 eyes. And that was the first thing I started with.

47:21Elizabeth Hurley very kindly. I gave it to her Christmas 2022 as a present. She ran upstairs, took a snap, came back, said, put this on Instagram. And I went from like 40 followers to 800 over the three, four days of Christmas because everybody's bored out of their mind at home. And there's a gorgeous picture of Elizabeth Hurley. So click on that, click on that, click on that. So that was very, very kind. It started with that. Then we branched out into like a t-shirt. And then there was like a baseball cap. Now it's kind of a very nice offer, very limited and very curated but going full circle i designed the first shoe i've done in almost 10 years so i designed a sandal for doors of perception it's called four eyes because i used to be called four eyes as a kid as an insult um and it's got four of my eye motif on a two on each foot so you've got four i'm going online after this podcast straight away and i should buy myself a pair fantastic and they just came out in pink yesterday did they yeah we're on our third reorder they from nowhere they're probably my second best selling item.

48:20Fantastic. I mean, that's really quite... And you sell them in Ibiza, do you? We sell online, direct to consumer, and then we sell to two stores in Ibiza. And do you know Estelle Maison? Yeah. Maison Estelle? Yeah. They, tomorrow, probably will receive their first delivery because they just out of the blue called me up and said, we love your stuff. Could we carry it for the place in Oxfordshire? Yes, Estelle Manor. And then Scorpios in... Mykonos. in the bazaar, the name of the gift shop, is going to be getting delivery in two weeks and then a store in the Hamptons. So I was not going to do wholesale.

48:55I was only going to do direct-to-consumer. Then a couple of stores in Ibiza said, wouldn't it be great if someone could try your stuff on? So I started to sell to stores in Ibiza. It's gone really, really well. So now I'm expanding it. So where are you going next and what's next for you? So what's next is I'm leaving Ibiza. After eight years, my time in Ibiza is coming to an end. It's been amazing. It's been visceral. It's been real. It's been like a roller coaster. It's been exciting. It's been terrifying. And sometimes you just want to be sick and get off. So I'm at the, I just want to get off now.

49:30And where are you going? I'm going full circle. I'm going back to Italy where I worked Monday to Friday for 20 years. I mean, I used to call the place Shiddly. I hated it so much. My Italian friends called it Shiddly because they were like, you're right. That's terrible. You're right. That's terrible. um there's something about speaking the language you know i speak french and italian fluently um for some reason in eight years my spanish has just never really taken off and there's a frustration in that um i want more connection i want more realness so you know ibiza does have another side to the island a more spiritual side but it is getting more and more flash and more and more vulgar i call them the new vulgarians they seem to be taking over the world, led by Mar-a-Lago.

50:15So my idea is to go the other way. So where in Italy are you going to go? Probably Sicily. The brief to the estate agent was, I don't want a neighbor for at least one kilometer in every direction. He's like, really? I was like, at least. And you're going to have a dog sanctuary there? Animal sanctuary in general, which I've always said. It was one of the things I wanted to do in Ibiza, but Ibiza is just too expensive. So there's a lot of donkeys. There's a lot of cattle. as, you know, agricultural animals, dogs, cats, everything. So that's what I really want to do. I want the last bit of my life to have a little bit of psychedelic work, have a little bit of work with doors of perception, and then to be helping animals.

50:53That sounds absolutely magnificent. And I will come and visit you. And before I let you go, I asked you to bring a photograph. Yes. Can you show us the photograph or just tell us about that photograph and how it sums up travel? It's with a gorilla sitting on my head.

51:09so yeah it's uh it just i mean you can see the the look in my eyes um my mom saw another picture which i couldn't find with me with a gorilla she goes i remember that look she goes i remember you as a kid when when you'd see a dog on the street or something you just become something else um which i'd lost so yes it's a gorilla sitting on my head well i'm sure that this newfound journey has taken you back to who you wanted to be. And I can't wait to watch in anticipation and excitement. And I will come and visit you in Italy. I'm not sure that I'll do the psychedelic journey because I'm terrified by it.

51:48But it's very, very interesting. And you have been so interesting. I mean, the most hysterical stories, as I knew they would be, but also very poignant and very exciting. So great. Thank you so much. It's been lovely to see you, Patrick. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.