Peg Peters on Psychedelic Therapy, Healing, and Mental Health

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Welcome to he cast, the official podcast of he changed it.

As always, I am Mike Chism. As always, I am excited to sit

here and have an amazing conversation with an amazing

guest around the world of men's mental Wellness.

And boy, that is a big world and there's a lot of stuff there.

And the guy that we have on today, boy are, are he and his

wife and and his team doing something about the idea of

making men's mental Wellness a better experience in this world.

And for those who don't have that, a way to heal it.

His name is Peg Peters. Now Peg, he and his wife started

gathering groups, gathering groups, and you can find them on

gatheringgroups.ca. Now we're talking about the idea

of healing through psychedelics in this in this episode, because

they have devoted an entire purpose.

Really at the end of the day, I think about I think about what

Candy and her team are doing with he changed it and how they

are just driving hard every single day to build this

platform to build this community.

Well, Peg and his wife and and and gathering groups is doing

the exact same thing. What they're trying to do is

shed light on how psychedelics, specifically in their situation,

psilocybin or mushrooms can heal people and, and cause a curing

of anxiety, a curing of depression, a curing of some of

these amazing difficulties that, that, that, that people are

having in many cases. And they have it's, it's wrapped

around, you know, eight week sessions that they do over Zoom

followed up with a retreat where at their farm in, in, in Western

Canada, in the Fraser Valley in Western Canada.

And I mean, that's a, that's a beautiful part of the world

where then a high dose of, of, of psilocybin has taken.

And you, they have four years and counting of results and

they're starting clinical trials with, with, with, with first

responders and some of these folks who have PTSD and whatnot.

And they're finding the results are absolutely incredible.

And Peg and I have a fantastic conversation where I believe, I

believe every adult needs to hear Peg or someone who has the

same information and articulate delivery system that Peg has in

teaching people. I think there's a lot of stigma.

I mean, we talk about men's mental Wellness.

There's a big stigma with men's mental health.

There's a big stigma when it comes to the world of

psychedelics. And Peg has cut his way through

that is the former pastor back in the day who left, left being

a minister. He worked for Trinity Western

University and and just left that because he felt that there

was a bigger calling and, and and you can tell this guy is

just living his purpose. His enthusiasm is infectious.

I appreciate him so much. So that being said, if you

haven't downloaded the he changed it app yet, what are you

waiting for? Download the He changed it app.

Go to hechangedit.com for details.

My conversation with Peg Peters is amazing.

Today you can find he and and his movement at gathering groups

dot CAA true, true solution for many people out there.

And if you're listening to this and this resonates with you,

book a nympho session, see what is available.

Get out of that tunnel vision that you're in right now.

That's what we want to do. We want to make the world a

better place. Thank you so much, and I hope

you enjoy our conversation today with Peg Peters.

All right, Peg, I have been looking forward to this one for

the last couple of weeks. As I think I've mentioned on the

show before, there are certainly certainly elements of this

modern yet ancient healing, revolution, reformation,

whatever you want to call it that have been certainly

certainly calling out to me. I've got countless anecdotal

tales of how there were folks who were a certain way and then

they've gotten certain types of medicinal therapies that would

be considered a natural psychedelic, whatever those

could be, you know, however you classify it.

And you can probably give me some terminology today as we go

through this. And it has completely changed

their lives. And, you know, some people are

extremely, extremely hesitant to embrace this.

You know, the Nancy Reagan just say no years kind of a thing.

And, and, and, and there's a lot of confusion and things getting

lumped into different places. You have sifted through a lot of

that stuff and really started making a difference in all sorts

of people's lives. Peg, I'm so grateful that you

are walking around on this planet and that you're willing

to share some of the information that you have here, if you

wouldn't mind. Peg Peters, who are you and what

do you do? Oh, thanks, Mike, it's great,

great being on a podcast where we want to talk about these

kinds of issues and with people that are really open minded.

And I think that's, you know, I think what the biggest thing I

want to start with today is this idea of curiosity.

That's really a key just, and, and so if we, if we can approach

this topic with kind of an openness to say, hey, how do I,

how do I get curious about this new way of thinking about

healing and connection and community?

And that's kind of I, I for, for me, I'm, I'm not much interested

in just plant medicines as, as a pill of like, hey, we need

another pill to help us with our mental health challenges.

That's I'm not interested in that story.

I'm very interested in an ancient story, connection and

community as the foundation of what we're missing.

And that once we get together in a community in safe ways and

then we move into these ways of working with plant medicines,

then they can do powerful transformation inside of us when

we feel safe and connected with others.

I think most of the fear that people have around kind of the

war on drugs from 1971 on is these these stories of these

medicines that people take. And like, I'm going to take LSD

and jump out of a window or I'm going to fry my brain or I'm

going to somehow change who I am if I take these medicines.

And I think yes, they are very powerful and we need to respect

them. And I really want to start with

sense of a not like I'm not just like, let's legalize these and

put them in the water and let's get everyone, you know, high on

mushrooms. I'm really interested in a

careful communal way of working with these medicines in safe

ways with therapists in community.

Not to say you cannot have fun on these medicines

recreationally. I'm sure the way they need to

come into our communities is through a real safe model.

That's tested scientifically rigorous and and really builds

community first and then we can move people into these altered

states. So yeah, I'm, I'm my wife and I

started something called Gathering Groups about four

years ago and it's a 12 week program that prepares people

with two facilitators over an 8 week journey online.

So you have a group of eight people, 22 facilitators, you

meet weekly in a certain community of practice for eight

weeks. Then you come to a two night

overnight psychedelic retreat just outside of Vancouver here

at our farm and you go with your group and you go into a deep

kind of psychedelic journey. And, and then that's integrated.

We have dinner together, we sit around of fire, we integrate, we

share what's came up and then we come back online for four more

weeks and integrate what what came up in your journey?

What, what patterns in your life did you want to shift?

What things did you want to let go of that are now it seemed

easier to kind of let go of in your life.

And so that's that 12 week protocol that we've developed

quite rigorously have now been, we've done about 55 groups

through this. So over 400 people have gone

through this protocol and we've continued to refine it.

We've got physicians, a psychiatrist, over 30 therapists

have given feedback into this protocol.

And so this is a really powerful model that's based on an

Indigenous way of working with medicine.

And that's that's really key because Indigenous societies

have used these medicines for thousands of years.

We did not invent this. This is not Johns Hopkins in

1990s first doing their first clinical trial with end of life

anxiety, which is kind of the first stuff that came in the 90s

and early 2000s. That's not the first time that

we did this. And you can't even go back to

the 60s and say, oh, it was the 60s when they were using LSD at

Wayburn Mental Health Hospital in Saskatchewan.

That's where the term psychedelic was first invented

and coined was by a Canadian. And yeah, it I.

Had no idea. I have no idea the word Canada.

A point by a Canadian at the Wayburn Mental Health Hospital

in Saskatchewan looking at LSD for alcohol treatment disorder.

And so they were finding that this molecule that they had that

was discovered by Albert Hoffman, who had synthesized

this in the 40s during World War 2IN Basil, Switzerland.

He had discovered this molecule that was based upon an ergot

mushroom. He had synthesized the molecule

is called LSD. And they were beginning to use

this in the 50s in Canada. And we were the first country to

begin to look at this and why Canada.

And I think it's really important because in the 50s we

already had socialized medicine. So the Canadian government

recognized that we had a whole host of people that we were

putting into mental asylums, literally shipping people off

into institutions. Yeah.

And because we were dealing not with private medicine, which is

like, who cares? They're poor.

Who cares if they rot away? This was socialized medicine.

And the CCF, which is the precursor, the NDP, yeah, come

up with the idea that we believe as Canadians that mental health

and all health needs to be a universal thing, that no one

should be have less access just because we don't have money S

everyone should have access to the best treatments on the

planet. And so Canadians came up with a

psychedelic treatment for some of these big, big disorders in

the 50s and 60s. And we were the ones pioneering

this medicine with the idea of to help people with alcohol use

disorders, schizophrenia, things that no medicine could really

help. But this molecule was showing

promise. And so I really want us to

recognize that first of all, Canadians have played a really

key role in, in this. And #2 we're not the first ones.

It's our indigenous brothers and sisters that have used

mushrooms. The Mazatec First Nations people

in Mexico have a 500 year history documented of using

these medicines. We know communities like the

Ayahuasca communities in South America have been using these

plant medicines for centuries as a way to work in community.

Never by yourself, it's always with other people that can hold

your discomfort and your fears and allow you to feel belonging,

which is really key. If you want to see shifts inside

your nervous system, you need to feel that you're safe and that

you belong. So that's, that's the kind of

stuff that we've been really looking at is group work with

psychedelics. And we've got a a clinical trial

coming up in 2025 in Canada looking at that exact issue with

first responders and psilocybin and using our group based model.

You don't say that very often. You don't put what you do in a

nutshell very often, do you? My gosh, that was very well

articulated, Sir. That is very well articulated.

How many times a week do you do that?

I don't know, man, but yeah, a lot because, you know, it's hard

because you have to kind of get past, like you have to get past

all of this, you know, 50 years of the war on drugs mentality.

Yeah, Yeah, you've got that that.

So you've got a social stigma against this, lumping it in with

drugs. We're hard drugs, right?

Like heroin and and fentanyl and these kinds of drugs that are

destroying our culture. They're destroying our people,

right. Yeah.

These are not the same medicines.

So first of all, they're not addictive.

So you have to go to like the top neuro neuropharmacologist is

named Doctor David Nutt. And if you can, you can put this

in your show notes. He made a graph of all the top

20 medicines on our planet that we that people use from cocaine,

heroin, methamphetamines, all the different drugs.

And he looks at the addiction versus harm rates, right?

Which is the ones the most addictive and which ones

actually create the most harm to the body and to other people.

And he any you know, we look at nicotine and alcohol.

Alcohol is the number one. Absolutely the most.

Harm alcohol and we you know we celebrate alcohol in our culture

and the least on this list of pharmacology is psilocybin.

It's not addictive. It's impossible it has not it

has no addictive properties if anything it's anti addictive

because the experience is so big psychologically that you go whoa

I've got a I'm going to take some time to really understand

what happened here in my psyche. I don't want to do that again

for a long time, right. So it's not addictive.

And the harm wise, the only, only harm that we've ever

recorded, you cannot overdose on psilocybin.

It's a natural occurring substance.

So you cannot overdose. What will happen is a big

psychic material will come up and that can be really

challenging for a lot of people. So that you, if you're not in a

safe context that is kind of held well by a therapist or

friends or community, then this kind of material, if you're in

the wrong set and setting. So set is our brain, the kind of

the intention we put into this, what, what set is going on

inside of us. And then the setting is the

environment in which we take it. So if I take mushrooms and I'm

in a chaotic place, I'm in traffic or in a downtown city,

it could really accentuate that. And I can feel really scared and

feel really overwhelmed. But if I'm in a real serene

place, we're calm and I'm feel connected, I feel real.

It's a belonging and love. And This is why I'm going to use

the word belonging a lot today, because this is the this is the

research that we've found is that if I can focus on one

thing, it's not the integration of this material that will

happen naturally. If you are with people that you

feel like you belong where you feel safe.

And if that happens and you do psychedelics, there's a natural

connection to integration that will happen organically.

And so satin setting are important.

And and so it's a big hurdle to try to get these, this story out

to the right people to say, can we get over our war on drugs

mentality and see these incredible organic gifts to our

planet to help us engage in the challenges of mental health

struggles that no medicine is really doing well at, you know,

at, at dealing with the issues of despair, isolation,

loneliness, depression, anxiety, PTSD, trauma, loss, all of those

kinds of things we see in our program.

And we see a massive shift for people.

And I'm going to put it at the level, and I'll be provocative

because people don't like this. Sure.

I'm putting up the level of cure rates.

We're not talking about we're diminishing your depression a

little bit. We're talking about you not

being depressed anymore. Yeah, done curing it.

Feeling a deep sense that I'm lovable for the first time, that

I, that I'm enough that my voice matters, that I am divine.

Even that happens for people and it has a long lasting effect.

Six, one year, 2 year follow up data on our group model is

saying this is sustainable as we work through this kind of this

kind of model and program. So I'm, I'm passionate about

this because our world needs this right now, big time.

You know, it's funny, you, you went through a whole bunch of

words, some of which are acronyms, conditions, some of

which have become buzzwords in our society.

You know, you just take PTSD, for example, and, and, and all

of that list that you went through again, so succinctly.

And I'm, I'm so glad that you're able to wave the flag and

communicate as clearly as you are, because clearly this is

what the lawmakers, the decision makers and, and, and also people

who are going through this stuff that have closed minds.

That is what is needed to open minds and to create dialogue.

So thank you for that. But you have gone through that

list that you just went through. You know, those are words and,

and, but, and especially buzzwords that we have only

discovered or, or come into contact with in the more recent

times. But what you're talking about

PTSD. Just because we created a label

for it and have a better understanding of it now doesn't

mean that 300 years ago it didn't exist.

Of course it exists 5000 years ago or 5000 or 100,000 years ago

in our evolution. Exactly, exactly.

And, and, and, and these things that you're talking about that

we are able to label and, and, and, and have a, have a more

succinct understanding of now, despite the fact that we have

this understanding now you're talking about a cure, a

treatment, a way of dealing with these things that has been

around forever. And really at the end of the

day, my question is, has it changed very much?

What's the difference between what, you know, dosage, types of

medicine that you use in your groups compared to what our

indigenous brothers and sisters would have been doing, you know,

100 years ago, that kind of a thing.

Has it changed very much? Has technology helped or do you

say technology get out of the way?

And part of the issue here is that there's no money to be made

for some of these big companies. And that's why these things

aren't embraced. And I mean, that's, that's,

that's, that's one where we could go down a big path.

On yeah, you know what, let's just just dip our toe in the in

that for a second, right. So Can you imagine like we are,

you know, we, we are dealing with something that, that, that

those of us that are doing research on this around the

planet and we're connected. So we've got, you know,

Australia and US and, and Switzerland and UK, lots of

universities, 143 universities right now currently have

clinical trials going on with psychedelics, 143 universities.

So this is. That's encouraging.

This is an encouraging. It's a kind of encouraging.

Thing in the last 10 years like it's just starting right yeah.

So where we're going to be in the next 20 years is going to

revolutionize how mental health is going to be treated on our

planet. It's going to take some time to

get our regulators and our decision makers to open up to

it. And we see a lot of kind of

maybe initial excitement and then we get a fear based

response. We even see this in Oregon where

they've legalized it in certain centers, but just recently on

the ballot initiative, uh, last week, uh, in or two weeks ago on

the US election, there was a number of counties that said,

you know what we don't, we, they lumped in psychedelics with all

drugs again and they said, we don't want fentanyl and heroin,

you know, legal. It's destroying our people.

We don't want this, we. And so they say no to all of it

again. And I'm like, oh, so there, this

is going to happen. We're going to, we're going to

face this, you know, openness and then a kind of restriction

of fear again. So let me, let me kind of go

back. Your question was what are you

noticing, you know, different now between, let's say our, the

ancient models and, and what we're doing?

I think the first is 2 things. One is is we are recognizing

that we do not heal alone. That our, our modern world has

been so focused on individual healing.

You go to your therapist or your psychiatrist because I need to

get fixed, right? There's something wrong with me.

I need to go to a therapist. And again, my wife's a

therapist, my best friend's a therapist.

Therapy is beautiful. It's an important part of our,

our world. It's not the answer to our

mental health conditions in the long run.

It's a stop gap. It can help some, but by large,

by and large, that is not how we heal.

We are wounded in communal structures, so we're wounded in

our families of attachment of origin.

We're wounded in systems and jobs and friendships in

marriages. We are wounded as human beings

and traumatized in our flawed communal structures.

So what Indigenous people have kind of taught us is that the

way to heal is to put you back into a safe community and begin

to heal with others. So that you begin to recognize

that it's not just you are messed up and you've got a story

that, you know, you are part of a group, that we all belong

together and that even your stuff that you're navigating is,

is not special, that you are actually all of you are, you

know, all of us have stuff. And it begins to kind of

normalize the story that I'm not the only screwed up one that

needs to get fixed by the psych, you know, by the psychiatrist.

And so I think the biggest learning from our Indigenous

brothers and sisters and from our past is the importance of

community. Johann Hari has a book called

Lost Connections and Johann Hari is a great writer.

And in this book he looks at the rise of SSRIs.

This is depression medication, right?

So he looks at in the last 30 years, how is it possible that

something like, I don't remember the exact number, but it's like

200 or 300 million people daily take a pill to deal with their

anxiety and their depression. And this is their, it's a, it's

a daily dose of this thing in the billions, billions of dollar

industry that did not exist 20 years ago.

This happened. And he, he argues, he says,

what's the reason this is not has happened is not because, you

know, pharmaceutical companies have done great marketing,

although they have. It's that we no longer have

systems of, of place where we can really feel seen and heard

in communal settings. Our religions no longer hold us.

They become places of shame, of sexual violence, of senses, of

places of fear, where we have notions of gods that are going

to send us to hell and feel that we are the worst.

So these models are no longer working for our mental health.

So we don't have those places of belonging.

Our families are beginning to split up.

Our marriages end. And 50% of the time our young

people move to places where they can get jobs.

They don't live around their parents anymore.

Our old people are farmed off into institutional housing.

So we no longer have our wise elders living among us, giving

us wisdom on how to live with this.

And So what happens is our lives became fragmented and isolated.

And Johann Hari argues that it's not that we don't have people

that we watch a football game with or hang out at a bar with,

is that we no longer have people that we can really be honest

with and talk about the deepest stuff of our life.

And when we no longer have those groups, our mental health is

going to slide and diminish and we're going to need substances

that can help us push that down. And that's what an SSRI does.

It mutes these feelings that are really overwhelming because we

don't have the the ability to sit with them.

Psychedelics do the opposite. They're not a suppressant.

Alcohol is a #1 suppressant of emotion.

We use alcohol to suppress the anger, the feelings, the

discomfort. I feel those are those are drugs

that suppress. Psychedelics are the opposite.

They open, they reveal. They the word psychedelic means

soul revealing or mind manifesting.

I didn't know that. Opposite so we this, this

medicine actually opens us up to these deep feelings that have

been trapped in our body. You know, we, we hear about

there's a there's a book called the body keeps the score by a

guy named Bessel van der KOK. It was a New York Times

bestseller when he looked at trauma getting locked in our

tissues in our body. And he says that if our body

keeps score, we remember these places of tension in our body,

that what we need is substances and and modalities to help U.S.

Open up our body to healing so we can feel these feelings again

and allow them to pass through US and leave us.

And so it's feels like how can a psychedelic heal trauma, right?

What, how can this work? Right?

It's not exposure therapy. You don't have to go back to the

trauma per SE. It's that these, these medicines

open us up to feel this with the down regulation of our fear

circuits. So our amygdala, which is our

fear becomes down regulated our frontal cortex which is always

this busy mind that. The decision making part, yeah,

yeah. And then all of a sudden what

comes online is our access to our emotions and our story

without fear. And so that can then open up and

flow through and out, allowing people to really navigate deep

personal trauma in a very short period of time.

Sometimes one or two psychedelic experiences with proper guides

and proper integration and people can really clear some of

this stuff. So I think we need community

again. Yep.

And and we need these ancient medicines again.

And if these two things could come back into our culture of a

deep sense of spiritual community, not religion, but

deep spiritual community and an openness to plant medicine on

earth, medicines as a way for us to now go back and say these

medicines used to be vital and integral.

If you go back to ancient it, you know, you go back to Western

traditions in Greece. So I did this last summer.

I went on a tour of Greece. And there's a site called a

Leucus just outside of Athens. It's 20 kilometers West of

Athens. It's on the coast.

It was the site of the largest psychedelic retreat that has

ever happened on our planet. For 1200 years, every year in

September, the third week of September was the temple of

Ellucis held 5000. People would trip in the

darkness with a psychedelic plant that they would consume in

a by these priests. These female priests would give

it and everyone was allowed to go to this go to Ellucis.

It was Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, all went to Ellucis,

Marcus Aurelius, we we have records of all these ancients

that would go to a lusus. They would have to prepare for

six months with a group of 20. People.

Yeah, yeah. For this big journey and the

journey was to face your own mortality, right?

You have to face your own death. And and this is what the journey

was. You go to the underworld, you go

to Hades. In essence, that's the the

metaphor of the underworld that the Carl Jung called calls the

inner life, the inner psyche, the shadow parts of us.

You need to go down into the shadow into the Hades inside in

order to re emerge and realize that you know what even death

can't stop. Even my fear of death will no

longer hold me back to becoming the person that aligns with my

values that are full of love and connection.

And so you, you have this ancient practice for over 1000

years. We've got record of thousands of

people journeying men, women. This was the one equalizer in

Greek society. You know, you had they had a

very stratified society, right? You have slaves and.

Free people, classes, genders. Yeah, all of it.

All of it was. Once a year they dissolve that

anyone slave girls. Any slave girls that's the most

the lowest you could get could go and journey at Ellucis

alongside of an emperor because everyone in essence takes off

their hat and becomes the same when they move into an altered

state. It's like what Burning Man used

to be. It's the.

First Burning Man. It's the first Burning Man.

The Temple of Ellucis is the first Burning Man experience,

and early Christianity adopted these principles.

And a guy named Brian Murarescu, an ancient Near Near East

scholar and linguist, wrote a book recently.

If I can find it here, where was it?

Here? It's called the immortality key.

I'll put that as a note. And he documents using

archaeobotany. This is a new science where they

scrape vessels that they find in archaeological digs, like wine

jugs, and they can scrape it out and use kind of DNA evidence to

say what was in that wine? Was it just pure grape juice?

And what they find is in these Christian vessels where they

serve communion to the early church before 300 AD, before it

was became Christianized as the Christian Empire, the

underground. Before Constantine.

Constantine. Before that, yeah, yeah.

They would use psychedelic wine. So we have evidence now,

archaeological evidence of psychedelic substances inside

this wine in the vessels so that when the women would serve the

Eucharist in the early church, you were actually encountering

the divine within. This wasn't just a symbol of,

you know, Jesus death. This was actually allowing you

to go inside with this psychedelic wine and actually

have a divine experience of, of recognizing your own sense of

who you really are. So that's to me is controversial

for lots of people, but I'm fascinated by this kind of

history. I'm going to dull, I'm going to

dull a little bit of that controversy with a couple of

things that you said to, to, to make notes because as you you

kind of alluded to it earlier, it's not a catch all for

everybody. It's not everybody's different.

Everybody's got a different thing.

You talk about religion and I mean, I'll tell you some of the

people in my life who are the most well adjusted people are

the folks who are part of a Church of whatever denomination.

I'm not even going to go down to which deity, never in mind

denomination. A lot of the people in my life

that are the most well adjusted people, people that I would

strive for to have a similar mindset towards are the ones who

are part of a community in a Church of somewhere where it is

all positive and there isn't some of the, the icky stuff that

that that that's headline grabbing and things like that.

I look at some of these communities and it goes back to

your 3C's because they're constantly present.

You talk about being curious, right?

These are people who are, they're constantly being

curious. They're always part of a

community where they can belong and they can connect with

because they are not in a place of fear of shame, judgement,

these sorts of things. Unfortunately, that, like you

said, is segregated. It's few and far between.

Many times, many times, you know, it's not one label covers

all. It is literally a case by case

situation. But the, the, the, the guts of

what you're saying is, is, is 100% aligned.

You people want to be connected. It's the whole reason why my

wife and, and, and her team are building.

He changed it. We want to create a digital

space where guys who haven't been curious, they have

literally been in tunnel vision and, and, and, and not taking an

introspective look at where they're at.

You, you nailed very, very, very much nailed.

You know, two of the key phrases that every guy out there and

then as she changed it and they changed it kind of come up that

that will also, I think it'll resonate between all three of

the, of the, of the platforms. You are not alone and you are

enough. And, and, and I mean, my word,

how do you not get to that place of knowing that you are not

alone and you are not enough without community, without being

curious and, and, and, and actually talking about these

things. And finally, the other part, the

other thing with my wife, she's got a background in, in what

would be called, I don't know if it'd be holistic healing or

whatever, but long ways back and, and you know, I haven't

needed a ton of, you know, MD doctors in my life for the last

15 years or so. You know, you break something,

whatever you got to get it casted, sure, but you have a

headache. And this is the part where I

appreciate where you're coming from.

You have a headache. We have been, gosh,

institutionalized to the place where, oh, you got a headache?

Take an aspirin, OK? Whereas she goes deeper and she

goes, oh, hey, what's caused this headache?

Oh, OK. It's something going on in one

of your, you know, with one of your organs.

Take this supplement and you go to the root of the problem and,

and you take the idea of the aspirin and the headache where

you're literally masking the headache and hoping whatever is

causing it will pass. OK, that might be benign even as

a, as a, as a thought, But when we're talking about

intergenerational trauma, trauma from our like stuff that we

haven't and you're literally creating a, a, a model a billion

multi billion trillion dollar industry.

You know, it's something I've been hearing the phrase the

industrial pharmaceutical complex being kicked around.

And again, not to say that it's not important to have these

things, but balances everything and things have to be checked.

If we have created a society where we are dulling the things

that could literally make a short circuit could lead to more

disease in our body. So it could fester, could lead

to disease of the brain where you know, we are not being

nevermind the best person version of ourself that we could

be. But we are now going down a

place where we are damaging ourself and others and where the

our solution for it on scale is taking something that just dulls

it but does not get rid of it. This is a recipe for disaster.

And this is what we're seeing. And the ironic part is, you

know, this is where the addictions come from and all of

these things. And now those addictions are

being fed by these industries that are profiting from people

who are addicted to them, unfortunately.

And that needs to stop. That needs to change.

And again, I'm not saying we need to get rid of the

Pharmaceutical industry, not even close.

Is that to be what our position would be or my position would

be, but it's the idea of letting in things that actually work and

not squishing them out. Has the resistance gone up or

down? So I hope all that what I just

said there is a good response to what you said.

We're on the same page. I'm super curious over the last

four years and beyond because it's not like you just said,

hey, let's do this. Four years ago, you clearly had

a lot of through line of, of, of of seeing impact and planning

and preparing to do this. Has the resistance gone up or

down in the time that you have started this peg?

You know, I think it's, it's the resistance has gone down and,

and I think, you know, I'll, I'll so last week I was in

Victoria, BC and I was asked to speak at the BC firefighters

conference. And now this is a a provincial

wide a conference where they're bringing their industry leaders,

their captains and, and really looking at issues to deal with

in the section I was dealing with was mental health.

So they were looking at, you know, what's going on with the

issues of trauma and and anxiety when it comes to our first

responders population. What we're seeing is that issues

of issues of suicide are actually rising and they're

like, how do we stop this? These are like, what is going on

with these, these these young men primarily.

And yeah, there are women involved too.

They're primarily young men that are going into this that are

facing horrific traumas that they have to deal with,

particularly with a lot of overdose problems.

So they're going into these scenes, they're seeing being

death and dying over and over and over.

And our bodies are not designed to be able to metabolize that

kind of trauma. And So what happens is that you

eventually dissociate from it, which means you no longer feel

it. You have to just you almost

glaze over like another, another OD.

I'm going to the thing. Now, what happens when you do

that is it allows you to have some kind of armor to be able to

show up at work and, you know, be on the job and rush into a

fiery building, but it doesn't allow your nervous system to be

able to pivot when you come home.

So what you've done is you've taught your body to shut down

when it comes to hard emotional issues over thousands of

experiences. Then you come home to your wife

and your wife's like, you know what, honey, this is what's

going on in my life. And you're like, I can't, honey,

can you just stop it? I'm going to go get my Jack

Daniels and I'm going to, you know, I need 3 or 4 drinks

before we can talk. And this is what's happening.

And so when I go and speak to the BC firefighters, there's an

openness, you know, their head of their union, It was the one

who invited me and it said to me, Peg, we we need a new way of

helping our members navigate some of these traumas.

And we are looking at psychedelics as a possible way

that these these guys could navigate this and, and really

find some healing. And what we want to teach is

this ability to pivot. We want you to be able to bring

armor up when you were on the job.

I want you to be able to rush into a building and not think,

oh, what am I going to see? I love that you are a hero going

out there on the front line minds.

However, we need the ability for you to then come home, be able

to let go of some of this stuff, process it in community and then

show up for your children and be able to be present for your.

You know, 8 year old daughter that needs a hug right now and

wants you to read her a story on on your lap.

Rather than I need to just check out and go into my man cave

with, you know, a bottle of whiskey and a game, which just,

you know, a game on the screen which allows me to just shut

down everything. That's what's happening.

And so psychedelics have the amazing, there's an amazing

opportunity here to work alongside our first, our first

responder population and really show that a model like this,

when it's done in community, it done safely with the right, you

know, set and setting in a communal setting can really help

our first responders find a model to navigate some of this

trauma and to be able to lift that up so that they can still

be aligned with their values. They want to show up for their

wives. I know that I talked to these

guys, they're not jackasses. They're beautiful men and women

that are wanting to do good in our world and that they're,

they're outmatched by the trauma that they're experiencing.

And it's totally normal for them to feel numb, to feel dull, to

feel like I, I just don't even want to wake up anymore, you

know? And I totally.

So there's a shift that's happening.

And I think it's happening because we're coming to the end

of our attempts to be able to navigate some of these kind of

things, and it's nothing's working anymore.

Our suicide rates are going up, depression continues to rise,

and nothing's working. And along comes into this story,

an ancient medicine that's inviting us into community and

into kind of knowing ourselves in a new way, finding this

beautiful love that is inside of all of us, but has been masked

over by the traumas that we've experienced.

I think that's a beautiful story.

And so I hope to be part of the unfolding of this on a legal

setting in Canada, which starts first by research.

We need to get research data so we can show Health Canada that

we know it's safe. I've we've done it lots.

We need to prove it now in all these clinical trials.

It's safe and it's effective on the long term.

And there's no downside. There's no negative outcomes

from it. And so we think that that's

possible. And so we're, we're, we're

excited to start our trial in the spring of 2025.

Yeah, that's really, really exciting about that.

Who is it's, it's first responders who are in the, in

the, in the trial here. And I mean, I, I hate the fact

that folks like the military or the the first responders have to

be the tip of the spear to kind of get this thing done.

It makes sense, of course. I mean, of course it makes

sense. You know, you've got this, you

know, epidemic of, of, of, of mental breakdown that is

happening and it's, it's expressing itself in so many

ways in this particular industry.

But I'm thinking about the guy in the truck right now who's

driving, listening to us, who's going through that same thing,

who's living that quiet life of desperation.

And he's hearing this and, and, and, and he's starting to kind

of not be tunnel visioned and pop his head up and he's

starting to get curious and go, okay, this is really resonating

with me here. It should be something that is

available. And I mean, just to hear that

there is no downside, the level of scrutiny that that you are

preparing for and have already received no downside.

When I look at again, back to the, the pharmaceutical side,

they're able to show percentages and oh, well, in this number of

people, it was effective. Obviously there's this number of

people where it's not and whatever and it's not, it

doesn't outwardly appear to be nearly the same scrutiny.

And you need to have the energy that you have to do this.

The idea of combining what we do know when it comes to therapy

and, and, and, and how to unlock and relate to our mind, to our

body, to our trauma and get these things together.

And you combine it with this amazing medicine.

We've come so far as a society, but it feels like part of the

society wants us to not get to the place where resolution will

happen. What keeps you going every day?

What keeps you, what keeps you fired up about this?

Yeah. You know, I've got, I've four

daughters and so my wife and I have been married for 34 years

and we've got 4/4 grown daughters in their 20s and

they're, they, they've all been involved in the work we're

doing. And actually, you know, our, our

origin story is that it was our oldest daughter that first did

psychedelics when she was 16 years old.

So this would have been 12 years ago at least.

And you know, and, and when she she came home and said, mom and

dad, I got something to tell you.

And I don't want you to be mad. I want you to listen to what

what's happened. And we're like, what did you do?

You know, as a parent, you're freaking out.

Like what? Did you steal something?

Did you get caught shoplifting or you know, that's where your

brain goes, right? And she said like she has

Crohn's disease, which is a real, it's an autoimmune disease

where your body attacks itself and it's very painful.

And it's been a real, it's been a real hard journey for her.

But she had done her research and on her own, unbeknownst to

us. And she said, I decided to do a

high dose psychedelic journey with mushrooms.

And what happened, mom and dad is I, I had this divine

experience. I met this divine being that

really began to put me in touch with myself, my body, and to

kind of explain to me that I, I don't have to fight this

disease, that I need to work with it and not have this

resistance. I've got to begin to a way of

gentling and bringing compassion and love into my body so that I

can connect my soul, my body and my mind in a real kind of

compassionate way. And I'm sitting here listening

to a 16 year old going, this isn't a kid doing this just to

get high. This is a kid with intention,

with deep spiritual wisdom and insight.

And we watched how she changed as a result of this over the

next years, you know, and we're like, I can't dismiss this as

just drug use. I had to say this was a profound

experience she had. And it took us a number of years

before, you know, I was ever comfortable enough to explore it

for myself. It wasn't until probably 2017

that I had my first psychedelic experience therapeutically,

which was profound, profound, profound for me.

But when you ask me what's keeping me going, it's these,

it's these young people that are saying we no longer want to

inherit. We inherit the way that you're,

you know, you mom and dad, your generation has dealt with mental

health. Yeah, we're done with it.

You guys have just slapped on pharmaceuticals to everything,

have pushed everything down and and trauma is not going away.

You don't have a holistic way of navigating it.

These medicines are coming in our lifetime.

We want to be the generation that begins to change things.

We want to begin to work with our themselves in a communal way

with an openness to these medicines and openness to

indigenous ways of knowing and being.

And we think this is a really important mom and dad.

And I'm like, that's what keeps me going.

These young people that have this vision, I want a world that

I can hand over to them that is no longer makes these these

medicines illegal, but instead gives a, a proper way to be able

to navigate this and do these kind of medicines in a Safeway.

My dream is that the kind of a gathering group model like this

is an open source model that can be used by researchers anywhere

on the planet and that we can put this inside of the Canadian

health system. Any Canadian should be able to

have this process paid for by their MSP contributions.

You should be able to say to your doctor or therapist, hey, I

want to do the psychedelic thing.

I want to really work on my inner life and say, OK, we'll

sign you up here, here and your, your payments are going to cover

been covered by MSP. It should fully be covered as a,

as a psychedelic, as a, as a psychological intervention.

If we can prove it safe and effective.

This should be available for every Canadian.

And so that's my goal. I've been to Ottawa, I've sat

down with people in the Ministry of Health, I sat down with my

MP. We, we brought people to them to

tell their stories of end of life anxiety being helped by, by

people with severe trauma have being helped.

There was even a Senate report called the end is now.

And, and, and that's an amazing title.

A Senate report that came up a year ago on Veterans Affairs.

They were the one who published it saying we need psychedelic

medicines for our veterans from the Senate of Canada with, you

know, Romeo de Lair as one of the people saying, here's our

hero, a general that helped us out in Rwanda who recognizes

trauma and he had his own PTSD from the Rwandan genocide that

he was there for. He's he is saying we need this

for our veterans. So when I hear a guy like Romeo

Delaire saying we need this for our veterans, why the hell is

Canadians not getting on board and saying why can't we open

this up? How come our our politicians are

resisting this? And this is really so it gets me

mad because there's so many people struggling right now and

we've got something that we know works.

And yet right now I have to try to raise privately $250,000 for

my clinical trial. No one's helping me.

Nobody wants to donate to this. No, no government organization.

We've tried for funding. No one cares about this.

And yet this is a cure that I know in the next 10 or 20 years

will come out and prove itself. But right now, it's really hard

to get this across the, you know, to get this acceptable and

by Health Canada. So we are going through the

right channels for clinical trials and we have to raise our

own money for it. And so that's what we're in the

midst of doing. So that's what gets me going, is

I want to leave this world better for my daughters than the

world the way I found it when it comes to mental health and the

crisis of which I really think is a spiritual crisis on our

planet right now. Very well said, Peg.

And you know, I, I go back to he changed it and what our mission

is what my wife's company and her mission.

I'm helping out with the you know, I'm, I'm the podcast host,

but I am well, well, well, also a massive supporter of this.

The huge part of where men are at these days and and is, is a

is a lack of purpose. And I'm curious, you're a,

you're a crusader, clearly a crusader.

Have you always been this way? Or is it one of those things

where, I mean, I, for me personally, I love, I, I do

enjoy my job very, very, very much as a financial planner.

But the part of the job that I enjoy is this, and it was when I

first hosted my very first podcast.

I've got 2 podcasts. I've got this one and my other

one, my Letterman podcast. And, and, and the first week I

did two or three heat casts and I realized, Oh gosh, I've hit

my, I found my purpose. And it's, it's to do with

connectivity. It's, it's to do with

connection. I, my, my graphic equalizer on

connection is pulled way up to 11.

And I, I found my purpose. And I'm, and I'm 45 years old at

the time. I'm 48 now at the time of this

recording, I'm 45 when I find this out.

And it's like, Oh my gosh, it's like the best parts of all of my

life thrown into one. I realize I have a purpose.

Not only that, there's a greater calling because, well, First

off, a greater calling because I want to help my wife achieve

what she wants to achieve. That's always a a certain

calling. But then what she wants to

achieve is to literally change the world with this platform.

And it all comes back to the irony of that is so many guys

out there haven't found a purpose.

And so my question for you is, were you always a crusader about

something and this is the latest one, or was that kind of that

light bulb, Oh my God moment. I have found my purpose and that

is why I'm such a crusader. I'm super curious about that

with the. Yeah, I think it's a little bit

of both end. I mean, I'm, I've, I've been a

passionate guy my whole life. And you know, I, I was an

ordained minister growing up and, and so, yeah, I just had a

heart to build community and allow people to connect with

something larger than themselves.

I ended up having to kind of leave that I was teaching at

different universities and I was at Trinity Western and Simon

Fraser. University.

And I'm kind of leaving that kind of world of the Academy and

the church and I really started focusing on.

Bubble, the bubble you were in, right?

Yeah. It was, it was kind of too

small, like the notions of the churches I was in, their notions

of God were still fear driven and I couldn't, I couldn't get

on board with any kind of fear driven notion of God.

And so the doctrines of hell didn't make sense.

They were, they were human constructs to in order to keep

people in line. And then it's kind of moralizing

structures of rejecting, you know, gay and lesbian folks as

not, you know, as not part of the Kingdom.

I just, I couldn't get on board with an exclusionary framework

that says that is those are the people that are going to hell

and I'm the one. So I kind of pulled away from

that. I got into social justice work

in my, in my 30s and 40s and started a, a nonprofit with a

buddy called Run for Water. And it's a, it's a, we raised

money for clean water projects in Ethiopia.

And so I was flying to Ethiopia four or five times a year,

working with indigenous organizations in East Africa,

empowering women with access to education and water.

And that was a real big heart for me.

And so I had AI had a big, you know, revolution there on I'm

like, Hey, this is a an issue that we can really change

getting people access to water and education.

And so that became a big drive for me.

But I think it's really psychedelics that has have kind

of been, you know, I'm 54 now and and I I'm recognizing that

this is my mission now, you know, Yeah, when I encountered

psychedelics, I recognize that this has there's so many

possibilities. And and the downline of what

this medicine could do if it's accepted into our culture in a

Safeway has profound implications, not just on mental

health. I want to mention this one

researcher that's been blowing me away lately.

Her name is Doctor Guldolin Gul with A2 little dots over EU

Right? Yeah.

L Golan, she was on she was on what?

Oh, she was on Radiolab podcast very recently.

Great 30 minute episode. Great insight from her and what

she's doing blows me away. So let me, let me just kind of

give you a 32nd why, why I think psychedelics have so many

opportunities. She's interested in

psychedelics, not for necessarily the mental health.

She's interested in what what they're doing on the neuro

circuit level, which is it opens up what's called a critical

period. Now the critical period in

development is between zero and five years old.

We have the ability to do rapid language acquisition, rapid

motor, a motor skill development.

We learn to walk within months. We're crawling around like a

baby and all of a sudden we're walking and we can figure that

out. That's unbelievably complex

motor skills, the ability to pick up objects with your

opposable thumb, like that's an incredible thing.

The ability to take I information in and name objects

that all happens between zero and five.

And it's a part of the brain they call the critical period.

It opens where we can have all this new acquisition of

language, of motor skills of all these things, and then it closes

and shuts down for the rest of our life and it never opens

again. And what she discovered, which

is unbelievable, is that the only thing that can reopen it is

psychedelics. Psychedelics can reopen the,

the, this pathway in her brain called the critical period for

at least 6 to 8 weeks following a high dose experience.

And it's, it's across the board, all site, all psychedelics can

do this. These molecules do this.

Now, what does that mean for her?

She's working with stroke victims, people that have been

paralyzed after a stroke. They cannot walk.

They can't use their arm. She puts them on psychedelics

and brings in then. Wow.

Not just during the session, but for the window after this

critical period opens. She brings in physiotherapist to

work with these people to regain motor skills after a stroke.

Can you imagine this? Yeah.

She's working with people who've been paralyzed.

Who? There's a guy named Jim Harris.

You type it in an outside magazine.

The Outside Magazine is an adventure magazine.

Type in the guy Jim Hare. The title of the article is Jim

Harris Ate Mushrooms after he broke his back and then he began

to walk. And you're like, what kind of

story is this? It opens a critical period.

And if you begin to begin to what happens is our brain opens

up new connections, new wiring and you.

And so this is not just helpful for, you know, spinal cord

injuries, for trauma, for I mean, for, for physical trauma,

but it also is things like they're looking at autism

researched. So adults that have a real, you

know, on the spectrum, they could still, they're really

resilient to a resilient, resistant to eye contact, which

is a very social engaging thing and hot physical touch.

They're, you know, they give people up and willingly, they'll

take a high dose psilocybin or is LSD and all of a sudden they

have this ability to look people in the eye, ability to open up

hugs. And as that they get comfortable

with that over the number of weeks, this can turn on a social

connection, you know, in, in people on the autism spectrum.

So she did another study on MDMA where she looked at and said,

OK, MDMA is this very pro social kind of medicine.

When you see it in rage, when people dance and people feel

this love and connection. We use it in couples therapy

lots. But she gave it to octopus.

So octopus are, are very social creatures.

I'm sorry, very opposite of social creatures.

They're very, very individualistic.

They do not do well with other they fight so if there's another

octopus around, they'll kill each other immediately yeah.

They're very solitary individual.

So she gives an octopus MDMA and what happens is it turns on a

pro social part of their brain and octopus began to be social

while they're on MDMA. Now this is unbelievable.

Just Google this MDMA octopus Goldolan and her research is

unbelievable, right. The stories that she's just

talking about what does this mean for us?

What it means is this critical period which can possibly help

us, you know, restore motor skills to people can help people

on autism spectrum, people that have had strokes can maybe can

be, you know, them this medicine be healing.

But what it also proves that what it's doing in the brain is

it's opening up new patterns of connection so that the story

that you told yourself about that trauma that happened when

you were 5 on the psychedelic, you have a new story

opportunity. You can reframe that story as no

longer this thing that's destroyed your life, but maybe

as a thing that's allowed you to become resilient, actually

welcoming in this thing that you've resisted.

And you can rewire your brain around trauma, depression,

anxiety. It's a nerd.

It's a new way for the brain to begin to make sense of our life

and our past. And so this to me, these

medicines are going to absolutely revolutionize all

medicine, not just mental health medicine, but all medicine is I

think is going to be impacted by the power of psychedelic

medicines in the next 50 years. So we are just starting to see

the powerful impacts of this and people like Guldolin are showing

us. So go listen to the Radiolab

podcast, 30 minutes gonna blow your mind and you'll be like,

how do we get, we need to get more funding for this.

This is a game changer. We're looking at it for

Alzheimer's that these that we're looking at, she looks at

what's happening with Alzheimer's is brain decline,

right? Psilocybin can open up the

critical period and we can arrest we can stop the cognitive

decline from Alzheimer's and dementia with psilocybin.

This is unbelievable. And and we're and actually, she

actually goes so far as to say, she says with MDMA, especially

the brain eventually gets used to MDMA.

And so if you use lots and lots of MDMA, you can actually kind

of it no longer has its efficacy.

And they think about 20 or 30 high dose MDMA sessions and your

brain kind of no longer can respond.

It's not the same with psilocybin, but it is with MDMA.

And she actually said jokingly in the podcast, she says, if I

was you and you're a young person and you love doing MDMA,

you know, at a rave, that's great.

You know, make sure it's safe and all that, but maybe do 20

and then stop and make sure you've got a couple of these

left in the bank. When you have a stroke at 60,

you want to be able to have access to this medicine so that

you can open up these this, this window in your brain, the

critical period. Again, you you need to kind of

save some for later when cognitive Klein is big and you

want this medicine to be able to work.

So what an interesting statement to me anyway.

So man, this stuff. I could talk for hours about

this man. And I love and I and I, yeah,

your enthusiasm is infectious. And that's what needs to be.

You need to have somebody, like I said, a crusader, a flag

bearer, somebody who, who, who, who can get people excited about

this and can connect people and join people together.

Clearly you have all of those skills and they are all coming

to a, you know, to a point here that that is, is, is leading you

to this, this, this purpose that will help help all of humanity,

which is, and it's not, that's not an overstatement like it's

changing the world in the, in the, in the best way possible.

We've used the word psychedelics a lot in this conversation and

you just kind of open the door to the idea.

Now I know psilocybin and mushrooms is where you're kind

of, what do you want to call it? Modality, you know, your

specialized ingredient, I guess you'd call it.

But at the end of the day, psychedelics is a broad term and

we want to make sure that we're not saying something that, you

know, psychedelics can do this. I would like to kind of define

that a little bit. What do you think about some of

these other, you know, the Ayahuasca's, the DMT's, the

Ibogains, the, you know, nevermind LSD and, and some of

these other ones that are out there in your mind?

What is a psychedelic that is a positive?

What are what are the psychedelics that are, that are

leaving a positive response on, on humans and have the potential

to heal? Is it all psychedelics?

Is it this one molecule and those molecules have been

altered into different, different ones.

Let's talk about psychedelic the word for a second.

Yeah, I know. It's a great, great, great

thing. Yeah.

The word psychedelics, you know, a mind or soul revealing.

Yeah, that's what that word means.

Is it kind of a category of these substances, Right.

And so you, you named a bunch, you know, you've got things like

mescaline and you've got LSD, you've got psilocybin, even

ketamine, ketamine is, is not traditionally A psychedelic.

Ketamine is a as a legal medicine that's used in

emergency rooms. It's a dissociative.

So it first came on the scene in the 1960s during the, the war in

Vietnam that every medic would carry a little bit of ketamine

because what it does is it allows you to dissociate from

pain really quickly. The acting with, especially with

an injection, You can do an IM injection with ketamine and you

no longer feel pain, but yet you're still aware.

So it's not like you're gone. Like let's say you know, I'm not

getting your tooth extracted, but you can, you can.

So they use it on children when you, you know, set my brother's

a physician, so he wants to set like a six year old's shoulder.

They popped out playing football gives him a shot of ketamine.

It's a dissociative pain. So you don't feel the pain.

He can set the bone back in or set that the joint back in

without the kid freaking out as you're holding a kid down.

You don't want to do that, right?

So ketamine's a great, another great substance that's being

used now. This is all of this kind of

class of substances. You mentioned ibogaine, which is

a really interesting one. This comes out of West Africa,

the Iboga tree. This is the root of the Iboga

tree. And now from this unique group

of this African tribe that boils this this Iboga root and

consumes it, and they have this about a 36 hour trip.

It's the longest psychedelic we have on the planet right now.

As far as notation, apparently it's not, it's not it's big.

It's a big journey, right? Yeah, but, but, but this the

the, so that's iboga, the plant that the, the molecule is called

the ibogaine. This albigen molecule is just

starting to be studied as having the ability to not just help

people get off of opioid addiction, but it actually

repair the burned receptors in the brain.

So it's not just like helping you get off of this, giving you

an experience where you no longer crave the medicine, but

it actually begins to repair the areas of the brain with

neurogenesis, new growth in the circuitry around these damaged

sites. Now, that's very unique to

ibogaine as a substance. So it comes from this West

African tribe that we've now going, whoa, let's look at this

scientifically. And we're like, this is the only

substance that we know on the planet that can really do this

kind of healing on an attic that has had deep, deep grooves of

addiction. We can help the person get off

and, and they and they no longer have the craving for the drug

and the healing, the receptor sites are actually healed

through new neurogenesis. I mean, that's unbelievable.

So you can look at ibogaine clinics that are running right

now in Mexico and other places. And right now it's still

illegal, just being tested. But to me, there's so much

promise with ibogaine for some of these opioid addictions that

are destroying our planet right now.

You know, we look at the Downtown East Side or any of our

our camps, our homeless camps that are just all over the

place. These homeless camps are full of

people that are deeply traumatized, who had deep mental

health struggles. And we no longer have places for

them. We don't have treatments for

them. And they just want harder and

harder drugs to be able to no longer feel the pain of their

life, the disconnection and alienation of their feeling.

What if, what if our way of navigating some of this

homelessness crisis is that we can pull people into ibogaine

clinics, help heal them and then help them get housed, help them

find connection, help them find jobs, help them.

You know, there can be a whole process of healing that we begin

to use these psychedelic medicines as a way to really

heal these people, not just, you know, white knuckling these

people. And you got to stop and get

clean and then go to a remember a, a was started by a Canadian

who believed that as LSD was the way to help people get off of,

of alcohol. So there is now this big anti

drug kind of thing. Their founder was first and

first was helped by his alcohol addiction by LSD in the 1950s.

So the history of psychedelic medicines are, are we've got to

listen to all these stories. So your question is, let's look

at these medicines and you know what, what, which ones are good

and which ones are bad. They're all helpful, but the key

is on all of them. It's all around the set and

setting. These are not a pill that you

take and you just kind of go about your day.

These are treatments that when paired with safe protocols with

therapy or or a communal group like this can be very

transformational, right? These can be profound

experiences for people and in order to, you know, in order to

do them safely, we want to prepare people.

We don't want to just say, hey, tomorrow, let's go, you know,

let's go deal with your trauma and you just take this at home

and you'll be fine. You're like, no, won't be fine.

You know, it is it's I do not recommend that right now.

We're not at the place yet where we are as a culture can just

kind of hand these things out. So I, I, I'm at this first stage

in Canadian, in our, in our Canadian laws, I'm looking to

legalize a protocol, a group protocol that's overseen by a

physician and a therapist. That's what I want to make legal

and that we can test this model and say if it's done in this way

in this treatment center kind of model, we, we're going to make

it accessible to Canadians and then we've got data and we can

start getting lots of data. So yeah, I'm, I'm very open to

exploring the research around all of these different

medicines. Ketamine has its use

particularly for suicidality. Ketamine has an immediate anti

suicidal effect. So it lasts 7 days.

It's almost automatic, even without therapy.

A high dose of ketamine will actually relieve you from this

desire to want to end your life. It closes and it's back seven

days later. But imagine if this if we had

ketamine treatments with a therapist in every emergency

room in Canada. When someone comes in and

they're going to go into the psych ward and they've been

handcuffed against their will, traumatized more and brought in

because they're on the edge of a bridge.

And what do we do? We just put them a big

antipsychotic into them and dope them up and they walk around and

pajamas in the ward not not being helped at all that way,

right? We're just going, we're just

going to slow this whole process down for you.

Dumb. What if instead we can say, oh,

you know what, boom. I am injection of ketamine right

now in 5 minutes. We're going to talk with you.

We're going to sit with a therapist for an hour and we're

going to say, hey, what's coming up?

And all of a sudden their fear circuits go down.

They can be present with you. They're not psychotic.

And they can talk about the trauma that's going on and they

can say, wow, you know what? I can't believe that that was my

that was my feeling about 10 minutes ago.

I'm actually realizing I'm enough.

I'm lovable. And what if that was our first

response rather than antipsychotic, you know, so

ketamine, it's right there in the hospital.

Let's use it. Let's use this on some of these

people, right? So each of these molecules have

incredible opportunities in our healthcare system to be used

well and effectively within the right set and setting the right

safe context for these medicines, right?

And so for me, community is the number one context that I really

want to get psilocybin as this, this mushrooms as, as the way

that mushrooms could come back into our, our kind of collective

way of healing and in our, in our planet.

So I, yeah, I'm passionate about this and, and hopefully that I,

I, we, we can kind of move the needle in the next five years in

Canada. Peg, I'm I'm so grateful that

we're connected and that and that you've been connected with

he changed it as he changed it. You know, it's funny with he

cast. I, I see, you know, Gretzky

talks about don't go where the puck is, go where the puck is

going. And, and I look at what my wife

and her team are doing with, with, with he changed and it's

about to go to the next level. I've been saying that right from

the very beginning. Well, we've gone up 5 or 6

levels and now the, the, the next one's going to be a real

big one. And when that happens, I've

looked at myself, as you know, Candy has said to me, well, do

you always want to host ecast? I said, yes, absolutely.

In fact, I want that to go to the next level.

And one of the things that I've been doing and talking to people

like yourself do having these conversations is I want to be

the, the he changed at Guinea pig for some of this stuff.

I want to be the one that can come and, and, and have a

testimony that isn't just anecdotal, that isn't just a

conversation talking to people about what they're doing, but I

want to be able to be a testimony for some of these

things. And I'm thinking about gathering

groups and going like I'm being called.

And I think in our initial call, I think I told you that, that,

that there's something in this world that has been calling me

for a long time. I'm the same way as you.

I, I do enjoy a little bit of marijuana every now and then in

the in the form of an edible. I didn't start till I was like

39 years old. I, I was always a, you know, the

just say no, hit me real hard. So I have had very limited

experience when it comes to this stuff, but I know the

psychedelics have been calling me.

I know they have like, it's just something that's there.

And I think about what you just talked about the idea for eight

weeks of, of, of, of, of gathering and prepping and

getting part, becoming part of a group where you are part of a

group, you are enough, you are heard, you're given instruction,

you contribute, you receive. And then you come to a place

with that group and you're prepared.

And there is a step by step process on a farm in.

And if you haven't been to, you're in the Fraser Valley,

right? Yeah, the Fraser Valley, if you

haven't been to the Fraser Valley, western goes Canada, all

of Western Canada is beautiful, But but the Lower Mainland and

just outside Vancouver, they're like the idea of doing, having

an experience like that at a farm safe environment and, and

with the goal of literally changing your life for the rest

of your life, you know, taking stock as to where you are right

now. I mean, I think about the

computer that's in front of me right now, the computer that's

over there. How many times do we have to

defragment these things? You know, you go through life

and, and, and suddenly it becomes fragmented and then you

have to defrag your life. How many guys out there right

now are in their 30s, forties, 50s, and they've never defragged

their computer? Great.

I love that analogy. It's beautiful because I think

we can all relate to this idea of we we need these processes

brought back into our culture, right?

Like if you think of our indigenous brothers and sisters,

we all have these indigenous backgrounds.

By the way, we come from, you know, I come from German

background, right, Mennonite and these kinds of things from way,

way back, 500 year lineage here. But we were, we were farmers and

communal people, right? We had processes that we would

do. And if you think about

indigenous cultures, they always had a coming of age ceremony,

right, Particularly for young men.

I have a real heart for men, you know, I have a real heart for

men to transform and, and to be able to be confronted by, by

their own ego, to say, listen, your ego is not central.

You need to be confronted by something larger than you.

And this is what a coming of age ceremony.

This is what a vision quest was. When you go out into the forest

with the elders, your father or grandfathers, and they would say

you're going to sit alone with food or water for three days in

a small area and all of a sudden you're going to start having

visions. You're going to do a whole diet

before and then you're going to be confronted by the the chaos

of world of of what's out there, you know, yes.

And all of a sudden what happens is you go inside, you look at

the fears on all the things that are coming up and then you

integrate that back in the community right after your three

day coming of age. I think we need these again.

I think psychedelics with men's groups can become rights of

passage again, where young men can work with elders and really

begin to say, hey, I need a mentor in my life.

Well, OK, first you're gonna go through a process where you're

gonna not just defrag your hard drive, but you're gonna look at

all the shadow parts of you, but you've suppressed and you're

going to be confronted by them. And then there's going to be

elders that have around who have already done this process, who

are going to help you integrate this.

You know, this is what I dream of, of a world where we have

elders again, where we have coming of coming of age kind of

ceremonies for men and women. Can you imagine?

You know, I talked to this guy named Mark Hayden who was the

head of MAPS Canada at one time. The MAPS is the the it's

Association for the Psychedelic Science, a multidisciplinary

association of psychedelic science.

And Mark Hayden, who now is an incredible therapist and

researcher in Vancouver. I asked him a number of years

ago, I said, Mark, where do you see psychedelics going?

What does good look like in 10 years?

And he without missing a beat, you know, I thought he'd talk

about research and all. He said sure.

What good looks like, Peg, is that mothers and daughters go

out on a retreat, four or five of them, and do MDMA with their

daughters together on a retreat where they can, as their

daughters come of age they can say, no longer be defined by

Instagram culture and what everyone else is thinking.

You define you. Find your inner star right

inside you and these mothers and these elders take their

daughters out and do MDMA together, he says.

What good looks like is a group of fathers go on a camping trip

for three days and they all do so a round of fire together.

And these young men open up to these older men and talk about

their dreams and their fears and their insecurities and their

sexual desires that they're trying to make sense of in a

porn ridden culture. And all of a sudden the men

begin to be part of this conversation.

That's what good looks like. And I was sitting there, my jaw

was on the ground, and I was like, that's what I want.

I want you. Sign me up.

I want that too. I want sign me up.

You know, and I'm Mike, I, as you talk about this, I'm getting

a little excited, but I had this idea as you're talking just now

and I know we're on a podcast, so edit it though.

Throw it up there, yeah. Wouldn't it be cool if you and I

were part of a men's group that I could help facilitate where we

bring 8 guys from the he changed it kind of platform and we

podcast this weekly and say, hey, let's, let's let's kind of

Week 2. We just had Week 2 with our

group of guys. We maybe bring on a different

guy each week and you and I have 1/2 an hour conversation about

this twelve week journey. And then we do many little

podcasts that we record about the transformation that we're

seeing with this group of guys. We go on a trip together over a

weekend and then we do a kind of a summary of what's changed for

these eight guys over the course of 12 weeks and, and listeners

could follow along. To me, that would that's never

been done before. That would be unbelievable

content, man. Yeah, Peg, if I'm playing poker,

that's called an insta call. I'm in, I'm in.

Yeah, you're, I'm in Like you're all in.

I'm all in that that. I'm all in, man.

I'm not kidding. Let's do it.

OK, yeah, let's set that up. I'm going to talk to Kennedy and

the team. We're going to set this up and

we will do exactly what you said I've already got as soon as you

say hey guys 2 names just popped into my head immediately from

part of the heat changed at world yes this sounds amazing

now for everybody else out there who's excited to have heard this

and excited gathering groups.ca is the best way to access you

like is that it's a website it's not a matter of social media and

things like that it's a matter of connection and so the best

spot is to. For somebody who finds us on the

website gatheringgroups.ca, you're going to find a lot of

information there. You can go to our our Instagram

too and there's some videos and that kind of stuff.

But yeah, do your research and then we have free info sessions

where we do about once a month and you can just we post them.

You can come in, we do a presentation on our model, the

research, the clinical data, the safety protocols.

And then you can sign up for a group and we try to launch one,

one a month. Some are all women's groups.

We have Co Ed groups and we have men's groups and my heart right

now is I want men's groups right now.

To be honest with you, 85% of the people that sign up are

women. Yep.

So that tells me that we're missing the mark with young men.

This is why he changed. It is the tip of the spear of

what my wife and her team are doing.

It's, I'm passionate about this, this work needs to get into the,

into men's work. And so I, I would love to be

part of that with you and, and really help change that

narrative. We need more young men opening

up their heart, being able to feel feelings, still being

strong men. But what it means to be strong

is not necessarily to be an alpha male that wants to use

violence to be able to show how strong is true strength is about

inner strength, right? It's about your ability to sit

in discomfort of your partner when they have a problem and in

your own life and not just suppressing that with alcohol or

running away or, you know, dissociating.

That's what all those things, someone who can sit in in the

pocket when it comes to difficult, and that's what

psychedelic work can help you do.

Oh, man, I mean, you know, one of the things early on Peg that

we've talked about in in in the heat changed it world is we want

to take back a phrase. And the phrase that we want to

take back is the phrase man up. And I know, I know this is I

know this will resonate with you immediately because you're a man

of a certain generation. You know what manning up is

manning up is stuff it down, you know, stuff it down and just

keep going. Stuff it down and keep going.

What you just described is the exact definition of what man up

should be and, and, and and. I just love that idea because

that's exactly what it is. You're preparing yourself in a

true, you know, integrity based way to give yourself tools to

deal with this world that's around us, those families that

are around us, what's inside of us that's truly manning up.

Yeah. I mean, you and I are going to

do this more and it might be public.

This is going to be great. I'm really excited about this.

I want to say thank you so much for taking time out of your

insane schedule with all of the crazy spinning plates you have

going on around you. Thank you for doing the hard

stuff. You know, you, you really,

really are in, in a nation, in a culture where we're kind of

encouraged not to necessarily do the hard stuff, the easy Rd.

You know, you, you've gone down the narrow path and, and, and

that is a hard path, but it is the path where all the good

stuff is and you're leading people down this path.

I want to say thank you, thank your wife for the your entire

organization for what it is that you guys are doing.

More to come, as Johnny Carson used to say, more to come for

sure. And thank you for taking time

out of. Your day, this is thank you for

your interest in this. And I think that you know your

your vision, the vision that Candy has your wife has.

Yeah, I just love it. I can get on board with this

vision of how do we create these communities of connection and

care that are deep. They're not just like, hey,

let's just go for a hike and watch a game, but actually

begins to do soul work, right? This deep, deep inner soul

journey work. And so I think that's a, it's a

coming together of two visions that I think are really actually

aligned. Absolutely.

So Mike, I, I love your enthusiasm and I really look

forward to getting into this project with you because we're

going to do this, man. Yeah.

Me too, brother. I'm Yeah, I'm stoked about it.

It's going to be great. I'll do a real quick outro right

here and then we'll say OK, bye. Privately.

This is exactly why we do the show.

I am a brokered record when I say that that term.

But these conversation conversations like this, like

the one we've had with Peg Peters today, just it takes us

from our place of automation and brings us out and it lifts up

and it hopefully for you, for people around you can cause this

introspection to show up. And that is what leads to change

is these initial thoughts. This is exactly why we do the

show. If you haven't downloaded the

heat changed app, what the heck are you waiting for?

Download it right now. We're updating it fast and

furious. Lots of resources, lots of

things going into the app here and and some big leveling up is

is is going to be coming here in the next 6 to 12 months and and

early than that actually really good stuff.

Go to hechangeit.com for all the details.

This has been another episode of he cast the official podcast of

he changed it. My name is Mike Chisholm.

Go change something.