Ladies and gentlemen, I hope your day is going beautiful. I hope that the sun is shining and the birds are singing. I hope the wind is at your back. I got an incredible show for you today coming all the way. From down under, all the way from Australia, today's guest is an eclectic expert in a diverse range of fields and has an amazing range of life experience. He is here to share those experiences and what he's learned from his quest to overcome extreme challenges in pursuit of his own self-actualization. During that journey, he completed three degrees and three books. Despite suffering from PTSD, dyslexia, and ADHD, he taught English to Japanese children in Tokyo, was executive chairman of an aviation safety company, and led an international project in war crimes and crimes against humanity in post-war Sierra Leone, West Africa, involving 300 people. Prior to that, he was a drug squad detective in the Australian Federal Police, where he was involved in shootouts, car chases, and record seizures of drugs during the most corrupt period in Australian history. Our speaker later spent 15 years as a criminal defense barrister and was counsel assisting the Crime and Misconduct Commission investigating organized crime and bike gangs. He was also appointed to three different judicial roles. He later created, wrote, and hosted a TV show called Law Legends lately that had a total cumulative audience of over 250,000 viewers. Most recently, he spent a decade raising three daughters as a full-time stay-at-home dad, which he tells me was far harder than anything else he has ever done. so please welcome keynote speaker and author of how to deal drugs and get away with it and dealing or healing reality checking drug wars drug wonders and our fantastic future andrew swindles thank you for being here today my friend how are you I'm really good and thank you for that introduction that was wonderful it's such a pleasure to be here with you today and I'm very excited about it hello to everybody who's tuned in Absolutely. I'm stoked to have you. It's such an interesting time to be alive, to see the way in which the world is moving. And you've got quite a background. Is there a particular place where you want to start at or what's a good starting point for you? That's a great question. People always want to go straight to the drug squad detective stuff because it's like straight out of TV. I really like what I learned in Africa. That was incredible. But I think the hardest challenges were probably my childhood. So your show, George, you pick what you want to do and we'll go with it. That's a great, I was hoping you would want to start there because I think so much of who we become later in life is a direct reflection of who brought us up, the environment we're in, and the lenses through which we were given to see the world. And that starts in childhood. And you talk about having some learning difficulties. that had to have a giant tint on the lens to which you see the world. Maybe you could talk about what was it like, or was there a period of time when you realized like, Hey, I'm different than people. I'm not, I don't see things the same way. They don't sound the same to me. I can't read this way. You know, was there a period of like, man, I'm a dummy or I'm just different. Or what was that like? Was there a strange period of your childhood? Do you remember that was transfer transformational? Oh yeah. Yeah, definitely. It was grade one and two. Uh, The work would be put up on the board, and I had a teacher, Ms. Courtney. She was a beautiful woman on the outside, rather ugly on the inside. She persecuted me, tormented me, harassed me. She felt that I was either being lazy or inattentive or whatever, and as a result of that, she decided she'd correct my behavior. she gave me the hardest time she ridiculed me abused me verbally in front of everybody and when the work was put up she would deliberately say when this is done you can go to lunch as an adhd kid all I wanted to do was run around the playground it was very hard for me to sit still so I would sit there for the entire lunch period simply not able to do this work day after day and it got to the point where one day uh I just walked out of school I was five and I walked out and tried to walk home um and so that was a very early time but what that did for me was it made me believe that I was really stupid And I carried that. And this is the ironic and amusing part. That's why I got three degrees. I was trying to prove to myself I wasn't stupid. So that dictated all of my academic career, that one thing. And I still have an issue sometimes, you know, that it comes up from deep within. So, yeah, massive challenge. Yeah, very early on in that formative period, as you say, it's crucial. Yeah, on some level. That already gives me some insight into why maybe you're able to understand the corruption that's happening. So much of, it seems to me, illegal activity later in life stems from these feelings of not being enough earlier in life. You know what I mean? There's an interesting relationship or correlation there. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, look, that's absolutely correct. There's tons of research demonstrating that abusive, dysfunctional, bad childhoods lead in many instances to crime because it starts with acting out. It starts with the reaction, the acting out. It develops into being antisocial. It develops into anger. And all of those things are guarantees to lead to crime. So there's a huge correlation there. It's really quite clear. Absolutely. So, you know, I ran the gauntlet statistically on that. The combination of all my history, I had something like a 95% chance of being dead or in jail or in a mental institution. So you're very lucky to make it through. Yeah. You know, I've also heard on the flip side of that, if you are able to make it through, and it sounds by reading some of your accomplishments in the past and as a father and as someone who cares a lot for the world around them, sometimes having these weights on us, they train us to be stronger. And when you look at people that some people that are dyslexic, Jerry Spence, the famous lawyer comes to mind, you know, you have to, because you see the world differently, you're forced to make sense of it in a way that no one else can. And sometimes it's, when you stick with that, it gives you this look that no one else can see. It's almost like a superpower. I don't want, I hate to use that word because there's so much that comes with it. But on some level, if you can see the world in that way and make sense of it, you have a view that nobody else does. Have you found like that to be part of it as well? Yeah, well, the research on dyslexics tends to support the theory and the data that they have better imaginations and they have higher average IQs. And those two combinations with a way of seeing the world differently is quite beneficial. But talking about what you get from a difficult childhood, there's a really great book. I think it's called The Spiritual Advantages of a Difficult Childhood. and what it talks about is that if you survive that and you have these adaptations they're usually things like resilience determination um inner strength and um there's two parts to it you get those but you also get a bunch of behaviors that uh you use to survive and when you reach adulthood you've got to get rid of the dysfunctional behaviors but keep the advantages which you will keep anyway so that's kind of one of the tricks you have to do um as you transition yeah Yeah, I've spoken to some really interesting people that quote their childhood as reasons for having to do the heavy lifting at a young age when you're forced to ask this question of why. Why me? Why is my mom like this? Why is my dad like this? Why does my school treat me this way? Why can't I read like this? All these heavy questions that don't really have a concrete answer in society or maybe people don't have the time to help you with. you have to figure out these deep philosophical questions. And it usually means lots of reading. It means lots of finding. It means lots of looking. And when you do that, by the time you're 30, you've already asked those questions that someone in their 30s might be asking for the first time. So it's a pretty interesting process. it is because if you add to all of those issues I was also ptsd from my childhood now when your ptsd is a child you have a concept called foreshortened future you don't see that you have any future at all you don't see yourself living past childhood you don't plan for it you don't think it's going to happen so you've got to overcome all of that so you add the ptsd into the mix and it gets really difficult uh and it's a massive challenge but what that triggered in me wasn't I did ask those questions but there were no answers for them because for instance with dyslexia back when I was a child they only thought it was one condition but they now know it's 16 or 17 different unique conditions that all operate together and you have some or all of them and that's why no solution ever worked but they're much better with it now but what that triggered for me was a quest to recover and self-actualize I just thought how am I going to get through this how am I going to get over this what am I going to do there must be more There must be answers. And that was what sent me on that path. It's a great. It's a windy road, that path. It was, it was, and it was hard too. It was hard too because I don't know if you can imagine, they call studying law reading in law. That's the traditional reference for it because you do this incredible amount of reading. And so my dyslexia was pretty severe, so I had trouble reading and writing and doing maths. And so doing a law degree, let alone three degrees, was an arduous act of self-discipline. And then writing three books. So there's probably a little bit of craziness in doing all of that. But, you know, I was on a quest. I was trying to prove something. And I finally learned nobody cares. Nobody cares about any of that except me. And so I let go of it. Okay, so here's an interesting one on the topic of nobody caring or people caring too much. As a child, and maybe we could speak about what happened to you and then you can get some maybe speculation on what may be happening too. When you look at healthcare, it seems that like a parent who has a child who has issues probably wants the best for their kid, but may not know how to do it. So they find themselves with a group of experts. It's like, hey, give your kid this pill and it's going to help them. And maybe you take the pill and the parent feels better about it. They feel like they're doing something. And then, oh, it's not my fault. You know, I give them the pill and the doctor's like, it's not my fault. You know, there's a weird sort of cremation of care going on in there. Right. I mean, you could speak to that sort of relationship. Yeah, absolutely. Australia and America have some of the highest rates of child medication in the world, and that's frightening, and it becomes the default position. In Big Pharma's business model, if the board or the CEO is choosing which things to invest in, they don't choose to invest in the cure because that doesn't give them maximum profit. They want to invest in something that's a pill that someone has to take every day for the rest of their life. And so they have a fiscal responsibility to choose that option, to invest in that. It's a medication, not a cure. So that's the first thing. And then when they've done that, they want to encourage the profession, and this happens in both of our countries, to prescribe it. And then that becomes the GP's default position. And some of these problems, you know, behavioural problems and issues are fairly intractable. They take a lot of intensive one-on-one care. Most people can't afford that and most insurances won't provide that and people don't have access to it. And parents don't always understand either. So they've got this whole thing against them, you know. And that's assuming that the parents, and probably most do, actually want to do it. you know, actually are motivated to help the kid because there is also unfortunately plenty of parents who don't. So, you know, these are complicated questions and I see it as a really sad thing that so many kids are in this position in both our countries that could be helped. And, you know, I think that by promoting things like ayahuasca and psilocybin and psychotherapeutic plant medicines, even if it's just the parent taking it, that's going to increase their empathy, lovingness, functionality, and then that maybe flows onto them being better parents. So it's an indirect benefit. Yeah. Yeah. So if you do want me to mention some of my childhood, I'm happy to do that. I have mentioned to you that it can be very triggering and because the people who aren't here in front of us, I can't manage their welfare and care. So I would say to them that I will not go into too much detail, but if they are distressed, maybe they should just mute this little bit so that they don't. And if they do get triggered, please contact a support organization or something like that. So would you like me to tell you a little bit about some of that? Yeah. Let me just reiterate for everybody listening right now, a little trigger warning right here. So if you're, if you find yourself easily or you find yourself in a position where you get triggered about something, this might be a good time to take a, take a, take a break, get a water break or get a beverage or something. But that being said, carry on, please do. All right. So if I could set the scene for you, my mother was a sex abuse survivor and an alcoholic, and as a result, she was a very angry, violent woman. So she was always in a very bad mental state from the start. Dad was a World War II... a veteran who had flown in the Lancaster bombers bombing Germany and he got severe PTSD. Those particular squadrons had 66% death rates. So it was a pretty intense experience. His PTSD destroyed him as a person. He was emotionally unavailable, angry and violent as well. So I didn't have one parent that was okay. I had two really mentally ill parents from the start. To make matters worse, their firstborn child, who was named Andrew, was a boy. He died of pneumonia just before I was born. So they were grieving on top of their mental illness when I came into the family and I had two sisters ahead of me. So that was the scene that I walked into. So before I was 10 years old, my brother had died. I had a little sister when I was four and she was the one I spent every day all day with. She died of a brain tumor on the operating table. The day that that happened, I knew something was wrong. My parents came home. I rushed out in a panic. They opened the door on me, knocking me over, went into their room, shut the door in my face. And in that moment, as a four-year-old, I thought that they blamed me for that death and that changed my relationship with them for the rest of my life and changed me for the rest of my life until I dealt with it. So shortly after that, I was alone at home playing, and there was a room. It was like a room from a horror movie in the house. I always hated it. It was a small, dark, dank bathroom with black mildew and vines growing through the window, and I hated that room, and my ball went in there. And I decided, even though I was afraid, I'd go in and get it. And I ran in there and the door shut on me and I was too small to open it. And I went into an hysterical panic thinking it was going to kill me, just like in the movie Sixth Sense. And I was in literally two or three hours in hysterics until I was a small little ball in a fetal position on the floor crying. And that traumatized me and caused me to become claustrophobic. And moving forward from all of that, shortly after that, um, I developed a large boil on my knee, and my mother took me to this doctor. He was an alcoholic too, and they decided he was in a rush, so they decided the nurse and my mother would hold me down while they cut that boil out with a scalpel without anesthetic, and that traumatized me as well. Then a little while after that, when I was about eight, mum threw into a rage one day at home and she got a pair of scissors and threw them at me and they went through my leg in one side and out the other. I was about eight years old. It completely shocked and traumatised me and I pulled the scissors out myself and there was blood everywhere and everything and then she locked me in my room because she didn't want me to go to the hospital. um so then you add into that the dyslexia the adhd and the traumatization and I was getting bullied and harassed at school because of those things as well so I'd be at home and my days were filled with verbal physical and emotional abuse from my parents and then I'd go to school and cop the same thing so that was all up to the age of 10 when I was basically pretty suicidal at a 10 year old and actually contemplated shooting myself and I didn't in the end so That's a summary of the childhood in a short thing. And that's where I started from in my life. But I'm pleased to be able to tell everybody the story has a happy ending and not in an inappropriate way. So I'm here now and I'm all good. And you can all be resting assured that it's all been dealt with and I'm okay. And I hope you are too. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I'm sorry that, you know, the world dealt you that hand of cards, but I'm thankful that you were able to maybe pick up some good cards on the river and start winning a little bit. I'm curious how you did that. You know, is that, how did you, how, you know, I'm a big fan of plant medicine, but I, is that something you use or are there other therapies or was it primarily, you know, certain types of plant medicine or what was your pathway to begin integrating those particular situations into your life? Well, the number one thing I think I got was, that was the thing that was getting me through was this incredible resilience and determination and uh that's the thing that I think and I also became very angry So I had resilience, anger, and determination. So I basically bulldozed. I bulldozed my own feelings. I bulldozed other people. I bulldozed everything. I liked playing a game called rugby league, which is a collision sport. You probably don't have it there. But that was how I channeled my aggression. I channeled a lot of my aggression into sport. I played a lot of sport, and I loved it. and it was my release and my balance. And so that was the first thing. And I developed some people skills to try and learn how to get what I wanted and that helped me too. But when I bounced out of school, I had no direction. I had that foreshortened future concept and I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't know anything about myself because I was not connected to myself. I had to split off all my feelings and everything else so that I could survive. Because if I had immersed myself in my feelings in those traumatizing situations, it would have killed me. So that's where I was starting from. And I was driven at that stage to seek adventure. And that's why I went into the Australian Federal Police Drug Squad, because I had no concept of self-care, self-preservation, no concept of future. So danger was not something that actually really bothered me. It didn't trigger me. You know, I would be the one with the coolest head in the most dangerous situations because I just didn't feel the threat because I was split off from my own emotions. It's not good, but it got me through. I knew that I had problems, but at the same time, you've got to, You've got to develop a little bit of a dysfunctional ego. So you've got this denial. You think there's something that's wrong, but then you develop an ego to cover it up. It's like a compensatory response. And you just think of yourself in a slightly aggrandized way so that you don't have to face all of the things that are in there that are real, that you think are life-threatening. But, you know, by the time that I'd left the drug squad, I decided to go back to university. And what was driving me then was this thing that I really thought I was stupid. And I went back to university. And it was quite funny because I had to go back to high school and do a year to get into uni. So I went from being in the federal drug squad with guns and everything to sitting in a high school for a year with 18-year-olds. Okay. So that was crazy. But I got into uni. Interestingly, though, life's still handing me lemons at that stage because at the end of that year, we have a score system and you've got to get a score to get into uni. And at the end of the year, I topped the school in a couple of subjects and so on. And the principal called me in and he said, we don't think it's fair that you're competing against 18-year-olds as a young adult. So we're going to take 10% of your marks off you. So I didn't get into that. I had to go to uni and do a year of an arts degree. And that's why I ended up with the arts degree as well. So yeah, I was trying to compensate for thinking I was stupid doing those degrees. I was trying to get over the, um, the issues and there was free counselors at the uni. So I started doing cognitive behavioral therapy and that was a fascinating experience because I was with him for six months and he was pretty good. And one day towards the end of a session, I mentioned my dead sister and he stopped in his tracks and said, you've never mentioned that before. And I said, oh, that's because I've dealt with it. You know, it's no big deal. And he goes, all right, you think that, do you? And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I'm fine. And he goes, do me one little favor. He said, go home, get out a pen and paper and write a letter saying goodbye to her for me. I said, yeah, that's no problem, you know. Dear Philippa, I miss you. Okay, goodbye. Oh, man. So I went home. And by the way, I had made a commitment to myself not to cry when I was a kid because I felt it made me weaker and vulnerable and would put me at risk of not surviving. So I hadn't cried since I was 10 and I was about 25, no matter what had happened. So I went home and I got a pen and paper out and before the pen hit the paper, I burst into tears. And I shocked myself, absolutely shocked myself, and I started writing. And I wrote about 15 or 20 pages. I cried the entire time and it was just like something pouring out of me. And I went back the next week and said, how did you go? And I said, oh, my God. LAUGHTER And he just started laughing. So, yeah, I did some therapy. It helped. But what I found in my journey was there's a thousand things out there, Reiki, kinesiology, therapy, and therapy they can all help. They all, they all add to things, you know, but nothing was going to cure, uh, PTSD, um, and, uh, ADHD and all of those deeper things. Nothing was going to fix those. Nothing was going to repair the damage of my childhood. There's an analogy with PTSD, particularly in your childhood. And they think that what happens to you as a person isn't it? The analogy is that if you took a big vase and you smashed it down on the concrete into a thousand pieces, And then you tried to put it back together. And that's what PTSD does to you as a person, particularly in a childhood. So the way out of PTSD psychologically is you have to accept the vase is smashed and it's gone. And you have to embrace a whole new thing and not keep trying to go back, not keep trying to be who you were. And the people who are able to do that are the ones who move forward in a really good way. And that's about a third of people. But yeah, you asked me, over the course of this quest, this obsessive quest that I had to recover and survive, all these things help. But the only things that are curative and definitive are the plant medicines. And that's why I wrote the book. And that's why I speak about it. As you know, I do international keynote speaking on self-actualization, but I also do one on drugs in general. And that's what I wanted to share. And I know it's something that you have a great interest in. So... They're curative, they're miraculous, they're transmogrifying and I can't wait for them to be in the mainstream and providing this benefit, these cures to everybody who needs it. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I think just the bit about writing a letter to someone that is no longer here is worth every moment of this podcast. It's such a great exercise that someone can do today to begin to see where they are. That's beautiful. And I almost started crying when you said it. It brings up lots of questions, but I'll start with this one before we get deep into the world of psychedelics and healing. be it PTSD or middle age or a crisis or someone in your life dying or losing a relationship which can feel like dying or whatever crisis comes your way, I love the metaphor of the face breaking. Once it's broken, It's a lot to realize, hey, that base is never coming back together. I don't care how much glue you have. I don't care how much time you have. You're never going to get that thing back together. So for a lot of people, like you said, maybe 30% of people move on. A lot of people get stuck in that spot right there. Is there, maybe you could just share a little bit more about like the, the, the feeling, I'm sure there was a period of time where you try to put that vase back together, man. Like, damn, I can, if I just get this one piece, I gotta find the glass down here. Maybe you could just share a little bit about that process between trying to put it back together and moving on and, and, and what happened in that, in that window. Yeah, well, for me, the repeated traumatisation in childhood meant that I didn't have a fully formed identity when all that was happening. So for me, it was more a process of I've got all these issues and I can't break through them. I can't overcome them. They're driving me. They're dictating my thinking, you know. occasionally suicidal ideation and things like that and I was just trying to put these fires out I had all these fires burning and they were all driving me and all causing me harm and dysfunctionality and self-defeating bad behavior and self-sabotage and I'm trying to deal with them all and everything's helping a little bit but nothing's making the big difference yeah right but for an adult who gets ptsd in adulthood They definitely get caught up. They have established identity. They liked in some ways who they were, but they just want that comfort zone. You want to go back to who you were and that comfort zone, and you cannot do it. And getting them to accept that's hard. And it's their quest to try and go back that is the destructive thing. Not the PTSD. It's the quest to go back that kills them. And it breaks my heart that these people are going through this and there's ayahuasca there and psilocybin to cure them and that these short-sighted politicians don't let them have it. And I'm just thankful that in both of our countries there are massive underground movements providing this out of the goodness of their hearts to people. carers and shaman people like that who are there saying I don't care if this government has got it wrong these politicians and these state apparatuses have got it wrong and they're persecuting us we care enough to help these people so we're going to do it anyway I admire them for that yeah it's it's a medicine that's been around since probably humankind has been around when you start looking at the lineage of it and the rites of passage and the ceremonies and You know, it seems here in the United States that there's a real... while there's a real underground swell and it's moving forward, especially with veterans and it's being legalized in certain states, there's a lot of great work happening around it. It does seem like the medical container is desperately trying to find a way to prioritize profits out of it. And that seems to be a holdup. I don't know that for sure, but that's just my understanding of what's happening is that there's the big pharma on some level and a lot of the medical industry is saying, wait, We can't measure these things, so therefore it's not safe, even though there's hundreds of years of safety on there. What is your take on maybe some of the reasons why the politicians or the government are trying to keep it away from the people, or do you think that they are? Yeah, well, I think the simple short answer, but I want to go into a few other things on that question, is that – they have a prejudice against these plant medicines and drugs in general. And they believe that's what the electorate wants as well. I mean, remember Nixon in 1969, he decriminalized, or was it 71? Anyway, he decriminalized all of these drugs when Ivy League universities were researching them. But if I could just come back to, and for no good reason, if I can just come back to the whole pharma and medical profession, SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which are the most preferred prescription medicine for mental illness in the world, is worth over $16 billion per annum. Wow. Right? Right. So that's number one, right? Number two is that medical professions rely on status, prestige and power to function. You know, if you think about the Kadaichi man in a village, he's one of the most powerful people. Well, our medical profession are the Kadaichi men of our society. And they have very high status. They have a lot of power. So something like this, they believe, needs to be brought within their power and their control as part of the profession's responsibility and its status and everything else. And they don't want to have that outside of their control. Now, the difficulty with that is psychotherapeutic plant medicines require set setting, shamans, carers, and a soft, gentle environment. You know, We often refer to the little arrangements they might set up for themselves when they're going to do a ceremony as nesting, you know, pillows and blankets and a certain ratio of carers and guides and shaman, right? And the right sort of music and ritual and ceremony and reverence around it. You want to transfer it into the medical environment. You're going to go into a clinical white sterilized room with a bed and you get our machines hooked up and somebody sitting there. And I couldn't think of a worse environment to take a personal journey on than that. And that's what I'm worried about, plus the regulation. Governments never get things wrong. When I do my speeches, I often come in and say, it's so nice to see a room of intelligent, educated professionals, because usually I have to talk to politicians So we've got the farmer. If they can't find a way to replace that $16 billion, they're going to find a way to stop this stuff moving into the mainstream because they can't afford a loss like that. Medical profession can't find a way to control it, and that's going to be super hard for them. They'll probably oppose it because it's a loss of status and power. Because remember, with psilocybin, you can go out into the yard and find a gold top and take it. Now, that's not good. I don't think you should do that. I don't think it's right to use these as recreation. but you can do it. I'll never, ever be able to control that. But just touching on this thing again about prejudice, right? As you rightly said, with psilocybin in the mushrooms, it's pretty likely from the historical research and archaeological records that we've been consuming this stuff for the entire existence of homo sapiens which is about 300 000 years and remember over that period of evolution that's where we developed a different cerebral cortex and we know that there's neuroplastic effects and neurogenic genesis effects from these medicines so it may have influenced the very formation of our cerebral cortex But even the human hominin ancestors were probably consuming it too. So in relation to that particular psychotherapy plant medicine, it is absolutely insane to say that we need to bring in all this regulation and control and it's dangerous and we haven't got research because we've got more history on the use of that drug than we have on any other drug ever in the history of mankind. Now, similarly with ayahuasca, which, as you know, is N-N-dimethyltryptamine. Now, that is a hormone that exists in your body and mine and our brains right now and in everybody on the planet and many plants. So, again, it's a completely natural substance, right? Now, the archaeological records, again, demonstrate that there's at least 3,000 years of historical use on that. So, once again... the idea that we need to rush in with all this regulation and control of something that's both natural and it's in your body now. If it's an offence to possess NN-dimethyltryptamine, which it is in both of our countries, we're guilty because it's in us right now. There's a certain amount in our bodies right now. Yeah. So this whole approach with drugs, And this is one of the things I cover really extensively in my book. I actually went through the whole history of prohibition because in your country, they started with alcohol prohibition around 1930. That was a complete and utter disaster. And it created the first... highly organized, highly efficient, organized crime elements, which we never, ever overcome. We never, ever overcome them in your country and mine and most countries. And that's prohibition created that. And then they realized it was a disaster and they took it out. And it was only a short time later they started prohibiting drugs. right which once again had um long history of use throughout uh humankind's recorded history so again another stupid thing to do and that fueled organized crime beyond anything and that fuels corruption across your society uh so complete An utter disaster. No basis for it. And everybody alive today has been consistently brainwashed about drugs through irresponsible, inaccurate, misleading media reporting, fake news reporting about drugs. All right. And I can give you a really good example of that. crack cocaine. I was in the drug squad in Sydney when crack cocaine was invented. And so one of the things we used to do was go to the medical laboratories and they would analyze the drugs using mass spectrometers and things like that. And I would talk to the scientists and the media was saying, crack cocaine is a new drug. It's lethal. It's more powerful, more dangerous, more addictive and everything. So I said to this guy, What's cocaine? He said, it's cocaine hydrochloride made from the plant. You make it using a base and mixing it up and everything, and it's water-soluble. And so that's why you snort it, because it is absorbed by going into solution in the moist nasal tissue and goes into your body. But of course, when that happens, hydrochloric acid is left on your nasal tissue and it can irritate your nose. And over a long-term abuse, it can eat into your nose, but you could stop that by rinsing your nose. And he said, so that's why crack was invented. All crack is is cocaine hydrochloride mixed with sodium bicarbonate, and all that does is make it combustible, which means you can smoke it instead of snorting it. And the precursor to it was people like Richard Pryor freebasing, so they're mixing acetone stuff to turn it into a smoke, an ether. So the media's going on about all that, and it was exactly the same drug doing exactly the same thing in the same way. It was just more convenient, healthier to take it that way. But again, cocaine itself, the only medical condition you may develop from long-term abuse of cocaine is peripheral neuropathy, which is called socks and gloves. So you lose some sensitivity in your peripheral nerves. That's it. And yet we've got this hysteria about cocaine. Heroin. Diacetylmorphine was used by the NHS in Britain as its number one choice for pain management in childbirth right up until the late 90s. All of these drugs, which have all these prejudices and all this nonsense about them, they are only a problem if somebody has a genetic predisposition to addiction which is less than 10%. And the research, and it's in my book too, shows that If you have an addict and you give them pharmaceutical-grade drugs, and it doesn't matter which one it is, including heroin, which is only injected because street heroin is rubbish. So if you give them pharmaceutical-grade heroin, they don't need to inject it. So that problem is gone. But if you have anybody who gets an addiction to anything, they have a genetic predisposition to addiction, so they're always going to get addicted to something, whether it's gambling or sex or alcohol. But you have to treat the addiction, and you do that. One of the most effective ways of doing that, because everyone who's an addict, if they're supplied with pharmaceutical-grade drugs, can function in society. They can keep their job. They can keep working. They can remain in their family. They can remain connected with their social network. They don't have to be criminalised. So you just give them pharmaceutical grade drugs as long as they need them, as long as they want them. There was a longitudinal study done in Merseyside in England where they got a housing commission complex and they put the addicts in that and they gave them support workers, OTs, psychologists for therapy and social workers and they gave them the basic income for their food and stuff and then they gave them as much of the pharmaceutical-grade drugs as they needed, and over 90% of them ceased voluntarily using over the next five years. The addiction ran its course, and the support systems helped them to adjust their lives. That's how you need to manage the small percentage of people who get addiction. And nearly all deaths from drugs are as a result of it being criminalized and prohibited. full stop and the research shows that so criminalization is insanity it destroys society and you know at the end of the day we live in a democracy of freedom if I am sitting at home and I decide I want to use some drugs which I don't it's my right in my home if I'm not hurting anybody it's nobody else's business it's certainly not the state's business And if you're not genetically predisposed to addiction, it won't matter what drug you use, including heroin, you won't have a problem. The health effects of long-term heroin use are almost negligible. It's things like stomach cramps, dehydration. That's it. A loss of pain levels of tolerance. We have a certain level of pain tolerance that we have. Some it's high and some it's low. but that's reduced by longer-term heroin use. So the whole thing that we need to get the state involved in taking away your rights and telling you what you can do in your home, to me, is the opposite of a democracy. Yeah. So much of addiction seems to be symptomatic of a society that's sick. It's not so much the individual. It's this world that they're living in, this idea that they are not enough because they don't have enough. They'll never be enough, probably because they didn't have an education. They came from poverty on some level. It seems to me that addiction is a fundamental sort of – Trying to think of the right word. It is a symptom of a sick society. And people turn to that to get away from society. And isn't it weird that in today's modern world, we treat addiction with more addiction. If you're addicted to heroin, I'm going to give you Suboxone. That doesn't make any sense. Unless... You peel back the curtain and you say, okay, that's because that is the system. The system is more addiction. We don't want you to leave. Don't do those drugs. Do our drugs. We're going to put you on there forever. The symptom is you're on this new addiction forever. And it comes with a cool label. You're an addict and you can never, ever do anything again because you're a bad, horrible person. You suck and you're an addict. So stay over here. Like it's a mindset on some level. And I think that this is where the ideas of plant medicine done under the guidance of someone who thoroughly understands the process can help guide someone through this thorny, you know, road of addiction. Like, look, you're not a bad person. You're not a horrible person. Right. And on some level, I think the plant medicines allow you to see yourself without judgment. And that third person view is like a breath of fresh air or what the addict would call a moment of clarity. Oh, wait a minute. I'm not the problem. Wait a minute. And it's like some snaps. And you can turn back to that moment of clarity and hold it and begin moving forward. I know that was kind of a lot right there, but what's your take there? Yeah, there's a lot in that. That's amazing. The form of your addiction is nurtured by your experience in life. So you're born with the genetic predisposition and then how it manifests and what sort of addiction it is and what your experience is is manifested in our society. So what you say about that, symptoms and so on in a society causing that is true. If you go back before Prohibition, the same number of addicts were around but nobody cared or bothered with it because they were functioning in society, as I said. There's so much to cover there, I'm a little overwhelmed. Yeah, so the plant medicines can often cure addiction, and some of the ways they do that is all the things you said, but then they manifest an enormous amount of empathy and connection, and that includes with yourself. Yeah. um and you can get rid of all of those prejudices that have been infused into you in your experience in your life through those plant medicine experiences and it does free you up but then again you know if if somebody's got an addiction it's a medical issue it's not a criminal law issue never should have been and with the right support and treatment it becomes fairly irrelevant because With all the drugs that are currently criminalized, and I might just put methamphetamine aside because I give that a little bit of a different category. Most drugs, they diminish in the benefits you get from them, or even some of them just don't work if you take too much, like your MDMA, for instance. Yeah. The reason I would sort of split off methamphetamine is because methamphetamine is one of those few drugs which you can keep taking it and it seems to drive you to want to keep taking it. And I mean consecutively, continuously for days. And that often leads people into psychotic states and that's where you get your worst outcomes. And that's why that one's a little more problematic because it doesn't really happen with any of the other criminalized drugs. So that is an issue there. But yeah, moving forward, you can just treat these people few of them with this stuff. And that's what's really wonderful and important. But, you know, is there things that you wanted to actually have me mention that you went through and all of that? Because I was just thinking, yeah, there's that, there's that, there's that, there's that, there's that, there's that. And I didn't get to address them all. No, yeah. There's so much in it. The one thing that comes to mind actually is there's an analogy in my book where I take two people and they're in parallel universes, you know, the multiverse. Yeah. So we've got the first person who is in our society, right, and they develop an addiction. And their future holds for them ostracization, loss of all their connections in their community, disestrangement from their family, health issues around hepatitis and everything if they're injecting and other diseases, having to associate with criminals, eventually committing crime, ending up in jail, and then there's death. So that's how we manage drugs now. In the other multiverse where there's complete decriminalization, that person develops their addiction. It's recognized as a medical issue. They're given pharmaceutical grade drugs and support and the addiction runs its course. They don't lose contact with their friends. They don't lose contact with their family. They're not estranged. They don't drop out of society. They don't get criminalized. They don't associate with criminals. They don't commit crimes. So which one of those scenarios is a healthier one for society? Well, I think that the decrim is the best way to go. But I think there's a part you're leaving out. I think that, and this is sad to say, but I think a large part of society has become industrialized around drug use. How many nonprofits work with homeless people? And how many of those nonprofits actually want to solve the problem? Why would they want to solve a problem that's going to cut off their paycheck? You know, millions of dollars. If you look at San Francisco, I saw some stat recently where, you know, something ridiculous, like tens of millions of dollars a year go to nonprofits to help homeless people. But it's just a giant money laundering scheme. It is taking all the money. They throw out some cots. Okay, good to go. You know, I'm a CEO. I'm doing something great. I'm helping people. No, you're not. You're just taking free handouts from the taxpayers to do nothing. but there's an industry around it, right? There's a drug industry. There's a nonprofit industry. There is, if you don't think there's an experimentation industry, you're out of your mind. Like people are experimenting all day long on psychotic drugs, on kids, on homeless people. They need those people to further their, their experiments on what drugs might work in the future, you know, and where else can you find people? Absolutely. It's crazy. I agree with all of that and I think that's all true and I think there's research to support it because what happened in those kind of, and you use the words industry and I agree with that, these things started out several decades ago as being things where volunteers and altruistically minded people would come in and they only wanted a pittance to run the organisation and often didn't even get that and everything went to the people and they were genuinely trying to solve these problems. Yeah. you fast forward several decades, it's now an industry and people come into it and they don't have to return a percentage of the money they raise to the directly required people. They get to keep as much of it as they want. I would like to see a law that if you're in that space, 90% of the funds you raise have to go directly to the people you're meant to benefit. And there are many people who are known as altruistic, who don't associate with these charities because they turn around and say to them, well, how much of the money that you raise or you're given goes directly to the people you're meant to help? And it's often 10% or 20%. That might be a high number. Yeah, it could be, but they're old figures. That's the huge problem. People have piled into these areas to make them living and to make a good living and to virtue signal, and they're not achieving anything. And it horrifies me and I'm sad about it too. So you're 100% right about that. It's a shame. It's the same though, isn't it? The pharmaceutical industry has got its profitability. The charity industry has got its profitability and that's what's driving all of that. This is what bothers me the most about being an advocate for decriminalization is If the pharmaceutical big pharma can't figure out how to take this over and profit from it and replace their $16 billion because it will wipe out SSRIs, their junk medication, then they're going to have to destroy it because they can't afford to lose that $16 billion without replacing that revenue. It's a good point. And the massive problem for them is even if they do take it over, because they're so curative, they're not medication, so they don't fit their business model. You're not going to have somebody on this forever. People who come into these things and do them properly come in, get the benefits over time, however long that is, and they move out of it again. Because they're not addictive, they're not dangerous, and they're curative. So I don't know how this is going to unfold because if you go back to Timothy Leary and those guys, they were destroyed by society for saying the things that we're saying. So I've chosen to do it when I'm an old man. So I've got nothing to lose. I can stand up for this and I can weather the storm. But, you know, some, you know, 30-year-old doctor that wants a career or anybody who wants a career and part in society, if this goes wrongly and it becomes a battle, those people will get destroyed. And that's something that I think about a lot, how to manage that, because I'm waiting for the backlash. Yeah, it's a great point. Clint Kyle's awesome guy with a great podcast, a psychedelic Christian podcast. Everyone should check this guy out. He does great work. But he says that the prison industry plays a role in this as well. That's what I was talking about earlier. I and so many of us believe that decriminalization is the way But when you start talking about kickbacks from pharma to politicians to the prison guards union and these private prisons, it's such a wash in money. And there would be a breakdown there. Who doesn't want to see that? But it's one thing to have good intentions and want to see something and then try to put that up against how many millions of dollars a year. It's interesting. And maybe we need a backlash. Maybe there needs to be some sort of backlash against that. Yeah, there absolutely does. It's interesting that you mentioned prisons. Actually, it's an area of interest for me because I was a criminal defense barrister for 15 years. And it's a massive industry. You've got one of the highest criminalized imprisonment rates in the world in America. And we've got a high rate, too. We're actually following the same path, privatizing and then becomes an industry and it grows itself. So we're building two or three new prisons just in my own state right now. And that horrifies me. So in terms of prisoners, in Australia, and it's probably similar in America, 80% of prisoners who serve more than two years re-offend and return to prison. And one of the reasons for that is that they're not improved and cured in prison. And they end up, because they're prisoners, criminals, they end up only having other criminals to associate with. No one else will associate with them. No one will employ them. So when they're out, they immediately gravitate back to the only community that will accept them and then inevitably get involved in stuff and inevitably go back. So my dream in that sector, and it would be resisted by the industry because it'll wipe them out, is to have any prisoners given these medicines in an environment, and it's perfect if you're in prison because all you can do is do the post-trip integration, and that's powerful, and give all these prisoners this medicine, and I think it would wipe out the recidivist rate, cure their ills, and return them to mainstream society really effectively, and that would be just a wonderful outcome. I would love to see that happen. Yeah, I agree. Clint Kyle says criminal university. Yeah. It's, it's, it's interesting. It's patterns, right? Like once you fall into a pattern, then you tend to repeat that pattern. And if you reinforce that pattern, you know, you leave, you leave an institution, you find that you're not wanted, you know, and it's, it's brutal there. I, on some level, when we, when we talk about, um, prisoners and psychedelics and backlash and the pharmaceutical industry and not being able to monetize something that's so readily free. I started thinking of like the sixties in some ways, it seems to me like we're on the cusp of that. And I think you're right. I think if, if there's not a real solid revenue stream where, where, where big pharma is allowed to patent these natural things, if you don't let them patent them, And they're going to try to put the genie back in the bottle. And that's what you had, you know, back in the 60s when you saw all these incredible raids and Art Linklater's daughter jumping out of a window because of psychedelics, even though it probably wasn't psychedelics. And Charles Manson quotes, you know, you're going to see these giant stories, this giant spotlight put on psychedelics in a negative way. If they're not allowed to use it the way they want to use it, it seems like to me. What do you take on that? That's 100% correct because that's exactly what they did with alcohol, with prohibition, and it's exactly what they did with drug prohibition that followed alcohol prohibition. The only difference between drug and alcohol prohibition is that alcohol is drunk by like 80% of people, whereas drugs are only taken by like 40% of people. So one was a majority, one was a minority. So it was okay to pick on the weak guy. It was okay to pick on the minority. Yeah, that's 100% correct. It's frustrating and it's ridiculous. The media has relentlessly, intensively demonised all drugs for decades. And drug deaths aren't drug deaths. Those instances you referred to were fictitious and false and they love doing that. They want to sensationalise things and sell papers, so they say drugs. There's extensive research done on the post-mortem findings of people as drug deaths. And in, I think it was 80 or 90% of cases, there wasn't a lethal toxic level of drug in their body. The drug deaths were a combination of factors that involved often poly drug use, unsafe environments, toxic drugs, in other words, the additives with the toxin, and a whole lot of other factors, choking on vomit, et cetera. So in the example of heroin, diacetylmorphine, which is the most demonized drug in our history, if you overdose on that, there's an interaction in your body where your body struggles to survive and overcome the drug, and the drug works on your central nervous system to depress it and cause you to pass away. So there's this battle going on, and that battle literally takes hours and hours to occur if you've taken too much heroin. And that means if there is any support or intervention in those hours, you will 100% survive without any consequences. But when you criminalise drugs and you have people taking them, they're often doing it alone or with people who are on the verge of society and if something goes wrong, they flee and they don't help. Or if you're alone, of course, then you're not going to get help. So, again, it's caused by criminalisation, not the drug. Yeah. That's a tragedy. You think back over all the people who have died from PTSD and died from drug-related matters, and they all died because of criminalisation, not because of the drug. Every one of them. And for me, that's a tragedy. And if I'm speaking and somebody says somebody close to them died, first of all, I'm so sad for them, and I acknowledge that. But then as well, you know in your heart that they would not have died except for criminalisation, but these people are now advocating to maintain criminalisation because they lost somebody. And that's really sad too because the answer for anyone else in the future is to decriminalise so that doesn't happen anymore. And unfortunately, they've caught up in their grief and are advocating to keep things prohibited because of their experience when they should actually be doing the opposite. So these sometimes are really hard things, you know. And the research on drug deaths from heroin shows that it's long-term addicts who are struggling to get a decent hit because street heroin is such rubbish. It's so adulterated and weak. And they're the ones who are more likely to die, not your early or first-time users. And even with heroin... It takes repeated use over a period of weeks or months to actually develop an addiction if you are predisposed to addiction anyway. So there's a lot of complexity around this stuff that can all be wiped out just by returning these things to the medical profession and to deregulation, you know, decriminalization. It's been very frustrating because the first book I wrote, which was How to Deal Drugs and Get Away With It, and that was a tongue-in-cheek title for a little bit of sensational reaction, It was actually nearly 15 years ago now. So I've been advocating for this. And the only light at the end of the tunnel I've seen in Australia is that we're the first country in the world to have legally authorized psychiatrists to prescribe MDMA and psilocybin. And we have a pilot program going now. And the two major cities, Sydney and Melbourne, have a clinic there where they're doing it. But again, I don't think they'll have necessarily got the ceremonial set and setting part right. But hey, it's a big step forward. So very proud that we're leading the world in that. But they forgot ayahuasca, left the other one behind. But, you know, if that works out and it will, because there's already tons of research showing how beneficial they are, then we're going to move forward with any luck. I'm very hopeful on that. Me too. You know, you guys in America, if I just briefly mention, with ayahuasca, your Supreme Court has already said that if people are administering it as part of a church, it's legal. So you guys can actually access it in your own country if you go to one of these churches. And that would be good because that will get the ceremonial set and setting aspect right. But I often say with the psychotherapeutic, I never use the word psychedelic or hallucinogens or anything like that because they're part of the whole prejudice that was created. That's why I use the word psychotherapeutic plant medicines. It encapsulates every important element. But I always say that taking these things and not doing post-trip integration is like taking Viagra and not making love. So for me, the post-trip integration is the key to this. Not only is set setting and ceremony the important thing, but the post-trip integration is the thing that completes your transmogrification. Yeah, that's a tricky one. Sometimes I wonder... You know, I'm curious to, I wonder like what, it's such an interesting word, like integration. Like some people think that that means you sitting down with a journal and for the next maybe month or so writing down your thoughts about it. And other people think that means sitting around a group of people who have gone through a ceremony or sitting down with an individual who may be a trained in a certain type of medicine. But it just seems like it's kind of sort of a catch-all. When you say integration, how do you define it? I love this topic. I'm so glad you asked. Yeah. Okay. If you take psilocybin or you take ayahuasca and you do it with the reverence, respect, the ceremony, the set and setting and the support, for the next three plus months, you're going to have elevated levels of oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine. You're also going to be experiencing a process of neuro... plasticity, and probably potentially neuro-nascence as well, which is a genesis of potentially new neurons. And that's all going to be occurring, right? And in your ceremony, you will have gained an amazing amount of insights and you will have taken certain steps forward in relation to facing fears and anxiety and all sorts of things. So you come out of that fresh. Sometimes you come out of it maybe feeling a little lost because a lot of the baggage you've been carrying around that's been dictating your identity and your behavior has just been washed away. And so there's not the same reference points there, not the same identity. And so you come out of that and that's when you need the post-trip integration and that's why it's so important because I think it includes all of those things you said and I think they're all essential. Journaling is my favourite. I'm obsessed with it. Journaling is a process where you create a brand new loving relationship with yourself. You are sitting down with yourself every day in an intimate way and building a new loving relationship, you're giving yourself quality time and attention. You're interacting with yourself in a loving way and you're going through things that are just about you. And if you do that, you will start to feel more self-love and you will start to want to do that. But a lot of people resist it and a lot of people struggle with it even in the first few days. But if you do that and you do that for your post-trip integration, you will get a world of benefits out of that which will translate into how you deal with yourself in your daily life. It will enhance it significantly. So I'm a massive fan of that. And that's something that doesn't require much. If you go and do your ceremony and you go and buy – uh a journal and a pen you're set you're good to go um so that's the first thing the second thing I think that is really worthwhile is to do it in a group of people who have done it um because the enormous boost to your empathy and your connection with the universe and yourself is is a powerful wonderful thing and if you immerse yourself in a group of people that are all in that at the same time you'll have the most beautiful experience of that interaction you'll experience connection you haven't experienced before with people And that all enhances your own self-love and the way you relate to people. And that's wonderful. So even if it's by Zoom once a week, I would do that for at least three months. In relation to sitting down in a therapeutic context with a professional, whether it's a mental health nurse or a social worker or a psychologist, can be really beneficial. And potentially recommend that too. That's probably the way the profession would go to monetize it. It'll be part of the package that you signed up for. But along the way in your post-trip period, you get insights. And there's sort of insights that might take you a year or two of therapy to get. But one of the big differences is because of the neuroplasticity, the new neural pathways, the flexibility that you've just attained, as these insights come in, they're automatically integrated. You have the revelation and then it becomes you and you move forward with that new state. And when that's happening, you also have fears along the way and concerns. And if you don't have someone to ask about those things, they can be things that hold up your progress and take your attention and take you off the journey you're on. And that's why the poster of integration becomes really important too because you can ask someone something that's been through and they go, oh, yeah, I know exactly what's happening there and this is how it will finish and you don't have to worry about that. So I think that's the main game. I think that's the real deal. I think that's the true purpose. And this is why I don't recommend or advocate for recreational use because these are medicines. They're powerful medicines. They're life-transforming, transmogrifying, exciting. And if you do it that way, you will get lifelong permanent benefits from it you couldn't have got anywhere else. But if you just go and take some mushies and have a drink and go and party, you're not going to get anything from it except the trip, and it's going to be not that good. So, yeah, I don't have anything against people using drugs recreationally. That's their business, as I said at the start. You do what you want in your home. It's your business. Nothing to do with me. I don't do it, but good luck to them. But this stuff is psychotherapeutic plant medicines for transforming your life, and that's not about recreation. It's about something much deeper, much more important, much more beautiful. Sometimes I think it's all medicinal use. You know what I mean? There is no recreation. Everyone is just medicating. It's all medicinal. Yeah, and they're getting stress relief. They're getting fun. You know, they're all valid things. They're all valid reasons. Yeah. Yeah, but they're not on the level that we're talking about when it comes to psychotherapy about medicines because that's going to help. It's like when I said all those things I tried, they all helped a little bit. It's the same thing. That helps a little bit. It's the same reason people get drunk and I don't have a problem with that either. That's their business again. The only time I think the state has a right to intervene in what you do is when you're going to hurt yourself or others. If that's not happening, State can stay out of it. We have massive overreach from government in the modern era. We're moved from democracy to authoritarianism and now we're sliding towards totalitarianism and that's always bothered me because at the same time that's happening, we're getting the most compliant younger generations we've ever had. There's been a massive mental shift from people of my era saying, I'll do whatever the hell I like unless it's specifically criminalised and we've shifted in the modern generations to, oh, am I allowed to do that? Do I need permission to do that? Now, that's a compliant, submissive mental state, which the governments love because it's very easy to get full compliance on anything they want you to do. And in Australia, it was frightening because in Melbourne, our second largest city, that dictator... he enforced the longest lockdown in the world yeah now we now know that lockdowns destroyed marriages businesses lives mental states and was a disaster and was probably not even necessary um there were other steps that probably could have done and we had the most compliant worst treated population in the world during that and there was compliance with it and I'm really disturbed about that as we slide towards totalitarian governments You guys had something aching to containment camps down there. You're picking people up and putting them in camps, man. You're not vaccinated to get in this camp. hundred percent right yeah exactly that's how I felt too I was scared about that um the government could have said we recommend you stay at home um the government could have said if you go out you must wear a mask that's all okay that doesn't infringe much of what you're doing but to say we're going to lock you down we're going to arrest you we're going to arrest you we're going to intern you um Yeah, we all know what that's closely aligned with from our past. You know, that's as close as you get to Nazi Germany as you can get. And the compliance is what frightened me because Australians are larrikins, they're cheeky and we were focused on freedom like your culture and suddenly this entire population is compliant with the most oppressive lockdown in history in the world. I'm just so sad and concerned about that. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you brought it up because I think it begins to... you know, pull back the curtain on fear. People are compliant when they're fearful. Oh, you're going to lose your family. This thing's going to kill you. You're going to lose... You know, when you start putting this giant propaganda machine of fear out there, it really changes the way people act. We're very easily conditioned to stay away from fear. And I think that on some level, psychedelics or... you know, these different types of plant medicines have a way that force you to confront your fears. You know, people that are dealing with traumas on some level, right? It's put in front of you and it's put in front of you in a way where, Hey, you can have a bad trip and not trying to run away, but it's not going anywhere. It's going to follow you. It's going to force you to confront your fear. And I think psychedelics do that. And I think that that's another reason why in the sixties, they, they, they're like, Hey, this thing is making people stand up. They're starting to They're getting these wacky ideas like they got rights and they should be able to do things, you know. But what is your take on the relationship between compliance and fear and plant medicines and fear? Yeah, look, that's 100% spot on. We are driven by fear and it's a genetic evolutionary trait and it serves us well. But where we're at now with it, it's disturbing and you're 100% correct. There was a couple of motivations for Nixon. One was he thought nobody would join the army and fight for the country and that they would lose control. So those were his reasonings. But you're 100% right. When you go through a properly run ceremony of either drug, You will overcome fear. You'll overcome fear as a main driver in your life, a main motivation. And when I was in the police, before I was a drug squad detective, I did community policing and I was in the riot squad and we used to watch people go from normal law-abiding citizens into frenzied, crazy people smashing staff and rioting. And it can happen very quickly. And similarly, I don't know if you heard in Australia when the lockdowns or the COVID came up, there were riots, well, not riots, but brawls in the supermarkets over toilet paper. Wow. I mean, how crazy does it get? So, yeah, fear is a massive tool for governments and they certainly used it in Victoria and you're 100% correct. If you do a ceremony correctly and you overcome fear and you don't live in fear anymore, then you're not going to comply And you're going to stand up for what you believe regardless. And I think that's a fantastic thing. I think that's an essential part of freedom, democracy, things that, you know. You know, Australia is one of the only countries in the modern era that stood with you guys in every war that you fought. Canada didn't. England didn't. France didn't. We did. And so, you know, in relation to those core values, we're very much aligned. and I want to see people cured and free from fear so that they're living their best life and they're also not sucking up this authoritarianism, totalitarianism. I'm a big fan of small government. Minimal, you know. I don't think that they're there to rule over us. I think they're there to serve us. Yeah. And the government should be afraid of the people. The people shouldn't be afraid of the government. Yeah. I think that... there are good people that want to lead, you know, the, the, it's just that the level of corruption is, is so deep at the top. It's hard to get rid of those powers. Never really relinquish. It's always taken. And so it's a matter of getting somebody good in there that will fight and will fight the corruption and not be turned when they get up against the machine and realize that it's, That's tough stuff. Yeah, look, I work for the Crime and Corruption Commission and I was the council assisting and I've done a lot of research on corruption and it fascinates me. it's a very complicated thing, but I think the problem starts with defining corruption as only the commission of criminal offenses, right? Because I think if you're going to create a definition of corruption, you have to have two, you have to have one that's the general definition for ordinary people. And then you have to have a definition that applies for anybody who's exercising any power. And they're two different things. If you're exercising any power at all in our society, then the definition of corruption really has to be flipped from anything criminal to corruption is any time you stray from that correct path, merit, honesty, transparency, objective fairness. It has to be defined that way for exercising power. It has to force you onto the narrowest possible path. And you have to be fully accountable, transparent, honest. You can't give lying answers. You can't deflect. You have to answer. You have to man up. And the narrower you make the definition – sorry, the stronger you make the definition of corruption, the more effect you're going to have. But you've got to remember, every system developed over the last thousand years in Western democracies through the Westminster system has been designed to – be self-protective and to hamper change and development. And once you get corruption in there, it's almost impossible to move it out. And all of the international NGOs that measure corruption are measuring that countries like ours are actually starting to slide downhill. And the leading theory of criminology is a slippery slope. And once you get on that slope, you slide downhill, but the slide accelerates. So to turn that around is incredibly hard. So the UN did a lot of research in the 60s after a lot of African colonies where the colonial powers were removed and these countries collapsed. And you probably well know the history that there was revolutions all over Africa for decades, millions killed. And they tried to address that. And the UN would go to these countries and say, we will provide you with an anti-corruption organisation. We will fund it. We will staff it. It will be completely independent and we will help you remove the corruption. And in return, if you agree to this, we will give you priority in funding and development. And every single one of them said no because they didn't control it. See, the key to having the window dressing of an anti-corruption body is to make sure that you retain the control. You give them a narrow jurisdiction, you give them narrow powers, narrow funding, narrow staffing, and they will not be a threat to corruption. And that's what everybody does. So they say, hey, we've got an anti-corruption body. What are you worried about? Well, it's a toothless tiger that's ineffective. And so they're not threatened by it and they don't care. They've done what they should. So attacking corruption is incredibly hard. The reason that I left the Australian Federal Police Drug Squad, as I mentioned, it was the worst period of corruption in our history, was because there were 30 corrupt detectives in that squad and they were pressuring me and I was only 20 to join them. and they were threatening my life and I was a kid in sydney on my own I wasn't from sydney big city I was from a country town and I'm there in the middle of this and subsequently there was a royal commission and it found there were 30 corrupt detectives in it do you know what the government did with those guys It allowed them to resign, gave them references, allowed them to be re-employed in other agencies in the government, and allowed them to keep their ill-gotten gains. And people like me, who refused to join them and left and had to go and start again, got shafted. So Australia is starting to slide downhill. We used to be in the top 10. We're not. and we're sliding downhill. And you couple that with movement towards totalitarian government and technological advance, and I am concerned about that. Yeah, rightfully so. And I think I lost as well the answers. Yeah, I do too. I think that on some level, we've begun to see, you know, maybe back, it started back in the Arab Spring or the Yellow Vests in France or the unions that are fighting here, but you see this sort of pushback, this sort of uprising that's happening from the grassroots all over the world. And I don't think it's a coincidence. I think it's the people sort of the human mycelium, if you will, the same way that the mushrooms go under the ground. Right. So this network of people like you and I talking cross countries here, having the same ideas, the same mindset, we're seeing the same problem. We're coming up with solutions and we're doing that over technology. That's, that is reaching out to audiences and 30, 40,000 people. And we're able to get our ideas out there. And that is this wave that overcomes the corrupt and hopefully washes a big part of it away. I'm positive. I'm bullish on the future. I, I, they say that sunlight is the best disinfected. And I think that's what's going on here. And that's why the last part of the book title is our fantastic future, because by advocating for this stuff, that's where we're going to get to. And that's what that's about. But, um, That whole thing of that overview, and it's particularly prevalent in countries like yours and mine, wealthier Western democracies, is our distribution of wealth is the worst it's ever been in history. And Australia was built on an egalitarian philosophy like yours was. And in Australia, right up until the 1970s or 80s, a man could be the sole provider in his family. He could go and do a 40-hour week. And he had enough money to buy his house and pay it off, to have a car for his family to go away on weekends and stuff, to have a holiday each year and to save some money. And his wife didn't work, right? And, you know, that's the golden age. We now have a situation because of this and the distribution of wealth where a man goes to work for 40, 45 hours a week and has a family, but his wife has to work too. He may or may not have a car. And often our home ownership now is dropping off a cliff because And he's doing an honest day's work in an honest job, and he doesn't meet all these bills. We've never had that before in Australia, and that disgusts me, especially when you see the rush of concentration of wealth to this top 1%. and some of them are not really good people, unfortunately, and they're happy to do that. They'll have 1,000 staff on their payroll that they're paying them just above poverty wage when they have $50 billion in the bank, and I don't think that's acceptable. Good luck to them that they're successful. Good luck to them they're rich. What difference does it make if you've got $30 billion or $50 billion in the bank? But all those people that are driving your wealth and creating that wealth, are getting money that's either at the poverty level or just above. And there's a huge movement now saying, well, why would I bother? Why should I do it? Why should I go to a job I don't really like and that is actually really unhealthy for me anyway because people in a lot of jobs, the job is making them unhealthy. and they're not doing what they love, and they're just trying to do the right thing, but they're being totally and utterly exploited, and it's worse than it's ever been, and I think that's really sad because both of our countries have the opportunity for that not to be the case. It wouldn't take much. Yeah, I agree, and you can kind of see some cracks in the strategy, it seems to me. When I look at the U.S. and I see the – like I'm for immigration. I'm for everybody getting a chance, but what it seems to be going on here in this country is that – the wealthiest corporations have decided that paying the people that currently live here is too much of a burden on their stock price and so they want to import slower or different they want to import a cheaper sort of labor force and they've been doing it and it's like this such a such a a a small slice of the people that are in boardrooms and CEOs and executives, what's happening is they're bringing these people in, and then the people that they bring in have a different way of protesting. I worked for a multinational corporation, and when the union would strike, they would walk out. But if you start looking at the way in India when a group of people protest, what they do is they wait for the CEO to show up or some manager to show up, and then they set his car on fire with the family in there. That's a whole different type of protest, and that's what's coming here. With the family in it? Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. So people and my warning to the people that think about this great replacement theory, like we're just going to bring in all this cheap labor. Be ready because it's a different type of protest that happens when you treat people like animals. They're going to start treating you like animals. I was reading some articles about I know in Boston and some of these really wealthy enclaves where they have a lot of housekeepers that they'll bring in that are from south of the border. I read an article recently where one of the person that was serving as a gardener or a maid ended up killing one of the kids of one of the owners. And you can see, oh, look at this difference in wealth here. So here's a child of an immigrant that came in and murdered the family that his mom was a housekeeper for. like that is going to start happening more and more and more. And all of a sudden these people that are like, we're going to bring in all this slave labor. Okay. Congratulations. Look what you brought in. Like you're bringing in your own demise on some level and there's enough for everybody, but it can't be concentrated at this person's a billionaire. And this person has nothing. Cause when you do that, you, you, you've, the house of cards falls down. There's enough for everybody. It's just this greed has become this incredible force that is contagious and disgusting and makes the world a worse place. But now we're back to psychedelics because I think it can heal that. That's right. That's right. They keep coming up as a solution. And that's one of the reasons that I think we both do this. And one of the things that in my life now, because in the communities I'm known here, is that somebody will come and want to sit down for two hours to talk to me about whether they should go and do this or not. And you have to go through all of the concerns they have and what they're worried about. And you have to give them some understanding of what it's all about and what they'll get from it. But I love those talks. I love doing that for people. And I keep a list of all the people that I've had that contact with and that as a result of me doing that, they've gone and done it. And the best thing is the afterwards, you know, when they ring you up and say, oh, thank you, thank you so much. and their life is so much better. And that's one of the things that drives me is doing that. That's my little contribution, you know, aside from doing this work and the books and stuff, which may have more of an influence over time. That's the most personal, rewarding thing to do for people that I can think of to spend my life doing. And it's just so good. Yeah, I just love the joy it brings them and the change it brings. uh it's contagious I think right when you do something good for somebody it's it's it's the opposite of catching a cold it's like catching a warm you know what I mean like you spread some love out there man it's beautiful yeah well there's this flow-on effect which I'm only just discovering now because for instance this one uh guy from my social group he came to my house and he sat with me for two hours and he was so scared and and we shared a great conversation he went and did it and um It was a little while after that I got a call from his partner, his girlfriend, and she came and had the same conversation. She went and did it. And the reason that she contacted me was because she saw what it did to him. Mm-hmm. So he's gone out into his contacts and they've seen the effect on him. So they've then come to want to do it too. And you have to think that's going to be like the network of growing influence, the ripples that go through, you know. Because you can't tell someone to do this. They have to be called. But they have to have that spark of curiosity that has to grow and then they have to feel the call. So you can't just say, go and do this. You know, it has to be an organic spark that grows, and then they go and find it out. And that's when it works really well. Yeah, on some level, I think that the plant medicines, they are sort of utilizing a strategy of growth that is – built on thousands, if not millions of years of nature. And that is that much like a seed can be carried by an animal and then dropped off that animal's fur and it lands in some soil somewhere else. So too does taking like ayahuasca or psilocybin plant a seed in you, and then you become an evangelist for it. And then it helps somebody else take it. And it begins to grow in that way, right? And it just, it's such a natural form of healing that is contagious. And we talk about how you know, illness is contagious. But if that's, if illness is contagious, then so is wellness is contagious. And I really believe that individuals becoming the very best versions of themselves is contagious. Oh, look at Andrew. Look at this book that he wrote. Look at all these people he's healing. Like, People want to be around. They see that. And then they start taking the path. The person you talk to, his partner came. They take the medicine. Then the next person takes the medicine. And it's this slow tide or wave that begins to wash over the masses. And people begin to see the error of their ways. And it's like the big boats. It doesn't turn around real fast. It's slow at first and then all at once. But you can see the changes happening. And I'm hopeful. that the sixties was like the first, like the come up to the mushrooms, like the first wave before you start peaking. And now this particular wave is a little bit higher. We're going to start moving through the corruption. I I'm, I'm really bullish on that. And like, I see the changes out there. So. Yeah, so I collect mainstream media articles about drugs and I've got them in years and there was a real change in the positivity about reporting about these and part of that was influenced by the fact that Ivy League universities and reputable universities throughout the world started doing conclusive research demonstrating that it effectively treats depression including resistant treatment resistant depression ptsd and a whole range anxiety and a whole range of conditions so when I started down this path that you're talking about of influencing society and as you know I'm an international keynote speaker I developed two talks I developed the drug talk which is based on my book and the other stuff that we've chatted about But I developed a second talk about the pathway to self-actualization. And in that talk, I talk about seven systems of peak performance. And so I've got this thing in relation because 30 or 40% of people deal with some level of anxiety in their lives on a daily basis. And I've got this thing that directly deals with that. And I call it the three keys to the kingdom because all anxiety is based on a belief you can't handle whatever you're facing. And the reason that that's so threatening is because underneath that on the deepest level is a belief that if you can't handle it, it will kill you. And that's what drives, that's what fundamentally at the subconscious level drives anxieties. So the three keys of the kingdom are the three things that you say to yourself when you feel that and they are, I'm safe, I'm okay, I can handle this. And it's not a mantra. It's actually something that you have to argue with yourself about. You have to persuade yourself to say if you're okay and you can handle this. And that's the first thing I share with them in the talk after I go through it. And the way that that works is that I told you that story about being locked in that room and it traumatizing me and I developed claustrophobia. Well, a couple of decades into the future, I was appointed as the Victorian mining warden and I have to go down into mines. And I was claustrophobic. I was so claustrophobic I couldn't get into lifts and stuff because of that traumatization, which I carried with me. So I realized that if I couldn't do that, I had to quit this job and I'd move my family to Victoria and everything. So I got this book by Dr. Susan Jeffers called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. And she'd researched all that and discovered those levels. I can't handle it means I'm going to get killed or it's going to destroy me. And she taught, she teaches you how to deal with it, which is where I developed the three keys to the kingdom from. And so I got the book, I worked this out and I started practicing it because you can practice on little things first until you realize how it works and how you use it. And then you can escalate into harder and bigger challenges. So I get called to go to this coal mine with a hundred meter shaft down into the coal mine face. Right. And I've been working on this and I'm ready to go. And we turn up and the mine manager's there and he's a happy sort of fun guy. And I'm in this struggle. I'm persuading myself I'm safe I'm okay I can handle this and I'm going okay I'm winning the battle and we go to the mineshaft lift and we get in and we go the hundred meters down and we get down to the bottom and it's rising and I'm winning and it's rising and I'm winning and I'm getting more confident and we step out and we go to the coalface and he turns to me and goes do you want to see how dark it is down here and before I could answer he switched the light off And I'm in this black void and it's just escalated it. And I worked really hard and it overcame it. And from that day, I'd broken through on that. So I tell that story when I share the three keys to the kingdom because it really works if you use it. And, um, and then that leads me to the second thing. And the reason I'm mentioning all this is because we're talking about overcoming all this self-actualization and what, um, and what medicines can do. So the next thing I share is, um, we have a, what I call a pathological critic, and that's what the, some of the psychologists refer to it too in our head. And you have to deal with that. It's kind of a form of ego defense and, um, It's a way of your ego keeping you safe, if you like. It distracts you from things by saying things to you that you react to and so you don't feel the feelings you're trying to avoid. And it's a pathological critic. So for short, I call it Pac-Man after that little video guy because he's always chewing at you, right? And you can renegotiate new arrangements with Pac-Man. You can engage with Pac-Man, connect with Pac-Man and say, look, I know you're trying to protect me and look after me. But I want to try something different. So if you agree with me, let's just try this way for a week or something. And if I feel better and it's working, let's stick with that. And you negotiate these agreements and you say, like, instead of when I'm going to feel something that I don't want to feel, instead of you coming in with these thoughts and distracting me, let's just have the feelings. And let's try that for a week and see if that makes me happier. So that's the next thing is redefining your relationship with Pac-Man, your pathological critic. And then the next thing I teach them about is journaling. So did you know that in terms of neuroscience, when you're physically writing, it's a whole different process in your brain to when you're speaking or typing. So physically writing is actually much more of an intimate act. And that's why one of the reasons, aside from you sitting down saying, this is a special time just with me, the physical writing adds a personal element to it. That becomes a process where it's very closely aligned to the idea that you're having a one-to-one, face-to-face conversation with someone. So you're actually developing this relationship in another dimension, in a sense. It's like you are having the self that you're talking to there in person with you when you journal. And that's another reason why... It's powerful aside from the special time and the intimacy, you actually are developing almost a real relationship with another entity, which is the part of you. And then there's a few other things as the attitude of gratitude. That's really important. And Sean Acker, I don't know if you've heard of him. He does a TED talk and he's an Ivy League professor. He talks about how gratitude works. And if you sit down each night and you write out seven things that you're grateful or thankful for every night, it will transform you neurologically. And over time, as you develop that practice, you start to have positive, spontaneous thoughts about what you're grateful for and thankful for. And that generates oxytocin and serotonin and positivity naturally. So it changes your mind. And you'll notice a difference if you do that just over seven days. But if you keep doing it, that will become you. That will become a spontaneous thing. And, of course, you've probably heard of open mindset, really essential. You throw that in the mix and ground yourself in the now. And they're the seven things that I teach about in my self-actualization talk. But you've got to set a foundation of having healthy food, good sleep, good sleep hygiene, not just a good night's sleep, a good sleep hygiene, healthy food, and some exercise regularly. Because if you don't have those three in place, these things aren't going to work as well, and you're not going to have that foundation. So that's what I talk about in my self-actualization talk, which is separate to my drug talk. But that's the stuff I love sharing because I can't go into corporate environments and say, okay, everybody, let's go do some ayahuasca in a ceremonial setting. But I can tell them all that and then they might look further and then they find that. Because one of the things you asked me at the beginning was how did my journey unfold and how did I recover after trying for decades and doing everything I could and therapy with multiple therapists and every other alternative therapy, art therapy, everything you can think of. Self-help books, I read all the best ones and I did what they said. The only thing that cured me was ayahuasca after all of that. That was the bottom line. I love it. Yeah, yeah. So all those things that we went through at the start from my childhood, pretty heavy stuff. The family therapist that we used to have when I was younger, he said that you've got a 95% chance of being dead in jail or mental institution with the beginning you had, but you're the 5%. And that's why I talk about this to share that because... If it works for me from where I started, I know that it'll work for people who didn't have that kind of start. And I've walked the walk so I can share it from a truth from within as well as it being an academic exercise, you know, based on research because I've got the both. And again, aside from getting people or encouraging people to do the ayahuasca, I share all that too. And it adds that element to it, that personal credible element to what I share. It's fascinating to me. And I'm curious. First off, those are both great talks. And it sounds to me that... with your laws there, with your background and with the laws that are happening there with some of the healthcare and the PTSD and psilocybin and MDMA, do you see a future where psychedelic therapy may be introduced into the healthcare system. Like part of a, if you work at this corporation, you have access to this healthcare. I know that there's a company called Enthea here that's working with Dr. Bronner. They have it and they are beginning to do a grassroots movement to get large scale corporations to sign on to healthcare programs that allow for this type of therapy. Do you see that in the future in Australia? Yeah, I do. We've got a slight difference because I know you guys, with your employment, you get these healthcare benefits in some cases and your healthcare is not free. So we have a base system where a base level of care, so you get injured or you're sick, you can go to a hospital and they will treat you for free. If you want higher levels of care, and most people do, you pay and you pay as an individual. You can get your employer to pay it, but it's not part of the benefits the way you guys do. Most people, you just pay it. And for most people, it's between $1,000 and $2,000 a year, which is pretty good. Wow. And that means you get to either go semi-private or fully private if you have any issue. So, yeah, there will be a time in the future where if I sign up to a healthcare company here, They will say to me for this amount of money, these are the things you can have. I can include childbirth in it. I can include joint replacements or eye surgery, you know, and I can have inclusions in it. And at some point that'll probably be in there when we've decriminalized and it's moving forward. And that'll be part of how big pharma and the medical profession can figure out their control and influence too. And you know what, if they get it wrong, the entire massive underground networks that exist in our countries will just continue yeah and um and people will pursue that you know it was fascinating to me that the people the shaman that I know that run these things they charge about 800 for a weekend where you do two ceremonies and everything's supplied right There was a study done if the medical profession was going to supply it and it was probably going to get it wrong and they were talking about 10,000 to 15,000. So horrified about that. The shaman who were doing it for the altruistic reasons and the rewards are massive for people who help people in this way. but they're not monetary, they're getting the minimum out of it. They're just getting enough to live and fund their lives. And you bring the medical profession in, oh, it's 15,000 to do the same thing. Come on. Seriously. Yeah, it just eliminates access to the people that need it the most. Yeah, that's right. And it just means that the medical funds can put up their fees a lot more if they want to include that. And, you know, it's the antithesis of what actually is being done and what's trying to be achieved. But, you know, I don't have a high level of confidence that a government and the medical profession and the farmer will introduce this in a really good way. And I am grateful, as I've said, that there's an underground movement that's doing this out of altruism and is doing a good job. Because they're safe. You're not talking about risk. All those myths are just offensive that are propagated in the media. It's ironic to me that somebody who... is in a nest with pillows and blankets with carers around them in an idyllic country setting is considered by the mainstream society to be at risk of death or killing somebody. You couldn't be safer. You couldn't be in a better place. You couldn't be more cared for. Sure, you got to go through some challenges in a trip. That's what it's for. I mean, this whole idea about bad trips, right? It's just a complete mischaracterization. All trips have challenges in them. That's the whole point. You've come there because you want healing. You've got trauma. You've been through stuff. You have anxiety, depression, fear, and you want to be cured. Well, guess what? You've got to go through that. You've got to deal with it, resolve it, and go through it. The beauty of plant medicines is it happens in a couple of experiences in a caring environment. If you are faced with those challenges in a trip and you resist them, again, escalate until you give in and you resolve them. It's the burning bush. The fear will come up, and as soon as you embrace it, it dissolves. It transmogrifies into something else, and you're free of it forever. But if you don't do that... then it's going to escalate and you're going to be more scared and it's going to be distressing until you give in and do that. So they're called a bad trip. The research now emerges that the more it's a bad trip, the more you get out of it and the more benefits you're doing, the better off you are because it means you've gotten rid of so much more. It's the magic of it. So, you know, this whole idea, this fear again, you know, we talked about fear and this is about fear. This is about pushing people's buttons and manipulating them and managing it. And they know they have that tool available to them, big pharma and the profession, if they need to use it. Because all you've got to do is sensationalise it and put a bit of fear out there like they have with drugs for decades and suddenly everybody's against it. Yeah. And that's a tragedy, you know, that's frustrating stuff. That's what we're up against. Yeah, I'm hopeful. It's sort of like a Trojan horse where it finds its way into some of these camps of people that are really maybe in the pharmaceutical industry or in the medical industry. They begin to have their own experiences and it awakens them to the idea that maybe some of the things that they have been pushing for are wrong. You begin to see that change happen from the inside out, but It's fascinating. We talked a little bit about the book, but I want everyone who's listening to this that found this conversation interesting and fascinating to know where they can get the book. Give me the title of the book. I see it back there, but can you grab it and hold it up close so people can see what it looks like? yeah there we go so so if people can see that right there it's dealing or healing a reality checking drug wars drug wonders and our fantastic future by andrew swindles and where can they where can they pick that up right now and what's the best way for somebody listening or watching this to get a copy of that uh thanks appreciate you doing that um I'm in the process of creating a website, but right now, if you want a copy, just email me at dealing or healing, dealing or healing at gmail.com, which is really easy because it's the title of the book, dealing or healing at gmail.com. Yeah. And so I've set up an email until my website's up. So if you want one, just email me and ask for it, give me your details, and I will post it to you. So, yeah, to the U.S., the cost is $50 U.S., which includes postage. And... If you email me, I'll send you back the bank details to transfer the money. Then I'll post it to you if you want the book. So just so people know, the book covers the history of drug use by human beings. Then it moves forward to prohibition of alcohol and then prohibition of drugs. and then it moves on to look at psychotherapeutic plant medicines in detail in a chapter, and then I propose a way forward in society. And it covers all of those issues about addiction and those analogies we talked about, about what society without criminalisation and one with and all of that. And it's a fully researched work too. It's... It started out as a master's thesis and then I developed it into a full book. And so it's referenced. So when I talk about a study, it's got the reference there, which is the academic way. So you can look at it. So it's not just opinions and thoughts. It's, it's got the research behind it. Yeah. So, yeah, that'd be great. I'd love to share it with anybody who wants a copy and yeah, I think you will really get a lot out of it if you read it. I really enjoyed writing it. I just always felt with all of these things, and it's like you, you're serving a greater purpose and doing something really wonderful and meaningful and rewarding, you know, and there's nothing better than living that way. And I'm so glad that I'm on this path now and I'm also not vulnerable to being destroyed like Timothy Leary was. I always keep that in the back of my mind. And the media never apologized to him for that because now we know that he was right, you know, and he was doing what we do, serving the community and trying to make the world better. And look what they did to him. And, It's the same, you know, Nikola Tesla, you know, I love Nikola Tesla. Do you know, a journalist once asked Albert Einstein what it's like to be the smartest man in the world. And do you know what he said? He said, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. You'll have to ask Nikola Tesla. Isn't that beautiful? If Nikola is the smartest man in the world, according to Einstein, which is a pretty good endorsement, then what does he say about everything? A journalist once asked Nikola Tesla, what's the universe about? How do we understand it? Nikola Tesla said, to understand the universe, you have to think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration. That's what that's all about. Now, these psychotherapeutic plant medicines connect you with that. energy, frequency, and vibration, you suddenly understand how you're connected to everything. You suddenly have the heightened empathy, and you suddenly have a new perspective on spirituality, on existence, on the universe. So I often mention that in my talks because I love that little connection there, Einstein, Tesla, and the universe. Yeah. So if you're looking for meaning and you're looking for answers, that's where it is. Yeah, it's beautifully said. Everything breaks down to energy, frequency, vibration, and it's amazing to me. I really enjoyed this, Andrew. I'm thankful for your time. I hope people go down to the show notes and check out the book. We talked about where they can get a copy of the book, but what if they want to contact you? Can they use the same email, or is there a certain place you want them to go, or where can they find you? Well, Yeah, I'm again doing the websites. There's another email, andrewswindellspeaks at gmail.com, but you could use either one. You'll get me. I've got a LinkedIn page. You've just got to put my name into LinkedIn. It's listed as Andrew H. Swindells. So that's another way to get hold of me, building a community there around this. in LinkedIn. And when I get the video of this, I'll put it up there too, which I'll be very grateful for. But the reason I mentioned Tesla, I just wanted to add, was when Tesla was doing his experiments, he announced that he was receiving radio signals from space. We now know that that's exactly what happens. There's radiation and radio signals coming from the universe. It's background radiation, etc., The media and the naysayers and the ridiculers vilified him for saying that, and they treated him as being crazy and said he was talking to little green men on Mars. And this is what these elements of society like politicians and media do, right? You've got someone that Einstein reckons is a genius. saying a perfectly valid, correct thing, and the entire media just piled on to try and destroy him. So they did it to Tesla. They did it to Timothy Leary. They do it to all of these people. And that disgusts me, actually. But that's what you're dealing with when you go into this. And that's why we now have the access. We can write books. You can do the podcast. And we have this direct access. that is so wonderful because we get to bypass those small-minded, petty people that don't get it and that don't care. So this is a gift. This ability to do this and write the books and get heard, it's a wonderful gift that was never there before. And so, yeah, just very grateful, very grateful and thankful for the opportunity. I think, you know, it's interesting if you go from Leary to Tesla, but you can even take what you just said and take it back to Leary about turn on and tune in. right? Turn on, there you go. I mean, there's something happening and you're not the only one to bring it up. I feel it. I see it. I, I, I'm able to transmute it sometimes, but there is something bigger that's communicating to us and wants us and is pushing us and pulling us to become the best version of ourselves. It'll give you ideas. It'll give you answers. It'll give you insights. All you have to do is be receptive to it and it'll flow into you and flow back out of you. And it will be contagious. It's, it's, it's love. It's there. And it's, it's trying its best to become part of you. So you become better. Ladies and gentlemen, it's there for you and everybody it's, it's free. It's there for everybody. You just have to believe and you have to do some serious work on yourself to receive the message. Once you do, guess what? You could be an amplifier of it. Yeah, that's so beautiful. And it is about love. Yeah. It is underneath everything. And I think that's one of the best frequencies, energies and vibrations. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So totally, you know, the entire experience of doing a psychotherapeutic plant medicine comes back to love, empathy, connection, all of those fundamentals. And that applies to the relationship you have with yourself, which then translates into the relationships you have with the entire universe, people and everything in it. And that's incredibly powerful, incredibly worthwhile, incredibly beneficial. Yeah. Yeah. And this is why I think that this direction's going to have more chance of success and get its own energy and momentum because that is underneath it all. It's pure and it's powerful. Yeah. I agree. Harmony. There's something to be said about voices singing together and standing together in the human mycelium. So, well, Andrew, hang on briefly afterwards. I really enjoyed the conversation. Hang on briefly afterwards, but ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. Go down to the show notes, check out Andrew's talks, reach out to him. He's got his email addresses down there. Get a copy of the book, join the conversation, reached out to him on his socials. You can reach out to me and I can put you in contact with him. That's all we got for today. I hope you guys have a beautiful day. That's all we got. Aloha.