Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life Podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day, a beautiful morning, an afternoon. It tends to be evening where I am right now. So I hope the birds are singing, hope the sun is shining, hope the wind is at your back. A remembrance. For those finding their way back, a remembrance of who we were before the world got its hands on us, before shame grew roots in our chests, before we learned that being ourselves was somehow too much and never enough all at once. We were wild then, wide-eyed and whole, dreaming in color, singing without knowing how to hide the sound. But slowly, we were taught to dim, to fold ourselves into shapes that didn't fit, to wear masks heavy with expectation and tradition, to call pain strength and silence grace. And so we disappeared bit by bit, trading freedom for approval. trading joy for the numb ache of belonging until the ache became too loud. So we reached for pills, for powder, for bottles, for blades, for anything that could hold us when no one else knew how to. And we did not know how to softly hold ourselves. They called it addiction and lack, but they didn't see the root. They didn't see the small child who learned that crying made others leave who learned that truth was dangerous and softness a threat. We weren't trying to escape life. We were trying to survive it, trying to quiet the thoughts that scream too loud in the dark, trying to forget the people we became to please everyone but ourselves. We lost years to the fog, forgot our own names in the mirror. We learned how to function while falling apart, how to smile while dying slowly inside. But still, somehow, a flicker, a spark, a whisper, burning like an ember in the depths. This is not who you are. And so we began The Hardest Thing. the turning inward, the facing of shadows with compassion, the peeling back of pain with curiosity, layer by tender layer. Recovery is not clean, but still an embrace. It is bloody and beautiful and must be reverential. It is mourning who we could have been while fighting for who we still can be. It is relearning softness, relearning trust, reclaiming a body we tried to abandon. forgiving a mind that only wanted peace. It is remembering who we were before the world got its hand on us, before we learned to hate ourselves for what was done to us, before we made all their pain our pain. We are unbecoming to become. Not just healing, but rising. Not just surviving, but living. We are not broken. We are excavating, uncovering, peeling back each hide that covers the soul. Breath by painful breath, we take ourselves back. This is not rebellion. This is resurrection. This is the holy act of remembering that we were always worthy. even in the dark, even in the mess, even when we forgot. And now we remember. Ladies and gentlemen, Anders Beattie. Beautiful poem, my friend. I had to take a knee the first time I read it, man. I'm so thankful you shared it with me. Thank you for that. My pleasure. And what a pleasure it is to be here and shoot the breeze and talk all things plant medicines and Ibogaine and resurrections. Yeah, it truly is. You and I had a really cool discussion, like the first sort of check-in, and we got this event coming up called Iboga Saves, and thanks to Lakshmi for putting it on, and the Iboga Saves event is going to be huge. There's a lot of great speakers there, but let me just jump in this, man. Iboga, what do you got, man? How did you get involved in this place, man? Well, I mean, my origin story around that... I found myself in a really desperate place by the time I was forty-five, where two decades and a half of using an addiction to stimulants, coke, followed by crack, had created a paradigm where I no longer knew who I was. And I was a bubbling, snotty mess of emotions lying on a bedroom floor, not knowing who I was and hating every part of me. You know, my addiction had really taken me to a place where I no longer recognized myself. And I'd been through every detox and every rehab and every geographical you could imagine in order to try and find myself or to return to myself. And nothing had worked. And somehow, Ibogaine came into my vision and in desperation, and it was truly desperation, I went and did Ibogaine with this incredible provider called Paul Featherston. And I did the Ibogaine and it gave me authority and sovereignty and ownership of not only my recovery, but for the reasons why I entered into addictions. And it gave me the opportunity to kind of forgive myself and see that, you know, it wasn't a moral failing of some type or another. It was that I had been conditioned into shapes that I didn't feel comfortable in. And, you know, the reality is, George, that, you know, addiction is, if you really want to define addiction into a really, really, really simple term, addiction is self-medicating against a profound sense of inauthenticity. People who use, they are using because they don't know who the fuck they are. They feel uncomfortable within their own skins. So for me, I think the whole point of a good addiction, recovery is finding out who you are and finding out why you're in pain and actually tending and caring and parenting for that part of your psyche that is in profound pain, not denying it, not subjugating it, not burying it and not medicating it, which is what we are taught to do in traditional rehabs, essentially. You know, we need to turn you into this shape. That shape will stick you down here. You'll be fine. Just do what we fucking well tell you to do. And so, you know, I think it's. Ibogaine is extraordinary. It gives you the opportunity to find out who you were before the world got its hands on. It's so it's so well put, you know, I so often and so often to me, I think we suffer from a lack of humility. You know what I mean? Like there's a whole system around us that just that just tries to shape us into this idea. And it starts at such a young age, like we're given these labels and these ideas of what we can be. But most of us don't fit in those labels. Most of us don't fit in that area. And we begin to think there's something wrong with us because we don't fit into a society that is sick. The society around us is ill, man. That has to be, at least for me, that has to be the roots of so much despair out there is the society that tells us all these things. What are your thoughts on that? Well, absolutely. I mean, I'm going to go straight to an amazing quote by Francis Wheeler. Love it. And this is what said, we were not meant to live shallow lives pocked by meaningless routines and the secondary satisfactions of happy hour. We are the inheritors of an amazing lineage, rippling with memories of life lived intimately with bison and gazelle, raven and night sky. We are designed to encounter this life with amazement and wonder. not resignation and endurance. This is at the very heart of our grief and sorrow. The dream of full-throated living woven into our very being has often been forgotten, neglected, replaced by a societal fiction of productivity and material gain. No wonder we seek distractions. Every sorrow we carry extends from the absence of what we require to stay engaged in this one wild and precious life. I suppose at the end of the day, a good Ibogaine treatment is about deconditioning you from your cultural, societal, familial, religious, and educational ties in many ways, those narratives that have been placed upon you, the expectations, the traditions, is to deconstruct them. And in doing so, what you're doing is creating space. And the space that you create allows your actualizing self to emerge. You've taken it out of prison. You've removed the bondages and you've opened the door. And I think, you know, for me, Finding out who you are on your terms, deconstructing those cultural and societal narratives, finding out who you are on your terms is the most profound act of healthy rebellion out there. And what it does, it gives you an emotional, spiritual freedom. Just allows you to be. And, you know, as we said before, you know, people are, self-medicating against a profound sense of inauthenticity. Well, if you deconstruct all of those things and find out who you are underneath it all, life can be and is just extraordinary. But it requires the balls to have sovereignty and take ownership and look at those narratives and face your fears and deconstruct the ego. And yeah, I mean, Ibogaine not only takes you out of active addiction very, very quickly, but it also kind of gives you a roadmap as to how to find your soul. Many people talk about Ibogaine being the equivalent of ten years of therapy in one night. I actually don't know a therapeutic practice or anybody as a therapist, and that's what I am by training, who could open somebody up to their potential in such a profound way as Ibogaine does. Yeah. The act of courage it takes. I think it takes, sometimes it takes forty years. It did for me, for me it took forty-seven years to get to a point where I finally had the balls to say, not now, I'm fucking done with this. This is bullshit. I'm not doing it anymore. And you gotta put everything on the line. Maybe that's why we have such addiction. It's a scary process. It's an initiation. It's an ordeal. You can't get to who you are unless you go through that ordeal. What are your thoughts? I think there's this thing that we're expected to play roles in order to define ourselves. Me, I played... you know, several roles before I got to a place where I could recover. You know, I put on the, I put on the costume of a professional soldier. Okay. All right. Crazy. And then I played the role of somebody who worked within journalism because I thought that was cool. And then I played this role and I played that role and I played this role. And, you know, eventually at the age of forty five, forty six, I went to the dressing up box in order to redefine myself again. And it was fucking empty. And it's kind of like, oh, shit. Now I'm going to have to do the work. Now I'm going to have to look at myself. I'm naked on stage with an arc like shining on me. And I think, you know, some people are very, very, very, very lucky. They get that looking for external approval. And that's the problem. I mean, I want to go back. Young Pueblo came out with this amazing quote, um, I can't say it verbatim, but I'll give you an example. The only thing I've ever been truly addicted to is filling the void I feel in my chest with anything other than self-love. And so for me, when clients come in and they're talking about addiction, I am not interested in their drug use because that's not the problem. That's the symptom of the problem. The problem is the void. And so I'm more interested in why the void, why the emptiness. And what happens invariably is as children, if we're growing up in an environment that is somehow difficult or tough, and I'm not just talking about, you know, parental coldness or helicopter parents or the divorce, this could be a cultural societal and educational level. Yeah. Very nuanced and very subtle. But what we do is go, well, I'm not going to be loved if I behave like this. Or I can't show that I'm frightened and vulnerable and sensitive. So I'm going to pretend to be something else. It's an adaptive response for children to do that. They are able to play a role in order to fit into the environment they're in. And if you are playing a role, we're going back to the dressing up box at such an early age, you have to deny a part of yourself in order to play that role. I can't be sensitive. I can't be vulnerable. So you deny that part. And that's what creates the void. Yeah. And then as you get older, you think, oh, I'm feeling just, I don't know who I am. I'm lost. I'm feeling a bit inauthentic. Yeah. If I go out with that girl, I'll feel better. Yeah. If I buy this car, I'll feel better. If I take on this job, I'll feel better. Oh, if I have a line of Charlie, I'll feel better. Guaranteed. Yeah. If I break the skin with a needle, I'll feel better. So what we're doing the whole time is looking externally for the fix. looking externally for the fix to fill the void and the beauty of doing something like ibogaine is that you stop looking externally for the fix and you start to look internally and the internal journey is about seeing and hearing and acknowledging and respecting that part of you that you hid many years before, because that part of you is the part that is sending up the signal saying, I'm not being seen. I'm not being heard. I'm not being acknowledged. Well, fuck you. I need to survive. I need nourishment. I'm going to get it from those external things. And that's what drives the addiction. But the reality is we're still not seeing them. We're still not hearing them. We're still not acknowledging them. So this is why I feel that Addiction, you know, progresses in the way it does because every time we try to fix that part of us which is in pain, actually what we're doing is adding fuel to the fire because we're still not really seeing it. The damaged, the pain body or the inner traumatized child, what it wants, it needs to be parented and it needs to be loved. That's how you mend yourself. is to be available for the part of you that's in pain, to understand the part of you that's in pain, to be compassionate to the part of you that's in pain. So when you act up and you behave appallingly somehow, and you've embodied that pain, if we can get to a stage and go, ah, well, Rather than go, oh, no, I behaved like this or whatever. If we can get to a stage where, oh, well, that part of me got triggered. And why? Well, of course it would. You know, of course it would be upset. To have that compassion to yourself, to that part of your psyche, that's where the real healing begins. And I think that's what Ibogaine does in a very, very, very special way. It presents you with a truth, but a compassionate truth. I hope I'm making sense here. Man, hitting home right there. You know, I want to talk about your experience with Ibogaine in the experience of it. I've spoken to some really cool people. I've spoken to Dr. Deborah Mash, Patrick and Michelle Fishley, of course Lakshmi, and some really cool individuals out there. And one of the things that I hang on to that they say is that Ibogaine – shows you you, shows you you. But the way they've explained it to me, Anders, is that sometimes you will have visions that aren't visions. They're visceral people being there. Maybe the trauma that you had with your mom, your dad, someone that abused you, you get to see them in real time and have a conversation with them. Does that sound like I'm summing it up accurately, or what are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, we've got to be very careful about that. I think Ibogaine gives you what you need rather than what you want. Well said. We've noticed that seventy percent of people get full visions, twenty percent get partial visions and ten percent get no visions at all. Sometimes my belief is that the Ibogaine has to work on the addiction in such a powerful way. It's just getting it out and it doesn't give you that visionary aspect. It's working too hard in other areas. But certainly I can give you an extraordinary story and I, I hope, I hope I don't cry when I tell you, but I mean, this is my, my, I began saying, you know, at the end of my using, as I said before, you know, I got to a place where I didn't recognize myself and, and the despair and the shame and the self hate was beyond anything. I mean, it, it, it was horror. Um, and I'm in a year room music and the walls are coming in on me and the ceiling's coming down on me and I'm smoking crack and I'm, I'm, I'm in a horrible, horrible place. And the more I look at my situation, the more painful it becomes and the more painful it becomes. The only way that I know to take the pain away temporarily is to go back on the very thing that is causing that. And, um, I was able to kind of hide my using from my loved ones as much as I possibly could. So I'd gone into that kind of latter stage isolation that all addicts do. But the thing that really disturbed me was that I kept having this idea that my grandparents were looking down from heaven at me going, oh my God, what has happened to our bloodline? this is appalling and that and that shame kind of was just so visceral and so horrible and so I take ib gang and one of the first visions I see are my grandparents and it's both sets from my mother's side and my father's side and they're dressed up in their sunday best they've got little trilby hats on and their gold watches they're looking elegant they're looking beautiful And I'm the observer of this. And I'm thinking, ah, that's my grandparents. And they look amazing. I wonder who they're going to meet. They must be on the way to a wedding or meet the Lord Mayor. And actually, they've come to meet me. And I can feel it now. I'm in front of my grandfather and that whole shame and guilt about who I'd become becomes really full on with me. They're standing in front of me and I think to myself, oh my God, I just have to apologize. I have to just plead for their forgiveness for what I've become. And I fell to my knees and I'm just about to say, I am so sorry. And my grandfather's hand comes out. It ruffles my hair. And he goes, you've done nothing wrong. Don't worry. Thank you for doing the work in your lifetime, which we weren't able to do in ours. And yeah, at that moment, I was able to put down a rucksack of shame that I'd been carrying from a very, very, very early age for the first time. And it helped me understand that maybe a lot of the trauma that I had been carrying was not my trauma. It was my father's trauma and my grandfather's trauma and my great grandfather's trauma. And I had this idea that suddenly I was the chosen one in the line and I was doing the work and it made me feel really good about myself. And it also helped me realign what my addiction was, that maybe my addiction was the vehicle that brought me to a place where I could do this work. And so for me, that, that was extraordinarily powerful that, you know, my grandparents came into my Ibogaine journey, not only forgave me, but encouraged me to continue the work that I was doing. And that was extraordinary. And I don't think there's, you know, That's kind of like that's really twenty five years of therapy in in thirty seconds. I mean, it was extraordinary, George. So that that was another and I suppose another very, very, very powerful Ibogaine journey I had was I went and did Iboga. Now that's a that's an amazing medicine. You know, that's something beyond Ibogaine. And I, I'm a great believer Ibogaine is fantastic for getting people out of addiction. And Iboga is just nothing quite like it for when you're going to do the spiritual, psychospiritual work, the further work, the depth psychology. And I did Iboga and I lay down and suddenly this voice came on and he said, you know, what the fuck are you doing here? You fraud. Why are you here? You piece of shit. You shouldn't be doing Iboga. And why are you doing therapy with people? You're no good. You're five seconds away from relapse. You're a piece of shit. And I'm thinking, oh my God, Ibogaine presents you with truth. it tells you the truth and it's attacking me. Oh my God, I must be a massive piece of shit. I must be horrible. And this voice kept attacking me and it kept bringing me down. And I'm there thinking, my God, you know, the Iboga, um, Actually, it's made an exception to me. I am such an awful person, such a horrible person, but it's made an exception. And this voice went on and it derailed me and it castigated me and it criticised me and it brought me down in such an incredible level that actually at one point during the ceremony, I could feel when the voice was about to attack me and I was... putting myself into a little ball in order to protect myself. And when the voice started attacking me, I was literally just shaking. It was just horrific. And then I made the epiphany. It wasn't the Ibogaine talking to me or the Iboga talking to me. The Iboga was showing me how I talk to myself. And... And, you know, he'd become so deeply inured in me and so normalized that I actually didn't recognize how negative I was towards myself. And I made that epiphany. And in the moment I made that epiphany, the iboga said, oh, fantastic. I'm going to take you on a joyride of the universe. And I was going down wormholes and I was doing this and I was doing that. then it said to me kind of do you want to see the cradle do you want to see god do you want to understand everything I was kind of like oh my god I've done all the work and you know my ego got in there I went down this wormhole and there's the light at the end of it there's all knowledge there's no understanding there is god on the other side of that veil and just as I get to the veil a field comes into vision like the A-team did. You know when the A-team, when they changed screen? Yeah, totally. A big slide. Yeah. And every time, and this happened about ten times, I'm just about to meet God and this fucking field comes into vision. And I'm just really, really disappointed by the whole thing. I'm thinking Iboga's been tricking me. And I suppose about five or six years later, about six o'clock in the morning, I'm driving to my parents. And I looked to my left and it's a July morning and the sun is coming up and I see a field with mist and crows flying over. And it is the field from my vision. And so I stopped the car and I got out. I looked over this field. And in that moment, I understood what the Ibogaine was saying to me, saying, if you want to feel spirituality, if you want to feel God, open your eyes. It's all around you. Look at this field. And in that moment, then, you know, that was extraordinarily powerful that not only, you know, I'd never seen this field in my life before, but it was the field from my vision. And so, you know, that was a kind of an epiphany that came together five or six years later after the Ibogaine journey. So this medicine is extraordinarily powerful. But these are my trips, George. They're not anybody else's. Everybody's relationship to Ibogaine or Iboga is completely unique to them. And I want to say that Ibogaine never, ever, ever really gives you what you want. It will always give you what you need. And often we don't know what we want. or know what we need we get too confused so um yeah so and you know I think yeah um those are a couple of the visions I've had personally I I don't think it would be appropriate for me to talk about other people's visions but um Yeah, iboga and ibogaine is the most extraordinary, powerful medicine you could ever imagine. Many people believe it actually to be the tree of knowledge from the parable of Adam and Eve. I'm almost at a loss for words. Like so much of what you have explained in those visions, I think speaks to the heart of know the difference between want and need and we don't know what we want or what we need and we find ourselves fumbling through this life just trying to make sense of it all and I think it's yeah good and I think that's a really valid thing maybe maybe what our wants are are more often based on our conditioning and our condition is more not false it's not what we want it's what we think we want And our needs just tend to be more natural, more simple. You know, I'm big on talking about something I call the minutiae in recovery. And the minutiae is the glue that holds all healing and recovery together. And the minutiae, is just getting up early in the morning and buying flowers for your apartment and making fresh coffee and exchanging bad ritual for good ritual and doing the simple things really well remembering to hold your wife's hand when you're walking remembering to give your children a kiss before they go to school that's the minutiae keeping your car clean is doing those simple things really well it's not about holotropic breathing and meditation and yoga they are all fantastic but if you're not doing the minutiae properly yeah they're meaningless and this brings us back to the dressing up box okay earlier there is a threat with people who do do ibm and iboga but they take the medicine and then you're kind of phoning them up and two months later and how's it going ah everything's great man I'm running three kilometers a day I've been two hours of meditation I'm doing yoga I'm doing tai chi and you're thinking this is going to be a train crash they've gone to the dressing up box and they've taken out the costume of a spiritual Leviathan this is inauthentic you know the authentic recovery is about doing the simple things really well the yoga the meditation the holotropic breathing are all add-ons to the minutiae does that make sense to you yeah without a doubt without a doubt I mean, we were talking about this because this is very much the Southern Californian mindset is to play the role of a, you know, a spiritual Leviathan. You know, I, I, I've got, I read goop. So, yeah, I mean, for me, it's, you know, the healing comes in having your friends over for dinner, cooking from scratch, buying flowers for the house, going for walks, having a great cup of coffee, making love. That's really where the healing is, because what then you're doing is embracing life again. You're not playing a role within life. You're actually available for it. And I think this is the big secret to good recovery. If you look at the NAAA twelve-step paradigm where you go in and they say to you, well, George, you're an addict and you're going to be an addict for the rest of your life. You have to label yourself that until you're dying breath. And by the way, you're diseased. And by the way, you are not trusted by anybody, by culture, by society, by your friends, by your family. You are not trusted. And we don't trust you. And we don't trust you to the extent that we're going to give you a sponsor. And this sponsor is going to help modulate your thinking. And your thinking is going to be based on our twelve steps and our twelve traditions, which if we don't attach to, You're going to end up in jail, institution or dead. Oh, oh, oh, oh. And by the way, you better be fucking grateful for what we're giving you. Double bind. Yeah. Well, surely this is the same type of trauma, fear led trauma that led us into addiction in the first place. It's the same narratives that turned us into something inauthentic to begin with. Okay. So for me, the real healing is about embracing life, not being in fear of life, not being in fear of yourself, but actually being available for yourself and being available for life. And so You know, the great thing about Ibogaine, it allows you to start eating off the smorgasbord of life again, to embrace it, to be available for it. That is where healing is. Healing doesn't occur in a pool of fear. Healing occurs in a pool of embracing, of compassion, of love, of being available, of just being, not seeking, just being. And so, you know, that's what worries me about, you know, the paradigm and the commercialization of Ibogaine and, you know, Big Pharma getting involved and psychologists and psychiatrists and putting it through governmental institutions and things like that. It's going to be fear-based. I can guarantee it. it's going to be people feeling pathologized and prodded and poked and being put through the mill, put through the sausage factory in some way, where people who have never been in addiction are taking control of your recovery in some way. Yeah. So that kind of worries me, and that's why I'm more attracted to the underground and working in the grey areas, because, you know, at some level, I think that the people who were working there are working there for the right reasons. They're working there because they want to see people heal. Yeah. You know, we spoke earlier before this conversation about how much of the seeking is part of the medicine, like looking for the answer, looking for the right people, you know, looking for something that there's that old quote that says what you're seeking is seeking you. But maybe you could speak to the idea of seeking as part of the journey, maybe the most important part. Yeah, I think the Joseph Campbell-esque monomythic journey, I think it's really important to understand that the first thing I want to say is Ibogaine and Iboga does not heal you. It doesn't do that. it is a tool in healing yourself. And I think that's the most important mindset that we need to engender within a client is that they are not going to go to Ibogaine and then suddenly wake up with George Clooney and their life is going to be fine and wonderful and thingy, but they're going to wake up with themselves. They have to make a choice as to whether they want to heal themselves. Yep. And if they want to heal themselves, then people like me and talking to you and getting involved with Awake, which is Lakshmi's gig and all of that thing, that's about taking authorship and sovereignty and ownership of your healing. And Ibogaine and other things within that are part of that process. Now, within a cultural paradigm, people just kind of like, oh, I'm a bit fucked up. I'm going to go to the doctor and he's going to give me some medicine and that's going to heal me. Right. It's not. That's looking for a fix. Yeah. Ibogaine is not about a quick fix. It's about doing the work. And it's about seeking. And so for me, you know if I get clients from europe I'd like to send them to costa rica or mexico and if I get clients from north america I like to send them to south africa or to central america because what I want to do is I want them to work for their recovery I want them to travel for their recovery I want it to become a right I want them to understand that you have to walk through certain fires in order to add meaning and purpose to this journey. You know, Ibogaine is not a bottle of hair shampoo or hair conditioner that you buy and you put into your hair and you walk out with shiny hair and it works immediately. That's not how Ibogaine works. It requires intentionality it requires curiosity it requires respect it requires reverence for the process and if the client can put respect reverence integrity and curiosity and intentionality into that process well by didn't they're putting it into themselves maybe for the first time in their lives and so the seeking and the preparation for ivy gang is actually creating a template on how you can treat yourself as you move forward. So this is why I'm so big on pre-treatment. I mean, if we were working in an indigenous or aboriginal society, you work with the village elders before you're allowed to imbibe the medicine. We're living in a paradigm now where you imbibe the medicine and you do integration. And I don't like that. I think if you're doing the work beforehand and you're preparing yourself and you're developing a relationship with that part of your psyche that's in pain, beginning to understand that, and you're preparing for this experience in a profound way, maybe authors, maybe music playlists, what are you going to wash away the past with? There's a whole load of little rituals that you can put into place before you do the IB game, which means you're taking ownership of it. It means you're putting respect and reverence and intentionality and integrity into the process of taking Ibogaine. Now, this is a game changer for an awful lot of addicts because it might be the first time in their life they've ever put any respect, reverence, intentionality and integrity into anything. And by dint, if they're doing it, they're showing self-compassion. They're being available for themselves. They're not just turning up and expecting a miracle. They're doing the fucking work. That's where the mechanism is. And so, you know, for me, and I like this line, pre-treatment, if you want to call it that, or the preparation informs whether you are going to integrate your Ibogaine experience proactively or reactively. If we look at what's going on in the world of psychedelics at the moment, all integration is invariably reactive because people are not prepping for it. What a waste of a psychedelic experience. Yeah. Leary warned us years ago. Let me see. Leary warned us. Set and setting. Get yourself into set. Get yourself into the right mental space, head space, before you go and do these medicines. See it for what it is. Yeah. Yeah. And I go on to Facebook now and people are offering, you know, in Oregon, six thousand dollar one day mushroom trips with two sessions of integration included in the price after. Aren't we wonderful? No, you're not. You're doing a disservice to the individual. You're doing a disservice to the medicine. You're doing a disservice to mankind behaving like this. because it's all corporate and transactional and, you know, so, you know, it's an interesting paradigm. You know, I worked for a while where I was setting up something in the Bahamas, which was going to be government backed and board of ethics approved. And then the money people came in and transactionality and, corporatism we want our slice of the cake can we afford to you know charge this much and we need to cut corners here to increase the profit lines and the profit margins and it became really toxic and horrible And it wasn't about, it started off about trying to heal the individual. But actually, at the end of the day, it all came down to margins. And we lost sight of the individual person suffering. They were suddenly revolving door cash cow wallets, basically, for some people. So we've got to be really, really careful around this latest renaissance in psychedelia. Actually, we could be doing an awful lot of people an awful lot of disservice, actually, at the end of the day. I love that. I think it speaks – a good quote that I like to use sometimes in these areas is that when the instrument becomes an institution, it loses its ability to be effective. And I see so much industry being built up around these medicines. I can't help but think, and maybe it's the divine trickster, like, watch this. Watch these guys try to fucking build an industry around it. It's going to be hilarious. When we were talking yesterday, we were talking about this, and I came out with that sort of imagery that certainly when I began – I've come across that whenever you try to do something from a corporate or transactional point of view, the spirit of Ibogaine has got this great big, huge bag of metaphorical spanners. And just as you're about to get somewhere, it throws a spanner into the works and it all falls apart. Nobody's really been successful at upscaling Ibogaine. And there are one or two clinics out there who are doing quite a good job now but you know on the inside the staff are unhappy I'm taking on a lot of their clients in crisis management because they don't feel that they've been held or seen or you know we're coming back to being seen being heard being acknowledged being respected people are an addiction because they don't see themselves they don't hear themselves they don't acknowledge themselves and they don't respect themselves they got into that state of mind because the institutions around them didn't see them, hear them, acknowledge them, or respect them. And then they're going into an Ibogaine treatment where they're not really seen, they're not really heard, they're not really acknowledged, and they're not really respected. And that's why I work with only four or five clinics now. You know, people like Gareth Moxie and Blair Bromley. You know them? Yeah, I know Gareth, yeah. Oh, Gareth is, you know, he's one of the ultimate. But, you know, Patrick and Michelle, Tom Leonard, you know, actually I kind of like Ambio. They're great as well to a certain extent. You know, there are people out there who are doing the job well. They care about the individuals. In my time working in this game, George, I have worked with around about twenty clinics, and now I only work with four. And I'm the one who's fired sixteen people. I had one clinic where the guy turns up, he's going into active withdrawal, which is part of the process, that's what we want, and he gets put down a corridor for three and a half hours in an anteroom at this clinic, and the first person he meets is the secretary with the credit card machine. Inactive withdrawal. How can I work with a clinic like that? That is appalling behavior. And that happens a lot within the IP industry. We've got, you know, Jeffrey Kamlet, he said, what happens when you get a narcissistic sociopathic heroin addict? What do they do after they've done Ibogaine? They open a clinic. So when you get the Patrick's and the Michelle's and you get the garrison of layers and you get the Paul Featherstone's and the Mark Winkle's and people like that and, and, and Ambio or whatever, You know, these people are providing a fresh breath of air. Tom Leonard as well. You know, they're doing it for the right reasons. You know, I think that's so, so important. So, you know, you know, Gareth, how do you know? I do. Well, I've had him on the podcast a couple of times and yeah. that's pretty much my, the gist of it. Like I've never met him in person, but I've had some really long conversations, much like this one where you get to know someone, you know, you can talk, there's a, there's, there's a, You can bullshit for twenty minutes or thirty minutes, but it's really hard to bullshit someone for an hour or two hours or three hours. You know what I mean? And so we had some in-depth stuff, and I couldn't help but walk away from that conversation, both those conversations with Gareth, like, this guy's legit, man. This guy actually cares about every person he's helping, you know? You can just see it. you know he he's developed the slow protocol the incremental protocol he's able to put more ibogaine in people and therefore they walk away with more nor ibogaine yeah it's safer it deals with post-acute withdrawal syndrome um and people feel hailed and they feel parented and so you know for me the perfect kind of ibogaine provision is not a It is, you know, a few weeks of pre-treatment, setting yourself up, working with somebody like me or Adam Penkel or something like that, doing the work beforehand, getting yourself set up, going in, doing the Ibogaine experience. And then what I like is the soft landing, the ten days post-Ibogaine where you go to an environment where you just immerse yourself in nature and you immerse yourself in play, you give yourself permission to find yourself again. And it's not about going back to work and showing how clever and inventive you are, but actually just embracing being alive again, being available again, being in your body. And then we're talking about after that, It's about continuing with the integration, continuing with the therapy or the informal therapy or shooting the breeze, as I like to call it. Yeah. And then it's the clients who say three months down the line, well, you know, I want to do an Ibogaine. iboga microdosing protocol now and then six months down the line they want to walk fifty miles of the appalachian trail and then nine months down the line they want to do some mushrooms and then twelve months down the line they want to go and see the northern lights in northern sweden these are the clients who do well these are the clients who put an intentionality and a respect and they keep pushing themselves and they keep keep working on themselves. You know, look, let's put it this way. Let's say you've got a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, So if I turn around to anybody who'd been using for two hundred and forty months and I say to them, how about investing one or two percent of the time you invested into your addiction, into your healing? Does that sound like a fair deal? Yeah. We're talking three, four, five, six, seven, eight months of putting yourself on the top of the hierarchy of needs, healing yourself, being available for yourself, being compassionate to yourself. Yup. That is what, that is what the healing is about. It's not a quick fix. I began. It's not that you turn up and a week later you're George cleaning, you know, it's actually, Investing into yourself with compassion, with kindness, with curiosity, embracing life, getting out there, doing it properly. It's a misnomer to believe that a successful Ibogaine treatment can be done in two weeks. It is an extended protocol. Personally, I feel that the healing protocol is what we are here to do anyway. And if you do Ibogaine properly, you should be uncovering the hides that cover the soul until your dying breath. That's the privilege. Yeah. That's the job. And I think Ibogaine allows us to get into that headspace where we can start embracing life, and we can start being curious about ourselves, and we can start being curious about our traumas and society's traumas, and move from introspection to outrospection into envirospection, where we start to really give a shit from a multidimensional perspective. Yeah, and for me, This is what I love. I love this. I see addiction, my using as no more than the taxi that brought me to a place where I could attach to this type of living. That's it. I never had, you know, in many ways, my addiction was the best thing that ever happened to me because it brought me to a place where I could work on myself. Most people never get that privilege, George. And they're addicted to making money and they're addicted to where they stand in their society, in their culture and what cars they're driving. And, you know, you have the paradigm of the good American male father. Oh, isn't he wonderful? He works all the hours God gives to provide for his family. Bullshit. He's not available for his family. He's not available for his wife, not available for his children. He's available for his business and he's available for his bank account. And he's available for his social standing. but he's not available for the people that he should be available for. And that's part of our cultural, societal, Western mindset, is that we're not seeing the truth. We're not seeing what's really, really important. You know, we can go back to that Francis Wheeler quote, where, you know, a societal fiction of productivity and material gain. You know, that's where the sickness really is. People in addiction haven't got a problem. If anything, they're understanding. Right. Right. And they're just trying to medicate themselves away from that sickness. Yeah. See, the thing is, let's put it this way, George. Sticking a needle in your arm and injecting fentanyl into yourself, in my opinion, is perhaps one of the most profound acts of self-love out there. And it's a really weird thing to say, but anybody who's using and trying to take the pain away, they're doing it because they love themselves. Does that make sense to you when I put it that way? It does, but can you unpack that a little bit more for people who might be like, what the hell? What do you mean by that? If you are finding life so extraordinarily difficult and painful and you find a door that opens you up to feeling better and feeling okay and being able to cope, surely it's a perfectly intelligent and acceptable adaptive response to the pain you're in. It will work for a short while, but it won't work long term. But I'm saying when people first pick up and they're using, it is actually a form of self-love. They're just trying to make themselves feel better. They're trying to survive. Yeah. You know, and we don't look at it that way. We see it as a failing. And I think the other thing about addiction is, you know, people like to say, well, you know, oh, they're an addict. They're so out of control. Well, actually, have a look at it this way. When you're racking out that line of Charlie and you're rolling up that note, that might be the first time in the day where you go, oh, thank God I own a narrative. I'm sovereign of this. Everything else in my life I have no control over. But this I have control over. And so it's not about being out of control. It's about the temporary relief of being in control and having authorship and sovereignty of a narrative. irrespective of whether that narrative is going to fuck you up and harm you in the long run, in that moment, it does its job. It makes you feel like you have some control over your life. Yeah, it's beautifully said. I think there's a ritual aspect to it too. You're having your own ritual, right? Like, and we're devoid of rituals. Yeah, and then, you know, that's the whole point. I mean, you know, of, you know, pre-treatment and integration and all the things we're talking about. It's exchanging bad ritual for good ritual. Yes. So one of the ways I get my clients to prepare for their Ibogaine experience, and we can go through that very quickly, is really ritualistic. Hey, man, why don't you create a playlist on Spotify? of music that sings to your soul. Take your time out before you go to your Ibogaine provision. Spend a few hours creating that playlist of beautiful music that can connect to your soul on the other side of the Ibogaine. So when the client is doing that before they go into treatment, they are with the Ibogaine. They are doing a ritual to be there. They are preparing themselves. They're putting respect and reverence into the process. But I say to my clients, well, you're going to wash away the past after your IV gate. Are you going to do it for one dollar ninety nine target hair and body shampoo? No, you're not. Go out and buy yourself some nice products. Buy yourself a five bladed razor blade. Buy yourself some decent. So the client who goes out before they go to Gareth or Tom or something like that and spends an hour picking those products to wash their past away with. They're with the medicine. They're putting respect and reverence into it. Then you get the client and say, bring an altar with you. Who do you want? Do you want photos of your children? Is that special pebble you picked up on the beach in Costa Rica? Is that favorite? Bring that with you. Create an altar. Get into the room. When you get to the place where you're doing Ibogaine, create that altar. I, every time before I go and do Ibogaine, I go and pick wildflowers and I make an offering to Ibogaine. I have wildflowers in the room that I pick. And if I'm in the middle of winter, I will go and buy cut flowers, which I will bring into the rooms and offer it to the medicine. Maybe writing a letter to your past or to your future or to your persecutors. People like Gareth and Blair do letter burning ceremonies. What are you going to wear post-OBG? What are you going to wear for the ceremony? right? You know, pick your clothes. You know, if you're getting married, you think about everything. You put so much intentionality and integrity, respect and reverence process of getting married. Let's try and replicate that for the most important ceremony of your life. The one that will get you out of addiction and stop you dying. Yeah. And so when you've got the client, he does the altar, does the letter, picks their clothes, um, picks their toiletries, creates a music playlist. Well, actually, then what they're doing is putting ritual, they're putting respect, they're putting reverence, they're putting intentionality into the process of taking Ibogaine. And Ibogaine does work this way, and Iboga does work this way. It's a two-way street with Ibogaine. If it feels that you are putting respect and reverence into the process of meeting it, it will meet you where you meet it. Yeah? So if you turn up as an entitled little twat who's just expecting, give me Ibogaine, I've given you a shit. The chances are the Ibogaine is going to give you a bit of a kicking. It's going to show you what a twat you are. Okay. So I think this is really, really important. The other thing is, is when a client does that, are they really doing it for the IB game? Perhaps not, but they are certainly doing it for themselves. And so Gabor Mate is right. Self-compassion is not some high emotional gooey feeling and some self-regard for self. It's actually just turning up and doing the work. that's self-compassion just getting on with it rolling up your sleeves and doing it there's an off chance this might might help me I might as well have a go yeah yeah yeah without a doubt and that's the difference between somebody turning up and doing ibogaine and expecting to be healed Or actually saying, yeah, you know what? I'm willing to heal myself. And I'm using Ibogaine as a tool within that process. And this is what I'm doing to help that process. That's where the magic is. Yeah. And that is all about ritual. Yeah. It's well said. It's well said. I got some questions that are stacking up over here in the chat. Anders, let me start throwing some your way over here. The first one comes to us. This one comes to us from Desiree. Desiree, you are an amazing woman. Thank you so much for being here. I think the world of you. She says, what do people misunderstand most about healing, especially addicts and their families? Oh, that's a great question. What do they what do they misunderstand? I think they kind of. they kind of see that the institutions out there have got the answers and they, they, they clearly don't. You know, we look at the rehab industry, which is an industry that is growing at, I don't know, something between four and eight percent a year based on abject failure. You know, the success rates of coming out of a, a rehab are next to none and especially as we're still attached to this twelve step paradigm of what healing should be from addiction we're talking about here from substance use you know clearly I don't believe that the twelve step philosophy long term will work with the monomythic um story where you're taking authorship and ownership and sovereignty of who you are um you know healing is about choosing to heal yourself it's not about using institutions to heal you because they don't hear you they just cover up and they just mask in in my opinion that's invariably what happens most of the time I hope that kind of answers that. The problem with Desiree's question is that she's opening up a massive can of worms. It's such a good question. I don't want to spend an hour going down there and dissecting. But yeah, I think decent healing is about taking ownership of your recovery, whether it's from addiction, whether it's from psychospiritual malaise, whether it's from depression, you know, the gig is we've got eighty years on this amazing blue planet. Healing starts when you are grateful for that and you're open to that and you appreciate life and you embrace life rather than running away from it or turning from it or being in fear of it and the reason that we're in fear of life is that we've been conditioned to be in fear of life yeah yeah so it comes down to the deconditioning I love it I love it, too. I want to bring on Crystal Phoenix Rising. Crystal, you are an amazing human being. I'm so thankful that we got to work on a bunch of projects together. And Crystal, I know I want you, Crystal, listen to this right now. When we're done with this, I want you to reach out to Anders. He's an amazing human being. He'd probably love to talk to you. He's He does incredible work, and she's got all these cool comments in here. She says, I'm so sending this live to my brother who has an outpatient rehab. He is on the same wavelength as you. Crystal, you're amazing. I can't say it enough. Thank you so much for being here. I want you to make a connection with Anders, Crystal, so go down to the show notes and do that. She's got so many great comments in here. Well, you know, look, please, please, I'm always open on WhatsApp. Yes. Yeah. So if anyone's out there and they want to make contact with me, my number is plus four, four, because I'm in the UK, seven, eight, seven, three, three, three, one, eight, eight, two. So that's plus four, four, seven, three. Yeah. Yeah. Plus four, four, seven, eight, seven, three, three, three, one, eight, eight, two. I know I'd be delighted to, you know, point people in the right direction and shoot the breeze. You know, this is, this is what I do for a living. This is, this is not my living. This is my vocation. This is my calling. So don't be shy. Yeah. It's the nourishment that keeps me alive. Nice. Do it, Crystal. Who else we got over here? We have, um, We have Ranga. Ranga. First off, Ranga coming from Canada. You're an amazing human being. Reach out to me, Ranga. We got to hook up this weekend. I got some things I want to tell you. He says, do you believe some wounds are sacred and should never fully close? You know, I would like that in context, to be honest. I mean, it's such an abstract thing to ask. It would be really, you know, what is it that Randass says? It's where the wounds are is where the light comes in. Isn't that something along those lines? Yeah. I like wounds, you know. You know, I'd like to put it this way. I like the Gary Zukav idea of Earth School. And I did this with Greg yesterday, and I'm going to do it with him again now. How old are you, Greg? Why did I say Greg? George. George, how old are you, George? I don't know why I said Greg there. How old are you, George? I'm forty nine. I'll be fifty in October. Okay, so maybe fifty years ago, a voice comes out the ether and says, hey, man, it's your turn to go down to earth school again. What lessons, what curriculum would you like to attach to? And you go, tell me about your traumas. Tell me about your traumas, George. Maybe what lessons have you decided to apply? Well, my dad was bipolar and not minor bipolar, like We moved once a year. Cops would show up at our door and be like, you guys haven't paid rent. You got to leave. Had the whole experience with my parents not being able to hold the relationship together. My sister tried to commit suicide. My dad tried to commit suicide. My son died. My niece died of a fentanyl overdose. I lost everything at the age of forty five, moved in with my in-laws, was sort of excommunicated from my family. My wife got stage three cancer and and now I'm here. I got that going for me. That's that's a hell of a curriculum you chose there. You know, and the thing is... Why would I choose that? Yeah, you know, and why would you choose that? Because it's the thing you can learn the most from. It's the opportunity to grow. It's the opportunity to become. Within crisis is an opportunity to grow. So maybe the whole point of Earth School is actually we pick the curriculum we're going to attach to. You know, George has picked a triple PhD. But I think that's the point, is when we make a decision to become fully conscious students at Earth School, we move out of trauma into healing. Curiosity is so important. You know, it's... You know, for me, you know, going through addiction, going through a very kind of middle-class English education where I'm at boarding school, the expectations of culture and tradition placed upon me, you know, I found that very, very, very tough. But actually, you know, in many ways, they, you know, they brought me into addiction and from addiction, I went to somewhere else and I'm able to embrace life in a full way. I'm very, very, very grateful for the wounds I received. Hope that answers your question. Yeah. Yeah, he's got me thinking again there. I mean, you know, these are kind of the wonderful sort of questions that if we were shooting the breeze over a pre-treatment session, there would be some real magic within us. There'd be some real nuggets. It's worth talking about. but I think an extended kind of way. Yeah. I love it. Crystal, Crystal comes back on and she says, George, you are going to love my chapter for the anthology. We chose not to be our diagnosis. I already love it. Crystal. It sounds like a beautiful, beautiful part. Thank you for, for putting it out there. Let's see. We got who we got coming over here. This is a great question. This one comes to us from Matt. He says, why do people trust lab coats more than lived experience? we've been conditioned to the whole point of education you know alan watts does an amazing lecture um if you look it up on um on youtube alan watts and I think it's called dance no it's not that's Oh, let me have a look up. Basically, Alan Watts talks about this idea that we're put into the corridor age four with this here kitty kitty. That's his very words. And we go through primary school and we have to hit a target. And then we go through middle school. And that's great. We're doing everything we're supposed to do. And then we finish school. finished school and we go to college and we get our degree or our qualification or our job and oh that's fantastic too and then you answer some racket some game yeah and you hit your targets and you're doing really well and then by the time you get to the age of forty you've arrived and you don't feel any difference and you've been conned the whole way along and that's what I feel that's happened is that We're conned by the institutions to have complete and utter deference to them. And, you know, in many ways, I think it comes back to this idea that the institutions, whether they're academic or religious or governmental, the one thing they don't want you to do is have authority and autonomy and sovereignty of your own emotional or spiritual life. because when you do, they can't control you in the way that they want to. So people who trust the guys in the white coats and the stethoscopes, especially around Ibogaine, you know, unfortunately, they've just been conditioned to be that way. And, you know, this is part of the work we do is that deconstruction. I would rather go and do Ibogaine with a gnarly old-timer like Gareth. Yep. who really gets it, who's been at the coalface, who's been through addiction, who's done the work, and he's an autodiadectic. He's really studied his craft. He knows what he's doing. I'd much rather go to him than some P-psych D and MD who's never been in addiction telling you how to recover. Yep. You know, if you were a soldier and you went to a lecture on how to survive in the trenches and it was given to you from a captain who studied at West Point or you had the chance to actually talk to a gnarly old regimental sergeant major who'd been in the trenches in Vietnam, well, give me the latter any day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The language of experience speaks louder than any book ever could. Cold face experience. Yeah. That's everything. Agreed. Yeah. It's well said. It's well said. Thank you, Matt, for dropping in there. This one comes to us. Who is this coming from? Betsy. Betsy says, when did comfort become the new religion? Oh, that's such a great question. I mean, I mean, I'm really, you know, I've got, I've got a slight problem with, with all the people on this podcast because they're just asking questions, which, which are the best audience in the world. Wow. Okay. And I have to really think about, I mean, I mean, it is comfort over autonomy. Comfort over sovereignty. Comfort means that you perhaps don't have to do the work. You know, comfort is, and you know, what is comfort as well? I mean, you know, let's break down really what comfort is. Is it convenience? Is that what you mean by comfort? Or is comfort embracing your children and having your friends over for dinner and walking through a forest? You know, what is comfort, really? I mean, that's kind of, yeah. Yeah, again, this comes down to conditioning. We're taught to take the easy route. When you go to a doctor, he doesn't really look at the symptomology. He doesn't really look at the causality of your problems. He looks at the symptomology and he deals with the symptoms. He doesn't deal with the causes invariably. Oh, I'm feeling depressed. Oh, well, great. Here, have these pills. They'll mask your depression. Yeah? Yeah. That's comfort, isn't it? Yeah. But it becomes really painful and really difficult at the end of the day because it's so fucking inauthentic. He's just not doing the work. You know, if you're a collection of fourteen point eight billion year old atoms that have taken conscious form for eighty years and you want to be comfortable where you haven't got the idea of what the gift of being alive is, then, you know, embrace embrace this opportunity you know for for for ourselves at atomic level we are eternal we are made one hundred percent of the stardust which is ever expanding we are the universe we have the universes come down for eighty odd years to live the human existence connect to that human existence with all that it brings with the joy the pain the heartache the disease the illness the love that's that's the gift the whole smorgasbord yep but what we do is we come down here and we deny it and we medicate ourselves from it and we subjugate it and we you know that to me is Just be here, be available. Be available for everything that comes your way, for within it, there is a lesson, there is an opportunity to grow, there is an opportunity to become. Beautiful answer. Beautiful answer. This one comes to us. Who is this? This is Tracy. Tracy says, why is rebellion labeled mental illness? Because it's dangerous. And, you know, I think, yeah, again, this comes back to, you know, what the institutions want to do is they want to control us. They don't want you. I think, you know, the act of taking Ibogaine or the act of going down a psychedelic route where you are Making yourself available to have your own relationship with a higher power, with nature, you're deconstructing all of those cultural, societal and familial narratives. That's the greatest form of healthy rebellion out there, is to find out who the fuck you are on your terms, not on their terms. I love rebellion, but I don't like reverb rebellion where you're an anarchist and you're picking up petrol, throwing it that, that, that, that's, that's not the rebellion I'm talking about. The rebellion I'm talking about is finding out who the hell you are on your terms. And, and the big institutions out there do not want you to do that. It's true. Very true. Uh, So this one comes... When you talk about rebellion, you know what comes up for me sometimes is the difference between revenge and justice. And sometimes when I'm coming out of... I find myself in this like... revenge mode and I gotta pull myself back and be like okay what's justice versus how much of what I'm saying is vengeful what do you do in that when you're walking that line between the between well you know for me I would say yeah I would say what part of you what part of your psyche is coming out with the revenge narrative yep because I think your higher self will always want one want to come from a place of of justice yeah and your lower self will be looking to hurt and to looking yes looking to to whatever so my first question would be well why wouldn't that part of you feel like that why wouldn't it be revenge And that's coming from a place of compassion. There's a part of me that's feeling revengeful. Well, let's take an interest in that part of me. Let's be compassionate to that part of me because then that revenge might turn into something more soft, something nicer, something kinder at the end of the day. So my belief is that that type of negative narrative or that type of negative emotion, sure, we own it. Fantastic. There's nothing wrong with that. It's understanding whether it's coming from your pain body or not. Yeah. As I probably would call it. Yeah. Back to some Eckhart Tolle. And then this all comes back to, it's not about denying your pain body or subjugating your pain body or medicating. it's about having a relationship with it understanding it understanding why it's in so much pain understanding why it's seeking revenge because when you when you come from a place of understanding you're giving it the nourishment it needs yep yeah that makes sense I mean for me I would I always used to talk about this idea that you know I used to feel such profound change for I was such so angry and irritable and arrogant at times and that When I get triggered and when I get frightened, my defense method is about anger and irritability and arrogance. And I really couldn't accept that about myself. Oh, God, you're such a fucking asshole. And then one day I kind of just made the decision, well, that's who I am. I do get angry and I do get irritable and I do get arrogant. And why shouldn't I with the trauma that I went through? Why shouldn't I have that reaction? Of course I should. And that's then coming in from a place, well, why wouldn't I be like that? And if you're coming in from a place of that type of curiosity, you're coming in from a place of compassion. And so the day that I accepted that I am an irritable, angry, arrogant arsehole was the day that I became less irritable, less angry, and less of an arsehole. It's within me, it's there, and occasionally it comes up. But so what? At least I know who I am. I'm being authentic with myself. It's about knowing who you are, warts and all. And if you know who you are, you admit to your failings and your foibles and your emotions and your anger and your irritability and you accept them, then you're not turning your back on yourself. You are being available for yourself. And if you are being available for yourself, you are healing yourself. But if you turn your back on your emotions and your feelings, then you're not being available for yourself. So how can you heal? Yeah, you're running from the very thing that would free you. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, what's that expression? The work that you are fearful of doing is the work that will free you. Yeah, yeah. Something along those lines. I didn't quite get that right. No, it's there. I think there's something really important to say here, and this is something I say to every single client in every single session, if I remember. And it is the perfect human being is imperfect. They're crazy. They're chaotic. They're all over the shop. And thank God we're like that. Thank God we're not all everyday robots. The imperfect human being is the human being who chose his perfection because perfection is a cultural, societal, familial, educational, religious paradigm of control. George, we will only love you if you behave like this. And it's like chasing a crock of shit at the bottom of an ever-moving rainbow. You know, don't try and be perfect. Celebrate your imperfections because that's what makes you human. And that's what makes you amazing and wonderful. And, you know, I've seen this. I've got a client at the moment where the perfect brother is castigating his imperfect brother the whole time. And actually, the person that I see is the most damaged out of the two is the one who's trying to be perfect the whole time. is trying to hold it together, is putting on a show for external approval, is not showing their vulnerabilities or fragilities in any way. That is somebody who is so wrapped up and tightened. And you know that inside that external expression of perfection, there are some deep and gnarly and painful emotions going on. Get imperfect. get imperfect, get vulnerable, get vulnerable, get fragile, you know, be honest, be authentic. That's where the healing is. And this idea that somehow we should be perfect. You know, all the pain that is attached to that, trying to be perfect. How horrible. Celebrate your gnarliness. Celebrate your addiction. Celebrate your pain. Celebrate. Be available for it because then you are being authentic. Then you can do something about it. Then you're not going to the dressing up box and playing a role. You're getting in touch with who you are. And we are all deeply and profoundly and beautifully imperfect. Man, that – how are you doing on time? I know you might have a hard – do you have an out here in about six minutes? I've got about another – yeah, I'm going to wake the kids up in about ten or fifteen minutes. So, yeah, we can start bringing it back into – Yeah. That was a perfect – couldn't have asked for a better closing sort of for ending there like I was that was really well said and uh I'm grateful for our time I can't wait to meet you in person man and shake your hand give you a hug man it's gonna be amazing we're all gonna be at the bogus saves event june seventeenth at the Canyon Theater in Denver. If you can't make it there personally, go to the links and get a free Zoom down. It's going to be a free event. You can listen to Anders. You can see Gera's going to be, I think, coming in via Zoom, and there's going to be so many great speakers. Dr. Mash, Patrick, Tom Leonard. I mean, basically, Lakshmi is brought together, and I'll be really honest here, all the people that I respect and have time for within the Ibogaine world. You know, the people who are there are the people who give a shit. Yes. They are the people who are doing the work. They're rolling up their sleeves and they're at the coalface and they're healing individuals on an individual level, helping them heal themselves. They're doing it for the right reasons. They're not doing it to create some revolving door, cookie cutter, sausage factory. Let's push an addict through one end and out the other end. These people actually give a proper shit for the individual and they give a shit about the spirit of Ibogaine and they're coming in from a place of humility and knowledge and wisdom. So there's a great crew of people there because actually at the end of the day, the people who are there are decent and kind. decent and kind. They're doing the work for the right reasons. They're providing Ibogaine for the right reasons. It's because they want to see people find themselves. So it's a good crew. Yeah, it's phenomenal. It's phenomenal. Let's say someone's listening to this right now, Anders. Where can people find you? What do you got coming up? What are you excited about? You know, look, I mean, I just kind of like You know, I haven't got any big master plans anymore. I found that when I do, that's kind of ego led. You know, it took me a long time to get here. I'm just happy to be doing the work I'm doing. And that's working with people and setting them up for Ibogaine and supporting them. through their integration and watching them heal and become their own people taking authorship and sovereignty of who they are and I have the privilege of working walking with people within that journey for a certain amount of time my website is www.ibgaincoaching.com um my phone number is plus four four seven eight seven three three three one eight eight two um get hold of me on whatsapp it's the only it's the only platform I work off um And yeah, I've just got to a stage where I've got a very, very simple little gig going, but it's the best gig in the world. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. So if anybody would like to get in contact and shoot the breeze and ask some questions or want to do some coaching with me, I'm completely open to that. Fantastic. Ladies and gentlemen, go down to the show notes. It's right here on the, on screen. I will gain coaching.com. Reach out to Anders. I hope everybody has a beautiful day. Thank you so much to everybody who took time to participate with us today. Got the best audience in the world. Anders, hang on briefly afterwards, but to everybody else, I hope you have a beautiful day. That's all we got. Aloha.