[00:00:00] Luke: All right, here we go with Episode 519. This is an ask me anything otherwise known as an AMA episode with my partner in crime, Bailey Richardson. And before we get into this one, I want to let you know that this Tuesday we'll be back with number 520. It's called Sonic Soul Retrieval: Raise your Voltage, Get Unstuck, and Tune Your Biofield with  Eileen McKusick. And that episode, my friends, is amazing, one of the best conversations I've ever had. So make sure you follow or subscribe to the Life Stylist podcast so you don't miss next week's show or any episodes to follow. And with that, Bailey, let's take it away. Actually, before that, how's your 2014 going? We've barely talked since the turn of the fake calendar.

[00:00:49] Bailey: It's going really well. It's winter. I feel like it's a new year, not time for me to assume any new practices personally. But it's been nice. I like the cooler weather. I'm here in Florida, where we're usually all year long and I got to pull my sweaters out. Yeah, that's about it. It's none last year personally.

[00:01:17] Luke: Okay.

[00:01:17] Bailey: How about you?

[00:01:18] Luke: Well, you're always smiling. You're smiling every time I see you, so that's a good sign. And for context, you guys, Bailey has done these AMA episodes with me for a while now and she's been working with me for what, two and a half years?

[00:01:31] Yeah, so Bailey was a former listener, and a couple of years ago when I was looking to hire another person to support me on my team, she reached out and checked all the boxes and the rest is history. We've been having a really good time ever since, so I express again one more year on my gratitude to you for everything you do to keep this thing on the rails. I'm doing great, man. I really am, starting this year, which is really not the real start of the year, but it's the fake Gregorian calendar start of the year, but I'll just follow it because everyone else is doing it. All the cool kids are following this calendar.

[00:02:14] Bailey: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:16] Luke: But I'm having a really great time, actually. I have a renewed sense of enthusiasm about life, and part of that is due to the fact that I'm making a mental shift in terms of where I put my energy. And I'm putting less of my energy on the things that are wrong/terrifying about this country and the world and our current state of affairs, and really focusing on solutions and how I can become more free in all areas of my life and in the world in the external sense.

[00:02:55] Legally, I'm studying a lot of law right now. I'm studying common law. I'll be doing a podcast, as you know, about that soon with Brandon Lee Williams, and I'm really, really involved in that, which is fascinating and incredibly empowering. For those that don't know what I'm talking about, you'll soon learn.

[00:03:12] Bailey: I'm really excited about that one.

[00:03:16] Luke: Yeah, I'm stoked. I love getting to the conversation for-- I'm not the first guy to talk about that on a podcast by any stretch, but I think within my space, not a lot of people have covered that particular topic of how to legally free yourself from the matrix essentially. And it's totally doable. It's a lot of work.

[00:03:36] Bailey: You found the perfect person to discuss it. It's not going to be convoluted. It's very direct, and I love that.

[00:03:46] Luke: Yeah, me too. Me too. That's why I've never really given it much time or attention, because all the content out there on that particular topic is super confusing and often it's like, I don't know, boomer patriot types that live in the back woods somewhere and aren't great at building websites and really conveying information, especially information in video or audio.

[00:04:12] So I've just been on the fence and knowing there's something there that piques my interest and just didn't really have the right avenue by which I could pursue it. So I don't know. Something clicked in me, and I think really what it is is that it's a metaphysical challenge that has a lot to do with my soul's evolution. I say it like that, and just to give a little context what we're talking about, in this country, there's two countries.

[00:04:50] There's the United States, which is a privately held for-profit corporation located in the District of Columbia, otherwise known as DC. That didn't exist before 1871. What did exist was something called the United States of America, which was comprised of the various states within the union.

[00:05:13] And so right now in this country, and this is true of many countries, I'm just explaining how it works here, there's a duality in terms of what we consider to be the country and what we consider to be the government of the country, and the vast majority of people are living their lives under the jurisdiction of a corporation in DC.

[00:05:35] And we just don't know it. And so we sign all these documents and our birth certificate that our parents signed and all these things opt you into the system. And that's the system that can tell you, hey, it's lockdowns, or tell you you have to pay us money, or you can do this, or you can't do that.

[00:05:51] And there's really not a lot of freedom. And it's a holdover from the 14th Amendment when the slaves were free. There were a lot of people in the country that didn't want them to be free, so they essentially created a second class citizen with far fewer rights. And rather than just attributing that type of citizenship to the slaves that have been freed, they went, wow, this is pretty awesome. We're just going to classify every single person born and living in this country under that same system.

[00:06:20] So the metaphysical part of that is that I've spent the past, even longer than the past four years resenting that system, being angry at that system, and underneath that, being afraid of it. And that's not a good feeling. So what I'm realizing is that I have unknowingly, through legal ease, word sorcery, put myself under the jurisdiction of an incredibly corrupt and dishonest and totalitarian organization.

[00:07:03] I'm essentially right now operating as an employee, an unpaid employee of a corporation as a US citizen in my current standing. So there's a duality there. I'm living in two countries at once, and the only country I really want to live in at the moment-- there's some other great countries, but the one that I'm in right now is the United States of America, which is a different country than the United States. So that's the kind of stuff I'm getting into and we'll be talking about.

[00:07:30] And metaphysically beyond that, I'm also living in the duality as two identities. There's Luke Storey with a sentence case written name that is the living, breathing human being man that I am. And then there's a corporate fiction entity of an all capitals name that was created when my parents signed a birth certificate.

[00:07:52] And there's a massive gap between the human rights that I'm able to enjoy as the fictitious identity that I'm living in now versus the real identity of a living man who's just on a piece of land they call Texas. And so as I'm starting to learn about this stuff, I mean, I'm studying hours every day, literally two, three, sometimes four hours a day, because something just clicked in me.

[00:08:24] And I think what's really motivating to me is the sense of personal empowerment and responsibility that comes with taking the time to study this stuff. It's so convoluted and complex, and it's made to be that way so knuckleheads like me don't figure out the system and leave.

[00:08:43] Bailey: Right.

[00:08:44] Luke: They don't want us to leave the tax paying plantation. And that's not to minimize actual slavery, but we are living under a version of corporate slavery essentially. And thank God, we don't have the kind of slavery that we used to have in this country, obviously, but when everyone was said to be free, it was a limited version of that freedom.

[00:09:09] And so one of the things that's been really interesting about learning what I'm learning is watching people fight and argue about a Democrat or a Republican in office, and seeing the reality of that is that people are fighting over two opposing CEOs of a corporation known as the United States located in the District of Columbia.

[00:09:41] So all of this bickering and fighting and we want our guy in and the other side wants their guy in, and all the things that they're able to do that violates our rights, people are really misled to think that if you have one person who's the CEO of the corporation called the United States, that things are going to be dramatically different.

[00:10:01] When in actuality this whole time, underneath the superimposed corporate structure in the country and the superimposed citizenship identities that we've all unknowingly assumed, there's a free country just sitting there for the taking the whole time.

[00:10:19] Bailey: Right. It's empty.

[00:10:22] Luke: Yeah. And I'm not really a political person, but I find myself much less bothered by all of the noise in the world. And as we go into this year, "an election year", it's becoming more apparent to me that a lot it, if not all of it, is really theater. And there's a huge elephant in the room that just the vast majority of people are unaware of, although many more people are waking up to this now, that if you do some work and do some study and take some certain steps that you can extricate yourself from the system that we call the matrix entirely, and you can do so lawfully and legally.

[00:11:05] And if you're not a dumbass and you're not at war with the corporation located in the District of Columbia, and you're peacefully living your life and you wish them and no one else any ill will, and you don't lie, cheat, steal, harm anyone else, you can exist on this territory, this piece of land with a lot more freedom than most of us do now.

[00:11:29] This year is my year. I'm done sitting on the fence of studying this stuff from afar and wondering if it's real. The deeper I go into it, the more I realize it's more real than I ever could have imagined. And also, it's actually more legal if you're existing outside of the system and giving yourself the opportunity to enjoy the benefits outlined in the Magna Carta, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

[00:12:00] Those rights are given by God, not by the government. And the only reason that we don't enjoy and utilize those rights is because we are US citizens owned by the District of Columbia, essentially owned by the United States. We're owned by this corporation.

[00:12:19] So this is like the ultimate red pill to me, is waking up to that and going, you know what? I actually don't really care what the government does because I'm working to educate myself about how their system that they've built works and to go beneath that and find the existing system of what used to be a pretty awesome country before they took it over and turned it into a corporate controlled plantation, essentially.

[00:12:51] So that's the thing I think I'm most lit up about. And my attitude this year is just completely different because of that, because of the empowerment that comes from sitting here and combing over all of these tedious government documents and contracts and all these things.

[00:13:08] It's not fun to do, especially for a brain like me. It doesn't come naturally to me to study statutes, and codes, and history, and all the things that I'm doing. It's a pain in the ass, but it's made fun to me by what's on the other side of it and the emotional and mental freedom that I'm already getting going, wow, I actually don't have to be afraid of these people unless I'm under their jurisdiction.

[00:13:37] Bailey: Right.

[00:13:38] Luke: And we have a choice about the jurisdiction we choose to be subject to. And I haven't changed anything in my life thus far because I don't want to do it wrong, and I don't want to be a dumb ass and make mistakes. But even if I never did anything, just understanding the rules of conduct in this game called living in this country, or pretty much any country. They have nuances.

[00:14:05] But essentially the whole world is built on this fiat currency and things like the Federal Reserve being a privately held institution and not federal, and they have no reserves. The country we live in is the same way. The United States isn't a country. It's a corporation. So just understanding all that, even if I just keep playing their game, knowing the rules of engagement and knowing the game is very freeing. So that's what my life is about this year.

[00:14:34] And then, of course, as you know, and some of the people that listened to the last episode I did, the 2023 roundup with Alyson, we're still actively-- I don't know if working is the right word, but we have a very strong intention to get pregnant and have a kid. So understanding the matrix, working to eventually extricate myself from it, and bring some other souls into the world and understand also how to set them up for a life that's free too. So it's a generational ripple effect when one who's going to have kids or someone who has kids learns this information.

[00:15:13] So I'll just close with that. It's a long diatribe I didn't intend to get into, but as you can see, it's something about which I have a lot of passion, and it feels really good to just be awakened in that way. We will record that podcast in March, so it'll come out in probably April or May, or so.

[00:15:35] And it's something I'll probably be talking about a lot more because this show really in its inception in 2016 was about building the ultimate lifestyle. And I never talked about any of this stuff because a, I didn't feel qualified. I didn't really know who to talk to about it, but interfacing with the judicial system and the organizing principles of our society is a really important part of having the kind of lifestyle that you want.

[00:16:10] You want to eat the kind of food you want to eat. You want to be healthy, stay fit. You want to have your spiritual freedom and religious freedom and sovereignty and have healthy relationships and a healthy home. And if you're human being that wants to build a lifestyle in which you thrive, then I think extricating yourself from some, if not all, of the authoritarian tentacles that are parasitically siphoning your energy and resources from you your entire life, it's definitely something worth looking into, and it does fit into the puzzle and the model and lexicon of this show, which is why I'll be sharing about it here soon. So I'll keep you and everyone listening posted on those developments as we go.

[00:16:59] Bailey: All right. Well, you want to get into it for today?

[00:17:03] Luke: Let's do the damn thing.

[00:17:04] Bailey: Okay. I'm going to be talking a little bit about psychedelics today. Favorite topic.

[00:17:10] Luke: Wonderful. One of my favorite topics and one about which I am both passionate and hopefully responsible.

[00:17:21] Bailey: I want to know what youth people are getting wrong or missing.

[00:17:28] Luke: Well, psychedelics, and we'll just put all psychoactive, entheogenic substances under the umbrella of psychedelics. Many people refer to mushrooms as plant medicine, and fungi aren't plants, neither are animals like the Bufo, olivaceus toad, etc. But we'll just call them all psychedelics for all intents and purposes.

[00:17:53] To me, they're a tool, and it's like a firearm, a pickaxe, a candle. Anything and everything in the world can be life-changing and incredibly beneficial depending on one's intention and also one's understanding of how to safely use it. So I'm sure for-- well, I'm not sure. I don't even have to talk about other people.

[00:18:24] For me, there were times in my life early on where I used psychedelics a lot, indiscriminately, and was put in a lot of dangerous situations, and I'm sure caused myself some psychological harm, just like there have been times I'm swinging a hammer and I hit my thumb when my intention was to get a nail into some wood.

[00:18:50] So I don't think it's a binary, dualistic, psychedelics are good, psychedelics are bad. It's the why I'm using them, it's when, it's with whom, it's how, it's which ones at which time. So I think from my perspective, and I can only speak from my perspective and my subjective experience, and I've said this a lot on the show, it would be intellectually dishonest for me to not be a psychedelics evangelist because of what they've done to heal so many aspects of my life in the past few years for truly miraculous healings that I've seen in others in my experience.

[00:19:52]  And I can't imagine what my life would look like had I not-- I guess it was in 2017 or so-- started to really research this area and start to have some experiences. Now, that said, the first couple of years of that, I was pretty enthusiastic because I was making such progress. The things that I was able to work through, just PTSD, and trauma, and destructive, and dysfunctional behavior patterns that I just could not dismantle any other way.

[00:20:34] And I had tried for a couple decades with some areas of my life. As I started to see these breakthroughs within, I started doing it quite regularly. And we can talk about that. But then, I don't know, I think I reached a certain point where I had done a lot of the heavy lifting in those experiences and then have just followed my intuition in terms of the frequency with which I choose to participate in in a psychedelic journey or ceremony.

[00:21:11] And so I don't work with them actually very often now, objectively. A couple of times a year maybe, something like that. But in the first, I don't know, '17, '18, probably the first three, four years, it was every couple months I was having some kind of experience. And worked with a lot of different substances, with a lot of different people in different settings, different contexts, and it's absolutely transformed my life.

[00:21:42] So I would be a proponent on the side of yay psychedelics more so than those people out there that contextualize them at the same way as doing coke, or drinking alcohol, or, I don't know, heroin, all the other drugs out there. So it's an interesting perspective I have too, because I'm someone who considers myself sober as a former addict and former alcoholic.

[00:22:09] So I know there would be people listening to this that are like, you're not sober. But sobriety is also something that's self-defined. So when I think of myself, this February, I'll be 27 years sober. And I've also worked with a lot of psychedelics in the past few years, but when I talk about my sobriety, I'm not habituated to or addicted to any substances that have any negative impacts on my life.

[00:22:43] And I also have very firm boundaries with certain substances with which I used to have real problems for a very long time. So there's just things that are on my-- it's like boundaries. I think we talked about this on an episode before. So at the epicenter of my being, my physical body, the things I put in my body and the kind of people I'm around and environments I put myself into and so on, there's an exterior boundary that's a very hard line no in terms of substances.

[00:23:15] So I do not use opiates, heroin, anything in that category. I do not use amphetamines, crystal meth, speed. I don't use cannabis. I don't use any form of alcohol, cocaine, crack cocaine. Those are the things that really caused me a lot of harm and a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, a lot of darkness for many, many years early in life.

[00:23:48] So when I say I'm someone who's sober, I'm someone who's in recovery from addiction, that whole category of substances for me is off the table. But I also don't judge people who might use any iteration of those substances for any reason. If they're doing it to treat their trauma and they're addicted to it, good for you.

[00:24:10] If you're partying and you're out doing coke at a bar, good for you. I have no opinion on other people's behavior or what they should or shouldn't do, or how anyone defines their sobriety or denies their addiction. Live and let live is the motto that I learned early in my recovery.

[00:24:30] But man, I also, again, just being honest, think it's a very positive thing that these medicines are becoming more widely available and people in general are becoming more knowledgeable about them. And I really believe if more world leaders and people of influence and prominence, whether that's celebrities, CEOs, founders of companies, politicians, start to heal themselves by any means, it doesn't have to be with psychedelics, but take someone who's a really powerful person who's running a company and they have childhood trauma that's unresolved, they're going to run their company and have an influence on our society that's going to be very different than someone who's done a lot of deep inner healing work and had direct experience of the divine.

[00:25:26] They're going to be informed by that and likely make decisions that are not only better for their life and their immediate family, but for all of the people with whom they interact and people that they hire, and legislation that they pass or don't pass and so on. So I see it as a net positive. But again, like with any tool, any tool can be used and also abused.

[00:25:52] So I'm sure right now there's a lot of fallout with a lot of people who are experimenting in the realm of psychedelics because it's become so prevalent and trendy. It's something people talk about a lot. So I'm sure there's people every day all over the world that are having experiences that are not positive and don't have a positive impact on their life because they were ill-informed or not educated, or they're people for whom those experiences were just not appropriate, maybe ever or at this time in their life.

[00:26:21] So it's a double-edged sword, but I do think it's a net positive on our society. And my opinion on that or my perspective is definitely colored by my own life because I look at what's happened in my life, and an interesting thing too about sobriety, because this is something-- and we can get into this later-- when I was 22 years sober in 2017 or so, and I started to not be as active in my various recovery programs because my life got bigger and I just was spending less time there because I was out manifesting the life that my recovery had allowed me to create.

[00:27:09] But I started hearing murmurs of ayahuasca. I never even heard of ayahuasca when I was a drug addict. It was not something that was part of our world at all on the streets of Hollywood, where I was doing damage. But I started hearing about it, and I thought, that's really interesting. Meeting people that had had these really transformative experiences and people for whom those medicines and ayahuasca specifically had really helped them to overcome just insurmountable patterns and blocks in their life, and I thought, man, this sounds cool. I think I could probably benefit from that. But I had a real block in the construct that I had created around being a sober person. I'm X amount of years sober. I'm a member of this program. I'm mentoring other guys in various programs. I'm in my own little corner of the world in recovery.

[00:28:08] I was a leader of a small number of guys who came in after me, and all that kind of stuff. And so you have this prevalent and very intelligent and well-tested premise in addiction recovery that the key to it-- the key to lasting sobriety is complete abstinence from all mind-altering chemicals.

[00:28:28] And that's how I got to 22 years sober. I wasn't like, oh, I could have a glass of wine on the holidays. No. No wine, Luke. You're done with wine. Oh, maybe I could just smoke a little weed at a concert. No. Not one hit, never, nothing. Coffee, and at that time, cigarettes. That was the only chemicals that changed my-- maybe sugar, the only substances that I used to change my mood, or self-soothe, or escape, or whatever. But I started hearing about ayahuasca, and I don't know, there was just something within me that just said, you need to go do this. And one of those things was actually an old podcast I did with a channel named Paul Selig.

[00:29:09] I don't have the number offhand, but hopefully our team will put it in the show notes. This is a great conversation. We are recording in New York City and what Paul does, beautiful guy, is he just taps into what he calls his guides and just starts talking. And I don't know whether you believe in this stuff or not. It's not Paul talking. Okay. I don't know who his guides are, where they come from. It seems to me they are benevolent.

[00:29:34] And I'm not a big guides, other side, channel or it's not really my thing. I'm not interested in that kind of thing, but he was an interesting guy to interview. So I was thinking about going into an Ayahuasca ceremony, a retreat for a week, and I was on the fence because of the sobriety thing, and I'm like, am I just rationalizing this so I can go get high after 22 years? Am I going to relapse? Am I going to come back and then I start drinking or doing drugs? And it wasn't something that I took lightly at all, but I just was compelled to ask him during the interview, I said, hey, if it's appropriate, would you tap into the guys and ask them a question for me? And he felt into it, and he said, yeah. They said, we can ask it.

[00:30:15] And I said, would it be safe and/or advantageous for me to go drink ayahuasca? And he asked the guides, and this is all in the recording of that episode. And to paraphrase, the guides spoke through him and said, it would be beneficial for you, a. B, you would be totally safe. And c, you'll continue on having a healthy, happy life, even if you never do it.

[00:30:42] In other words, you don't need to do it, but if you feel compelled to do it, you'll be fine. And I was like, green light. Done. Booked it. Yeah, the guy had said it's cool. I'm doing it. So anyway, long story short, I went and did that, but I really had to reconcile the identity that I had built, and rightly so, and I'm very grateful that I built an identity as a person who is a sober guy in recovery.

[00:31:07] And I know how I got to 22 years of sobriety was complete abstinence. And I knew I was entering into a new realm that was unknown and was guaranteed. And at that time, at least in my circles, wasn't a well worn path. Let's put it that way. I think now there's groups around maybe around the world, at least in the country.

[00:31:35] I know of a couple 12-step groups, for example, that are based on using psychedelics for healing and also being sober from whatever you were addicted to. So that definitely didn't exist to my knowledge and in 2017. So long story short, I went and did that and it completely transformed my life and changed my life.

[00:31:55] I'm a completely different person. So one of the things that I look at around-- I guess, you didn't mean to get in this tangent on recovery, but it's pertinent actually to your question-- is it a net positive or a net negative to society speaking in terms of people in addiction recovery?

[00:32:14] And we can talk about people that want or need to be in recovery and is this a path for them or not. But I always look at any of my behaviors or any decisions I make to do or not do something is by observing the fruits that those decisions or actions bear. By their fruits, you shall know them, I think is a biblical phrase.

[00:32:38] I know it's from the Bible, I just don't know where. And I really like that. It's like in Alcoholics Anonymous, there's a phrase that is in the literature that people use, and it says, does it pass the acid test? Which is an old timey way to see doesn't experiment work or not.

[00:32:57] And so a couple of years into my version of sobriety, my exploration into psychedelics, I had a couple people, my dad being one of them, who came to me and said, hey, I'm seeing you talk about this crazy stuff on social media that you're doing drugs now. What is happening here? Are you okay? And in part of my-- and some of them were just curious, like, wow, you seem to be okay, but you're doing this thing that's uncharacteristic of you and your lifestyle and you considering yourself a sober person.

[00:33:29] And so I started looking at-- because I want to be honest with myself, and if I am delusional or I'm in denial and I'm starting to go off the rails by doing whatever kind of substances, I want to know that. I'm not afraid of the truth about myself. I think it's very empowering. Even if I mess up, I want to know because I want to stop messing up.

[00:33:49] So my dad, some other people called me. Are you okay? And in some of those conversations, I realized that the fruits of my behavior are all positive by every measurable metric of life. So less depressed, less anxious, in a beautiful, incredibly healthy, fulfilling, intimate, trusting, safe, amazing relationship with the woman of my dreams, making more money than ever in my life, and also managing that money like a goddamn adult for the first time ever, not perfectly, but better than I had before.

[00:34:30] Physical health and vitality, better than ever. Sleep, better than ever. Strength, weight, just any area of life from my internal experience or the external manifestation of my internal experience. If you gave me a rating or a grade on my life, my life had objectively improved in every way, all of my relationships, all of my friendships.

[00:34:56] Weeded out relationships that no longer served me. Started learning how to have boundaries, people pleasing less, asserting myself more, which has been something I've worked on throughout my life and still working on.

[00:35:11] So when I started to have those conversations, I just knew, wow, I'm fine. I'm safe. I'm not going down to the bar, and I'm not doing anything illegal, or crazy, or anything. Well, I guess technically I had done things illegally because I wasn't always out of the country-- don't tell anyone-- in those experiences.

[00:35:31] But that is to say if I could step back as objectively as one can from themselves and where they are in their life, which is of course, difficult to do-- other people can typically see us better than we can see ourselves-- but if I looked at the outside circumstances and the results of that period of time in which I was really working with a lot of medicines, everything was better.

[00:35:54] And it's still that way. It's not like, ooh, I got lucky for a couple of years and then shit went downhill. Every trajectory of my life, every measurable aspect of success, whether it's superficial and external or very meaningful and internal, I've just gotten better and better.

[00:36:17] Now, if I was doing cocaine, heroin, alcohol, smoking weed, I wouldn't own a home. I wouldn't own a business. I wouldn't even be able to get a job working for someone else. If I had a relationship, it would be a dumpster fire of trauma bonding and pain. There's no way I would have any net worth. I would absolutely be in debt. Every area of my life now that is any measure of success would be polarized to the exact opposite, if I was actively using drugs as an addict or drinking like an alcoholic.

[00:37:07] How do I know that? Because I tried it for a very long time. I could take you back from nine or 10 years old to 26 years old, and my life was an absolute cluster f of failure and misery. So I know where that road leads because I walked down that road so many times thinking, oh, this time it'll be different. I'm going to control it this time, whatever.

[00:37:32] So that's been a really interesting experience and also one that's taken a lot of thoughtful consideration too to make sure that I'm being honest with myself and that I'm not delusional, and that I'm also being-- since I have somewhat of a public platform, and I don't know, a few thousand people listen to me talk every week and listen to the people with whom I talk and these conversations, I do feel beholden to take some responsibility for that and not just give a blanket positive recommendation that everyone should go out and trip balls.

[00:38:09] I honestly don't believe everyone should work with psychedelics. I'm sure it's not right for some people, and I'm sure at different junctures in one's life, it's probably not right either. And there'll probably be a time in my life where I feel like I've done everything I can in that realm and probably won't do it anymore. I'll do it less frequently, or I might hit, I don't know, either an impasse or some sort of block, or I might really start to go deeper into those realms and start facilitating people and working with medicine every week. I really don't know.

[00:38:45] I'm open to where God's will takes me. And I think as long as I'm steadfastly introspective and being as honest and objective as I can about myself and my behavior, then basically do whatever I want as long as I don't cross a certain line. And those lines are based on my memory of what happens when I cross them.

[00:39:11] And so there's a certain amount of discipline and there's a certain amount of agency that I've surrendered to my higher power that's like, hey I realize I'm under this grace of protection from having my life fall apart again. And I won't betray that gift that I was given when I was 26 years old. And so every step I've taken in the realm of psychedelics has been with much consideration and prudence, like, hey, checking in with God.

[00:39:45] I'm praying about it. I check in with my wife about it. Hey, I got this invitation for this experience. How's that feeling for you? Is that going to interfere with your flow right now if you really need me here to be very present and grounded? All this kind of stuff. So it's a very long answer to an important question.

[00:40:05] Is it a net positive or a net negative? I think in the world at large, it's a net positive in my life, absolutely 100%, A plus level 1,000 positive with the caveat that-- and we can talk about some of these caveats, with the caveat that that's just me and my experience. Literally all I can do in this particular topic is just share honestly my personal experience because I wasn't always out of the country-- don't tell anyone- in those experiences.

[00:40:36] But that is to say if I could step back as objectively as one can from themselves and where they are in their life, which is of course, difficult to do-- other people can typically see us better than we can see ourselves. But if I looked at the outside circumstances and the results of that period of time in which I was really working with a lot of medicines, everything was better.

[00:42:32] Bailey: Yeah, I think you're right about that. And I think also the integration, which you didn't really touch on integration, I'm surprised, but I think you've done a really great job with that.

[00:42:46] Luke: Aficionados or facilitators listening be like, talk about integration. Here the thing. And I love this topic because it's like when I first got into recovery. There were certain books that we're just required reading. This is how this thing works. This is how the disease of addiction or alcoholism works. These are the spiritual principles that you need to learn about so that you can develop a relationship with your higher power and that higher power is going to help you overcome your addiction.

[00:43:20] And then I got into reading all sorts of other spiritual books, and still do. When the idea-- and they didn't use the word integration, but the word that was used in my recovery was application. So it was explained to me, you can read the most powerful spiritual literature in the world, and if it is limited to a mental construct or even a belief system or something that you memorize, if it's something that you just digest from the neck up, it's going to have very little effect on your life.

[00:44:02] And so that's the application. It's like applying something. It's the difference between reading about how to drive a car and actually getting in your car and going down the road. So integration is a word that I love because it's not something that's limited to post psychedelic experiences.

[00:44:24] Everything we literally do all day every day in our lives is the integration of what we're learning. So if I learn, I don't know, something online, I go on YouTube and watch a tutorial on how to play a song on guitar, me taking that information and internalizing it and then practicing it is integrating that.

[00:44:49] And so everything that we're picking up, all the inputs we pick up from our senses and our life experience, if we're paying attention, are things that we can then integrate to make ourselves more whole. And I love the word integration because it's related to integrity, and integrity, you can define it a number of ways, but the definition that I like is, is wholeness, completeness, sturdiness.

[00:45:13] I think about these oak trees I have outside my house. We have these beautiful oak trees all around Texas, but on the property that we call ours at the moment, that belongs to God, we have these beautiful oak trees and they are just immovable. We might have an ice storm. Last winter, we had these ice storms, and it rained, and then it froze, and so some of the branches of the oak trees fell off.

[00:45:37] But the trunks of the oak trees have integrity. They're immovable. They're not going anywhere. They know what they are. They know what they're doing, why they're there, and they're just stable. And so I think about what makes a human in terms of our psyche, and it's our character. It's our nature.

[00:46:01] It's who we are informs what we do and how we do it. And so our integrity level is the degree to which we are able to maintain the truth of who and what we are, which also has a lot to do with the values that we hold dear and the values that inform our decisions. So anytime I am deviating from my values, which are just universal rules or laws, I'm losing integrity.

[00:46:37] And so to integrate in day-to-day life is to gain more integrity, to become more whole and less disintegrated. So say one is put in a really stressful situation. You're going through a breakup or you get fired, and it's one of those situations that brings out the worst in you, let's just say.

[00:47:02] You get vindictive, or punishing, or violent, or anything. Our character is being disintegrated. We're actually losing grip on what makes us us. And so we lose our stability, and we lose our grounding, and we become vulnerable to lower impulses and temptations, and we start acting in ways that aren't really true to who and what we really are.

[00:47:29] And so when you venture into the realm of psychedelics, we can talk about microdosing later, but in terms of heroic doses, or ceremonies, or journeys, all of the external layers of who we think we are get freaking obliterated. Some people refer to this as an ego death.

[00:47:52] Every experience is unique unto itself. It depends on the substance you're using, how much of it you take, what the parameters of the experience are, who's involved, is someone leading you or you're just on your own, etc? But what's happened for me is all of the false constructs that I've built around myself that define to me who I am are disintegrated, just obliterated.

[00:48:21] And I'm laying there in a puddle of tears or a puddle of laughter and in touch with the most true and most real parts of myself, my soul, my essence, my being, and the mental constructs of all the stories I've told myself my whole life and all of the painful experiences that I've endured, the pride and arrogance of the ego that wants to be somebody, and I start believing my own bullshit about who that person is, or believing the bullshit about my lack of worth or value as a person, both sides of that egoic identity.

[00:48:58] In other words, the truth of our reality, the truth of the nature of this earthly realm, the truth of our relationships of the past, our relationships of the present, our relationship with ourselves, all of that ideally, if things are going well in experience, become more prominent, and more tangible, and more real, and the false identities that we've built and all the patterns that they create disintegrate. They fall apart.

[00:49:31] And so in terms of post psychedelic integration, what that means for me and my experience is putting myself back together or allowing myself to be put back together so that I can then move forward and operate in my life from the motivation of my true self. Because of the parts that have been disintegrated are the parts that are ephemeral and substitute and counterfeit to begin with.

[00:50:10] But there's a reason why we don't walk around in our normal waking state on a DMT high. You can't drive a car. You can't make a phone call. You can't operate in your physical body, in the physical world. Well, I guess maybe an enlightened master could. I can't. It doesn't fit with the rest of the program here of being embodied, incarnated as a human being.

[00:50:34] We're in this material realm for a reason, and our senses trick us into thinking that the material world is all there is to reality. When you're in a medicine experience, the material world becomes very malleable, and you start to see the fractal nature of that world and the fact that it's all made up by our senses.

[00:51:01] So if we weren't in a body with eyes, and ears, and a temperature on our skin, and sound, and all the things that make the word "real", when we're in medicine space, we're actually seeing the true reality, is what I'm saying. And so all false reality gets obliterated. And then when the experience subsides and you come back into your construct of reality in the material world, because now you're perceiving it through your senses, it requires time and effort and dedication to then build a new model of what your world is and what it means to you, because it's all been blown apart.

[00:51:41] And I think this is one of the downsides of some people either not being educated about integration and the importance of it, or else ignoring that instruction and just going from journey to journey to journey, because it's so interesting and sometimes fun and sometimes is so healing and transformative. You just want to keep going and keep going.

[00:52:05] But if I'm obliterating my reality on a regular basis without putting the pieces back together, it can be very disruptive to life, if not destructive or even dangerous to one psyche. It's like you walk into, say, your first deep ceremony. You're a puzzle that has been completed through the experiences of your life and through your interpretation of those experiences.

[00:52:33] So you imagine a puzzle that somebody's already put together on a table, and then you throw some shit on top of that puzzle that blows all the pieces all over the floor. And then when it's over, you just carry on playing with those puzzle pieces and then you blow them apart again and again and again and again.

[00:52:54] And what can happen, and I'm sure it does happen for some people, is that those pieces become so disintegrated that you don't even know how to put them back together again. So when your puzzle's blown apart in a medicine experience, it's really important and it wonderful if you have help. I think a good facilitator is someone who can help someone put those pieces back together because you might come back to your life and go, wow, I need to get a divorce, or I'm shutting down my company, or quitting my job, or I'm moving to a different country.

[00:53:27] You can get some wild realizations that have real direct impacts on your life when you come back. Not only your life, but the lives of the people with whom you have relationships and people that depend on you. If your puzzle's blown apart and you come back like, hey, you can't go through the world as a blown up puzzle. You have to have a picture of who you are, and that's your integrity.

[00:53:50] It's the notches in your puzzle pieces that make you you. And when they're all stuck together beautifully, and you have a picture of who you are in your character, in your nature, then you can take the lessons you've learned and actually navigate through your life as a person who's in a body that has a job, that has relationships and responsibilities.

[00:54:10] And you can play the human roleplaying game that I'm a person with the body in a material world. But if you've integrated the places that you went to when you were disintegrated, then there's a way to operate in the world where you can be in the world and not of the world, or wear the world like a loose garment. I remember different times after working with 5-MeO-DMT. It was months of integration and just realizing that the simulation that I thought was the real world is actually the artificial world that has been created for me as a playground to grow.

[00:54:55] And so I can't live in that playground all the time, but I can fully land back in my body and be that oak tree and sway with the winds and the ice storms and not take it all that seriously. And that's a beautiful, beautiful way to live. And I definitely don't do that perfectly all the time. I'm just like any other person.

[00:55:16] The waves that hit my boat on the sea sometimes rock me really hard, but there's still an underlying anchor to the bottom of the sea that knows I'm just playing a role in this game. I'm playing a role that people call Luke Storey, and I have to pretend like certain things matter in the world that ultimately really don't because the infrastructure of the physical experience was designed by God, and I chose to come here to use this earth school for all of the benefits it has to offer.

[00:55:55] But having the understanding after putting my puzzle pieces back together after an experience that the world that I just came out of in that psychedelic experience was actually closer to the ultimate reality than the world I'm sitting in right now talking to you on a podcast. So the integration is like making myself whole again so that I'm in touch with those deeper, more etheric, timeless eternal parts of myself, but also acknowledging the relevance and importance and utility in being in a human body, having a human experience.

[00:59:21] And sometimes with an experience, the integration, for me, is very formal. I'm journaling. I'm taking a few days off work. I'm really meditating a lot, going within that space. And sometimes it's shorter. It's like, ah, got it. The thing ends. And the next day I'm back to regular life as a civilian.

[00:59:42] So there's not like, again, a right and wrong way to practice integration, but I think there's a right way to emphasize how important it is and that what you do with what you learn in a journey is more important than the actual experience itself.

[00:59:59] And I'll close with this and then we can get onto your next thing, a great example of a real time integration. So I was in the ceremony maybe year and a half ago with a few friends, and we were working with a heart opener, which for some people is MDA or sassafras, some people MDMA. For me, I was working with something called kanna, South African plant medicine that's actually legal.

[01:00:30] I think the version of it I did is much stronger than you could just get on the internet or something. I have a show coming out with my friend Ryan on kanna soon. But when I took the kanna, which is the preliminary part of this particular protocol-- and many practitioners work with MDMA and mushrooms, for example, because there's a heart opening, a safety, the disabling of your limbic system and the default mode network that helps you feel very safe in your body and enables you to feel free to explore the more psychedelic realms of the mushroom.

[01:01:06] So in this particular one, for me, the heart opener was kanna, which is quite strong. If anyone's taken MDMA, very similar to that, just warm chest, deep breathing. Really got to breathe to hold it in the body. And then later on in the evening, ate some truffles made with ayahuasca and mushrooms, and then things get very supernatural and very psychedelic.

[01:01:32] But in the very beginning stage of this, maybe the first few hours, I started thinking about someone that I love deeply and someone with whom I've had a very fractured and really tragic relationship throughout my life, just comedy of errors and a lot of a shared trauma and familial trauma in the background. And it's a relationship that I've really wanted to have on a deeper level and have this more consistent, and some of my behavior in the past has made that difficult. And so that person came to me as that first phase of that medicine hit me.

[01:02:26] I started thinking about that person and the truths that began to download to me were just on another level. The shit that I was able to see in the dynamic of that relationship and the things that I had done unknowingly to undermine that relationship, ways in which I had hurt this person deeply through my own ignorance and unconsciousness, I traced it all the way back, and I started writing.

[01:02:57] I wrote, I don't know, 15 pages, and I couldn't stop writing. And it's like I was talking to their soul and that there was an intermediary, a mediator, let's just call it God, who was telling me what I needed to see and understand and hear, and then I was telling it to the person in the form of writing, and I just went on and on and on and on. It just kept pouring out of me, and it was really deep and really meaningful and beautiful, and extremely sad, and painful, all at the same time.

[01:03:41] So if I would've, a, not written it down, I might've gotten some healing from it, but I don't know what it would've done for my relationship with the other person. So I wrote it down and I knew my integration was to take that writing and distill it down, being completely sober and not on medicine, to a letter that I could send that would do more good than harm, that could help take responsibility for my mistakes and my actions, to make amends for things I'd done that hurt this person, whether I did it knowingly or not, to really take ownership of my side of the street, not from a place of shame or guilt, but just an honest adult acknowledgement of things that I had done in the past and also just a deep gratitude and appreciation for how much love this person has shared with me and so much that they've done for me throughout my life.

[01:04:51] And I transposed it into a Word document. I edited it and edited it and edited it over and over again, and kept refining it and refining it to ensure that it communicated the highest level of truth in the most compassionate way that I possibly could. And then eventually, one thing that I had committed to was sending some iteration of that letter.

[01:05:21] And I didn't want to go off half-cocked and cause more harm than good, so I really worked on refining it until it was as perfect as it could be, and I sent it in the mail. Print it out, and send in the mail. And the healing that I got from that was mostly dependent on the fact that I just recognized everything that I recognized and the fact that I codified it in a physical letter and I mailed it.

[01:05:53] It really didn't matter how it was received, if it was received, if it was reciprocated. It was about me and my own journey and taking responsibility for myself and expressing my honest desire to have a deeper, more consistent relationship with this person. And I didn't hear anything for quite a while, and then I got back something to the effect of, thank you for your letter. I understand. And that was it.

[01:06:26] There's no 15-page letter back. But it wasn't about what came back. It was about letting this person know how much I love them and how sorry I was for things that I'd done in my life that hurt them. So my reward, my integration was achieved the moment I threw that thing in the mail, and it was just an added bonus that even though the reply was brief, I really felt the reply. That's all that needed to be said.

[01:06:59] It was like, I hear you, and I understand. That's all I needed. Now, that relationship, was it magically transformed in this realm and now we're singing Kumbaya and living happily ever after? No, it's not all that much more involved or close than it was before, but I can leave this body someday knowing that I did everything I could to make things right.

[01:07:26] That's integration, or one example of it, is leaving that experience with some really powerful information that I believe was really given to me by God. It was very difficult stuff to face, to look at, to feel, very uncomfortable, very painful, but now I don't have so many of those feelings anymore because I did everything I could rectify the situation, and there's more to do. It's ongoing.

[01:07:52] I'm still making an effort to carry on with the beginning that I made by just writing that really thoughtful and I think pretty deep and loving letter to someone. And now I can follow up. There's more integration now, and that's a year and a half ago or something, maybe two years ago. So now it's not like, oh, I sent the letter. I'm off the hook. It's like, okay, that's a start.

[01:08:16] And now I can continue to do everything I can to follow up with my behavior and my consistency and trying to stay in touch and continue to be loving, and forgiving, and understanding, and all those things that I wish to be. So I blew apart a whole construct, disintegrated all of these thoughts, ideas, beliefs that I had, took my model and just completely nuked it and created a new model with which I can move forward and operate from a different perspective in that relationship and all other relationships, because how I do that relationship is how I do all of them.

[01:08:57] So it gives me instruction on how I can incorporate more compassion, forgiveness, understanding, taking more responsibility for myself, accessing even more unconditional love for other people with whom I'm in relation and more unconditional love and forgiveness for myself for not doing better when I couldn't do better from where I was at that point in my life.

[01:09:22] So I don't know how I could have ever arrived or if I would've ever arrived at that understanding without the assistance of entheogens. I mean, really. I don't think there's a therapist in the world that could have sat down with me and, oh, let's take a look at this relationship and written me a 15-page letter that just nailed the whole thing. Maybe. Who knows? Anything's possible.

[01:09:48] But I know that that one experience changed my life. And if that's the only experience I ever had with psychedelics, that would've been good enough. But that's one example of dozens of experiences I've had like that that have absolutely transformed my life and my relationships.

[01:10:06] Bailey: That's so beautiful. I've had its like that where you can see relationships clearly after something like that. And you're right about there-- it's like once you send that out, you've gotten what you needed from it and on how they react to it. But it is really nice to get that. You said they just said I understand that means so much.

[01:10:37] Luke: Oh man. Yeah, it is life changing. It would've been one of my life's great regrets if I hadn't had that level of awareness and really saw so clearly what needed to be said. And if I would've chickened out or been lazy or too busy and not done it, oh man, that would be a really hard thing to live with.

[01:11:04] And I kept referring this person, that person. I'm not trying to be cryptic and mysterious. I'm just honoring the anonymity of the other person involved because they didn't choose to have their half of the relationship talked about on a podcast to tens of thousands of people. So yeah, I'm not trying to put on air, so it'd be weird, but I'm just being respectful.

[01:11:35] Bailey: So the thing disintegration and integration, that hit me really hard. Like a paper that you get it wet and then it is disintegrating in your hand, like you lose what it is. And that is when you're in the journey. It's like nothing is what it used to be.

[01:12:03] And then afterwards, you can put it back together with the pieces that you want to that are important. But that I think leads us into microdosing versus macro, a full-on journey versus taking a little bit of that disintegration and consistently using your life. Can you talk about that?

[01:12:37] Luke: Yeah, it's a great day to talk about it. I took some psilocybin today.

[01:12:41] Bailey: Oh, nice.

[01:12:42] Luke: That's probably why I'm one of the reasons I feel open-hearted. Plus, I always feel that way when I talk to you. We just have a rapport. I just love you, Bailey. I love you, Bailey. Yeah. So the key defining characteristic of a microdose is that it's sub perceptual. And I think this is something that people get hung on when they're first exploring microdosing because they don't feel it.

[01:13:18] I've given mushroom tinctures to friends, and I go, man, try this out. Do it every other day, or do it four days on, three days off, whatever. Give them a little protocol if they're struggling with depression or anxiety or creative blocks, whatever the thing may be. And I've had a number of friends come back, and I say, hey, how's it going? How you feeling? They go, oh, I don't really feel anything. I go, yeah, exactly.

[01:13:45] If you're feeling it, then you're getting into-- people have different names for it none of which I made up, but some people refer to a handshake dose where you probably wouldn't drive a car, but you could still be around other people who aren't on that dose and act somewhat normal and keep your shit together into the hero's dose or heroic dose where all bets are off.

[01:14:12] You need to be in a safe place with safe people and have everything very well planned out and structured for how you're going to spend that time. Personally-- it's funny because and the other night-- I took what I hoped would be a lighter heroic dose, and I ended up being in what I call the in-betweenies, which is like, I couldn't drive a car and wouldn't want to, that's how I judge if I'm sober or not in a medicine thing, is like, could I drive safely right now?

[01:14:52] And if I was driving, I got pulled over, would I get arrested? So I was feeling it to the degree that I wouldn't want to be doing emails or try to be working, or drive a car, or anything like that, but I wasn't like in it either having an experience. To me, those in-betweenies tend to be uncomfortable.

[01:15:16] Bailey: Mm-hmm.

[01:15:17] Luke: I personally tend to do better with just the full-on thing, full send as I call it. It's like sending an email halfway. It's either, whoosh, you hear that little whoosh, or you don't. It's like I want to go full on and just come what may and just deal with it or else a sub perceptual dose where, for me, a microdose, I'm just in a good mood.

[01:15:47] It like it's really is not something you even notice, except for the fact that it might be something like, oh, I'm having a good day today. I just feel upbeat and positive and my mind seems to be firing on all cylinders. The microdoses I tend to work with are psilocybin, mushrooms, and sometimes LSD. Those are the two that are in my somewhat regular repertoire. And also, months go by and I forget to do it. And I go, oh man, I should start microdosing again.

[01:16:20] It's not something I even think about. They're just with the rest of my supplements in my supplement cabinet. And so I have labels on them that say, do not eat and stuff, in case someone gets into the cabinet and accidentally takes five hits of acid on a Tuesday afternoon.

[01:16:38] But some days I do it. Some days I don't. I'm not one that's particularly regimented about it. There are certain people that have very specific protocols on this many days on, this many days off. I just wing it as far as that goes. But I do notice if I'm working on something creative, and this is especially true with a microdose of LSD, it has a really interesting effect on my brain where I can access my creativity and flow state, but also be logical and analytical and get stuff done.

[01:17:12] So it acts a nootropic for me, whereas microdosing, psilocybin, I don't know that I feel that focused. It's just more like I feel in a good mood. Saying all that, the only times I've had that have been positive with the in-betweenies have been if I am just out in nature in the beauty of the world with people that I really feel comfortable and safe with.

[01:17:44] So in those kind of situations, yeah, I might eat a half a gram of mushrooms or maybe a gram of mushrooms and go for a hike or go for a swim. And as long as I know where I'm going to be and how long I'm going to be there, I might go in that in-betweenies without totally tripping balls where I just need to lay on the ground and close my eyes and breathe through it and have a whole experience.

[01:18:05] So I will say that, that every once in a while will just push it a little bit past microdose if the set and setting are appropriate. But generally, microdose, for me, is sub perceptual, so I don't know I did it. I can do everything that I normally do probably better, drive a car, do work, record a podcast, whatever, and no one probably knows but me.

[01:18:29] Another substance that sometimes I'll microdose is some refer to as wachuma. It's the San Pedro cactus which has the active ingredient of mescaline. So it's in the same family as peyote, which also has mescaline. And actually, I was microdosing peyote a few years ago as well, but I prefer the San Pedro cactus over peyote for both-- the full send journeys and also for microdosing.

[01:19:00] And that's a really beautiful hard opening medicine. A microdose of San Pedro is really, really nice. I like it. And that's more, for me, appropriate and not so much-- I don't think I've ever done it and then sit down at my desk and work or do a podcast. It's more of a social microdose that's like, oh, I just feel maybe a little more access to my warmth and openness and just lightheartedness. So I like that sometimes when I'm going to be around people.

[01:19:31] Sometimes I'll microdose ketamine, which isn't really a psychedelic. It's anesthesia. But a small dose of that is something I would not do if I had to do anything except lay down or meditate. I've never understood how people abuse ketamine. I know it's an issue with a certain subsect of people where they have ketamine nasal sprays, and they're going to Burning Man and going clubbing and doing ketamine. That to me is the ultimate nightmare. I would never, ever try and use ketamine and do anything except lay down or meditate.

[01:20:14] When I first started trying ketamine, I had a nasal spray that had oxytocin and ketamine. And this is how I learned this actually. I remember one day when I was living in LA and I had taken a couple of sprays and then meditate. I'd have these really great meditations. Not like full K-hole ketamine trip, but just definitely feeling different, put it that way. Maybe a medium dose, a handshake dose.

[01:20:42] So one day I was going to go out to the backyard. I had this little man cave. I called the zen den, and I was going to go do a hyperbaric chamber, which is something I would like to do with ketamine. It's really nice because you just totally relax. You go into this quantum space of meditation.

[01:20:59] So I took a couple of sprays and then something came up, and I had to, I don't know, answer a text or something. I took a few minutes to get out into the backyard to go out to the zen den, and it hit me on the way out there, and I was like, oh shit, this is not good. I felt so weird. It was like, I don't know, the worst part of being drunk, not the fun part, but the shitty. You can't focus. The room spins. You're off balance.

[01:21:32] To me, ketamine, if I'm not laying down, feels like the shittiest alcohol experience you've ever had, minus the nausea and all that, but just disoriented. It's, for me personally, not pleasant at all. So that was the last time I ever did that. I was like, okay, noted. If I ever am going to do even a very small dose of ketamine, I need to be lying down, relaxed, in a safe, comfortable place, and have an intention going into it.

[01:22:02] And the intention for me, microdosing something like ketamine is a meditation or just to relax and just to get out of my body and out of my mind and just disconnect. However, I don't even really think of using small doses of ketamine as a microdose because it is perceptual, but it's probably the only one that I actually prefer. And if I ever use it, I actually prefer not going too deep with it.

[01:22:34] It's really spooky in there, in the void of ketamine. It's really weird. I'm not really a fan of that, and it's never something that I would take just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of because it's not good for anything for me. The only thing it's good for is like a small dose that I definitely notice, but again, I'm using it to just deepen my meditation or just to turn the mind off temporarily and just get a reset so that I can start a different creative project or just pivot, or sometimes even to fall asleep if my mind's just racing.

[01:23:07] I have too many great ideas going on, and I'm excited and all amped, and I try to go to sleep, and I can't. Sometimes I'll do a tiny little bit of a troche, which is what you put in between your cheek and gum, like a dip. So that's how I administer it these days if I do. But it's a tiny dose. It's like, I don't know, half of a troche, but it dissolves very slowly. So I think when I do it, I'll do 50 milligrams, which if you did that in a nasal spray, you'd probably be pretty high. In a troche, the 50 milligrams takes an hour to dissolve or something, so it truly is a microdose in the sense that it's going into your bloodstream in a titrated fashion, so it doesn't really hit you all at once. It's very mild. But again, I wouldn't go drive a car or try to do a podcast or something with a 50 milligrams of ketamine in my brain.

[01:23:59] Bailey: So you feel like the nasal and the oral work pretty similarly, the feeling?

[01:24:05] Luke: The nasal spray is much stronger in my experience, and hits you much faster. The two oral ways that I've tried it, one was in a lozenge that's like a breath mint, that chalky, quickly dissolving lozenge. That was not a great experience for me. I've talked about it on the show before.

[01:24:30] I took too much one time, and it was very unpleasant, and I was in a really spooky place for a little bit. Good thing about ketamine is even if it gets weird, it's going to wear off in 20 minutes or something anyway.

[01:24:42] Bailey: Oh, I didn't realize it was that fast.

[01:24:45] Luke: Yeah, it wears off quite quickly. So I learned there that the quick dissolve little lozenges are not my jam, and then I got ahold of these troches that are made of wax or something, and they dissolve very slowly, so it's very gentle and subtle. So that's my preference. But again, nothing against people that use ketamine to like party or whatever. I just don't understand how anyone would ever want to do that. It's not a pleasant feeling to be on a really big dose of it.

[01:25:20] But I did work with a practitioner, Dr. Sam, who uses a number of different medicines. We did a podcast about that, as you know. He is a licensed therapist, and so part of his protocol is a ketamine injection, which is, I don't know how much, probably a really big dose, but because of the way he designs the protocol, it's not weird at all.

[01:25:46] The ketamine is actually just very relaxing and allows you to do some really deep inner work on the heels of the other medicines that he works with. So that's the only time I've done it professionally or in a guided fashion. But because of the way he stacks the medicines, it doesn't go to the weird, scary ketamine place.

[01:26:07] It's actually really nice and very safe. I mean safe physically in the real world, but also just feels emotionally very safe and smooth and you go into it very smoothly. You come out of it very smoothly. When it's over, you feel pretty much normal again. It's really interesting the way that he's developed that protocol.

[01:26:27] So that's my experience with ketamine. And I think on the topic of microdosing, I can't think of anything else that I've really worked with in that capacity other than a few times I have worked with a smokeable ayahuasca--

[01:26:50] Bailey: Mm-hmm.

[01:26:51] Luke: That if you only take a tiny, tiny little bit, it's like micro E but not something you would do and then try to work or something. Again, with the ketamine microdose on meditation or doing some breath work-- but you're definitely feeling it, so it's not technically a microdose, but it's micro in contrast to drinking a couple of big ass cups of ayahuasca and going on a six to eight-hour full DMT elves experience.

[01:27:23] Bailey: That's what I did that time. You remember? I took very little.

[01:27:28] Luke: Right. We did that. Yeah. We did that when we were in another country. Yeah.

[01:27:34] Bailey: Yeah, on our trip.

[01:27:37] Luke: Yeah. I forgot you were here. Yeah, that's right. Or you were there, I mean.

[01:27:43] Bailey: That was great for me. I've never drank ayahuasca before, so that was a nice way for me to meet her, I think, without having to go all the way in. It's funny you were talking about the in-betweenies. I love that name because I think that's my favorite place to be, honestly.

[01:28:11] Luke: Is it.

[01:28:12] Bailey: Yeah. I would say specifically with mushrooms, don't really enjoy, and it's different if there's a heart opener as well. But when it comes to psilocybin, if I'm past the in-betweenies, I feel like they're like taking me away, turning me into a mushroom. I don't feel like Bailey anymore, and it's just too much. So I like to be able to ride that line specifically with those, but yeah. So you can decide whether to bring or not. Yeah.

[01:28:51] Luke: Yeah. And also, we talked about the integration. And of course, on the front loading side of that is the intention. And a lot of this stuff, people that work with medicine a lot, it's like everyone has these things that become rote. Set your intention. Are you going to integrate?

[01:29:13] I'm glad people are aware of that, and it's worth mentioning because again, I get enthusiastic about this stuff and someone listening is probably like, dude, you're a drug addict. You're doing all these drugs. So it's like, again, there's not a right or a wrong reason why one would enter into these realms. There's just an honest to yourself why.

[01:29:40] And I know we've been going for a while. You guys listening or watching the video, every time we start, I'm like, Bailey, don't let me keep talking. Shut me up. We're we got to do this in an hour, and I promise every time, but you ask me good questions and I get so excited.

[01:29:57] We usually talk about topics about which I'm really passionate, but I do want to talk about-- we've talked a lot about what can go right and how transformative some of these experiences can be. But man, I've had friends that have gotten a little too-- not many, but a couple that have gotten a little too enthusiastic, a little too frequent, maybe not being mindful about the integration process and not mindful about the intention of why am I actually doing this? Am I just saying yes, every time there's an opportunity to sit? And I've had a couple friends that have had, I would say, psychic breaks, very challenging times. One of whom my friend Kyle Kingsbury, who was on the podcast, I think we talked about it on the podcast. He had a really powerful 5-MeO-DMT experience. He's talked about this a lot publicly.

[01:30:54] And he was out to lunch for a few months, just having a real rough time. I have another friend who was just doing a lot of different medicines back to back for a series of months and didn't go to a mental health facility, but was pretty close to it and non-functional and just went off the map for quite some time afterward. And a lot of people that cared about him were quite worried.

[01:31:20] So even in the years that I've been doing this with some intentionality and really being mindful of how and when and why I'm working with these medicines, I have seen in the periphery some people have a real hard time. My experience with that, I started doing psychedelics in 1986 when I was 16.

[01:31:45] First time I took acid was in high school in my sophomore year, and I took it in the morning and started tripping in home ed class. I don't remember because I was tripping balls, but I think I just left school and was just like, okay, yeah, no, the floor's melting in front of me and whatever. But I do remember this home ed class, which is weird. I don't even know if they have that class anymore.

[01:32:12] Bailey: I would guess not.

[01:32:12] Luke: And that was the first time I took acid. I don't know if I did mushrooms. Probably took me a minute to find mushrooms after that. But I definitely used to take acid in high school. And I was living in Colorado, and we used to take acid basically to stay awake, to drink more. There was no shamanic playlist. There was no facilitator. There was no intentionality. It was literally just like, let's all take acid and just get drunk. And we found, if we took acid-- because acid can be speedy, it's stimulating.

[01:32:54] So we would take acid. We lived in Aspen, and that's about, I think around a four-hour drive to Denver. So if we wanted to go see concerts, me and all my little heavy metal and punk rock buddies, all five of us in the entire state, we would take acid just to drive over the continental divide so we could stay awake and drink.

[01:33:19] I mean, just complete idiocy, just absolute reckless, stupidity. So my introduction into this was not smooth at all. And then when I moved to Hollywood when I was 19 and got really into a lot of the hard drugs, we would use my-- I sold mushrooms. That was one of my careers in my early 20s.

[01:33:44] And so I always had just pounds of mushrooms on hand. We would take copious amounts of mushrooms and acid and go see the Grateful Dead and do this kind of thing. And the thing that I think a lot of people don't realize too, when seeking to work with psychedelics in a recreational sense, is they last a really long time.

[01:34:06] And so if you think, oh, we're going to take acid and go to this concert, we're going to take acid and go see a weird movie, or one time in San Francisco, I went and watched the Pink Floyd laser show at the Laserium, incredible thing to do on acid. The only problem is the whole show is only 45 minutes and the acid trip is like nine or 10 hours.

[01:34:23] So I'm driving my little 82 Subaru around the streets of San Francisco up and down tripping balls, trying to find my way home. Very unsafe, very stupid. So I used to do a lot of things like that where I would get the bright idea to take acid, and then I'd be doing all kinds of other drugs and drinking copious amounts of alcohol, and then end up at the end of the night in a totally bad trip, in bad neighborhoods, trying to score drugs.

[01:34:53] Just dark, dark people and gnarly, dangerous situations when I was in a very emotionally sensitive state from the psychedelics. So I've misused them a lot earlier in life, so I know the dark places that you can go to psychologically and the really physically dangerous situations you can get yourself into because you don't know what the fuck you're doing.

[01:35:20] So I just want to state for the record that psychedelics can be very dangerous psychologically and physically, and they're illegal in most places too. You can get in trouble with the law for selling them, carrying them, and probably even being on them if they could somehow test you and prove that you were. So I always want to say, as much as a supporter, as I am, and I'm definitely an evangelist for their benefits, shit can go very wrong also.

[01:35:52] And so it's the intentionality around it. Even if your intention is just to have fun and blow off some steam, I don't think there's anything right or wrong about that, but I would advise one to be really mindful about knowing where you're going to be. How safe do you feel there? How well do you know the other people? What are you going to be doing? Who's going to be coming and going? Is there a room where you can go be by yourself if you need to be? Is there someone there that can support you? Is there a guide? Is there at least a trip sitter who's not also on psychedelics that can come up and rub your chest and say, man, you're okay? Just breathe. You're all right. If you start freaking out in a trip and there's no one around to bring you back to at least some semblance of reality and help you to feel safe and cared for, it can be extremely upsetting.

[01:36:45] It needs to be stated. If it's not obvious to everyone listening, it's really, really, important to just create that element of safety for yourself, no matter what your intention is. If it's to change your whole life and heal all your trauma, great. You still need that. If you're just trying to have some fun and you want to go in a deep experience, it's also really important to have that safety net.

[01:37:06] It's like some bumpers on your bumper car in case you start hitting the walls. You want to have some semblance of security in that so that you don't hurt yourself on a physical or metaphysical level. And that's not even to speak of the entities. Oh God.

[01:37:27] And this is going to a sound crazy to some people. And for the people for whom psychedelics are a part of their past or their current life, they're going to be like, yeah, no, duh. When you're lowering the veil of your awareness, your psyche, your mind, your heart, your body, your aura, when you're disintegrating your perception of reality and you're moving within dimensions that aren't readily accessible in your normal waking state, it's really important to understand that within those dimensions, which people say there's 12 or this many, I believe there's an infinite number of dimensions, people call them astro planes, different things.

[01:38:16] There's a million names from depending on your methodology and belief system, but there are absolutely dimensions that we can't, at least most of us, really perceive when we're in our normal waking state in a body. When you enter into a psychedelic experience, you're opening up the gateway to a multitude of dimensions.

[01:38:37] And within those dimensions, there are spirits that are here all the time, but we just can't see them or feel them because our senses aren't tuned that way, at least most of us. Psychics and shamans and different people, of course, are tapped into that. My wife lives in that realm all the time, which is why she doesn't work with psychedelics a lot. She doesn't need to. She's just there.

[01:39:06] But it's really important to understand that whether or not you believe that the spirit world exists or not doesn't change the fact that when you ingest really strong psychedelics that you're opening up the gateways to those other dimensions, and the beings, the energies, the entities that exist in those multitude of dimensions don't give a shit whether you believe in them or not.

[01:39:29] They're there, and they may or may not show up. And just like in the earthly plane, how there are benevolent and benevolent beings, there's people who are lacking the awareness and expression and embodiment of love. Those people, we tend to call evil. I don't think evil exists. I think there's just degrees of love.

[01:39:54] But let's say someone is a sociopath, a psychopath, a violent person because of ways in which they've been hurt in their life, etc., rapists, murderers, all these kinds. Just call them evil. While the spectrum of beings that exist interdimensionally are even more vast than what we experience here on earth, and part of the role of a shaman or a facilitator, if not the whole role, is to make sure that as those portals into those dimensions are opened wide, that there's some safety parameters on an energetic metaphysical level to ensure that those benevolent beings that are out there or around us all the time that we're opening up the doors to, that they can't attach to us or can't harm us and interfere with our highest good.

[01:40:50] I'm so glad I thought of that. Now, personally, I've only had one experience where I put in some hours of work doing battle with not even entities, but just with-- I don't even know how to say it-- the mothership of demonic forces. I don't really use the word devil, but there was a real battle going on for a very long time.

[01:41:20] And I held my ground, and I was steadfast, and there were people there that could have helped me if I felt like I was getting sucked into some weird stuff, but this energy appeared, and I felt confident that I was able to navigate that space and to fortify myself with prayer and the presence of God and different things that I was thinking, feeling sane.

[01:41:47] And I felt like I emerged the victor in that particular situation. This is the only time I've ever had a weird presence. But I'll tell you what, for about two months after that, I was not right. And I really think that there was some residual slime or entity attachment, some sort of succubus shit that was like in my field.

[01:42:11] And that's a situation where I felt like I emerged out of that as conquering the beast. I slayed the dragon in that journey. I was doing a lot of deep work on those lower parts of myself, ways in which I've succumbed to those temptations and just behaviors that haven't served me, and things like that.

[01:42:28] So even in a situation in which I had support, I felt in the moment like I was handling my shit and holding my ground. I still got some gooey entity energy on me that took a couple of months to clear. So that's another thing that's really important for people to understand. Not so much in the microdosing realm, but when you get into the journey space, it's really important to be mindful of hygiene, spiritual hygiene, and just know that, like I said, whether or not one believes that these energies or beings exist, just trust me. They do.

[01:43:06] And that's another reason why the intentionality in the setting and having someone who's experienced there with you, at least in the first phases of your exploration so that you're not vulnerable to those non-physical influences and energies, super, super important.

[01:43:27] Me personally, I don't consider myself religious or even Christian per se, but when I go into those, I am calling in Christ consciousness to protect me. That's the highest protector that I know. And that's how I go into those experiences, and that's what I keep with me in those experiences, and that's worked for me. Whatever that energy is, I call on it. It answers. It's there. I'm protected, with the exception of that one time where it got a little squirrely in the weeks after the experience.

[01:44:01] Yeah, those [Inaudible] personally, but I know quite a few people who, like you said, they lifted that veil and they weren't careful about who they let in, about who they gave access to them. And the power of prayer is a big one. Personally, I also call in Christ consciousness. Seems that that's how you can really stay safe there. I don't know if I ever told you about my first trip. I ended up getting lost for--

[01:44:44] I do remember that story.

[01:44:45] Bailey: On my 18th birthday. Yeah.

[01:44:48] Luke: I do remember that.

[01:44:50] Bailey: Go ahead.

[01:44:51] Luke: You ended up sitting on the curb crying and people had to come find you or something, right?

[01:44:55] Bailey: Yeah. I had to call my mom, which at 18, when you're on a bunch of drugs, that was like the last thing I wanted to do. But yeah, she picked me up. And there was no one, neither the place where I started at the party or where my mom took me, nobody in my life had any idea with something like that.

[01:45:20] Yes, they were there, but I don't think-- they didn't know how to navigate something like that. They didn't know what I was going through or what they should do in order to bring me back. So I ended out being by the grace of God that I did eventually come back and I learned a lot.

[01:45:36] Luke: Yeah. I think most of us who have ventured into these realms have at least one story where it did not go according to plans. And that's the thing. As much as you can plan and set the intention, even in a situation in which the table is set and everything was done mindfully, once the bell rings, there's no unringing it. And that's why the preparation, everything is so important.

[01:46:03] There's no antidote. You can't just be like, ah, you know what? This is getting a little weird. I'm going to opt out, just sober up. It's not happening. There are a couple things that, like 5-MeO-DMT, it doesn't last that long, and then when it wears off, you're totally sober.

[01:46:21] So there are things, but for the most part, most of these substances have a very long half-life, and you're in for a many hour commitment. So if it's going off the rails, there's no getting out of it. So it's really important piece for people to understand. There's going to be a lot of people listening to this, of course, that maybe they're not even tuned in anymore because they're like, I already know all this, for people that are really experienced.

[01:46:46] But I think this is a really important conversation for people who are like, oh, I keep hearing about this. And they're seeing the wave of the trend and thinking, oh, I don't know, I'm becoming medicine curious or something. It's really important to be armed with this information upfront and maybe even people for whom they haven't been that mindful before and have had negative experiences, have written it off as a modality of healing or consciousness expansion because they have had negative experiences, so they think, oh, that's not for me. I did it back in high school, and it was too scary, or I had a bad drip.

[01:47:23] It doesn't have to be that way. And again, there are many people for whom it's just not a good idea. People might have psychiatric conditions or be on psychiatric medications. There's definitely many counter indications which would make it so that it maybe isn't a good idea for someone or maybe just for where someone is in their life at this moment.

[01:47:48] For me, I think one of the reasons I've been much less frequent is I'm very much in the 3D world building our home and working on my business and my relationship, and it's very important that I'm really grounded and centered and more earthly right now than it has been during some of those times in the past where I had a little more freedom to explore.

[01:48:11] Right now there's a lot that's being asked of me, that I'm asking of myself, so I'm less interested in going interdimensional and more just like grounding myself in this dimension as much as I can. So there's different seasons in life where it's more or less appropriate to.

[01:48:29] Bailey: Nice. Well, I think we could talk about this for hours, but--

[01:48:34] Luke: Clearly.

[01:48:35] Bailey: But that's all I got for you today.

[01:48:39] Luke: Right on, Bailey. Well, it's been a wonderful chat, as always. You always have great questions, always happy to see you. You have a great talent for space holding and creating an atmosphere wherein I feel like I can really share some things that might be helpful to people, which is the whole point of this, so thank you.

[01:49:01] Bailey: Oh, good. Yes, you're welcome. Thank you for saying that. I love doing these with you. And this is not something I ever imagined myself doing a few years ago, being on camera, on a microphone, talking to thousands of people. So, yeah, I'm happy to do it.

[01:49:20] Luke: It's good. That's so funny. Think about you're sitting there listening to a podcast for a couple of years and like, oh, this is cool. I'm learning from this. This is interesting. And then you'd never imagine, fast forward a couple of years, you'd be like, yeah, I'm going to be the co-host.

[01:49:35] Bailey: It's ridiculous.

[01:49:36] Luke: It's funny. I have shit like that happen all the time. Even one of the recent recordings with Alex Jones, he rolls over to the house and comes in. Hey, how you doing? Nice to meet you. I'm like, Alex Jones is in my house right now. It was just such a trip. And sit down in our loft and talk to him for four hours. I'm just like, man, if you would've told me 20 years ago that crazy guy from Austin that I used to buy DVDs of would be sitting in my house talking about world affairs, there's just no way I would've ever believed that was going to be my reality. So it's fun. I love to see how life unfolds like that.

[01:50:10] Bailey: Yeah. And I'm excited for this year. I think a lot more things come in. We're going to do some big things.

[01:50:20] Luke: Hell yeah, girl. All right. Well, you have a blessed day, and I'll bid you farewell. Until we meet again.

[01:50:27] Bailey: Luke, bye-bye.

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