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Welcome to the Free Thought Project Podcast.
A hub for free thinking conversations about the promotion of liberty
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Here are your hosts, Jason Basler and Matt Agarist.
Hello again, Free Thinkers.
Welcome back to the Free Thought Project Podcast.
My name is Jason Basler and joining me is the Free Thought Project Editor-in-Chief Matt Agarist.
Well guys, it's been over a week now since we published our last podcast.
It feels like it's been a month though.
What a crazy week.
We've seen the left now defending free speech after three years of censoring anyone critical of COVID.
The right has started cheerleading for cancel culture that they once detested from the left.
And of course, the conspiracy theorists have endless theories about how Charlie Kirk is still alive
and various shooter theories and many people who aren't necessarily conspiracy theorists
aren't buying the current narrative we're being presented regarding who killed Charlie Kirk.
Now guys, if you're wondering what our thoughts are on the whole situation,
definitely listen to the podcast we recorded last week with award-winning journalist Ben Swan.
It's a powerful conversation that covered a lot of ground including reactions from both the left and the right.
And as always guys, we tried to provide a balanced assessment not couched in platitudes or flavor of the week outrage,
not stoking division or pushing one political faction over the other.
We've always been clear about our bias here at the Free Thought Project.
We're biased towards liberty, towards peace and accountability.
And we've really never wavered from that being consistently pro-freedom, anti-authoritarian,
while also stiquishing the flames of fear.
Now fear is always used for political agendas and you'll find if you read our articles and listen to our podcasts
that we're trying to empower you with knowledge, with facts and perspectives that move towards independence from the system,
not cowering in fear, begging for it or more partisan fervor.
So today we'll be speaking to a guest who is doing exactly that.
But remember guys, this work takes massive effort, research, investigation and most importantly that precious resource called time.
So if you do recognize how important the work we do is please take a moment to ensure that you are following the podcast on your podcast player of choice.
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Alright, so our guest today is someone near and dear to the Freethought Project family.
And lucky for us he was able to join us on short notice after our guest this week never showed up.
So our guest today is Kevin Whitson.
Kevin is a career educator teaching both high school and college students.
And he's also a talented writer who wrote for Western Journal.
And also guys, spoiler alert here.
Kevin worked for us here at the Freethought Project for over six years, even after the Great Purge of 2018.
Now he wrote dozens of articles during that time period under the name Jack Burns
that were mostly focused on police violence, police accountability, the opioid epidemic and the drug war.
Unfortunately, as the well of resources began to run dry for TFTP
during the years after that massive censorship campaign that they waged against us.
Unfortunately, we had to part ways with him, but he's recently wrote a new book
and we want to have him on the show to talk about that.
So, Kev, it's great to have you back joining the TFTP family.
Welcome to the Freethought Project podcast brother.
Thank you guys. It's such a pleasure to be here.
And I'm glad Ben Swan could open this thing up for me.
We like to give our audience a little taste of the previous podcast that we recorded the week prior
because sometimes people don't get every episode.
And, you know, sometimes we have to remind them how powerful each and every episode is.
So this Kev isn't the first book that you've written, but it is the most recent.
And according to your Facebook post about it, it actually took you two years to write it.
It's called the Paranoid Mystics Guide to Ending Addiction Now Using Psychedelics.
And Kev, this is the topic that you spent a lot of time covering at the Freethought Project
and it's very much a part of our wheelhouse.
In fact, about a month ago, we actually recorded an entire episode
on how the state of Louisiana, Matt's home state, just criminalized cratum leaf.
And of course, that episode, you know, it dug deep into the infrastructure of the failed drug war
and the state's legal racket on drug enforcement and all the big pharma overlap,
which I'm certain are all topics we'll be getting into today.
But I have to ask you, Kev, like, what was the motive behind writing this book?
I know it's a topic that you've written extensively about, but like, why now?
Like, what was impetus?
And can you share a few of your thoughts on the response you've received so far to it?
Absolutely.
Well, our listeners, you know, they're unaware, of course you guys are very much aware
of the behind the scenes story that took place in our own personal lives, the Whitson family.
And that's when we lost my first born son Cameron Whitson to a drug overdose in 2020.
And specifically the 22nd day of 2020.
And it was a day, obviously, you know, anybody can imagine, you know, getting the call.
In fact, I was here in Arizona where I live and I was in the garage of my son's best friend.
And I was getting ready to let those boys have this expedition that the motor had blown up in.
And they were going to take it and sell it and use it for college money, you know.
And got the phone call from my dad that they had found my son dead in his home.
And, you know, yeah, that was the pivotal moment that took all of the research that I'd been reading about for years
and brought it down into a gobsmack, you know, right in the face.
And I think you can just imagine that, well, my life as I knew it was over
and I was starting a new chapter of my life, one mostly dealing in the world of grief.
And I've been a journalist, like you said for you guys, for six years and a year prior to that.
And I used to be a minister of missions at my dad's church, a Baptist church in North Carolina,
First Baptist Church Indian Trail, North Carolina.
And I can tell you, even knowing the research, having grown up in the church,
having served as a minister with my dad, there was absolutely nothing that could have prepared me for that phone call.
And I tell people that I cried every day for six months and I did.
And in those tears, and out of those tears was born all of the material for my first book,
which was a simple reflection on my son's life and his struggles with addiction.
And that book is available on Kindle, Amazon Kindle, and it's entitled,
Grieving the Loss of a Child, One Man's Reflections on a Life Taken Too Soon.
And that's really what it was, was just me looking back at his life and trying to make sense of the senseless tragedy.
Wow, yeah.
Well, as you mentioned, you know, we obviously knew when that time happened, when that came about.
And, you know, we tried our best to console you during that time period.
Obviously, it was something that, you know, no parent ever wants to experience.
And the chapter of grief, I guess, and, you know, Silver Lighting was something that brought about this book.
And the way that you pitched this book is, you know, you're trying to help other people work their way through this.
And potentially not even allow it to happen in the first place, to have a loved one who does pass from addiction.
And you said, you know, you had this chapter of grief in your life, and I can only imagine how difficult that was, Kev.
And, you know, it speaks the world of your character that you were able to put words on paper to share this experience with others
and give them some type of understanding of just how vast addiction is, how potentially damaging it can be to an individual
and more so, more importantly, what to do to try to work your way out of that
and how parents and friends, family members can help that whole process.
Now, I definitely want to get into more of that here, and I'm sure we will, and we have a lot to talk about.
But I have to ask, because I'm sure our audience is wondering, you call yourself the paranoid mystic,
and that's not a label that you hear every day.
So I'm curious, like, what that mean, that name means to you personally?
Is it, like, being skeptical of the mainstream narratives or, like, tapping into something deeper and spiritual?
Like, how does that lens shape the way that you think about addiction and recovery?
And especially in a world that, yeah, you know, there is a big problem with the way that addiction is treated right now.
So instead of, like, the clinical problems, you know, this is more of like a personal journey, I think, anyway.
Does that kind of touch on where the name comes from?
Yeah, you know, I've always been a little bit suspicious of just about everything, even going back to childhood, you know,
and thinking about things. I wouldn't call myself a paranoid person, but I had always been, you know,
suspicious of certain things, like what's in our foods, what's in our clothes, what's in the atmosphere,
you know, things like that, and go down those rabbit holes to try to find out.
And, but when my son died, something broke in me, something broke in my psyche, something broke in my spirit.
And I started researching, thanks to a really good friend, by the way, who sent us a book on near-death experiences
written by John Burke. I can't remember the name of the title, but John Burke is the author.
And I was just mesmerized by what people had experienced at the moment of their death.
And, of course, this was out of curiosity for me. I wanted to know, you know,
I knew my son was alone when he passed away, but I wanted to know what he experienced.
And so I set off on a metaphysical journey to try to understand more about, you know,
what's above and below this material world that we live in.
And I got a lot of answers and, ironically, a lot of comfort from that as well.
And so I started gorging and obsessing on near-death experiences, and I would read book after book of those
and online at the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation.
They have an entire database you can just, you know, read until your heart's content.
And so, like when I say something broke in me, I mean something really did broke, you know, did break.
Nothing really much mattered in the sense that it had mattered before.
And I was much more concerned with the unseen realms and the unseen world and near-death experiences
and researching those helped fill in the gaps for me.
And that turned into also another thing where, you know, which John Burke doesn't really address in his book,
which is the topic of reincarnation, you know.
And, you know, it didn't seem fair to me to try to be a good dad.
I'm not saying I was. I mean, everybody in my family would tell you I needed help in that area.
But it seemed unfair to me to have such a beautiful son be born into our family
only to have that young man's life be snuffed out by drugs at the age of 21.
A semester away from graduating with a degree in business and very bright young man.
I mean, his IQ was very high.
He got a GED at 16 or 17, went straight into college, finished three and a half years,
fell off a horse with his addiction to drugs and passed away.
And I couldn't quite understand the fairness in that.
So I started researching reincarnation.
Was it real? Is it mentioned in the Bible? It actually is.
And I'm not saying reincarnation is a reality.
Personally, I believe it is.
And I don't think everybody has to reincarnate.
But, you know, that would be fair.
You know, I think that would be fair.
You know, if my son passes away in this lifetime at such a young age,
would he ever get a chance to come back and live a full life, as we would say.
And so the world of mysticism and the world of metaphysics opened up to me.
And, you know, just to be honest, I was looking for a really catchy logo.
And it turned out to when I put the two words together, it turned out pretty good.
And my good friend, Kevin Kelleher in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Kelleher is his last name.
I told him I'd let everybody know he's the one who designed the logo.
And so yeah, I put those two together and I figured that just about everything in my life
had prepared me for this point of doing this work and releasing this book
because it truly can bring an into addiction overnight
if people just heed what's being mentioned and what's being said in the book.
And then take action. That's the big thing, is taking action.
And I have some vignettes and some anecdotal stories to go along with that
which I'm sure we'll get to later on about.
Does it actually work yet? The program works.
It certainly does, man.
And full disclosure, I was given a copy of Kevin's book, The Rough Draft,
last year when he actually offered me a chance to do all the writing
on the benefits of Crate a Minute.
Unfortunately, I got so busy with work and life in general that I never got to do that,
but he ended up finishing it anyway.
So it's an amazing book, Kevin.
I mean, congratulations on getting it published and everything.
That's awesome, man.
I want to touch on something personal, what you've been going over just now.
I can't help but recall that day that you told us all that.
It broke my heart.
It's the worst possible thing that anybody can experience in their lifetime.
And I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, man.
But I appreciate you really sharing that with us and in your book.
You wrote this guide out like out of the pain you just described.
And the grief that comes from that is something no parent should ever endure.
But at the Free Thought Project for years, you've written some of these articles.
We covered psychedelic renaissance, basically, for years,
especially the research coming out of institutions like Johns Hopkins
on using psilocybin to treat not just addiction, but treatment-resistant depression.
The data is fucking stunning what's happening now.
We're talking about single-guided experience providing lasting relief
where the pharmaceutical industry hasn't even come close.
And zero of these treatments come with homicidal ideation or suicidal ideation
like the side effects listed on the pharmaceutical labels for these
that are alleged treatments for these ailments, right?
So, you know, when you were living through this,
this exact kind of profound grief that kind of leads to this type of depression
and what this research is focused on while investigating all these substances
as a way to save people from the fate that befell Cameron.
My question is, in the midst of this process, did you ever seek out these tools
for your own healing?
Like, did you use psychedelics not just as a journalist's guide for others
but as the grieving father that you were during that time?
Absolutely.
And in fact, when I finished the book, I was sitting there thinking,
I'm not going to be a hypocrite here.
I'm going to actually put into place the things that I'm telling people can help them.
And I did everything that is mentioned in chapter one of my book,
which, as you know, Matt, is all about healthy living.
And what I thought was, if we can just turn down the cravings for everything,
not just for drugs, let's turn down the cravings for everything.
Maybe this dopamine response that people are experiencing will diminish some
and they'll be able to have more power in their life.
You know, in the near-death experiences I've studied,
they have told people who have died,
you're healing people all wrong down there on earth.
You're supposed to be using frequency healing, vibrational healing, and light therapies.
And as you know, there's talk of med beds and things going on right now.
There's talk of light therapies and things and these frequency machines.
Most notably is the Reif machine, R-I-F-E,
where Dr. Reif had created this machine that he claimed could heal anything
and probably it did.
But you know, as well as I do the dark entities that profit off of sickness and fear
and have all the power put an end to that.
But no, I did, Matt, and I went 30 days taking a micro dose of psilocybin.
And I gotta tell you, even after the first day it was like, wait a minute,
was I depressed? Because I feel great now.
I feel amazing and I can handle the world.
And that was just after day one.
And I don't think I've ever shared you guys the story,
but when I was a missionary living in Costa Rica, I got depressed.
I got diagnosed with depression.
They put me on an anti-depressant.
Turns out it was the same one that Eric Harris was taking
when he killed all those kids in Columbine.
No, anti-depressants don't cause suicidal or homicidal ideations.
Of course, it couldn't be that.
It couldn't be something as simple as a pill that he took, right?
Yeah, no.
And I learned really quick that anti-depressants were not only unsafe.
They were dangerous.
And, you know, wounded me physically for years and years.
So I jumped at the opportunity to not be a hypocrite
and try out those things.
Now, I will tell you this, it's my surprise, both of you.
I've taken on two different occasions four milligrams of psilocybin
and nothing happened to me.
I'm not sure that I'm even, you know, a good candidate
for psychedelic medicines because I didn't have a trip.
You know, people who were using the same exact batch of mushrooms,
I mean, they were tripping out and seeing all kinds of crazy things.
And there I was thinking, oh, I think all I have to do is throw up.
And that's all I did.
So I'm not a psychonaut.
I'm not an expert on psychedelics.
I'm just a grieving father who recognizes that 800,000 Americans
have died in the last 10 years from overdose.
And somebody needs to do something about it.
Other than the people who are just happy to take your money,
put you in a house somewhere until you can't leave
until your drug problem is gone.
You know, the standard traditional approach to recovery doesn't work.
Doesn't work.
It not only doesn't work, it doesn't work at all.
It's abysmal in terms of its success rate.
And of course they're not going to ever tell you
what the success rate of their recovery center is
because it's probably close to 40% if they're lucky.
So we've got to have a rethinking.
We have to think again about how we're going to approach
this topic of drug addiction, drug abuse, overdose,
and overdose deaths.
And I just, in my book, I said, look, let's just do this.
Let's give people, their loved ones back drug-free
in the quickest amount of time as possible.
That should be our goal because they have to get back to work.
They have to get back to taking care of their families.
And in our case, we would have loved for someone
to have given us our son back drug-free.
But that didn't happen.
It partly didn't happen because he didn't want it to happen.
But it also didn't happen because the approach was wrong.
Right. And actually, that's something I wanted to get into
because we all know that addiction is one of the most
challenging aspects of the human experience.
And it's not just something that applies to drugs either.
I think that when we hear addiction,
it usually conjures up that connotation to drugs.
But anything could be an addiction.
Overcoming addiction, as I was saying, can be a journey.
Anybody who's ever experienced it
or knows somebody who's close to, who's dealing with it,
it can only be defeated and conquered
when the person is ready.
And I think you just kind of touched on that.
Nobody can really force it, rehab.
While it can be a worthy endeavor,
it only works when the person has made that choice
for themselves that they really want it to be over.
So much to know how we talk about addiction
and even recovery still feels like it's stuck
in this kind of clinical framing.
And while that can be helpful for some people,
I think it misses the deeper layers
and the process of recovery,
which is the grief, the identity shifts,
even the spiritual reckoning.
And I think your book leans into that idea
of healing as a personal journey,
not just some type of...
You walk into a rehab center or clinic or something,
and you just get some type of quick, magical, medical fix.
So can you talk about how psychedelics
do open up that kind of doorway
and why it matters in a world
that continues to treat addiction
like a problem that needs to be solved
instead of something that needs to be a journey and lived?
Right, absolutely.
Well, the term psychedelic can be translated
revealing the soul.
And I think that's the power of psychedelics.
And in my book,
I cover several different psychedelics,
and they all seem to work in very similar fashion.
And, you know, for example,
in February of 2020,
my son overdosed and died twice
in 24 hours from fentanyl
and was resuscitated,
and they used Narcan to bring him back.
Here's something really crazy.
Just a week or so prior to that,
an ex-girlfriend of his had given him
a hero dose of magic mushrooms
to deal with his addiction.
And, you know, I've already stated
he wasn't ready, and here's proof that he wasn't ready.
Instead of using the magic mushrooms
to reset his mind
and reset his brain
and his consciousness and his spirit,
he gave it away to a family member
who was really struggling with alcoholism.
I mean, blackout drunk type of alcoholism.
And instead of caring for himself,
he was still caring for others,
and he knew that this other person needed it.
And that person took the dose
and hasn't touched alcohol since.
Wow.
And that happened before he passed away.
I took note of it, and I was like,
wow, I can't believe it.
I seriously can't believe.
Are you kidding me?
Something as simple as a fungus
that grows on a calterd somewhere
has the power to break addiction like that overnight.
And, you know, I took notice of that.
And so what I think psychedelics do
is it allows the soul of the individual
to see where they're going wrong in life.
And I think ultimately that's all we really are anyway
is we're eternal souls having a physical experience.
And the vessels that we are given for this journey
are susceptible to addictions of all kinds.
Jason, you mentioned it just a minute ago.
Chapter two is all about destigmatizing addiction
for everyone.
There's a story in the book about me meeting a teacher
and her son had passed away
and when I introduced myself as a grieving father,
out loud in front of about 10 or 15 people,
she said, oh, one of them.
Now, I'm very respectful.
And if that person had been a man,
I probably would have asked very quickly,
what are you talking about?
But I knew, I understood.
I had heard it before, you know.
And it's, we have this very,
you talk about an epidemic.
We have an epidemic of judgmental people in this world
who look at drug addicts and think that they're unworthy
to even breathe the same air
that quote unquote normal people are breathing.
And I'm guilty of that.
I'm guilty of having that same judgmental spirit.
I caught my son smoking meth one day
and I asked him, I said, son, you're hanging out
with meth heads.
What does that say about you?
And here's what he said to me.
Dad, they're not meth heads.
They're just people.
And man, it was like somebody punched me right between the eyes.
I mean, hit me so hard.
I realized that, you know, here I am,
this guy who tries to give everybody the benefit of a doubt.
And yet I'm using the very same terms that people use
to stigmatize addicts as some type of group of people
that are unworthy of love and respect and attention.
And chapter two is all about how we're addicted to everything.
We're addicted to sugar, cell phones.
We're addicted to people pleasing.
Some of us are addicted to painting our hair pink right now
and purple and putting on toxic yoga pants
and stuffing them real good full of whatever we've got
and walking around parading like we're someone else.
I mean, people pleasing and, you know, workaholics.
Think about it.
Workaholics.
That's a form of addiction.
And yet these very same people that I've been mentioning
are oftentimes ones that are quickest to judge others.
Yeah, man.
I mean, speaking of judging others,
former Texas Governor Rick Perry,
I'm sure you're familiar with what he's been doing, right?
He was a hardcore drug warrior in the early 2000s
and locked up countless people for different drugs.
And now he's an advocate for it.
He's an advocate for the exact same thing that you're doing
is to treat depression and addiction with psychedelics,
namely ibogaine.
Some of the studies that they're doing
that are coming out of Stanford and shit,
one of them is that it can resolve psychological opioid dependence
on the first dose of ibogaine.
80% of the people that went through this study
on the first dose had zero dependence on opioids afterward.
And then the people that received their second dose,
97% of those people all were relieved
of their opioid dependence.
And we're talking, this is like a weekend.
You know, this isn't a state,
one of these expensive ass treatment centers
that really, like you said earlier,
don't really want you to get healthy.
That was what we talked about on the Kratom podcast
a few weeks ago, was that one of the main lobbies
that were responsible for criminalizing Kratom in Louisiana
was the rehabilitation centers and the sheriff's departments.
They don't want treatments out there
that people can go buy off of a gas station shelf.
Now you can't buy ibogaine on a gas station shelf.
You shouldn't be able to, you know,
it's not as safe as like psilocybin or anything like that.
But administered in a medical context,
it's certainly showing to be a million times better
than anything that any pharmaceutical
has ever presented, ever, you know,
and it's just wild to me.
And like you said, like in chapter one of the book is,
I think it's chapter one, it's, you know,
you have to, you have to go down this journey.
Like you said that Cameron gave away those mushrooms, right?
But he had, he started phase one, you know,
like before a single psychedelic is even mentioned,
you like, you lay out this plan for people
to get full medical workups,
tests for the motherfucker gene,
which I like to call it, it's the MTHFR gene,
parasite cleanse and, you know,
completely cut out the sugars, the processed carbs.
I would probably even add stop scroll doom
scrolling on your fucking phone all the time.
You know, essentially you're telling people to stop
being willing lab rats and reclaim their own biology.
Right? Someone who follows these steps.
Yeah. Yeah.
Someone who follows these steps is like
they're waging a personal war against their
gut disease, systemic inflammation,
the whole dopamine cycle fueled by the food
and by the shit that they're scrolling on,
on X and Facebook and Instagram and TikTok.
From, from your perspective,
how much of the heavy lifting in like,
in the healing addiction is accomplished
by this radical act, like of just reclaiming
someone's, their own physical sovereignty
before the psychedelic journey.
Is it possible that for some, like the,
the magic isn't just in the mushrooms,
but in like starving the parasites
and the corporate food poisoning first.
And this is coming from somebody who is, you know,
a huge advocate of psychedelics and treatment.
But I'm just curious on your views on that.
Yeah. You know, Matt, I used to be the editor-in-chief
of Panacea, which was a health and wellness
newsletter circulated in Canada.
And I, of course, I was writing tons of articles on
natural living and healthy lifestyles and things like that.
But I gotta tell you, your question right there
is spot on because in the back of my mind
I keep telling myself, if people will just do
what's in chapter one, whether they're an addict or not,
whether they're an addict or not,
if they'll just do what's in chapter one,
they're going to lose weight.
They're going to have clear-headed thinking.
They're going to not receive an instant reward
for everything they put in their mouth,
which has to have some kind of effect on the body.
But, you know, what you said about the MTHFR gene mutation,
now just get this.
It's estimated that 40% of all Americans
have the MTHFR gene mutation,
and many of them don't even know it.
Many of them are probably hearing it for the first time
on your podcast here,
and they're going to go and look up MTHFR
and they're going to find out all about it.
It's a simple spit test cost very little money
to find out.
But after you find out that you do
or do not have the MTHFR gene mutation,
you're going to realize very quickly
that you've been poisoning yourself
with store-bought foods,
with foods bought at fast food restaurants,
with certain drinks that are out there,
and I just, I cannot imagine that
there's just going to be a lot of addicts
who get through chapter one and start implementing it,
who are going to get to the part
where it talks about taking a psychedelic
and they're going to realize,
I don't think I have a problem anymore,
because I don't even crave my drug of choice.
I just wonder if it's going to happen, Matt.
I really do.
Well, I think that there's a massive awakening, man.
I mean, I started doing these things.
I started eating healthy and doing right,
but I don't know which came first.
It's like a chicken-of-the-egg situation, right?
I don't know if I started eating healthy
and exercising and making all these good habits
because I took a lot of psychedelics
or that I started taking a lot of psychedelics
because I started eating healthy and doing these things.
It's a chicken-of-the-egg
and I'm not sure which way that goes,
but I think that there's a benefit to both of them.
Certainly, I wasn't as healthy when I used to do psychedelics
and I used to just do psychedelics as a recreation.
I never got much out of them.
I would get drunk and then I'd eat a bunch of mushrooms with friends
and I don't do that anymore
because it kind of muted my experience
and now I like to eat high doses of mushrooms
and talk to God, basically.
Recently, you were talking about the MTH FR gene
and we just talked about that.
Jason and I with our good buddy, Luis in Texas
and he was experiencing some severe side effects
from the stuff that he was putting into his body
because he did have that mutation
and once he started supplementing,
I'm not sure what the supplement was.
It was like niacin or something like this
that he showed he was deficient in
and it changed and his blood pressure went down.
Everything else went down.
It completely fixed him, basically.
It's like a $60 test on Amazon.
Read the reviews before you get them though
because some of them have like two points.
I recently participated in an ayahuasca ceremony with him.
We went to a Peruvian shaman
and it was one of the most profound experiences in my life
but it also drove home the point
that for a journey that intense,
a professional guide is absolutely non-negotiable.
You're navigating the cosmos
and you need a pilot at the helm
or you could...
I mean, I guess you would come out of it eventually
but it would be pure chaos
and so your book rightly advocates
for finding reputable clinics
for heavy lifters like Ibogaine and ayahuasca, right?
Absolutely.
We've been talking about mushrooms
and I completely recommend to everybody
to do mushrooms.
You can do that in your room by yourself.
You're going to be fine.
It's the number one safest drug on the planet
found by multiple different studies,
safer than anything,
like magnitude safer than alcohol
or even nicotine, right?
It's up there
but some of these other drugs,
they need responsible medical situations
or shamanistic situations to be taken.
So here's my question.
Where do you draw the line
between the absolute necessity of professionals
or for something like ayahuasca
and the personal liberty of an individual
using safer, more manageable medicines at home?
What's your take on something like psilocybin
which is, like I said,
it could still be incredibly powerful
but using a home setting without a shaman,
it's not that bad
but perhaps with a trusted friend
or a partner as a facilitator,
as you mentioned in the book.
So how does the average person,
the one that your book is for,
safely and effectively take that healing power
back into their own hands without a formal guide
if they can't afford it or something like that?
Yeah.
That's a really good question.
What do you do if you can't find a guide
and you've got to take what you can take,
where you can take it?
Well, like I said,
I don't have a lot of experience with psychedelics
personally speaking
because I was never really into that
and the only reason that I'm even,
you and I and Jason are even talking right now
is because my son passed away
over drug overdose
and I want to do something about it.
So right before I took
the first four milligram dose of psilocybin
I contacted the grower
and I asked him, I said,
listen, I think I want to do this by myself.
You know, what do you think?
He said, absolutely not.
Don't, whatever you do,
especially if it's your first time.
So for first timers,
probably not a good idea
to do it, you know,
in an enclosed space at all.
But if you're going to do it,
if you're hell bent on doing it
by yourself for the first time,
I would say that
your mindset has to be right.
You've got to pick the right setting
and somehow you're going to have to
work on reintegration of the experience
because for you it could be
quite different than it was for me.
For me it was a lot of discomfort
which ended in nausea,
but I did experience the benefits of it.
So just because you don't think it's working
doesn't mean it's not working.
It's still working
whether you have a psychedelic trip or not.
But so I would recommend to that person, Matt,
to answer your question very directly.
Make sure you source
the mushrooms from a
the psilocybin mushrooms from a
reputable grower.
Find a creek,
find a lake,
find a pond,
find an irrigation canal somewhere
where you can be in private
and by yourself
and near the water.
And I would recommend putting on
Native American flute music
as a way to calm the soul for the experience
and
if you have to be by yourself, be by yourself
but I would
encourage people who are hearing this
to get a good friend
who's been on psychedelic journeys before
who doesn't talk too much
and who will just sit with you.
Just sit with you. That's all you need
someone to sit with you.
Nothing's going to go wrong like you said, Matt.
We did a story years back
about a UK study that was
not published because
it made the alcohol industry
look terrible and
psilocybin was the least
dangerous
of all the illicit substances
in the world of legal
and illegal drugs and alcohol was the most
dangerous. So you're
exactly right when you said it is. It has a
safety curve like no other
substance on the planet. It's
not to be feared no matter what everybody
has tried to convince us
with social media and with
movies and things like that
and dare to keep your kids off drugs
you know this is your brain on drugs
eggs flying, frying in pans. No, it's
nothing like that. It is a medicine
it's a sacred medicine it needs to be
respected but you have to have the right mindset
and going into it thinking it's not
you know that you're a pro at it
and nothing can happen to you
might be underestimating it
but the setting is just as important
and you need a facilitator
someone in the end to help you
make sense of it all and I would say
a good friend who you could talk about
what you discovered in your trip would be
a good way to reintegrate
back into the world after something like
that. Yeah, I
believe Luis Fernando
Mises is actually available for hire
as a shaman too so
you know they're looking
for somebody reach out to Luis
might help if you know him first but
I agree with everything you just said
Kev, I think you put
a lot of truth down right there and
yeah I think that stigma that
we were talking about earlier in the conversation
surrounding drugs unfortunately
gets carried over into psychedelics
which are just yeah healing medicines
they're plant medicine to a
large degree and unfortunately
they just all get categorized together
those campaigns the anti-drug
campaigns like you know this is your brain
on drugs and all that stuff it did so much
negative publicity
so much negative propaganda
and it really did damage
I think the
reputation of these drugs
that were not even necessarily drugs
they're plant medicine right so it's crazy
that that has unfortunately been the case
and the stigma still carries over to this
day and
I agree completely that you know your mood
your mindset your environment has
a lot to do with the experience that you will
get out of this plant medicine
but I've had a few experiences with
mushrooms and I must say like
there is a huge
profound change that
happens when you do
get to that level where you can
activate the self-awareness
the self-actualization
and I don't think enough people in
society have really done that
they've really turned and flipped that switch
it really is kind of
helps you focus in the right
direction of your own personal purpose
and your own personal meaning and really facilitates
that type of mindset so
I would suggest
if people are curious about these
types of things definitely read
Kevin's book but don't
be afraid and that's something
I actually wanted to get into here a little
bit because some of these people listening might
be intrigued by the ideas of psychedelics
helping with addiction and trauma but they might
also be cautious about
they've heard horror stories about bad
trips and
I think sometimes too people decide
now here call bad trips
the reflection that they are meant
to have in these experiences they call them
bad trips because it's almost a little too overwhelming
to face your ego
to face what life
can be about and existentialism
and all that stuff but
there is still a lot of fear and misunderstanding
out there even as more studies
continue to shift the narrative
and personal stories so somebody
who is curious but hesitant like
what's one thing that you'd want them to
understand about psychedelics and healing
you know Jason that's a great
question one thing I want people to
understand about psychedelics and healing
it's it was the most
surprising thing for me
while writing the
book to realize
that cannabis
is a potent psychedelic
and we don't even think about cannabis
as a potent psychedelic
but I'll give you I'll give you a
little anecdote here
I've been smoking
cannabis
thanks to my son by the way
I have
driving anxiety I had an anxiety attack
on the side of the road my family
had to come and get my car and drive me back
home and I went to my doctor to get my
benzodiazepine prescription
refilled my doctor wasn't available
the nurse practitioner was
I went to see her she treated me like
a drug seeker and would not refill
my bottle of benzodiazepine
which I'd had for 10 years
for some reason she wouldn't refill it
so I go back to the house
pissed off and I tell my son
I said I said
that you know what wouldn't give
me my script and here I
am still anxious
and still having trouble
and my son the one
who passed away leans over to
me said dad I think
it's time you smoke weed now I'm 48 years old
I never
smoke weed in my life my southern Baptist
preacher daddy would whoop my ass
with a belt
I mean he raised me righty
you know put the fear of God in me but I had fear
of drugs too and from those national
campaigns but I got to research
in cannabis and
found some sources there and
and these guys were saying
you know if your
weed grower
is a hippie himself and into psychedelics
his weed will turn out
more psychedelic just like we
talk about plants growing better when we talk
to them when we sing to them when we
say nice things to our plants right
so every we've got to
get we've got to get this
thing out of our western minds that
everything isn't alive
no everything is alive
with the power
of the source of all life that being
I know when nobody likes to hear this word
God himself
God is in everything animism
when I was in theology school they
gave us like a one chapter view of animism
saying that you know God is
not in everything God is not in the plants
God is not in the rocks that's just
things that he can use to show you that he's
alive if he wants to no I
truly believe everything you see in this
and this in this world
that we live in is alive
from our creator and
yeah you're going to catch me
touching trees and talking to trees
and I'm very appreciative
now of the fact that what I see
is just as alive as
the person I see in the mirror
but weed itself
weed itself
is a potent psychedelic and in
my case I smoked for three
years before I started experiencing the
ego death I'm smoking
weed every night before I go to bed that's the only time
I smoke weed I'm smoking weed every
night and I start to realize
what an asshole I've been
not just to my
son but my daughter and my other son
and my parents and my wife
and there I am apologizing to my wife after
30 years of marriage for all this
shit I've been doing and
you look back and
and I didn't know it at the time Jason
that it was cannabis doing it I had
no idea so so I'm having
an ego death in northwest Arkansas
with just my wife and I there we had moved
out there to treat my daughter's
illness the world's most painful illness
complex regional pain syndrome
and she had gotten all better we decided
to stay just in case
the illness came back and
and so it's just my wife and I
in a camper in northwest
Arkansas and I'm smoking weed every night realizing
that you know what
a mess I've made of things trying to do it all
on my own and cannabis is giving
me these downloads almost
every night you know you've got to
work on this you've got to take care of this these
are the things you've got to do in your life to make it
better for everyone and I think
to the person who's on the fence about
whether or not they should use psychedelics
of any form
that that's what you're going to get out of it
is this is who I really
am and oh my goodness do I have work
to do and
and and then you have also it feels like
you have the power to get it done
so you know for those people
who don't really want to do magic mushrooms
or don't want to get into an ayahuasca
ceremony
or don't want to trip balls for 15
hours with ibogaine you know
you you can start with something as simple
as cannabis but here's
what you could do at night before
you take your cannabis you say
to the to the
to the substance and we call it sacred because
everything that is made is made
sacredly we say
this is my intention
for this
cannabis smoking session tonight I
want this this and this out of my life
or I want
this this and this to come as a result
of this experience
and treat cannabis with respect
that's one thing somebody could do
another thing that they could do is
educate themselves on the
the risks and dangers of taking those psychedelics
and Matt you mentioned something I
didn't want to end the podcast man without talking
about ibogaine because
if there was one substance
that this government
that we live under could
have allowed into my son's
life that would have cured his addiction
it would have been ibogaine and I found
an Australian study
during my research but I couldn't
find it the second time when I went back
looking for it I don't know if it got scrubbed
I don't know if it's just the keywords I used
or what but
there were 10 opiate and heroin
users IV
and they were given
ibogaine 9 out of the 10
had instant
recovery from addiction overnight
and
the 10th one did not
you know why that 10th one did not
that 10th one passed away from a cardiac issue
so anybody who
wants to engage with ibogaine
really needs to do so in a clinical setting
and I recommend places like
Iboga Quest out of Mexico
there's another one that a UFC
fighter set up down in
Tia Juana Matt you might know his name I can't remember
wrote
yeah he's on Rogan all the time I can't remember his name either
but you just look UFC Ibogaine you'll find out
yep and
Iboga reset on
Instagram there's a guy who promotes Iboga and he has phone
numbers of people who can call Iboga reset
but
if I were an IV drug user
and I'm shooting up meth
or I'm shooting up heroin
and I know one of these
days you know I'm not going to wake up from this
I wouldn't
mind at all the risk associated with taking
Ibogaine because there's a 90% chance
that when you start shooting up heroin in your arm
you're going to die from it
and there's a 90% chance
that if you go to one of the
Iboga clinics in Mexico
that you're going to not only live
through your addiction you're going to have a thriving
life after that
it's a no brainer
you know pick your poison pick your risk
you know the one the one thing
that you keep doing and shooting up
isn't leading to a productive life
so
you know why not consider it
you know if you're okay let's pick
the farthest place away Vermont right if you're flying
from Vermont to
LA what
what does it cost $400 $500 $600
max
$600 you could take a bus down to the
border you could walk across the border and you'd be
somewhere where you could get deliverance
so I
didn't want to end the podcast without talking about the world's most powerful
and potent psychedelic
that truly does have a track record
of curing addiction and setting
people's lives back
on a more
straightened path
but does that answer your question Matt?
Yeah man I mean
I think we're always starting to scratch the surface of
what the what Ibogaine could do
revolutionary for this world
I really do think that we're at a crisis of
consciousness in this world and we could just
scroll X or
Facebook or whatever just to see that right
I mean the more we talk about
this the more research that comes out it's like
there's a very clear picture that begins to emerge
from these psychedelics these substances
when used with intention like
you said they foster empathy
they dissolve the ego like you and Jason both said
they reduce fear they connect
people to this universal
consciousness which I call God some people might not
but that's what I call it
you know we see it in the clinical data over and over
and over again and I mean
we're both you and I are sighting studies that
we haven't even crossed paths yet
and that's just what happens right
and it forces you when you know see all
the benefits of this stuff it forces you
like to ask this fundamental question
why would the ruling class
want to violently prohibit these substances
to produce these exact outcomes
right the the official narrative
is public safety
but that transparency is so
fucking false when you look at it from the
at the societal destruction
caused by legal state-sanctioned drugs
right and like the alcohol and pharmaceuticals
and from the inability of people
to access these drugs or in
these substances like the real answer seems
to be that the state thrives on division
fear population disconnection
and it gives them they feed off that power
they get from that division right it needs
people to be tribal to hate their neighbors
to participate in political theater to
outsource their thinking to authority
to find meaning and consumerism
psychedelics are the direct
chemical threat to that entire fucking system
yeah it's no wonder they are legal
right an eagle dissolved population
is hard to manipulate with propaganda
a connected population is hard
to divide and conquer
so like that's the grim diagnosis of our control
system right and yet it feels
like that prohibition as well
starting to fucking crumble and I love
it man I I see like
once you do ayahuasca you can't
go out there and dye your hair purple and say
Charlie Kirk deserve to die right you once
you do ayahuasca you can't go out there and say
fucking liberal
libtards are stupid you know you just
these walls break down you see through the superficialities
that these things that this world
creates for us outside
of our control and
you start to see the world and feel a connection
to it right this the science is
undeniable and like people like you are
creating the tools for these grassroots
awakening man like completely
outside of the approved channels and I fucking
love it kev I really applaud
your book man like what you're doing
you being this driven
person since this tragedy so
five years ago dude it's like it's
it's inspiring and I'm so glad
we got to reconnect though but yeah
yeah man after you know or before
we go rather you know we always like to end on a white
pill I think this whole podcast has been basically
a white pill though but I do want
to end with one last question man you could you could be
quick to wrap it up I know Jason has to go but
basically like I want to see if you share
my view man do you see a positive shift
on the horizon like where
enough individuals choosing to heal
themselves can fundamentally disrupt
that entire apparatus of control
from the bottom up absolute freaking
loosely in fact if all
you did was stop eating the food
that the death cult gives you
you might just break free from
that system altogether you know the matrix
people talk about and find
out that you're much more connected
to each and every person you come in contact
with every day than you really think
you are we're all eternal souls
having a physical experience
and I tell
people like this love
is all that matters love
is all there truly
is and when we are
operating in love
we are most like God
because God is love
and that same love
God created this world
for us to enjoy for us to be
challenged by and you know one of
those challenges I just see it
Matt like you just said is
rising above
what you're told to think
and embracing the potential
of what just might be
fucking beautiful dude
hey free thinkers this is Matt Agerist
and I'm gonna take a quick pause to remind you
of something really important first off
apologies for the interruption but if
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man Kevin
thank you for coming on
like having a last-minute edition
like this Jason I usually like
to prepare well before
and we didn't have that chance to prepare but we didn't
need to man this was an amazing podcast
Kevin thank you so much dude
it was really good catching up tell people where they
can get your book and where they can follow
your work sure so if you go to
Amazon and you type in Kevin
KVINWitzen
it's spelled white sun without the
w-h-i-t-s-o-n
put it in quotations and it'll
come up you'll see the paranoid mystics guide
to ending addiction now
using psychedelics and I teach
people step by step how to
source it believe it or not it's in there
how to source magic mushrooms
get them delivered to your home and do
so with as little legal risk as possible
and how
to access plant ceremonies
such as the ayahuasca
where to go or how to find those
iboga clinics in Mexico
you know I think I've done
my job I put it out there
now let's see how many into how
many people's hands we can get this information
I love it dude we'll also have the link
wherever you listen to this podcast the link
will be below it Kevin thanks again man
it was awesome it was a pleasure catching up
with you brother thank you Kevin
thank you for listening
to the free thought project podcast
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