Near-Death Ecstasy Experience, Turning Down the UFC, and Discovering Plant Medicine in Christianity

God's word is God's revelation to humanity. It represents his own voice. He is speaking. He tells us about himself. He tells us about ourselves. He tells us about the world. He tells us what's broken. From the perspective of what God says in his word. Drug and alcohol addiction is just. It's an expression of idolatry. We are made in God's image. We're made to know God and to enjoy God forever. But the problem is that we're rebels against God. We want to go our own. We want to fashion our own little idols and, and not have God. And so we do that. Like there's a famous theologian in history that said that the human heart is a natural idol making factory and it is never idle in making idols. And so ultimately, drug and alcohol addiction is the pursuit of an idol. And the answer is we're broken. We're rebels against God. We don't want God. So we chase the substandard God. And the problem is, is that false gods will never satisfy real spiritual needs.

Hey, folks, my guest on today's show is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. I am not kidding. He played Michelangelo and Donatello for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. He was also Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat, arguably during his time in martial arts, one of the most dangerous guys alive. World champion martial artist with five black belts. You may have also seen him as a fighter in MTV's the Final Fuji. He's also been married for over 20 years. He's got five kids, and he has been featured on a series for the History Channel called the Stoned Ages, which reviews the Christian approach and philosophy concerning drug and alcohol addiction. He was also in the documentary film A Storm Comes Rolling down the Plane. And you may have heard me say Christian there.

Yes.

He's also the pastor and the elder of Apologia church in Tempe, Arizona since it was founded in February of 2010. So he's been a pastor at the time of this recording for over 13 years. He's worked for many years as a hospital chaplain. He's a popular speaker for camps and conferences and churches and schools around the world. This dude's up to a lot. Kind of makes me feel like an underachiever.

Anyways, though.

You can find out more about Jeff and access all the show notes for Today's episode at BenGreenfieldLife.com Jeff Durbin BenGreenfieldLife.com Jeff durbin. His last name is D U R B I N. Admittedly a wide ranging and often controversial fella, but we Had a great discussion. Drugs, alcohol, and much more. So enjoy this episode with Jeff Durbin.

So, Jeff, you keep pretty busy, man.

Super busy. Are you actually exercising as we speak?

I'm walking on a treadmill. On a very soft treadmill. I don't know if I call this exercising. I suppose some people might call it exercising.

Okay.

I always engage in a little bit of light movement when I'm talking to people because you know what? I actually find it keeps my. Kind of keeps my brain turned on, you know, the whole concept of like the walking university, you know, back in, in the days of. Of Plato and Socrates and the idea of like more brain derived neurotrophic factor getting generated when you're moving. Well, that's what I.

What I usually do is I make everybody sick when I'm on video calls because I just wander around the room in circles and people almost vomit.

Yeah, well, it's kind of funny. I used to do that too. Obviously it's not conducive to podcasting. I used to wander all over my office and I still, like, I have carved paths out in my yard from phone consults and phone conversations, or I just walk loops around the yard. I wish more people would. Would kind of, you know, get out of their chair when they got to talk on the phone just because, I mean, why not, right? Yeah, you don't have to be tied to a chair.

That's right. That's right. I sat here. I sat here so I would look nice for your interview, but apparently I should just start wandering like you.

Well, you're on the road too, right? You're traveling?

Yeah, yeah, we're in Florida right now, which I think it's looking pretty bad outside right now. I was told a hurricane may hit, so I'm not sure what the next 24 hours will bring.

All right, well, hopefully, hopefully it stays tame, at least for the. For the purposes of this interview. And you know, there's so much that I want to talk to you about, Jeff, but right before we started recording, you asked me because I'm wearing a blood glucose monitor on my left arm right now on this ketone monitor, my right arm. He asked me if there were NAD patches and I said no, but I. I have one on my butt. And you told me you're actually a fan of NAD yourself.

Yes, yes, big time. I get my NAD from Ion layer. Great, Great company. Great guys.

Honestly, amazing what you're able to do with their treatment in terms of costs and everything else to get nad. But, yeah, I'm regularly On it. My wife is on it. I haven't yet put it on my butt, though. Ben, is there a reason you put it on your butt?

Well, not up the butt, not like an enema, but basically.

You'Re supposed to put it on a hairless area. And I guess I've just revealed to my entire audience that I don't have a lot of hair on my behind, but I put it on kind of like the upper hip area of one of my butt cheeks, because there's not a lot of hair there, and so it sticks a lot better. And furthermore, it's one of the few places on the body where you don't get a little bit of the. You know how you get a little bit of skin irritation sometimes from these patches?

Just. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yep, Yep. That is one of the. That's one of the only drawbacks.

Yeah. And you also have a little bit more subcutaneous fat, at least most people do, around the upper butt. And so I find I feel it more when I put it right there. I used to put on the inner thigh, which is another good spot, because you have a little. A lot more capillarization there. But that area seems to create a. A lot of irritation, a lot of skin friction. So anyways, I'm just curious. Why do you use the. The NAD patches?

Well, I learned about a couple of years ago when a good friend of mine, Dennis Arfante, he's a professional baseball player, and he's played for a bunch of teams nationally. And then also in Japan, he had to. He had to ultimately retire, and he got a hip replacement. And that's. My dad got a hip replacement years ago, and it took him, like, six months to a year to get walking again and get on his feet again. Well, my buddy got the hip replacement and then started doing some NAD treatments, and he was literally out exercising and back to his routine again in, like, two weeks. It was honestly stunning to see him recover the way that he did. And so, yeah, I had wanted to do it for a long time, but I'm a baby, Ben. I'm afraid of needles. And.

He also told me about the torture of, like, getting the NAD drip IV and just, like, the elephant on your chest. And I wasn't looking forward to that, so I sort of delayed it for a long time. And then I learned about ion layer, where you get essentially a higher dose, a fresh. A fresher dose with none of the, you know, none of the torture. And so I was like, well, sign me up for that. And so, yeah, I Started doing it and felt amazing. Recovered super, super fast from my regular training. My wife had some like, love the long effects of COVID She had like just the smell stuff where like certain things smelled like garbage. Her favorite thing, coffee smelled like garbage for two years, but she still drank it because she's in love with coffee. And, and so she started doing it and three days into her loading cycle, two of her favorite smells came back and now she can taste coffee and smell coffee again, which was, you know, that's just what happened. I don't have any explanation for it except that's what happened. So yeah, I'm a big believer in it. I think it's a, it's a God given thing. It's, it naturally occurs in your body when you get older. You're, you're, you know, you're losing much, a lot of it. You don't have as much of it anymore. And so I just, I see it as, as a great example of human ingenuity and treating people like they're valuable and like life is valuable and creating ways to sustain life and preserve life and make life better. So I love it.

Yeah, well, you know what I like it for is it's obviously beneficial for a lot of the stuff you talked about. DNA repair, injury, inflammation. And yeah, there was some evidence that it may help with long haul Covid or Covid injuries. But I like it for wakefulness during sleep deprivation. Like people who travel a lot and people who tend to have periods of sleep deprivation do really well. And you could say the same thing for creatine, like 5, 10 grams of creatine on NAD and these. You know, I suppose we should probably write in the ion layer and have them sponsor this podcast or something. But the slow bleed via these, they're called electrophoresis patches is very similar as you indicated. What you can get through an IV without having to drive and do the needles and the cost and you get a similar milligram dosage. So yeah, I'm a big fan.

I don't talk to a lot of people, maybe I'm stereotyping here who are pastors and elders who are kind of into some of the biohacking stuff or on the pointing edge of the health and fitness stuff. Maybe it's because sometimes it could be associated with transhumanism or fleshly carnal pursuits or something like that. But I mean you obviously have a history of martial arts, so you know fitness. But do you do a lot of other things for, for your health or for your longevity or Anything like that.

Yeah, well, you'll. I think you'll probably be amused at this, but I saw you giving a plug for momentum.

And you said that, you know, it's this great. It's great. It's like, you know, biohacking all this stuff and it tastes like ice cream. I was like, well, sign me up for that. So, So I do things like that. I've been doing momentum for the last two or three months. I feel great. My. My thoughts are clearer. It's just, you know, it's a good, good way to get everything I need. I, I do a lot of supplements that are just sort of like nose to tail stuff, like trying to get all the stuff into my system that I just normally wouldn't get into it, like liver and, you know, heart and organ stuff. And so, like, what I take, you know, daily is. I do. I do a lot of supplements that are just, you know, organs, meats and things like that. Just fats, beef, tallow and obviously the nad stuff. But I try, I try to. I try to be very cautious about what I put into my body. I'm not always the best with it. I, I love. I'm addicted to yerba mate. And I know it has, you know, too much sugar in it, but that's probably the only bad thing I put into my body is, Is yerba mate. But yerba mate has all the elements or necessary things to sustain life. It is super great for you. It's good that the, the tea itself is amazing for you, but it's the sugar that I know that's not good for me.

You mean like those canned yerba mate drinks where it's got yerba mate, but then it's. It's got the agave or the high fructose corn syrup or whatever in it?

No, this doesn't have the high fructose in it. It has just cane sugar. But.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm a big fan. Well, when I was. You mentioned Mortal Kombat when I, When I was playing Johnny Cage and Night Wolf actually on the world tour, we. One of the legs of the tour was in Argentina. And I remember, you know, I'm like 18 years old and I land in Argentina. And everybody's walking around Argentina with this gourd in their hands with a steel straw. And when I say everybody, I'm not kidding, Ben. It was like a cult thing. Everybody is walking around with this gourd in the straw. And so, so one of the days I was doing the show, I'm downstairs in makeup shows Going on. They're trying to get me all changed up. And these women are just, like jabbering away, like, just super high energy, sip, sip, sipping on this. On this gourd. And I was like, what is that? And they were like, oh, Jerba mate. They tried to give it to me. They were like, taste it. And I. I realize now I, like, really offended them. I was like, oh, no, no, thank you. Which is very offensive to do that when someone offers you your mate. Anyway, so I never. I never drank it while I was there. But when I got back to the States, I was, like, seriously addicted to coffee. Like, I mean, I was way too much coffee. And I saw yerba mate in the store when I got home in a Whole Foods, and I started drinking it. But I was doing it like that initially. I was doing it from the gourd with the tea leaves and did a study on it and saw that it's just packed full of minerals, nutrients, vitamins. It is super and high in antioxidants. It's really, really good for you. Obviously, the way that I'm doing it now with the cans is not the best, but. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you know, every culture has their stimulant. You know, the Argentinians, the South Americans have the yerba mate, and the Southeast Asians have kratom, and Europeans and Americans have coffee, and I guess the Australians probably have, I don't know, beer. But it is interesting how every culture has some kind of stimulant. You know, this whole Mortal Kombat, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles thing, I think it's super interesting for two reasons. First of all, you'll laugh at this. I was one of those super conservatively raised, homeschooled Christian kids growing up. And my parents didn't even let me watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, much less play Mortal Kombat video games. And here you are, the pastor and elder of a church, and you were Michelangelo and Donatello and Johnny Cage. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about the story of how you got involved in martial arts and came to being those. Those games and movies.

Yeah, so I. I grew up. I was, you know, born in 78, the 80s, kid. And so when I was young, very young, there wasn't much on TV at all. And Saturday morning there was like, one of the channels was Kung Fu Theater. Chinese Kung Fu theaters is the old, like.

Chinese movies with, you know, what is it? Subtitles? Not subtitles. I can't even think of the word right now. You know, they're just narrating over it, but it's just terrible. But I would just, I would sit for hours and hours and hours and watch kung fu theater and I just say I was in love with it. I, I don't, I don't quite know why, because it was such an unusual thing to be honest with you, to be four years old and just be addicted to what the martial arts. And it just, I thought it was so beautiful. And I think it was also just a, a matter of being able to like do something artistic and beautiful and be able to control your own environment and defend yourself.

And so anyway, I grew up a military brat and my dad was stationed in Holland. Judo is huge in Holland. And so I started judo when I was 4 years old and then we moved to Japan ultimately. And when I was in Japan, the whole time I was there, I was in two different martial arts schools. Because I was so in love with the martial arts. I wanted to do both these systems. And my time in Japan was like Monday through Saturday every single day. I was training after school all day long and ended up moving from Japan to Washington D.C. and in D.C. just by the grace of God, I ended up, I mean honestly, providentially getting to learn from and becoming a private student of one of the best coaches in the world. Literally he was training like the world champions of the day. He took me on and, and I, I am under his care and his teaching. I started winning all the national tournaments, the international tournaments and world championships. So basically from like 13 years old till 20 years old, I was competing professionally. I was a part of numerous national karate teams, went to the Junior Olympics, medals in the Junior Olympics, won every major national and international world martial arts champion ship in my field. And my whole, my whole teenage years, all I, all it was, I mean, I don't even know how I graduated high school to be honest with you, because I was never there. It was just full time training and full time competition traveling across the country. So what happened was when I was 18 years old, I had, I had literally just turned 18 and I went to Boston and it was some national tournament in Boston and they were at the time David Fishoff Productions, who's like produced and done shows for like the Beatles and all the major bands and everything. They were, they were, they were doing Mortal Kombat, the live tour and they needed a Johnny Cage and they had auditioned across the country and stuff, but they sent their representative out to this national. So I went up and did my thing and as soon as I walked out of the Ring. This guy walks up to me and says, what size pants do you wear? And I just said, he was a stranger. I'm still, like, gasping for air because I just did a performance and I was like, who are you? What do you mean? He goes, what's your inseam size? I said, what do you mean? He said, I'm with David Fischoff Productions. We produce Mortal the World Tour, and we want you to play Johnny Cage.

Oh, wow.

And so that's how I got that and some of the other stuff I did for, like, Ninja Turtles, and I did some stuff for, like, Mission Impossible, the video game and Action man, the cartoon, and a number of other things. Rainbow Studios is a studio in Phoenix, and they were doing a lot of big production stuff, and that's when motion capture is really hitting and getting off, getting off the ground. And I ended up getting connected to them, and, yeah, the rest is history with that. They would just get. They would call me up and say, hey, can't tell you what you're doing. Just come on in, sign a contract. I'd come in, sign a contract, I'd get in gear, and they'd say, hey, we're doing a video game. Permission impossible. We need a fight scene. We need somebody to get blown up. We need you to get on the stage and do it. And then for Ninja Turtles, the franchise, they were starting to do their cartoon production stuff, and it was all motion capture. And so they contracted with Rainbow Studios, and they asked me to be the choreographer for the fight scenes and the action sequences as they started doing all that. And I played Michelangelo Donatello, and I also did some of the fight scenes for Casey Jones.

Wow. Well, now it sounds to me like your rise in martial arts success may have preceded the surge in popularity of the ufc. Did you ever consider the ufc, or was that something that was just a little bit too late for you?

No, no. Actually, what a funny story about that is, I think I had just turned 18.

And UFC, I think they were in part number two or number three at the time. I can't remember. But it was super popular. And everyone was like, this thing is nuts. Well, I'm not sure how this happened, but they sent me a contract to fight in. I think it was two or three. I can't remember which one it was. But I was, you know, the 18 years old, and they faxed over a contract, and I actually considered it at first because, you know, it was. It was billed as no holds barred martial arts. And I was like, that's how I Think this should be done in a way. Like, if you really want to see who the best fighter is, you need to make it, like, a real fight. Like, don't put a ton of restrictions on it. And then the last page of the Facts I remember was all the holes that were barred. Like, you couldn't pull the ear, you couldn't grab the coin or whatever it was. And so I thought, well, I don't like. I don't like that. It just seemed like there were a lot of rules there that were sort of favoring people that wanted to just fight on the ground, and you couldn't do certain things to. To sort of stop that. And so I was like, well, I also don't know if I want to get, like, broken into pieces. And I'm pretty sure this happened around the same time as I got the contract for Mortal Kombat. So I was like, I don't know if I want to get, like, in the broken bone or something or get my face all wrecked before I go to Mortal Kombat.

Yeah, good point. Good point. Are you a fan of the ufc?

Yeah, yeah, Yeah, I definitely am. I don't get to watch it a lot, but I'm. I'm. I will forever and ever be passionate about the martial arts. Obviously, I'm passionate about what I do now, but I will never lose my love. I have never lost my love, for it's only increased the martial arts. I absolutely love it. It's a gift that God's given to me, but I just absolutely am in awe of what humans can do with their bodies and how we could learn to control our environment and defend ourselves and our loved ones.

And, yeah, I think I tried to.

Find you on Instagram, and it didn't appear you're very active on there. Maybe I found the wrong handle, but it was ninja pastor. And obviously this kind of leads into this kind of interesting marriage of martial arts. And you being a pastor and an elder, how'd that come to be?

Well, so I came to. I wasn't raised in a Christian home. So you were homeschooled then?

Yeah, I was homeschooled K through 12.

My dad was from Miami, my mom from Detroit. They both grew up in slightly troubled adolescent, teenage and young adult environments and moved to Idaho to try and establish a little bit more of a family in a safe and protected and a little bit less urban environment, and wound up raising me and my two brothers and two sisters in a very conservative Christian home in North Idaho in Lewiston, Idaho.

Wow. Wow. Well, Yeah, I think that was a gift in your life to have that kind of upbringing. I wasn't raised in a Christian.

And so I heard the gospel later on in life and ultimately know I came to Christ after a drug and alcohol addiction, turned to Christ. And.

And so, yeah, my. My life began to change. I'm still a. I'm still a work in progress, but had a love for God, love for his word, love for people, wanted people to know God and to have peace with God like I had received. And so that was all happening in my life while I was also a martial artist and I owned martial arts schools and all of that.

So you were addicted to drugs and alcohol at the same time that you were involved in martial arts?

That came later. So, yeah, I think around 21 years old, made some really, really poor, sinful decisions, was with the wrong people, and started to do stuff that I never would have done before. I mean, I. I always saw the. The world of drugs and drug addiction as. As gross and icky. And, you know, how could you do something like that to yourself? And it all ended one night when I went out to a club with some friends that were in town from Hollywood, some martial arts guys, famous martial arts guys, and took ecstasy with them for the first time. And that led to about a year. That led to about a year of depravity. Just abandoning my wife and my kids and going off on drug and alcohol addiction. Almost died several times. And I really got to the place where I went to the Scriptures after my life had just blown up and started reading the Gospels and reading the call of Christ to come to him, to be saved, to die to yourself, and to trust in him for eternal life. And I began to question whether I'd ever actually understood that message. And that's where I turned to Christ. And so, yeah, that went behind me. And I still had the martial arts stuff going on. And I opened a martial arts school, a super successful martial arts school.

It was a joy. It was a very successful martial arts program. And I was doing ministry at the same time, so I just wanted to serve Christ. And while I owned this business and did martial arts and so I would, you know, have my martial arts school. I would go out and do evangelism. And I was in. In seminary just to learn.

You, you mean, you mean, you mean like, like street preaching.

That. I mean, occasionally, but it was mostly like. When I say, like, street ministry, evangelism is more like literally going out to, like, the public square wherever there were events or there are people and Just going to engage in conversation with them to give them the good news. And really passionate about apologetics. That's the defense of the Christian faith. And so I was always studying that. So I sort of had two things going on. I was in my martial arts world and martial arts life. But I was also loving God, growing my relationship with Christ and serving God in different various ministries. So I never actually had any intention after my addiction and coming to Christ of doing my full time ministry, being a pastor. I even told my wife one day I said, I don't have, I'm never going to do that. I'm not worthy of something like that. I'll be happy just to own our business, preach Christ and just, I'll clean the toilets at the church. And I meant that. And my wife told me when I said that to her, I think you need to pray about that. I don't think that's what God has for you. And I was like, that's what I was like, well, that's what I want. Yeah, I'll just clean the toilets or hand out bulletins. And I did mean it. But after some time, the pastors of the church that I was at many years ago started telling me, we see these gifts in you, we see this, we want you to start doing more. And I had a pastor who knew me very, very well and he told me, hey, Jeff, I want you to teach a Sunday service. And I told him no. I said, I didn't feel comfortable with that. I didn't feel like I was supposed to do that or worthy of that.

Does teach a Sunday service mean preach a sermon?

Yes.

Oh, wow, that's got to be a little nerve wracking.

Well, it was. And I also just didn't feel worthy of it. And I literally, Ben, I told him no. I was like, no, I'm not going to do that. And so he gently and graciously tried to convince me and tell me why he thought I needed to do it. And I kept saying, I don't feel comfortable. And finally he said, jeff, I'm your pastor. I'm not asking you, I'm telling you.

Need to teach. This is your gift, you need to do it. And because he said, I'm telling you to do this as your pastor, I said, okay, out of obedience to God, I'm going to listen to my pastor right now. He's not telling me to do something bad, so I'm going to do it. So that led into that one Sunday, led into just a bunch more over the next year where I Was teaching at different churches, doing different camps and things like that and got to the point where the Lord made it very, very clear that I needed to give up my school and let it go.

And step into vocational full time ministry. He made it very clear. It's a long story with a lot of people speaking into my life and just a lot of circumstances. So I literally did. Ben. When it became clear this was like an act of obedience to God, it was clearly calling me to do it. I gave the keys to one of my karate students and gave him the karate school.

And walked away from it.

You just gave it to him? You didn't like sell it or anything or. You had no financial exit?

I had no financial exit. I had offered them the school, they wanted to take it. They were supposed to pay me something. But I was, that wasn't for me why I was doing it. It was if they could, they needed to. And they ended up not doing it. And yeah, I walked away. And dude, it was, it was, it was, when I reflect on it, I'm like, that was really the, the spirit of God moving in that situation. Because what I was doing from a human perspective was absolutely undeniably stupid. I was stepping into a full time vocational role as a pastor with no money to speak of, to care for my family. I walked away from a martial arts school that was highly profitable, highly, highly profitable. And I just took a step of faith in saying, all right, Lord, if this is what you're calling me to do, I'm going to do it. And so that's how I started doing it. Vocational pastoral work at the church I was at. I was also at the time.

I'm leaving parts out, but I became the head chaplain at a hospital in Phoenix that's a drug and alcohol rehab facility. It's full time around the clock. Doctors, nurses, therapists, medical detox. And I was the head chaplain over there. Christian program they had there. And from there so many people started coming out of drug and alcohol addiction to Christ. It became very clear they needed to be cared for on a full time basis. They're in a very unique, sensitive situation. And so the elders of the church I was at agreed that the Lord was calling me to plant and to serve these people full time. And so I, I did another big step of faith. And I just, I stepped into planting Apologia church after the elders laid hands on me and sent me and we planted the church at the drug rehab in the family building and the people in front of me were all on detox medication in halfway houses, families and lives destroyed. And the first night we had church, There were about 10 people in the room. Lives absolutely demolished and had just turned to Christ, all of them. And that was, that was 2010. And now apologia church has about, I'd say on a good Sunday where everyone's there, close to a thousand people, 850 somewhere, if everybody was there all at once with kids and yeah, that's how, that's how we got where we are.

Wow, that's a pretty good sized church. By the way. Did you say you almost died when you were, when you were on ecstasy?

Yeah. Really? So everybody, you know, one of the things in any, in any drug anybody uses, everyone has like, ways like to avoid ODing or you watch out for this sort of a thing. But at ecstasy, everyone knows that you'll overheat and yeah, you know, you, you burn up all the serotonin in your brain. And so it becomes at a point when you're using so much of it, you've got like nothing left to really feel the drug anymore. It just feels like you're just taking meth or something as you're just, you just energized. So you're constantly chasing that ecstasy and high. But I burned my brain up over that year just with a ton of ecstasy and other stuff, but especially ecstasy. Well, the first time I tried ecstasy, I took one pill at about 1:00am and I was, I was high and feeling it until the, like the next afternoon. And.

By the end of the year, I couldn't take one pill. I was taking like five, six pills a night. And it's debt, it's. It's dangerous because you could take one pill and overheat and I was taking five or six.

Do you mean, do you mean you were, you were taking that much to like party or, or just to sleep or something?

No, no, to party. I was disappearing and partying and disappearing for days and partying for days and.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. And. And so, you know, five or six pills one night and you know, you know you're in trouble when you're overheating and so you're always looking out for that. So you try and drink a lot of water and keep cool. Well, I'm at this after party after doing a ton of ecstasy one night and you know, nobody there cares about anybody. It's all fake. It's all, it's all a facade. But, you know, everyone's in there, you know, jabbering away and talking high on ecstasy. Lights are dark and all of a sudden, I. I realize my heart is coming out of my chest. I mean, it. It. It is hurting. It's beating so hard. And then I realized that I am like blood, blood. Blood red. I look down on my arms and my. I'm just. It's dark, and I can still see the brightness. And I'm just like, oh, my goodness, this is not good. So I run to the kitchen and I grab a big bag of ice out of the freezer and everything I could, and I go to the bathroom. Everyone's like, what's wrong? I was like, nothing, nothing. Just leave me alone. I turned down the air conditioning as low as I could possibly get it. I went to the bathtub. I poured a cold bath, dumped all the ice into it, and I jumped in the bath, and I tried to put all my pulse points under the water to cool myself down. I was getting hotter and hotter. My heart's beating faster and faster, and I just melted everything in the bathtub. And the water is getting warm now. And so I realized I'm overheating. I'm probably going to die. And so I jump out of the tub. I sit on the bed. And I knew what I was doing. I knew that the real reason I was doing what I was doing, I was trying to find satisfaction elsewhere other than God. I was trying to find peace or joy somewhere outside of God. I knew that this was between me and God. And so I remember I just started talking to God for the first time in, like, a long time. And I said to him, I said, lord, I know that what I'm doing is sinful. I know what I'm doing is wrong. And I know that you have every right to kill me. I said, but please just don't kill me yet.

And I just said, please don't kill me yet. And as soon as I prayed that prayer, it's the truth. As soon as I prayed that prayer, all of a sudden my heart just went right back to normal. Everything got back to normal, and I was no longer in this, like, stupor, this drug stupor. I was sober. And it was just an. It was like a snap, snap of a finger. Everything came back.

Now, based on what you know about. Based on what you know about drugs and drug metabolism, that doesn't really just happen, right? That would have to be something a little bit supernatural or miraculous.

No, it certainly was. And I'd like to say. I'd love to say. I'd love it if the story were God saved me from this, you know, overdose, and then I immediately turned to Christ and everything changed and my heart changed, but I was so just horrible and pursuing this thing that even after he saved my life, there about two weeks later, is when he finally crushed my life. And I still continued to use after that, but in two weeks, God crushed my life. And one day, literally before noon, my phone was shut off. I had an eviction notice on my door. They dragged my car away and repossessed it. They turned my water off, electric off. And the person I was working for at the time told all of his employees, I'm not paying you, sue me. So I have no money, no lights, no water. I'm getting evicted. My car's pulled away. And it couldn't be worse. I'm sitting in an apartment with my wife, my one year old, and like my newborn baby girl, and I've destroyed my life. And so God just ripped everything off from underneath me. And I just basically had nothing but him and to sit in silence. And I just got into the Word, started reexamining the Gospels and the call of Christ to come to him. And that's where God crushed my life and then saved my life.

Wow. Wow. You know, it's interesting, by the way, you were an early doctor of cold thermogenesis, probably before you even knew it, with your whole ice bath trick.

Yeah.

You're in the biohacking without even realizing it. That's right. So when you said that you called on God and then you later said that you found Christ and that that helped pull you away from this lifestyle of drugs and alcohol for people listening in. I mean, why is that? How do you explain that to somebody? What it feels like to have that hole in your soul filled with something else? Or how does that actually work?

Yeah. So you mentioned the documentary for the History Channel called the Stone Ages. And they had, they had specifically wanted, and this goes into your question, they specifically wanted to talk to somebody that approached drug and alcohol addiction from an explicitly Christian position and foundation. And so they searched and searched and searched, and they finally landed on the hospital that I was, that I was at. And they asked me to do it because from my perspective, God's word is God's revelation to humanity. It represents his own voice. He is speaking. He tells us about himself, he tells us about ourselves. He tells us about the world. He tells us what's broken. And from the perspective of what God says in His Word, drug and alcohol addiction is just. It's an expression of idolatry. We are made in God's image. We're Made to know God and to enjoy God forever. But the problem is that we're rebels against God. We want to go our own way, we want to fashion our own little idols and not have God. And so we do that. Like there's a famous theologian in history that said that the human heart is a natural idol making factory and it is never idle in making idols.

That's great.

Yeah, it is great. And that's true with drug and alcohol addiction. One of the things that you see is that there's so much humanity visible in the addiction and in the pursuit of whatever it is. Now it doesn't have to be drug and alcohol addiction. It could be sex addict, whatever the case may be. But what it really is is that you and I will chase an idol to get what we can only truly have in God. So people, I should sit in the hospital and just ask people, why did you chase the heroin? Why were you going after the meth? What were you trying to gain by pursuing the pills or the alcohol? And it's always something very human, something very image of God. And it's always things like, well, I was super anxious and so I would drink, I was worried and so I would drink to not be worried. Or I needed peace. And so I would take the pills or shoot the heroin or I was pursuing pleasure and happiness and so I was taking the ecstasy. Whatever the case may be. It's, it's just the pursuit of an idol. You are chasing, we are chasing that thing for what we can only ultimately have satisfied in God. And so you know, you're pursuing, you're pursuing the heroine for peace. But it's a, it's a false piece, it's a fiction, it's a lie, it's fake, it's four hours of, of of fake. It's not even real peace. You're still you. And you're still you in God's world. And what's broken is you. And God is the God of peace if you want peace. He reconciles us to himself through Christ, brings us to peace. He's the God of peace. There's no chaos and storm in him. And his promises are true. And our hope in him is true and guaranteed. And so ultimately, drug and alcohol addiction is the pursuit of an idol. And the answer is we're broken. We're rebels against God. We don't want God. So we chase the substandard God. And the problem is, is that false gods will never satisfy real spiritual needs. And so you'll chase it forever. And you're never going to get it. And so from a Christian perspective, you have to look at it holistically, though, because what you can't say is, okay, really what's wrong is that you're a rebel, you're a sinner, you need peace with God, you need Christ. Turn to Christ and live. You can say that that's a foundational problem. But Scripture is comprehensive and holistic about humanity. We're not just a spiritual being, we're a physical being. And so from a Christian perspective, you have to settle. You have to settle. The spiritual issue is what's driving everything. But the physical issues. You may need detox. Like, you know, one of the first things I say to somebody that's, that's just in sort of the throes of addiction is, what are you doing? What are you taking? And if it's something like a benzodiazepine or any kind of opiate or anything like that, the first thing I say is we need to go right to detox. Because you could die if you stop taking a benzodiazepine. You could die if you stop drinking alcohol in the throes of an alcohol addiction. And so we try to look at it comprehensively and say, okay, we want to settle the main thing, and that's that you need Christ and peace with God. You need your heart changed and your mind changed. And that's something that only God can do. And you need peace with God that he brings through the gospel. But we also got to settle this issue of this really painful experience you're going to have now. No longer taking the heroin or no longer taking the benzodiazepines.

Yeah, it's like you need God to fill that eternal hole in your soul. But you may need a few days of high dose nad to make sure your body doesn't completely flip out as you learn how to put those pieces into place. Yeah, that's right.

You know, it's funny, Ben, is that I learned something because I had no intention ever of being a chaplain in a hospital. I had no intention of a drug and alcohol ministry. I literally had never thought at one time, and it's just something that the Lord providentially had fallen to my lap.

But.

One of the things that.

I learned was how Christians in history have dealt with drug and alcohol addiction. I learned that Baptist and Presbyterian pastors, like 200 years ago used to keep, like bottles of whiskey close at hand. So if they did have somebody struggling with an alcohol addiction, they could taper them down over time to help them to get off of it because they understood you couldn't just stop it because you could die. So imagine that you got Baptist pastors that are like feeding addicts.

Whiskey, and they're doing it because they didn't want them to die. So they would taper them down.

Right. It'd be like a modern day pastor having a pill cutter for opioid capsules or tablets in their top drawer of their desk to help people come off. It is kind of interesting because for us in the fitness and the exercise world, you see a lot of former drug and alcohol abusers turn to things like ultra marathoning or Ironman triathlon, kind of continuing that cycle of escapism, you know, addiction to chronic repetitive motion, some new infatuation. And sometimes, you know, I almost, you know, despite that obviously being a much healthier addiction, if you want to call it, I still think there's a lot of people kind of obsessed with exercise and fitness that are using that to fill the eternal hole in their soul, you know?

Yeah, yeah. So there's my favorite catechism question in both. For both the Westminster Confession of Faith and the London Baptist Confession of Faith is the first one that we use. And it's what is man's primary purpose? The old way it said, I love too. It's what is man's chief end? And it says, to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. And that's what we were made for. According to scripture, you are meaningful and beautiful and you have been purposed by God. You are not a cosmic accident. You are in the image of God. You have value and dignity and you have worth. And you are made in the image of God to know him. That's. That's your ultimate purpose. It's the foundation of every moment of your existence, is you are made to bring glory to God and to enjoy him forever. But if our relationship with God is broken, then we're going to try to seek satisfaction and peace and wholeness elsewhere. And so, yeah, for some people, it's heroin. For some people it's sex. For some people it's idolatry in some other form. It could even be the idolatry of some exercise or some other. You're trying to fill this thing, this, this that's broken in you with this substance or this person or this stuff or this pursuit to try to find joy, which you can only ultimately have in God. And because that's what we were made for.

Yeah, yeah, that's actually. It's kind of the entire premise of my book Fit Soul. You Know, this idea of being a soul with a body, not a body with a soul, and the idea of spiritual fitness being ultimately the source of true fulfillment and happiness. But, you know, you also tend to see kind of like this parallel conversation especially occurring nowadays with books like the Immortality Key by Brian Murascu, how there's an argument that there is a history in Christianity of people actually using these same substances that you and I right now are vilifying as pathways to commune with the divine, as ways to talk with God. Brian even talks to the Immortality Key about how different forms of spiced wine or spiked wine were elements of the Eucharist, and that Christians were using forms of LSD like ergo, and that, you know, magical mushrooms probably played a role. What's your take on all that?

Yeah, it's fiction. And.

No historian or scholar with any integrity would actually make that kind of connection to the Christian faith. It's just.

Truly, truly fiction. Because you can see in the documents themselves, because that forms the groundwork of what forms the people of God and the church. In Deuteronomy, chapter 18, God explicitly, this is way back in the history of the Bible. God explicitly addresses communication with the dead, sorcery, taking substances to try to communicate with the dead. And the other side, he condemns it, because the problem is what you're communicating with is not what you think. And he's trying to protect his people from the kind of contact they may make with the other side that they don't really want to be involved in. So he warns his people against pharmacia, against sorcery, against taking substances to communicate with the other side, to get into an altered state of consciousness. And if you look in Galatians in the New Testament, so that's the Old Testament, the New Testament, God explicitly speaks to the issue of pharmacia. And you can hear it in the word pharmacy. Pharmacia and sorcery. It's the taking of substances to alter your state of consciousness to be able to communicate with the other side. And so Scripture condemns that kind of practice.

And by the way, you just made a good point to alter your state of consciousness for the purposes of communing with the divine. Because a lot of people jump in and say, ah, you're drinking a cup of coffee and you're wearing an NAD patch, and that's altering your state of consciousness. But if you were putting on the nad patch to say, hey, this is going to allow me to pray better and I'm going to go seek wisdom from the Spirits and maybe from God, because this nad patch is going to really help me do that. It would actually kind of fall into the category of pharmakia.

Right, right. Yeah. You, the, the, the, when you talk about pharmakia and sorcery, the idea was, and it's interesting because today this is so popular with DMT and ayahuasca and all these trips. I mean, you have actually some good dudes like ex Navy Seals talking about how, you know, they, they did a DMT trip and it helped them in many ways and saw that there actually is more to the universe than just, just this physical structure. They saw there was, there's something, there's something beyond the physical that I'm seeing and I'm glad that they know that now, but I don't like where they're going with it. But it's very popular to, to take these substances to see the other side or to get into the other realm. And that is what God is prohibiting and calling people to turn away from. And again, it's because of the danger, the spiritual danger that it poses to us. Because yes, there's another realm, yes there is a heavenly realm, and yes there's another side. And yes, there are real heavenly beings and spiritual entities that are all around us. That's a biblical worldview. It's something that Christians don't talk enough about, just the activeness of the other side. But one of the things Scripture is really clear about is that you cannot communicate with the dead. You're not talking to another person on the other side. You will be talking to a heavenly being that is an angel or fallen angel.

A machine elf or a praying mantis or a purple fairy or whatever other entity is displaying to you.

Isn't that funny too, when you listen to so many of the common experiences of people who take these DMT trips, they'll regularly talk about that. Yeah, I did my first trip and these entities I met on the other side were so helpful and they were so loving and so nice. But I went back like three or four times and then it's like, I need to avoid these things. These things are nefarious and they're scary and it's just like, well, that's God already told that story, you know, back to Moses.

You're making a really good point because I actually, you know, I have a lot of friends who have found God, you know, as you alluded to, or you know, been atheists and aren't atheists anymore. You know, I mean, no guy who's a Plant medicine practitioner says, yeah, atheists come in, but they don't come out. And it certainly can be a path to realize, especially if you're an atheist, you don't believe in a spiritual dimension. It can be a path to all of a sudden very forthrightly believe in the existence of a spiritual world. The problem is, as you were just talking about your sixth, your seventh, your eighth time in, you start interacting with elements of the spiritual world that dictate that there's very few people I know, at least, who have returned over and over again for plant medicine experiences and have not started to kind of slide towards. Humans are inherently good. All we got to do is love each other. Sometimes there's that. So we really don't need God, we just need ourselves. Then you also see a lot of people sliding towards things like schizophrenia and bipolar and weird personality disorders. And it's one of those things that seems innocent at first but really builds up. And I mean, you talked about like the Navy Seals, you know, we'll do iboga or DMT or psilocybin or whatever. In many cases for post traumatic stress disorder. You see sometimes the same thing for things like head injuries and yeah, that stuff can be effective, especially for trauma or finding a new path in life. But I really don't know anybody who has not gone on a drug free, facilitated or non facilitated vision quest for anywhere from two to seven days in the wilderness with a journal, typically water fasted and come back out of that not being in the exact same state of awareness, trauma release, communication with God, et cetera. So I think that just because there's multiple paths to the top of the mountain doesn't mean every path is, is good or risk free, you know, is.

A, is a good one. Yeah, this is really important too in terms of how I think we look at this holistically as Christians. This issue of like drugs and, and, and taking drugs. So like the, the Bible, God's word condemns through and through drunkenness, the abuse of alcohol, but it also has glowingly high praise for alcohol in the right context. You know, celebrating, feasting. God says amazing things about wine. And so there's a balance, an amazing balance in scripture where it's, it's not like some pietistic Christians say, like I just abstain and stay away from because the substance is evil. God doesn't call the substance evil. It's what we do with it that is ultimately evil. So like, for example, in terms of like drug and alcohol addiction, what I say is praise God for morphine.

Which, you know, some people think, what do you mean? I go, praise God for morphine, but also a curse on morphine, depending on how you're using it. So praise God for morphine. When you get in a car accident and snap your arm, you are praising God for the morphine, but also a curse on morphine when a person is just pursuing it for the pleasure and the good feelings and the peace that it brings them because they're just engaging in idolatry and something that will never bring satisfaction to their soul. I say, praise God for cannabis, which makes a lot of Christians angry. And I say a curse on cannabis. It depends on how you're using it, if you're using it. Like, historically, it's been used, like with the Queen of England who had menstrual cramps that were so debilitating she would pass out. They gave her cannabis, and it. It helped get her through those awful periods of. Of her. Her cycle. And, you know, I'll just give you an example of one of the things I learned. I didn't always know this. I learned this at the hospital.

We had a patient there that was just wrecked. And, I mean, this guy was. His body was barely held together because this terrible accident he was in, like. Like 30 years prior, and he was on so many opiates, and he's just taking this stuff like candy and it. And now he's just suffering the consequences of detox that is happening to him every day. If he doesn't ticket on time in these high doses, he'll start to detox, and his. His world hurts. Well, the doctors, you know, we're sitting down in the daily thing with the. With the doctors and the nurses, and they pull out his chart, and they're like, well, this is really bad. He's in a lot of pain. He needs something, but we got to bring him down because he's taking too much. And, you know, so they're talking about how can we balance out the fact that he needs opiates for pain, but, like, how do we do this? And so the head guy there goes, well, you know, if he would just start taking cannabis, we wouldn't have this problem. And so I laughed and I said, that's what he said. No, if. If he would use cannabis for pain, he wouldn't be dealing with all the toxicity issues. And I was like, well, really, he really. I was like, what do you mean? He goes, jeff, he goes, have you noticed that we don't have a. A cannabis detox protocol at the hospital? Nobody in Here is detoxing from cannabis. Did you notice that? And I was like, yeah, you're right. And they were like, because there is no detox protocol we have for cannabis, we would just tell them to do outpatient because they have a mental addiction to the cannabis. But he said, you know, you got a choice. He says, if you're dying of cancer, you. You're either going to have an opiate addiction, guaranteed if you're taking opiates for the pain, or you can do cannabis for the pain and use it in a balanced way. And I thought I really had to think about that. I was like, yeah, it is all about using it for the glory of God and using it rightly. And so for Christians, a way to look at it rightly is not to say the substance is evil. No, it could be used for good. It's just how you use it. Are you using it as an idol? Are you abusing it? Because all of these things can be very good things for the preservation of human life or for the flourishing of human life. Like, my wife just recently got her first kidney stone. She literally thought she was dying. I was like, I've never seen her in this much pain. And I rush her to the hospital. And let me tell you, we were praising God when they stuck her with the morphine. But also, we're driving home, dude. We're driving home. They had just hit her with morphine, so she's now feeling like she's okay, and we're driving home. And on every street corner in Phoenix right now is somebody that's almost dying from. From fentanyl or from heroin on the corner. But it's the same essential thing to the body, but it's how you're using it.

Yeah, you're making a really good point. I mean, I've used a small microdose of psilocybin to work on creative writing. I've used a microdose of LSD before a long run. I've used a microdose of iboga, like South African bush extract, before a hard weight training workout. I've also used, like, hoppe and psilocybin to enhance sensory perception during hunting, all at responsible doses. However, the argument. Like, I had Doug Wilson, the Wilson family, they're friends of ours on my podcast, when he came out with his book on cannabis, and there are others I'm sure you're aware of in Christian circles who will say, well, the differentiation between alcohol and pharmacia or plant medicines is that it's a lot easier to get Accidentally high and misuse and abuse. The latter meaning it's really, really easy to actually take 100 micrograms of acid versus 10 micrograms, and therefore, you're playing with a lot of fire in that scenario. And then furthermore, the other argument you hear is that alcohol is differentiated from pharmakia in the Bible because pharmacia allows you to commune with the divine, whereas nobody ever really has a deep spiritual experience when slobbering drunk. And my thoughts on her. A, yeah, responsibility and temperance is required for everything. If you can't display responsibility and temperance, I mean, don't go around something and don't use it if you're around somebody who has that same issue. And then B, I mean, you could freaking take enough coffee to be an entheogen or a psychedelic and overdose on that. I mean, in my opinion, it all comes down to responsibility, temperance, the intent of use. And again, I think just because something can be used to commune with the divine, if you take a high enough dose of it, doesn't mean avoid it at all costs. I think it still has a purpose.

It can be. And I generally would agree with all of that. And Doug is a very good friend of mine. He's actually mentored me, and he's been someone I've leaned on over the years. I love the man. I've had dinner at his house on a number of occasions. I love Doug. Definitely disagree with him on the issue of cannabis. I think there's some major inconsistencies he has that he just hasn't examined. And, yeah, I think that Christians largely have some inconsistencies in this area. And I think it's important for us to overcome them because inconsistency is not glorifying to God. And I know all of us have them. And when we're inconsistent, we're not being like God, who is fully consistent. He cannot lie. God is the truth. And so I think we should overcome these inconsistencies because they could be quite devastating. And I'll just get. I'll tell you what I mean by that. When. When, as Christians, you vilify cannabis. Now, I'm not promoting people to go out and smoke pot right now, okay? I want everyone to know that I've called it idolatry when it's abused and all the rest. But when, When. When we condemn cannabis and just say that's an evil thing, don't. Christians shouldn't do it. What I want to say is, do you understand that you. You could be potentially, with that belief, devastating Somebody unnecessarily, physically. And if someone says, what do you mean by that? Okay? If they're dying of cancer and they're in pain, you've got some choices before you for pain relief and to help you through this, okay? And one choice is you could, you could get the opiates and you are absolutely guaranteed. Long term opiate use means you are chemically dependent and the damage that it will do to your body, to your system. The pain of the detox is unreal. Sure. I mean, I've been in hospital and seen so many people detoxing from opiate addiction. And it is not pretty. It is extraordinarily painful. When you tell somebody you're dying of cancer, don't take the cannabis, take the opiate instead, you are guaranteeing them a chemical dependency on something that is going to wreck them and it's going to be very painful. You have, you have another choice. And the other choice is you can take something that is natural that God gave to the world that literally you have elements of in cannabis like cannabinoids that you're, that are, your system knows what to do with. It's like, oh, I recognize that, I know what that is. Isn't that funny how it grows in the ground and it's in our system and you're like, oh, and it's for pain. And so you have something that's not going to devastate you physically dying of cancer like the opiate. And so my honest, I've said this publicly. If I'm dying of cancer, the pain relief that I'm going towards, first and foremost is to cannabis. Because that's going to be a way where I can assure that my, I'm still going to be physically there for longer for my family than I would be on the opiates. If you're on the opiate, you may get a prescription from a doctor. Hey, you're dying of cancer. Here's this, here's this prescription for opiates. You need it, you're in pain. Listen, have you ever seen somebody that's in the throes of an opiate addiction or on pills like Percocets, Oxycontin, whatever, they're not there. Not only are they chemically dependent, they disappear. Like they just start nodding off, they're gone. And so I would choose the more natural route that's going to do less damage to my system. Here's the deal. It's a fallen world. There's no way out of the fact that we have pain and we can find ways to relieve people of pain. I want to take the route that is going to be a little more beneficial than the opiate.

Yeah. Cannabis or arguably kratom in some circumstances. So how big of an issue is this for you as a pastor? Obviously, drug use is rampant in society and widespread. I'm just curious, is this a big problem in the church, too?

In what way?

For example, I live in Washington state where cannabis is legal. And when I go to church, sometimes I wonder, gosh, I wonder how many people in here just stroll because our church is literally in the same parking lot as a dispensary. And, you know, whether it's cannabis or other drugs. You know, I'm just curious how many Christians struggle with these issues and maybe don't bring it up to their fellow Christians because it is kind of considered to be a little bit more of a serious problem than. I don't know.

Yeah, you know, maybe drinking.

Drinking an extra beer at night or something.

Yeah. Do you mean like the abuse of the substance or you mean just like.

Yeah, like. Like substance abuse?

Yeah. No, I think it's huge. It's always an issue. Anytime you're dealing with humanity, you're dealing with people who need. Either they know God and they need to grow in that relationship with God and be sanctified, or you're dealing with somebody who doesn't know him and needs to be reconciled to God and brought to peace with God. So in that world, as long as you have image bearers of God that need God.

And there. There's going to be a struggle with some form of idolatry and addiction. And. And so, yeah, it's. It's going to be at varying degrees. So, like, in our experience as a church, we'll deal with it regularly with a lot of new people that will come in, we'll find out they have some sort of an addiction. So we're ministering to them and helping them through that. Sometimes we have people that come in that are in a throes of a pretty bad addiction. So we're trying to help them get to. We try to do it comprehensively, deal with a spiritual issue, but also deal with the physical issue and so get them to detox. I think it is a problem and it will always be a problem as long as the world has fallen.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I think I was actually talking with one of my friends who's working on a website now. It's like an anonymous website where people can go and join support groups. And he's specifically targeting towards Christians who are embarrassed or don't have some sort of drug and alcohol abuse outreach program in their church. And I think it's actually a fantastic idea because I think one of the big problems is a lot of Christians are particularly embarrassed to talk about it to their fellow Christians if they struggle with.

I don't know, which is. Yeah, no, which is a problem.

Cannabis or psilocybin or whatever else.

Yeah, Christians. I think, you know, the church is for. Is for sinners. It's not for the righteous. Jesus saves sinners, and so that's who's supposed to be there. And it should be a place where people are allowed to take off the God face. Like, all is well, we're happy, everything's working perfectly, and just be honest with their brokenness and their need. Because Jesus heals the sick, so you have to come to him as the physician. And I think the, the church should be a place where people have the ability to. Just to say, hey, I love God, but I'm really struggling right now. And then we minister to that person and care for that person and help them walk through it as they, as they're repenting of these things. We're. We're helping them. There should be sort of an environment where there's an ease to say, hey, I've fallen flat, that I'm struggling, I need help. The problem isn't the repentant person who says, I hate this. I want free from this. That's not the problem. That's the work of God in their life. The problem is the person who loves it, doesn't want to let it go and just pursues it and just dives into it.

Yeah, yeah. Or in my opinion, increasingly the person who is using that as their tool to connect to God, which I think is going to be a huge battle that, that Christians face in the coming decade is people who are like, hey, you know what? Somebody using plant medicine to commune with the spirits in Peru. I'm going to use it to talk to God. And I actually know a lot of Christians who are now experimenting with substances for the purposes of prayer and meditation. I don't think it's such a good idea.

It's explicitly condemned. I'll say this one last thing, I'll say to that. I was joking with some friends a couple weeks ago. We actually did a show on this. Cultish did a show on this recently, the DMT in Ayahuasca and communicating and sorcery and all that stuff. And one of the things I said was like, well, you Know what? I would never, ever, ever even want to try that, though it sounds interesting to say, hey, you can get a shot at the other side. And, you know, all that. That might sound appealing. I would never want to do it because we're involved in a lot of ministry and I think there's a lot of spiritual attacks on us. I wouldn't want to get to that other side and just give them the opportunity, give them an opportunity to get their hands on me.

Nor do you want to send a message to billions of people that the best way to commune with God and to really become deeply engaged with prayer and step up to the next level spiritually is to go and have some sort of a psilocybin experience or ayahuasca retreat that frankly, most of the world's population is never going to be able to afford or do or have access to anyways. I think it just kind of sends people the message that, hey, if you really want to be holy, you got to try this because this is the next level, bro. You know?

Right, Right. Yeah. And the way scripture puts it is the way to peace. And they have a relationship with God. A deeply intimate relationship with God is through what Christ has accomplished in his perfect life, his death, and his resurrection. It is a gift of eternal life. It is peace with God. It is. It is a free gift. The way to peace with God and communion with God is through faith in Christ. And then as you are in Christ, you grow more and more with in your relationship with God. Knowing him, walking with him, communing with him. And so the way to peace is Christ, not ayahuasca.

I would encourage you to go to BenGreenfieldLife.com JeffDurbin Jeff J E F F Durbin D U R B I N and Jeff, thank you so much for coming on the show, man.

Thank you, brother. Thanks for having me.