Pharmakia, Plant Medicines, Addiction, Escapism, Shamanism & With Robert Orem

This is a Ben Greenfield Life podcast episode featuring Robert Orem, author of Pharmakia. The conversation covers Orem’s personal history with cannabis and other drugs, his Christian conversion and cessation of drug dependence, and his thesis that the biblical term pharmakeia condemns drug use in occult/witchcraft/idolatrous contexts. They discuss spiritual experiences from entheogens, risks of deception/possession, historical actors (Leary, Huxley, Crowley), and distinctions between legitimate medical use versus drugs intended to induce altered states for divination or journeying. The episode also includes practical reflections on spiritual disciplines as alternatives and promotional material for the book and related resources.
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My name is ben greenfield and on this episode of the ben greenfield life.
Podcast whatever spiritual experience you're having when you're high is going to be intense the problem is it's a deception and the genuine experience that the deception is an imitation of is the experience of rebirth and renewal and spiritual life through faith in the genuine god which comes through faith in jesus christ.
Faith family fitness health performance nutrition longevity ancestral living biohacking and a whole lot more welcome to the show.
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whole family to sweat in they have a whole variety of sizes including a one person version of what i have which is perfect for even like the smallest department and they have a quiz on their website ain't that helpful to help you determine which of their thirteen different models is perfect for you and your house and your family and your needs so if you want to sweat buckets and get healthy doing so in the privacy of your own home go check out this quiz at healwithheat dot com healwithheat dot com code ben gets you a discount and free shipping at healwithheat dot com so check them out healwithheat dot com code ben all right folks well you may have heard me talking quite a bit lately about this concept of plant medicines and how i am increasing increasingly disillusioned with their use and the wild popularity of them for a variety of reasons one of the books that i read as i researched this whole concept of the pros and the cons of plant medicine is called pharmakia pharmakia refers to a word that i'd actually seen a lot pop up in the bible but it wasn't until i actually read a book about what it truly means that i had a real light bulb moment about why it actually appears in the word of god as something that we should be careful with and if you're listening and you're not a christian and you don't believe in the bible i would encourage you to actually listen to this episode anyways with the author of this pharmakia book just because it's chock full of a lot of information i think anybody who's kind of like thinking about plant medicine or is involved with plant medicine or working with a shaman or anything like that should know because there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that you should know about and my guest on the show today robert oram he not only has a background in the use of a lot of these compounds but he also has a very very unique perspective as somebody who has kind of like me become disillusioned with them and has really made a lot of sense out of why they might not be all that they're cracked up to be or at least come with a great deal of caution required and a giant yellow warning flag on them so robert has taught in jails treatment centers schools and church primarily in the realm of addiction and drug use and has a personal history with plant medicines and drug addiction and has also studied up quite a bit on what the word pharmakea really means and some fascinating views on why these type of drugs might exist in the first place in terms of the plant uses on the planet earth and a whole lot more so robert thanks so much for coming on the show man i'm super excited to unpack this with you i.
Am super excited to be on your show i've been looking forward to it.
For a long time yeah and your book kind of like i just randomly came across it was kind of flying under the radar and you and i have been talking behind the scenes about maybe turning into an audiobook or something so more folks can listen in who are more of the podcast audio types so if you guys haven't read the book you can go to bengreenfieldlife dot com pharmakia p h a r m a k i a that's where the show notes for the show are going to be and also i'll link to the book over there and eventually if we wind up doing an audiobook version of it you'll be the first to know if you're listening in here but robert tell me about your history with the use of plant medicines and drugs and what got you interested in all this in the first place i was.
Just a typical nineteen eighties party boy there was nothing spiritual about my drug use at all i ended up having some spiritual experiences but they weren't you know what i was looking for i was just looking to have a good time back then we didn't even use the term plant plant medicines but i did sort of have an aversion to regularly using any drugs that weren't natural so i tried everything except for crack cocaine but pot was my drug of choice i was a classic wake and bake stoner i did a lot of mushrooms and i did a lot of hashish like i said i didn't want to get into doing things like cocaine or methamphetamine on a regular basis i just didn't like the fact that they weren't natural i probably should mention since this is the ben greenfield podcast that about the same time that i first started smoking pot i started weight training also i was about seventeen and i fell in love with working out at.
The same time that's interesting i actually run it i even interviewed a guy who's more more like the endurance ultra running community who actually uses cannabis quite a bit for long runs for kind of like that painkilling euphoric effect and i do know people who will go hit the gym on it you know i think even you know popular podcasters like joe rogan have talked about you know taking thc before they go they go crush it on the kettlebells or or on the jiu jitsu mats right.
I did that all the time it was one of my favorite things to do i would go for three four hour bike rides up in the marin head francisco or i would just go to the you know weight room so working out was one of the few good habits that i've had my whole.
Life but good you'll you'll fit in.
With our crowd yeah.
Yeah there's definitely a lot of things that i enjoyed about smoking pot and getting high i mean i didn't get hooked on the bad experiences that came later you know i got hooked on the euphoria and the relaxation and the creativity and the good times and and when that's all i was having i couldn't see any reason not to be doing them all the time i mean why wouldn't i if i was still functional and i could have a better workout or a better bike ride or a better creative riding session why wouldn't i smoke a joint or hit a few balls right.
Yeah and there is a little bit of a i guess there is the pain numbing effect that a lot of people get addicted to opioids but will depend upon but there's also like a little bit of escapism involved as well i think there's a little bit of a disconnection from self a disconnection from maybe the pain that might help you grow as a person and really i think for the same reason that a lot of people wind up doing heftier doses of plant medicines in kind of like a journeying based experience i think that and i know we'll get a chance to delve into this quite a bit it's also just kind of like a noble excuse to tweak the brain chemistry and fall into a state of mind in which you can forget all your worries and forget all your pains and just escape for a little while and i don't necessarily think that's healthy and obviously it comes with a great deal of potential risk based on something i've talked about in the podcast and you talk about in your book the ability of many of these particularly plant based compounds to open one up to some spiritual worlds and other dimensions that can be a little bit dangerous to be surfing around in which i know sounds kind of woo but did you ever get into this because a lot of people go to ayahuasca in amazon or peru or whatever or people journey with magic mushrooms et cetera did you ever do a lot of this mind expansion spiritual exploration like a light blocking mask with music and laying back with some type of five hta agonist surging around your bloodstream or were you just smoking pot and hitting the gym pretty.
Much smoking pot and hitting the gym until i had my first real spiritual experience quote unquote when i was high you know when i first used i was a junior in high school when i first got high i'd been drinking for a few years when i first started smoking pot i was a junior my senior year i was smoking pot every day i was also doing cocaine and mushrooms and some pharmaceuticals like on the weekends i never had any bad trips i never had any problems in school i didn't have any problems in my relationship relationships at all in fact my life was going great and then all of a sudden on one night everything changed it was during my freshman year of college and i had been doing some pharmaceuticals and i was getting high with a couple of my friends we were just watching tv and i described this experience in detail on a video testimony that i made recently it's going to be available at robertorum dot com okay you can just look for part one of the testimony but basically i had experience what i later learned shamans refer to as being thought being thought yes where the mind is taken over and you receive a vision or a level of understanding that is simply supernatural and at the time we were just watching tv talking and when this moment came on to me i was looking at it was my girlfriend myself and our best friend were sitting in our living room watching the last episode of mash which some of your audience may remember that show and all of a sudden i looked over to our friend and he was talking and i could suddenly see everything about his personality i understood all his anxieties and his concerns i could see how the influence of his parents was causing him lots of confusion and strife and i could just see this guy like an open book and then i looked the other direction and through my apartment wall into the next apartment i saw the girl who lived next door to us sitting on the couch and i could see her anxiety she was in sales i could see her anxiety about money how it was affecting her you know i'm not exaggerating this at all i looked at the television set i didn't just see the program mash i saw the actors on the stage under the lights with the directors i saw the waves being transmitted to the television we had antennas back then on our tv's and i saw just the function of the television set and i looked at my girlfriend at the time and i said something's happening i'm wise i'm wise and of course they're listening to me they're thinking okay right whatever you're just stumped my best friend left and i'm just there with my girlfriend and this continued to happen and i all of a sudden looked at myself and i had this moment where i was able to see my future and i saw everything falling apart in my life that was going absolutely great at the time and at that moment i had a panic attack and that ended up being my first of many panic attacks but looking back on that experience i can understand in light of pharmacia and in light of you know everything i've studied since since then i can understand that at that moment i had a spirit enter me and it was a spirit of fear it was a demon who basically took control of me and destroyed my life and he gave me a prophetic vision of what was going to happen and that experience is very similar to accounts that i later read about of shamans when they first come into contact when they first encounter the spirits that are going to become their guides their primary guides my spirit guide the first spirit that i was exposed to was a spirit of fear and of course at that time i had no idea that there was anything spiritual going on i just knew that you know i had had a panic attack and pot was starting to you know cause me some serious problems sure enough my life started to fall apart you know i flunked out of college my girlfriend and i broke up i ended up living in my van down by the beach for a while i was starting to have mental health issues and i just decided okay i got to do whatever i can do to get off to get off the pot i got to stop using this pot because i understood that was really the main part of the problem and i spent eight years trying everything that i could possibly find to stop using and get control of myself again but nothing worked one of the things that i tried was twelve steps and you know alcoholics anonymous i don't know if you're familiar with them.
At all yeah i'm pretty familiar there.
Yeah it's a very quote unquote spiritual program they have a saying that says it's there's no spiritual angle it's a spiritual program so i was living in san francisco at the time and i went into aa and as i was involved in that program for about a year and a half i started becoming spiritual quote unquote and so i started in you know the new age was very popular back then i got introduced to shamanism and hinduism and zen buddhism and that type of meditation and i started reading you know books philosophical books and zen books and spiritual books and so my first introduction to anything spiritual at all was in that context where i was actually sober for the first.
Time in years you weren't a christian at that point no okay no i.
Had not been raised christian.
In all the things that i tried to stop using it never occurred to me to crack open a bible or call out to jesus it just wasn't even an option that i considered it's basically the way i was raised but then i ended up relapsing out of twelve steps and it was a very interesting time and i think some of your audience will relate to this i was very shocked to find that when i went back to smoking pot after i had been introduced to all this you know all these spiritual practices and principles and theories that i actually felt closer to god as i understood him at the time it wasn't the god of the bible it was still my higher power and i felt more spiritual when i was using so at that point in my history my using became closer to what but you're describing where people are trying to use drugs as a quote unquote entheogen or they're trying to have an encounter with divine light or whatever name they want to put on it and that was how i used drugs.
Up until the point where i got introduced to jesus christ god and then got god basically spoke to me one night about it and set me free of the desire for it but at that point i had given up trying to quit smoking and i had this spiritual rationalization for what i was doing i became a christian i accepted jesus christ i had an intensely positive spiritual experience that i describe on these videos that are on my robertorum dot com or website and as soon as i came to faith in jesus christ he started to clean up all these other areas that you know drug addicts typically struggle with cussing and use of pornography and drunkenness and fits of rage and sexual experience you know sexual relationships and you know so my first year as a christian god was working in a powerful way to make me more like jesus but i still believed that drug use was a spiritually positive thing yeah.
And by the way if i could interrupt real quick regarding the link between drug use and spirituality i mean a lot of people and this is common in some of the psilocybin studies that have been done in places like johns hopkins will report that the use of psilocybin for example was the most spiritual experience that they've ever had in their life and many religions traditionally have relied upon things like psilocybin and cannabis and other entheogens et cetera because it seems that not to get too chemically about this there's this link between the dopaminergic response the triggering of these five hta receptors another receptor called naag and kind of what goes on in the prefrontal cortex when it comes to many of these drugs that kind of shift you into this same type of spiritually receptive state that you might experience during meditation and prayer and worship and music it's kind of like pressing down the gas pedal on full speed to shift you into this state of what may describe as spiritual enlightenment or something like that which i think is kind of a lot of the background behind the attractiveness of a lot of these compounds that people are using now to find god or expand their mind or to tackle trauma or to meditate or worship or anything like that simply because there's something about these that shift you into this deeply spiritually responsive and open and receptive state it's why many folks who i know who have been previous atheists for example will go on some kind of a plant medicine journey with psilocybin or ayahuasca or dmt and when they finish that they're no longer atheists like they come out the other side saying well i've seen god i know there's a higher power i know god exists i know there's a deep spiritual world that i never really understood or became involved with and many people will hear that and be like oh well that's amazing this could be the salvation of humankind the ability to be able to use these type of compounds and maybe later on we'll get a chance to unpack the story behind folks like timothy larry and aldous huxley and how they actually tackled this type of potential of some of these compounds but what's interesting is that and i don't know if you'd agree with me i would imagine having read your book that you might the idea of using drugs as a crutch for example to allow someone to be spiritual i think is actually pretty dangerous because all of a sudden we're sending a message to billions and billions of people that the way to find god involves some kind of secret hidden access to these compounds that would shift one state or the ability to be able to meet with a shama or the ability to be able to travel to peru for example and in my opinion what folks are experiencing in that state is not only a deeply spiritual experience but a kind of a knowing or an experience of of god or the spiritual world without a true knowing in terms of that being woven into one's life and it winds up in many cases i think being a deal where people in order to have a spiritual experience begin to rely upon the neurochemical shifts that occur in response to drug use and i think that there's a lot of danger there because it takes people away from the so called hard work of chopping wood and carrying water and praying and devotion and meditation and fasting and instead you're just like pop some pills and fast track your way to god so a it produces a little bit of like a spiritual laziness and b it also and this is kind of important when it comes back to like what you said about the feeling as though you had like a demon or spiritual possession it opens people up to this whole spiritual world where yeah you might experience god or jesus or christ consciousness or whatever you want to describe as that but you're also in this whole other dimension where there's a lot of other spiritual entities that could take advantage of you that could possess you that could influence you and for every nine people i know who have had a deeply positive experience with many of these entheogens from cannabis to psilocybin to dmt and beyond there's one person who kind of gets messed up who comes back with triggered schizophrenia or bipolar or just is super weird and feels as though they're never the same from that point on and some even feel as though they've been possessed by something and that's where i think a lot people of of the danger lies is a a production of spiritual laziness and dependence on drugs for a spiritual experience and then b the potential to actually get possessed by some of these entities that you're engaging with as you kind of cross over into this portal that's kind of dangerous to cross over into and goes back to that whole concept of the reason it's actually warned against in the bible is the fact that there's a lot of dangers once we're entering that portal because we're messing with spiritual entities that have existed for thousands of years that really know how to use human beings as puppets i know that's a lot to digest but i think those are important things to.
Think about yeah absolutely that's pretty much the context of my experience although we're discussing it now with the benefit of hindsight at the time i didn't understand any of this and yeah you're absolutely right the altered state of consciousness that the drugs produce enable us to perceive a spiritual realm that is very real but according to the scripture there's two you know very important things you have to bear in mind is a the bible is clear that one third of all the angels rebelled against god and followed satan and became demons and so there are demons in that spiritual realm and then the second important part to understand is god has condemned the use of drugs period full stop it's not like the way he treats alcohol where alcohol use in moderation is acceptable it's not a sin drunkenness is the sin when you're talking about alcohol god doesn't make that sort of you know graduated you know estimation of the use of drugs it's there is no acceptable use of drugs and so i can understand what happened to me now because it's completely consistent with what you just described and when you interpret it biblically but at the time i didn't know and to your point about you know relying on the drug that's exactly i won't spend any more time on i'll just tell you real quickly it's kind of the highlight of the part two of my personal testimony that's on robertorum dot com comma but i had been counseled by my assistant pastor at the time about my continuing drug use you know i'm a christian and i told him flat out i said look i use pot i'm an addict first i tried everything there is to get off of it i can't get off of it i said and i use pot for you know i was convinced at the time that it was bringing me closer to god and one night when i was reading my bible probably high because i was high all the time god spoke to me and he has only spoken to me a couple of times in the way that he spoke spoke to me that night he only said a couple of sentences he said you're a slave to marijuana and it's not my slave my will that you would be a slave to anything and i'm just listening i mean there's you know i didn't hear voices i heard in my spirit i heard god's voice and i knew who it was because i had come into a relationship with god through faith in jesus and the next thing he said is is you think you need marijuana in order to draw close to me but you don't he said you've made it an idol period and that was and that was all he said to me but the amazing thing was from that moment my desire for marijuana was gone i mean i just accepted the truth of what i had been told you know i wasn't going to argue with god about either of these things and just from that moment god set me free from my desire for marijuana so my freedom from my desire my slavery to drugs was simply part of the process of sanctification that all christians go through when you enter into a relationship with jesus christ he accepts you right where you are it doesn't matter you can be like i was using porn getting drunk getting in fights i got suicidal issues i'm smoking pot every day god doesn't care come to my son as you are and then once i got into relationship with jesus the holy spirit started just walking me out of those sins and my drug use was just another one of those sins but then later he led me to start doing all this research and it really enabled me to put a fine point on my understanding of the spiritual nature of what had been going on for all those years and why i had suffered the things that i had suffered you know you mentioned you know one out of nine people who end up having you know mental health issues or whatever my experience is really closer to about half and half i mean i would say half of the you know half of my stoner buddy friends that i knew were more like me in that it just devastated us emotionally and mentally and spiritually.
Yeah yeah and granted i think that cannabis is unique in that it's very easy to just be like a functional day to day pot smoker and while cannabis has been used by shamanic and pagan cultures for some pretty deep and theogenic experiences it's pretty easy to use recreationally and not necessarily in the same way that a lot of people would use intentionally save up for one or two months and prepare via a dieta to do something like a deep psilocybin or ayahuasca experience i think cannabis is a little bit different i do know people who don't touch cannabis or marijuana and who will do something like journey with psilocybin once or twice a year or go to a dmt experience once a year on certain times like whatever their birthday their rite of passage their wedding night whatever and so i think that there's this ceremonial aspect of things that needs to be taken into consideration as well because i know there's a lot of people who just they aren't daily users but they'll occasionally go on these deep journeys which i don't think have as much of a problem from an addictive potential but more of the potential that you're entering into this spiritual world in which your soul is ripped wide open and you're actually at a very high and quite dangerous potential to be influenced by other entities but that being said i want to backpedal for just a second and ask you a couple of clarifying questions and before i do i do want to highlight something that you mentioned and that is that once you start a daily spiritual walk for example waking up in the morning and doing meditation and specifically like a christ based meditation or something where you're communing with god prayer scripture reading devotions etcetera it actually is weird and almost kind of like magical how much the need later on in the day let's say like at the end of the day to hit a vape pen or the desire to do like a psilocybin experience at the end of the week or something like that just goes away because your soul spiritually fulfilled i have to highlight the importance for those of you listening in of what robert said because i have found that when i am very intentional and very mindful of my morning spiritual experience in a full sober state because let's face it very few of us roll out of bed at five am and think about going to take mushrooms before we go to our devotions there's this complete removal of a desire to even mess around with these drugs for a deep spiritual experience it's kind of odd that it happens so quickly once you devote yourself to that daily chopping wood carrying water practice of a morning devotional or an evening devotional prayer scripture reading meditation type of routine i've found that to be incredibly helpful for myself as a guy who is surrounded by people who are using these plant medicines and who have rampant access to them it's almost like being in a sober state communing with god becomes far more attractive and removes this desire to use a lot of these medicines so i want to highlight the importance of that but i also want to ask you robert you said something a little while ago that i need you to clarify you said that the bible flat out condemns drugs and yet it's my understanding that this greek word pharmakeia as a noun refers to the use of drugs in occult magic like in sorcery to divine with the spiritual world or to journey for example into a different spiritual dimension and the reason i think that's important to bring up and i'd love for you to clarify with this a little bit is because because if we say the bible flat out condemns the use of drugs then i think we enter into a scenario where it's very difficult to say well what about a pharmaceutical what about cocoa what about even microdosing for sensory enhancement with something like lsd or psilocybin or something like that so is it the flat out condemning the use of anything that shifts one's state because i think that the slippery slope there is that we wind up just just like condemning everything including potentially like kale versus is it the use of drugs specifically for the purpose of divination right of entering into a different spiritual dimension because it's my impression and i could be wrong here that what we're not supposed to be doing what we need to be very careful with is taking a high dose of an entheogen that shifts us into this portal in which we're interacting with the spiritual world and exposing ourselves yourself to not just god or jesus but angels demons spirits entities you name.
It i think you hit on an important aspect of understanding what the bible actually teaches about that and when i was researching pharmacia it's important not to expand the definition of the term into areas that the scripture doesn't address and it's also important not to restrict the definition of the term to eliminate eliminate practices that the scripture does address so for example some people there are books out there where some people have tried to argue that the bible's references to pharmacia mean that even medicinal drugs are you know verboten and you shouldn't even be taking what i refer to as legitimate medicine there is a book called.
Pharmacia it's spelled differently than your book it's spelled p h a r m a k e i a it's called pharmacia a hidden assassin and i read that book after i read yours and that author actually says yo any drug period is pure evil and sorcery and i don't agree with that but go ahead what were you going to say.
Yeah so i don't agree with that either i mean there are in my book when i was defining drug it kind of defined the boundaries of the definition of pharmacia also and so in my book i said in substance that people use to enter an altered state of consciousness apart from legitimate medical need okay now i purposely i put a fudge word in there legitimate medical need you know you can decide for yourself what a legitimate medical need is but the greek word pharmacia was used in different ways in the greek language also but there's only one way that it's used in the scripture it's in the sense of sorcery so that's sorcery is an old english word for witchcraft but basically the two contexts that pharmacia appears in the bible is in the practice of idol worship and in the practice of witchcraft and so anything that falls.
Within the boundaries of those two spiritual practices either worship of you know what the bible would say are false gods or the practice of any type of witchcraft that's sort of your boundaries for pharmacia so you know what people are talking about now is journeying is to my mind that's just witchcraft with a sort of a shamanistic twist journeying out of body is the same phenomenon as shamanic flight and it is unless i'm not understanding correctly which is the same thing that witches do when they perform astral projection or astral travel can you.
Describe what astral projection and shamanic flight.
Are okay so it's an out of body experience basically it's an intentional out of body experience in which either the witch or the shaman projects their spirit body which is a replica a double of the of the physical body into the spiritual realm that we've been talking about about drugs allow you to enter and interact with the spiritual realm and so a witch or a shaman will often use drugs in order to separate their spirit body from their physical body so that they can enter into the spiritual realm and while they're in the spiritual realm that's when they have their encounters with whatever gods they're seeking to encounter you know a medieval witch would have oftentimes been intentionally seeking to encounter demons shamans typically are seeking to commune with their gods which are typically you know animistic or naturalistic gods like the god of rain god of wind or a jaguar spirit or whatever but even shamans commonly encounter demons shamans know that.
Demons are real oh yeah i don't know a single shaman by the way who doesn't claim the ability to be able to go into another realm and battle against evil spirits that might be projected by other shamans or shift their spirit into a different portal or a different dimension but interestingly and maybe we can talk about this later on many of them like these so called white magic shamans will say okay i'm going with the powers of jesus and god to power these to battle these other demons or dark spirits that are in a different space and that might seem all noble and stuff but it kind of falls under the same category as.
Pharmacia doesn't it it is pharmacia and i think it makes more sense it'll probably make more sense to your listeners if i just give you just two of the verses that are in the scripture that refer to pharmakos there's actually three greek words there's pharmakia which like you said is a noun it's actually an adject but it's used as a noun and it's used to specify witchcraft or idolatry that includes the use of drugs okay so there's lots of different kinds of witchcraft and there's lots of different forms of idolatry but pharmakia refers specifically to witchcraft and idolatry that includes drug use the second word is pharmacos pharmacos is a noun and it refers to the person who's practicing practicing pharmacia right so a pharmacosa practices pharmakia that's easy and then there's a third word ipano which is a generic term which it's funny my limited greek understanding i think a good translation of epano is the high ones but it base it is a generic word for witchcraft that can refer to people who are using drugs in their magic or not it depends on the context but anyway so let me just give you two two verses one from the old testament one from the new testament and that'll help your audience sort of understand the level of sort of trepidation and concern that i have and that you now have about these processes so in the book of exodus in chapter twenty two moses has just given israel the law the ten commandments and he's going through through and adding a few kind of you know loose laws just additional commands to them and in exodus twenty two eighteen moses speaking on behalf of yahweh the god of the old testament says you shall not permit a sorceress to live now that word sorceress is pharmacos in the greek so it refers specifically to it's in its feminine form in the greek but it refers specifically to a female witch who is using drugs to perform magic all right and the next verse he says whoever lies with an animal shall surely be put to death and the next verse he said he who sacrifices to any god except to the lord shall be utterly destroyed so you've got the use of drugs in a spiritual context you know know drug use for spiritual purposes condemned as a capital offense and it's listed along with bestiality and idolatry and if you know your bible at all god is not down with bestiality or idolatry okay so that just it was a capital offense.
All right this is cool but you want to pay attention because it's coming up right around the corner on friday december second you're going to get a chance to join me and some really powerful healing physicians down in sarasota florida this is a live event goes from eight am to five pm i'll be there my friend and a brilliant former podcast guest the doctor strange of medicine doctor john laurence is going to be there hbot usa doctor jason and melissa and saunas are going to be there with their hyperbaric oxygen therapy brian richards of saunaspace harry paul one of john's friends who i recently met who's also an amazing healer for an event that's super unique it's all based around the elements of earth fire air and water with a ton of treatments and technologies and modalities and very unique biohacks that you're gonna get exposed to during the entire event basically what i mean by that is when it comes to air you're gonna learn about hyperbaric oxygen and ozone and air filtration everything you need to know to upgrade your air when it comes to earth pulsed electromagnetic field therapy earthing grounding a host of other ways that you can use the power of the planet to enhance your health your sleep your recovery your muscle gain your fat loss a lot more water you'll learn about proper water filtration how to upgrade your water hydrogenated water structured water basically soup to nuts everything you need to know about water and how to apply it in your home in your office and your life and then finally fire is a fun one lots of cryotherapy a little bit of ice too breathwork inner fire practices a ton of stuff when it comes to introducing the element of fire into your life so this event is super unique john and i have been working on it behind the scenes and it has come together amazingly there's even a vip experience if you sign up for the vip experience you could come two days early or stay a few days after the event and basically you will get all the medical 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just slobbering drunk by the time you consume enough alcohol to do so i mean there's some examples where people use alcohol in ceremonies but it's pretty hard to od on alcohol to the point where you're journeying and still be loose enough to really get anything out of it so you described earlier how there's a differentiation between drugs and alcohol and you think the reason for that is because the drugs particularly drugs that allow one to journey that would be traditionally used for divination all the way down to the you talk about this in your book the ergo the precursor to lsd that early witches would smear in their broomsticks and apply rectally or vaginally to be able to enter into these other dimensions stuff like that is actually putting you at a very very deep spiritual risk because again you're entering into this other dimension that our modern day scientific rational materialistic logical culture would like to deny exists but just because we deny it exists doesn't mean that we can get rid of it and kiss it all goodbye and again this returns back to people who never believe in god doing a plant medicine ceremony coming out the other other end saying oh hey there is a god there's this spiritual portal that we pass into that can be deeply scarring spiritually and or shift our dependency on the pure simple blissful experience of seeking god in a full on sober state to needing drugs to seek god while simultaneously putting ourselves at the risk for possession and interaction with these spiritual entities who may not have our best interest.
In mind right you have to come to grips with the fact that god is not going to allow people to come into communion with him a apart from jesus christ and b with the use of drugs there are several reasons for this prohibition and it's a really good question it's a tough question to answer without laying down enough of a biblical worldview to answer it intelligently i go through everything very methodically in the book that's why it's four hundred odd pages so yeah it's super thorough yeah when i make statements here that may sound crazy you know i've given the proof text for them in the book you know we have to remember that god is holy and god has always been the one who determines how how we are going to approach him and it's not up to us to determine how we're going to approach him and one of the best stories for sort of pondering this whole question of can we use drugs to enter into god's presence is the old testament story of nadab and abihu nadab and abihu were sons of aaron who was the high priest and he worked along with moses and and when the israelites were wandering through the desert they had built the tabernacle and they had begun the priestly service and one day aaron's sons offered what the bible refers to as strange fire to god and they were immediately incinerated and in leviticus if you go to leviticus ten one i'll read a couple of verses out of the niv aaron's sons nadab and abihu took their censers put fire in them and added incense and they offered unauthorized fire before the lord contrary to his command so fire came out from the presence of the lord and consumed them and they died before the lord moses then said to aaron this is what the lord spoke of when he said among those who approach me i will be proved or shown holy in the sight of all the people i will be on honored and then a few verses later it says the lord said to aaron you and your sons are not to drink wine or other fermented drink whenever you go into the tent of meeting or you will die this is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come and so most people think that nadab and abihu had been drinking when they went in to do their priestly duties and and they think that that caused them to basically screw up the proper ritual of worship by not using fire from the altar to burn their incense and i think that's probably the best explanation of what was going on there but the point is they entered into god's presence under the influence and they made a mistake and it cost them their lives and god said if a priest comes buzzed on wine into the tabernacle he's going to to die so do you think that he's going to welcome people who are high on drugs into his holy presence now that he's in heaven you know i don't think so and again once you understand what god has said about the use of drugs there's really no question about the fact that he hates that practice and the reason i believe he hates the practice is because like you were you were saying that it's not just that you have the potential to encounter evil spirits and demons who want to destroy you it's that you are sooner or later that is what you're going to.
Do i have a question about that by the way about this whole holy of holy thing with the levites because i wrote an article about this at one point about these blends of oil and incense that the levite priests were would burn and apply to their bodies in the holy of holies and they're pretty potentially like consciousness altering mixes like nearly psychedelic mixes like myrrh and calamus and cassia and frankincense as a matter of fact there was actually this company it was called victory spelled an ie in port angeles washington that bottles these things up and makes the same recipe that they used for the oil and the incense and i ordered it and tried it i burnt it in my sauna the same way that they would have in the holy of holies and applied the oil to my neck and i got high as a kite and so i've always kind of wondered in the back of my mind well did god have like a certain use for those compounds in the holy of holies that was restricted to the levite priests that shifted them into this state where they were able to divine with god but were yet in this protected holy of holies space where they wouldn't have been exposed to demons demons and entities and was that like an exception to pharmacia or have you ever thought about that much at all or come across.
That well first off there's a prohibition against anyone using that specific incense in any context other than yeah and by.
The way i didn't know that at the time i was just like huh this is interesting i'm gonna try this out just because i was cowboying around with stuff that i really i think i should have had a lot more caution with but nonetheless like that was what i experienced experienced so i would.
Question if it's really an authentic reproduction because i don't know that we know the exact ratios and the exact chemicals but you know let's go to the scripture and let's get a scriptural view of what god says about priestly service we read about nadab and abihu there's another reference to pharmacos specifically in the old testament in malachi in chapter three and this is a prophecy prophecy of what jesus is going to do to the priests of israel when he returns okay so i'll read just a couple two verses from malachi three out of the niv it says jesus will sit as a refiner and as a purifier of silver he will purify the levites and refine them like gold and silver so just as a comment you know when you refine precious metals you do so so by fire all right so it looks like it's another picture similar to nadab and abihu where he's going to destroy the sinning priests via fire then the lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness and the offerings of judah and jerusalem will be acceptable to the lord as in the days gone by as in former years and then in verse five it says so i and that's jesus will come to put you on trial i will be quick to testify against the sorcerers and that's pharmacists so that's not just you know people practicing any kind of witchcraft that's people practicing witchcraft with drugs specifically and he says the adulterers and the perjurers against those who defraud laborers of their wages against those who oppress the world widows and the fatherless and those who deprive foreigners of justice and do not fear me so you've got another instance where jesus is going to not another instance but an instance where jesus is going to deal with the levites when he returns and he's going to basically do the same thing that god did with nadab and abihu he's going to refine or burn away away the sinning priests and those sinning priests includes the ones who are using drugs you've got scripture that actually addresses these things and again not to hammer away too hard but i just want to read to you a verse from jesus that refers to people who use drugs all right it's actually the most terrifying verse in the whole bible in my opinion it's found in revelation twenty one eight and in this passage jesus is speaking he's talking to john and in verse six he says it is done we're at the very end of the bible we're at the beginning of the new heavens and earth we're at the end of all things and the judgment right and jesus says it is done i am the alpha and the omega the beginning and the end to the thirsty i will give one water without cost from the spring of the water of life those who are victorious will inherit all this and i will be their god and they will be my children that's a wonderful verse it's a picture of the free gift of eternal life with god for the faithful but in verse eight he says but the cowardly the unbelieving the vile the murderers the sexual the sexually immoral those who practice magic arts and that's pharmacos in the greek that's you know drugs specifically the idolaters and all liars they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur this is the second death so we christians we have to come to terms with what god says about drug use we can't escape it if we're gonna have intellectual honesty about god's word and don't you know don't get wrong i'm reading these verses but i'm not judging anybody you know jesus is judged not robert oram i was doing all these things you know i thought the same way that many people probably in your listening audience think about drugs.
I did too robert like for me i had deeply positive experiences that i think were despite my opinion now that based on my new understanding of the body bible now that i understand that i think that it was a sin for me to be experimenting with all these drugs in the fashion that i was namely for the purpose of journeying and entering into other portals and dimensions and i've said yeah taking a microdose of psilocybin for a creative writing day or for a hunt or a hike or something for increased sensory perception i don't necessarily consider that to be pharmakeia nor do i consider snorting a little bit of oxytocin before a date night with your wife to be an issue for enhanced touch perception or or something like that or better sex and i even think that there might be some use cases for end of life therapy or trauma or some of those things that could technically be considered legitimate medical uses but for this idea of just spiritual enlightenment and these mind expanding journeys using plant medicines just the fact that they come with these dangers that i think god knew about has painted them in a whole new light for me and i would be really remiss not to ask you about the emergence of these specifically in america because i think that's really problematic and this shocked me in your book actually where you get into this discussion between timothy leary and aldous huxley i realize this is a little bit of a pivot from where we're at right now but i have to talk about this while i have you on the show because i'm curious because these these guys despite them being the grandfathers of plant medicine in the us or whatever they seem to have something really out against christianity and the bible when you look at the history of plant medicines and you realize that the people who really made it popular in the us almost had an agenda it's a little bit concerning can you get into that a little bit yeah.
Aleister crowley was an occult magician who who referred to himself as the great beast six hundred and sixty six a lot of people know his name he's the most famous and infamous cult magician there's ever been and he was just so you know aleister crowley was a pharmacost he first started using cocaine then he went to mescaline and eventually he turned to heroin and he used those drugs not only to journey to you know perform astral projection but he intentionally wanted to contact demons and he intentionally wanted them to come to dwell within him because as an occult magician he understood that the indwelling demons were the source of his magic or occult power so that's crowley what's interesting is aldous huxley first wrote the doors of perception and in oh gosh i think fifty what fifty five i forget and he said in that book that he had tried mescaline for the first time and he wrote the doors of perception and the doors of perception is essentially just a description of what was supposed to be hooke's first mescaline trip but it turns out that huxley had actually met al easter crowley twenty years prior on a trip to berlin and it was right after crowley was had published his famous manual on occult magic called magic and theory in practice and it was when crowley was very much into using mescaline and turning everybody else that he could possibly possibly get to try it on temescalin themselves well none of huxley's biographies refer to this meeting you can only it's hard to find it's only referred to in aleister crowley's personal journal and that's hard to find but in any case huxley knew and understood what i am talking about and he learned it supposedly from aleister crowley huxley knew knew that the bible speaks against the use of drugs period but especially for any kind of you know spiritual purpose and it blew my mind because i didn't i didn't start down this rabbit trail until i was reading an excerpt from timothy leary's autobiography hopefully your audience knows who timothy leary is when timothy leary from first got started in promoting you know drug use and sort of began the hippie movement of the sixties he first consulted with aldous huxley and there is a transcript of a conversation between huxley and leary in leary's autobiography that's called flashbacks and leary quotes huxley as telling him that the opposition to what they they were doing was the bible and that just blew my mind because okay this is no conspiracy theory this is in leary's book i read.
That quote by the way the excerpt from timothy leary's autobiography and it reminded me of a billion discussions i hear every day like these two guys get together they say well let's take drugs and ask our expanded brains a question right which we see all the time like hey i'm gonna go journey or i'm gonna head head off with some of my other executives in my company we're going to take some psilocybin walk on the beach we're going to figure out some new ideas for our company we don't know we're in this state where we're going to be exposed to also demons and entities et cetera we're just going to go mind expand yet we know that gods both big g god and little g gods speak to people through plants so there's some danger there already whether it's ergo or psilocybin or ayahuasca or whatever and then once they start talking they start discussing this philosopher's stone this powerful knowledge that's been passed on by scholars and mystics and artists and again you hear a lot of people talk about that these days right the akashic record i'm going to tap into universal consciousness et cetera et cetera and then one of them says that society needs this information we got to somehow get this out into the world and out of the hands of of the intelligent rich and that kind of comes down to almost this third wave of plant medicine hey get this into the hands of many people because it'll create kumbaya and love love love and we're all going to hold hands and dance around the campfire and so they go around to that and at the very end they basically say that the brain drugs the mass produced brain drugs are going to bring about vast changes in society and all they need to do is spread the word and then at the very end of that quote i think it's aldous says it's the title timothy he says the obstacle of this whole evolution is the bible and robert i think the reason for that is because when people like the sixties is a perfect example but i think we're seeing a resurgence of that now when people take a heroic dose of psilocybin or they go on a plant medicine journey or they go to ayahuasca or whatever a lot of times they come back with this notion that seems really noble based on basically like hey we all got to love each other we should all come together and hold hands we can all change this world if we all engage in this shift of consciousness together but the one thing that nobody talks about coming out of that experience is oh and hey by the way we're broken humans fallen creatures sinful creatures and there's no way that we can pull any of this off without god and without relying on upon the salvation that was extended to us by the death of jesus on the cross in other words us humans can do this all on our own holding hands and using drugs and we could save the planet and i think that's another reason that god expressly forbade pharmacia because all of a sudden it removes god from the equation because we think we can do it all on our own plus drugs middle finger to god we don't need you in anymore because we figured out a way to expand our consciousness without you but as everything from the holocaust to modern day terrorism to the recent power play during the pandemic and beyond shows human beings left to their own capabilities despite us thinking we're all going to do the best thing and help each other out tend to really bring the world to hell in a handbasket pretty quickly once we put our faith in something other than something like absolute mortality immorality or god or the acceptance that we are broken creatures in need of salvation and that's why i think that maybe timothy leary and aldol huxley knew that one of the primary impediments to the spread of drugs was going to be the bible because the bible not only says hey you shouldn't be using these things for salvation but b as you mentioned very early in our discussion robert the only way to true immortality and true happiness and true self salvation is a belief in jesus christ that allows us to have union with god and so drugs are a perfect way to temporarily make us think we don't need that.
Yeah right exactly it's a new religion and in this new religion you can have spiritual experiences again with a biblical worldview you have to understand that this angel satan that deliberately rebelled against god and has been involved in deceiving and destroying destroying mankind since then he is going to create false religions and false spiritual experiences in order to continue to move us away from god and away from jesus christ especially and so yeah that's right back to your point about the concern about the idolatry sort of element in this whole picture the bible says there is one god and one mediator between god and mankind the man christ jesus and jesus said i am the way the truth and the life and no one comes to the father except through me so those are you know those are very exclusive claims about who gets to come to god and how the how is through me and so the only who is those who have put their faith in jesus christ that's the heart of the gospel and all satan has to do is convince us that there's another way that we can come to god apart from jesus christ and he's got you he's got you deceived and you're eventually going to reap the fruits of it but even if you don't end up having bad experiences the devil has managed to keep you away from jesus and in the end that's the beginning big deal yeah.
What do you think though about this idea that the church specifically the early church had a great deal of influence from the use of entheogens there's that book called the immortality key which is based on this idea that the eucharist was not just wine but it was spiked wine and that people were actually in an altered state of consciousness in the early church what are your thoughts on that whole book and theory put forth by brian marascu in his book the immortal mortality key right well let.
Me first say i read his book before i got his book i listened to four hours of podcasts with brian he was on joe rogan and a couple other shows and he seems like a really smart likable interesting guy he.
Is he's a friend of mine we've had dinner before and talked about this but i want to hear your take.
On it well his book did change my view of how the ancient greeks and romans used wine to worship dionysus and bacchus like you said if you're going to try to drink enough alcohol in order to have a spiritual experience you're probably not going to it's probably not going to work because you're just.
Not if it's just alcohol yet right.
And i had always assumed that they were you know simply drinking copious amounts of alcohol to have encounters with these you know the god of wine but now i think they probably had hallucinogens such as ergot added to the wine which you know that's pharmacia but it's in a wine carrier and i think he convinced convinced me that pharmacia in the context of pagan idolatry was much more common not only in ancient greece but maybe even in israel than i understood in the past but having said that i don't think brian proved his main thesis that hallucinogen use was common among the first christians and he even admitted it himself toward the end of the book he he said you know we didn't find the smoking gun so it's an entertaining read you know there's things i learned from it but the thing that got to me is well he didn't prove his thesis so why did it sell i don't know seven million twelve million copies whatever it was and i think the reason people were so excited about his book is they want to believe that god is okay with this they want to have some validation for what they're doing but if he was really going to prove his thesis to my mind there's three levels of proof that he kind of needs to pass through the first one was kind of what this book was about did it happen ever did the early church ever use ergot or something else in the wine of communion there's still no proof that it happened even once but like i said given all his research to me it seems possible you know i actually wouldn't be too surprised if i learned later that somebody found that you know say for example the church in corinth which was a mess of a church they were involved in all kinds of occult and pagan things i i wouldn't be too surprised if somebody found evidence that you know there was one or two instances that the church in corinth had defiled the eucharist.
With urgoth oh i totally wouldn't be surprised if they were but at the same time like the whole book of first and second corinthians is paul writing letters to the corinthians telling them that they were making big mistakes with these like pagan feasts and some of their sexual revelry and so the fact that they were doing it does not mean that that was right and in fact it appears that one of the greatest apostles apostles of christianity paul if he did know this was writing to the corinthians telling them yo knock it off this stuff is dangerous yeah you can't.
Drink the cup of the lord and the cup of demons yeah he says.
That the cup of the lord and cup of demons with the cup of demons very very likely being despite drug infused wine being used during the eucharist so maybe they were doing it but that doesn't mean that they were the perfect examples of early day christians that we are supposed to supposed to emulate.
Right exactly so actually brian's work really and he cites that verse but brian's work really just strengthens the argument against it because he even said in his book that there's a right way and a wrong way to do communion and that the church fathers all seem to be in agreement that adding any kind of drug is the the wrong way so you know he didn't prove it but people want to believe that it was part of it the second level if you were going to prove it you'd have to say you'd have to show that it happened frequently and you know there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that it happened frequently you would have to you know he said we didn't find a smoking gun if you want to say it was common practice you would have to have a you know smoking machine gun of evidence right to support that and then finally which is what you already addressed assuming you found widespread evidence of the use of ergot in the communion you would then need to prove that it was sanctioned that it was orthodox practice and the bible just clearly shows that it's not and like i said you know brian quotes that same verse in first corinthians ten yeah.
And i mean even if the wine was you know spiked back in those days or had a lot of these these entheogens religions in it i mean you also and this is i realize like possibly a little bit of a stretch but jesus was offered that wine on the cross and refused to drink it and maybe that was for different reasons but it could have also been because jesus christ himself knew you know this guy who had turned a whole bunch of water into wine at the wedding in cana that the wine he was being offered on the cross actually was one of these hallucinogenic and theogenic substances i realized that that's kind of like it's stretching and a total hypothesis but basically i think the long story short here is that let's just say that it's true that there were elements of entheogenic use in the early christian church that's kind of like saying nowadays there's elements of adultery and inaccurate preaching or sinful worship in some churches in america america and therefore that makes it right and it doesn't i mean church is full of people who are hypocrites and who are sinful just like any other element of society and that doesn't just because it's a practice in the church doesn't mean that we endorse it.
Right correct i mean you got to go back to the bible to your point about jesus refusing the wine that was offered to him when he was being taken to be crucified the bible says it contained gall which is believed to be a sort of a narcotic and he turned it down so jesus refused to enter an altered state of consciousness even when he was in excruciating pain but you know i thought it was interesting brian's book kind of brought out the fact that wine was more or less a universal carrier for different kinds of kinds of medicine you know and that would be a a good example of it but you know he argued he quoted one corinthians ten twenty and twenty one and paul like you said paul said the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons not to god and i do not want you to be participants with demons and then in verse twenty one he said you cannot drink the cup of the lord and the cup of demons too you cannot have a part in both the lord' table and the table of demons and so that to me if brian is right and if that is what they were doing that verse addresses it perfectly he's saying no it's a cup of demons because it's a cup of pharmacia.
Yeah in the book you you get into so much more like i had both my sons read it it was kind of like their drug education honestly because you get into you know know pcp and cannabis and ketamine and marijuana and you you cover it all and you give a really great explanation and so i gave it to my sons just because i'd rather they learn about you know all these drugs in the comfort of their own home with dad but i like the way you present it because you highlight how they work the mechanisms of action the the dangers and some of the things that even the bible says about them but i think the most important thing about your book and this this is one of the reasons i that would really love for people to read it is you give people hope you basically say that really the only way to get that type of permanent shift in consciousness and expansion of the spirit and attainment of becoming a new creation is so much simpler and so much easy and so much less habit forming and addictive than turning to plant medicines or to drugs and it's a very simple but a very explicit message and that is that you have this complete lifting of the burden off your back this complete cleansing of your consciousness and conscience and this near removal of any type of desire to be dependent upon or rely on these medicines for a spiritual experience once you discover how easy and and free and simple it is to have a deeply spiritual experience with god in a fully sober state on your knees in the morning i can tell you what robert every single morning my sons and i are sitting cross legged i don't say it's to brag or to be like you know to act like i'm all holy praying in public or whatever my sons and i are sitting cross legged on the living room floor and we have incense burning and we're playing soaking worship music and we're reading the bible and we're praying praying and i'm crying and it's this deeply spiritual release and that's every single morning and there's no drugs involved and then we stand up and we go about our day and the entire day is magical and amazing because of that and i wish more people could just experience that especially people who are considering going off and doing some type of plant medicine journey i would actually i would challenge somebody listening in just try it like instead of doing some fasting and dieta and you know leading up up to your super special trip to go see a shaman maybe take that time instead and just spend thirty days in prayer and meditation and soul searching and journaling and reading passages of the bible like proverbs or first john or romans or any of these other amazing passages of scripture and then take those i don't know usually it's like three or four days that you've dedicated to taking drugs and doing all your intention setting and journaling out afterwards and instead go out in the forest or to a quiet place and fast and have some water and have your bible and a journal without the drugs and i guarantee that you're probably going to have not probably i know you're going to have a better experience but here's the problem robert ninety nine percent of people will hear that and they'll be like wait that doesn't sound like any fun i don't get to do drugs i don't get to shift my confidence consciousness i don't get to see special colors inside my head even though trust me if you fasted for two days and you're deep in prayer with god you will see a lot of special colors inside your head don't worry about that but it's one of those things where people just don't want to chop wood and carry water but if you're listening in i would say hey you know what just try it before you go off and do plant medicine try the other route try the harder route try the route that involves blood sweat and tears and hard work and fasting and going off by yourself self and i wish more people would do that before they say hey i found god through plant medicines because if they did that first i'll bet they'd say hey i found god through prayer and fasting and engagement in the spiritual disciplines and i think that's what people need a lot more than they need yet another trip to peru or the amazon to do ayahuasca right and.
If my thesis on pharmacia is true then the experiences they are having having are a deception and they are a convincing deception a because of the sensory effect of the drugs and people make the mistake of thinking oh well if i'm having an intense experience then it must be a genuine experience but that's not necessarily the case the drugs are have got your you know sensory input on you know next level turned up to eleven so whatever spiritual experience you're having when you're high is going to be intense the problem is it's a deception and the genuine experience that the deception is an imitation of is the experience of rebirth and renewal and spiritual life through faith in the genuine god which comes through faith in jesus christ to your point i mean i have no never felt like i have lacked access to spiritual power or guidance since i came to faith in jesus christ ever have i had experiences that were as intense as some of the experiences i had on psilocybin i've had a few but again that's not what determines whether or not they are authentic and genuine and can be trusted and genuine faith in the genuine god brings genuine renewal and genuine life and like you said there is no substitute for it.
Yeah i agree well we scratch the surface of your book and what's contained within it i would really challenge people to go out and read it we probably got some folks thinking and wanting to leave some comments and questions and feedback and so if you go to bengreenfieldlife dot com pharmakia that's bengreenfieldlife dot com p h a r m a k i a bengreenfieldlife dot com pharmakia you can leave your questions you can leave your comments you can leave your feedback i'll link to robert's website robertorum dot com as well as his book he's doing a new series of videos when i mentioned his book i think he kind of saw a little bit of a resurgence of traffic to his website and and he's starting to put out some really good content and again like i mentioned in the introduction robert and i are even talking behind the scenes about maybe me recording the audio version of his book if you want to listen to it but in the meantime you've at least gotten a little taste of what's in there in today's show robert i want to thank you so much for coming on the show for writing this book we could have talked for hours obviously but i think we covered at least a little bit of what i wanted to cover i hope we got some people people thinking about the dangers of these medicines and some things they should think about instead and so i'm super grateful for you man and thank you for coming on.
The show likewise brother all right folks.
I'M ben greenfield along with robert orum signing out from bengreenfieldlife dot com have an amazing week all right this is cool but you want to pay attention because it's coming up right around the corner on friday december second you're going to get a chance to join me and some really powerful healing physicians down in sarasota florida this is a live event goes from eight am to five pm i'll be there my friend and a brilliant former podcast guest the doctor strange of medicine doctor john laurence is going to be there hbot usa doctor jason and melissa saunders are going to be there with their hyperbaric oxygen therapy brian richards of saunaspace harry paul one of john's friends who i recently met who's also an amazing healer for an event that's super unique it's all based around the elements earth fire air and water with a ton of treatments and technologies and modalities and very unique biohacks that you're going to get exposed to during the entire event basically what i mean by that is when it comes to air you're going to learn about hyperbaric oxygen and ozone and air filtration everything you need to know to upgrade your air when it comes to earth pulsed electromagnetic field therapy earthing grounding a host of other ways that you can use the power of the planet to enhance your health your sleep your recovery your muscle gain your fat loss a lot more water you'll learn about proper water filtration how to upgrade your water hydrogenated water structured water basically soup to nuts everything you need to know about water and how to to apply it in your home in your office in your life and then finally fire is a fun one lots of cryotherapy a little bit of ice too breath work inner fire practices a ton of stuff when it comes to introducing the element of fire into your life so this event is super unique john and i have been working on it behind the scenes and it has come together amazingly there's even a vip experience if you sign up for the vip experience you could come two days early or stay a few days after the event and basically you will get all the medical protocols customized by doctor john and his staff if you claim one of those ten vip spots that'll include iv methylene blue laser treatments john's really unique bliss release which is basically an endonasal adjustment which is essentially a chiropractic adjustment through your nose for your entire skull which if you've had tbi or concussion or allergies or things like like that in the past it totally reboots that entire system there's going to also be ozone treatments myers iv cocktails exosome treatments iv laser access to a cvac machine and john's entire facility is going to be at your beck and call if you got one of the vip tickets and then we're also probably going to have a little bit of a party later on in the evening after this event the whole thing is going to be a pinch me i'm dreaming full on cutting edge of biohacking experience and i'm just now letting the world know about it so spots are gonna fill up pretty fast space is limited but if you wanna get in now here's how you go to bengreenfieldlife dot com elements event that's bengreenfieldlife dot com elements event it's in sarasota florida again it's all day friday december second i would come in early and stay after if you just want to try out all the crazy modalities there i don't know how fast those vip tickets are going to sell out but either way this thing is going to be absolutely amazing i just can't wait like i'm pinching myself can't wait to be on the plane to head down there and do this so check it out bengreenfieldlife elements event and i'll see you there i hope.
More than ever these days people like you and me need a fresh entertaining well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave so i hope i've been able to do that for you on this episode today and if you liked it or if you love what i'm up to then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel wherever that might be and just find the ben greenfield life episode say something nice thanks so much means a lot.
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