Rythmia CMO Dr. Jeff McNairy | The Ayahuasca Cure (Podcast 595)

When I was first exposed to ayahuasca about 10 years ago and first heard about it, it sounded like a very scary medicine to do. I was scared to go and do this. Now, after just spending a week at Rythmia and doing 4 different nights and, and seeing about 60 people in my group going through it, it wasn't scary at all. It was quite a beautiful experience. It was hard for some people. There's nothing scary or hard about it at all, and especially in a beautiful facility that you give. How would you describe it to someone who's never done it?

I couldn't agree more with you. And there is this theme out in the world that this is some scary process, some horrible thing. I think it just comes from lack of awareness and understanding about the process. As I explained earlier, DMT is our—

All right, Dr. Jeff McNary is our guest today. He is the second in command for Rythmia, an ayahuasca center that I went to last month in Costa Rica. Blown away by their entire business and facility and the work that they do. Jeff is a psychologist with a master's degree in public health from UCLA. He's the chief medical officer of Arrhythmia Life Advancement Center in Costa Rica, which is the only medically licensed ayahuasca program in the world. He's a fourth-generation Angeleno. I'm not even sure what Angeleno— oh, from Los Angeles. Fourth generation from Los Angeles. He has managed several health programs in Los Angeles and also served as the administrative director at the well-known Passages Rehab Center in Malibu. He grew frustrated with traditional medicine because many patients kept returning for the same problems— addiction, trauma, and depression— without real improvement, including the founder and his partner at, at, uh, at Rythmia, Jerry Powell. While he was at Passages, he met a patient named Jerry Powell, and together from 2009 until 2014, they discovered how plant medicine would create deep healing and personal change. In 2016, Dr. Jeff left his career in Los Angeles. And co-founded Rythmia, where he wanted to offer a safe, medically supervised program using psychedelics to help people break through their emotional walls. Since then, Dr. Jeff and the team at Rythmia have worked with over 23,000 guests and gathered hundreds of thousands of data points on their healing journeys. You're going to love this episode. You can also watch it on our YouTube channel. Please share this on social media. This is how a lot of people will get their childhood dramas sexual traumas, and any of the kind of deep work that they're not doing cured or healed. It's certainly something that they need to listen to and share with their friends as well. We'll see you on the inside. Before we continue, today's episode is supported by our trusted gold partner, Redirect Health. If you've ever felt like you're overspending on healthcare and your employees can't even afford to use it, then listen up. Redirect Health offers healthcare benefits that finally make health insurance optional. It's a 24-hour online primary care and Rx membership that protects your business by guiding employees before problems happen. That means you're not overpaying for coverage that you don't need. It's like your mom is your doctor. You'll always know the health care you need, where to get it, and when it makes sense to use insurance so that you can pay the least. Redirect Health: protection for business and guidance for people. Go check out redirectcoo.com. That's redirectcoo.com. And if you're talking to them, let them know that Cameron at the COO Alliance recommended you go there as well. So Jeff, welcome to the Second in Command podcast.

Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to talk with you about what we're doing down here in Costa Rica.

Yeah, I am really excited as well. I feel like that guy that, that bought the Remington razor blade company is like, I like the product so much I bought the company. I liked Rythmia so much I attended, and I'm excited to have you on because I've been a client and I also just spent 7 days there last month and had an extraordinary experience at Rythmia. So for anybody who doesn't know what Rythmia is, why don't we start there and you can explain what it is, and then we're going to go backwards and talk about how we built or how you built it and, and kind of where we're going.

Sounds good. So Rythmia is what we would consider a luxury ayahuasca retreat experience. And so luxury is a funny word because we might think of these 7-star hotels in Dubai when we think of luxury. When I say luxury, what I mean is we're not in the middle of the jungle. We're not sleeping on the dirt. We're not in a yurt with a bunch of people around us all the time. This is a resort that we bought in Costa Rica and we converted it into the only medically licensed ayahuasca facility in the world. And so we have a license to serve a psychedelic that's been proven through different studies and a lot of research over the last several years that helps a lot of people with PTSD and with, if they have an addiction history, not current addicts, you know, but people that have been struggling with things. And also it's great for mental health issues like depression and anxiety. So people that come to Rythmia are seeking a life change. And so we have this facility that holds 100 people and it's, it's a, it's a program that's 7 days. Like you said, you're here for 7 days.. And we have a whole curriculum. We call it the Rythmia way. And people before they get here have to be medically cleared to participate. So I've been here since the beginning. I'm a doctorate-level psychologist, as you mentioned in my bio, and I'm in charge of all the clinical sort of practical side of providing services to the people who come here from all over the world. And we've had to date about 23,000 people come here.

Interesting. I love that you mentioned the whole medically cleared to attend Rythmia. I can state with fact that that's true, because when I attended in October, I was turned away at the gate. Um, I had done, I had done some psilocybin and some ketamine work in the month prior with, um, some shaman and some doctors, and, um, I didn't realize that I had to clean my whole system of that in addition to the whole diet of eating clean. And, and, uh, so I was truthful at the reception and told them I'd done it, and they went, well, you can't stay. I'm like, What the fuck? I just flew here from Vancouver. I flew from Vancouver to Costa Rica. They're like, well, we'll give you a credit. You can come back anytime in 12 months. So I really love that. And I thought it was bullshit. I was like, this is stupid. This is dumb. What are they doing? And then I read up about it later, and there's actually some strong medical reasons for doing that and keeping people clean. Can you explain that? Why people, if they're doing plant medicines, should have a clean system and some of the counterindications that might happen with, with some of the other plant substances or entheogens.

Yeah. And I apologize for that having happened last.

Oh, it was really good. It was, it was a good lesson for me too. It's like, why am I doing all this stuff in a month? I'm not even integrating. It was actually a really good lesson for me to slow it, slow it down.

Yeah. It, it actually always ends up for people that that happens to, which again is kind of rare because it, what ends up happening is they really have a life shift that occurs through that experience. So I'm glad, I'm glad you had a great sort of outlook on it. Thank you. For that. So sometimes what happens is substances that we're taking that are really beneficial, like psilocybin, like ketamine for some people, or just their own lifestyle that is really— there's supplements that are out there that are very good, like ashwagandha, functional mushrooms, things like that. Those are all in a class of something called serotonin agonists, which means they surge serotonin in a very healthy, productive way. But because ayahuasca has a substance in it called a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, this combined with a serotonin agonist that's not ayahuasca would cause way too much serotonin in the brain. And that's probably, uh, or prob— it could be very problematic with something called a serotonin syndrome that can happen for some people. So in order to be safe, we wanna make sure that your body's really clean and that you haven't had within 30 days on some other psychedelic experiences. Now, there's people out there in the world that take mushrooms with ayahuasca and they blend it, and it's just, it's not safe to do that. We've been able to track all the data, all the research over the years, and it's really important to be clean physically. So, there's medications that are contraindicated. So, SSRI medication, which are antidepressants, benzodiazepines for anxiety. So, those are the common like Xanax, Ativan, Valium. Also opiates for pain management and also, uh, the, the, the Adderalls and the attention deficit issue, uh, meds like Dexedrine and Ritalin, those are all contraindicated. So most, most of those meds are only about 2 weeks off, but the SSRIs are 30 days off. We wanna make sure people are really clean in their body and we always tell the, the clients, the potential guests to, to taper with the help of their prescribing physician before they can check into Rythmia.

Well, I really appreciated it. I appreciated it because it really showed me that I was going into a very safe container to do the work. I was going into a safe container where, and when I was there for the full week last month, I, I saw nurses everywhere and medics, and there was a clinic. And even one of the nights I wanted to go home early and they took my blood pressure a couple times to make sure I was safe. They checked on me in my suite. I really appreciated the safety of the experience. So for anyone who has not done any plant medicines, has maybe even not heard of ayahuasca, Can you explain what ayahuasca is, some of the history behind the medicine, the plant medicine, and then why, why people are doing it? You know, you've said you've, you've had around 23,000 clients over the last 10 years. Uh, why are those clients doing it and what kind of people are showing up to do the work?

So ayahuasca is an indigenous plant medicine, we call it, from the Amazon basin of South America. And this medicine has been used for thousands of years by a lot of the indigenous tribes down in that part of Colombia, Peru, Brazil, other parts of Latin America. And what it is, it's a blend of two different plants. And one of the plants, they call it the ayahuasca vine, and it's this big, beautiful vine that grows in the really lush, dark, you know, jungle parts of, of the Amazon. And that vine has what I was mentioning earlier. It has the monoamine oxidase inhibitor, the MAOI component in it. And then the other plant, that they get is a leaf-based plant, and that's regional depending on where the shamans live. So there's nuances between different versions of ayahuasca. All of them have the vine, but then the medicine in Colombia has a different DMT plant than the medicine does in Peru. And so it's always a little different based on that, that plant. So DMT is the active ingredient in that leaf-based plant. DMT is the active substance. That's already in our bodies. All of us have DMT already in us. Animals do, plants do, humans do. And it's really interesting about what this molecule is. Some people call it the God molecule. That's what the shamans call it down in the jungle. And there's other people that think it has a lot to do with how we connect to each other and how we connect with ourselves. It's a molecule that's naturally released into our bloodstream by ourselves without ayahuasca. Couple times in our life. One of them is when we're born. I have a 2-year-old, so she's pretty new to the world, but when she was 6 months old and less, there was a lot of DMT flowing in her bloodstream and she was kind of this angelic little spiritual connected little baby, right? Like all of us were. And if you've been around kids lately, they're kind of like that. Then when we die, DMT is released into the bloodstream as well. I was with my dad when he passed. He passed very peacefully. He was older and sick, but he passed very peacefully and he had a lot of DMT flowing. And what was he saying when he passed? He was seeing his dog from childhood. He was seeing his parents that had passed. He was very like ceremonial and peaceful. So that's another time DMT is released, which is interesting. Another third time is when we have lucid dreams. Sometimes we have dreams that don't make any sense and are just whatever, processing stress for your day. But then we have dreams that seem like a message. They seem like we're getting information. And those are the lucid dreams. And that's where there's a high DMT content being released. So the way I look at it is DMT is a molecule that connects us to our environment and to the universe and other people. And we've become blocked in our life through environmental conditions that are maybe not ideal. I grew up in Los Angeles, so I had a lot of smog and a lot of, you know, living in the concrete jungle as we call it, and eating poor food. So, all these different environmental things and just lifestyle habits have led to our natural DMT channels being blocked and it's not flowing like it should be. And so, if I drink DMT and drink ayahuasca, what happens is it calibrates the natural release channels that I have in my body. I call it priming the pump. You get the pump to start to work again by giving it a little bit of the substance of need. And so that's why after you have an ayahuasca ceremony or you've been to arrhythmia for a week, your life can now take off in a different manner. And it's, you're really just more authentically yourself. Again, you get back to who you are as a person. You have not any more of this sort of rigid way of thinking and you're more connected. So the ayahuasca is a really interesting plant that, you know, I'm always blown away by how these guys even found it. Like, how did they know to put these two plants together?

Right?

So there's all these sort of folklore and mythology about how it happened. The medicine that we use from Colombia, their tradition is that they saw a jaguar thousands of years ago being very docile and kind of playful with the people of the, of the tribe. And then they kind of watched this jaguar's patterns. It had been gnawing on the vine of ayahuasca. Then it went and it had been eating tea leaf, and then it was like, kind of part of the tribe. And so they, they mimicked that and came up with this drink. So it's pretty, pretty interesting stuff.

There's another really interesting story in, in the, I guess, uh, evolution of Rythmia. One, you know, you had just went back thousands of years as to how they actually found the, the different plants and combined them together. But there's another combination that I guess happened to get Rythmia to where it is today and what it is today. And that's you meeting the founder of Rythmia, Jerry Powell. Can you speak briefly to, um, to that story? Cause I think it's an incredible story. That a bit of the hero's journey, right? Where someone who had really stumbled and then went through some valley of death and then it kind of came out and transitioned on the other side. And you were a part of that, getting through the valley of death and coming out the other side. And then I guess the two of you really built this into what it is today. And there's a couple hundred people at the Rythmia working. How many employees have you guys got?

We have 245 employees currently.

Yeah, this is like, this is a legit business. I mean, there's, I was staying in a beautiful casita. The food on premises is incredible. The spa was amazing. There's mud baths and massages and you're doing daily colonics and an incredible pool, beautiful gift shop, like a really beautiful resort in a way. Not as you mentioned, 5-star, 5-star, but certainly solid 4-star. And a very complicated business that we'll talk about. But what was the genesis of that business? How did you and Jerry meet, and what was the entrepreneurial seizure that, that had he and, and you decide to build this thing?

Well, when I was training at UCLA Med Center with my degree in public health and then looking at psychology as a future option for me, I was going to go to medical school and be a psychiatrist. I was kind of looking down these different roads. Um, what I was noticing in my practice, whether it was with women at the OB-GYN department that I was managing at the time, you know, back when I was in my mid-20s, or whether it was a drug and alcohol rehab that I was facilitating and I was the administrative director of, all these different clinical environments, I was noticing a, a theme is that the clients were not really getting healed. They were not really getting better. What they were getting was stabilized and their symptoms were being remedied, but the underlying cause of whatever was their condition was not getting addressed. And this was a big question mark I had in my brain. Throughout all of my medical training, which is up to now, I've been in the field about 35 years. And so when I was running a drug and alcohol rehab in Malibu called Passages, that's where I met the CEO of Rythmia, and his name was Jerry Powell. And he came in and like most people that come to a rehab, they're really rough. They've been through a lot recently. Jerry was extra rough. He, he had a very difficult childhood. He was raised in a coal miner's town in Scranton, Pennsylvania. His parents were rough. His dad was a rough dude. So was his grandparents, but he was a survivor and he was an entrepreneur and he was a really hard worker. So he had done amazing in his life career-wise, but he had neglected his family. He neglected himself. He was doing all kinds of crazy behaviors and partying and just basically got outta hand completely. And so when he came to Rhythmia, we were trying to work with Jerry on getting him to feel grounded and stable, hopefully for the first time in his life. And it wasn't really going so well. He got sober off of his drug of choice, which at that time was Demerol, which is a very difficult, uh, opiate-based surgical medicine for when you're under getting surgery. So that's a horrible thing to be addicted to, but he was. And so he got past that at Passages. It took him 2 months, but then when he discharged and, and was done with Passages, for the next 5 years, I put him in my private practice. And this is where things really started to get outta hand because he didn't think he was going to rehab for alcohol and cocaine or anything else. He just thought it was for Demerol and that it'd be fine. But, which is crazy, right? But, but he began living this crazy lifestyle. His wife left him, his kids weren't talking to him.

Yeah.

And I was like, all right, man, I'm gonna try to get you focused and get you kind of get you to just do the work is what I was hoping would happen. So every day, 5 days a week, I met with this guy for 5 years and I went to his house in Malibu. I lived in the Marina del Rey area in Los Angeles and it was just not going well. And eventually he got suicidal, which had happened a couple times in my practice with him over the last 5 or 6 years. And I said, dude, you can't kill yourself. This is ridiculous. Like, you know, you got so much to live for your, your kids, even though they're not talking to you, you know, that's gonna happen one day, hopefully. And I said, why don't you take a break? You've been in therapy for a long time. Go on a break. Just do something that's like calming and just get out of LA for a bit. So it was on that trip that he went to Costa Rica and tried plant medicine for the first time. And I didn't even know what he was doing because I thought he was going to Thailand and he was initially with his girlfriend. But that got messed up or something. And then an aftercare therapist that I worked with at Passages called him because he posted something on Facebook that was very alarming. And I didn't have Facebook at the time. I still don't. So I never saw this. He posted this beautiful picture of this sunset and this beach and he said, this place sucks. I was like, you know, so everybody was kinda like, what's going on with Jer? Right? So one of our aftercare counselors contacted him and said, Dude, I know that you're in a bad place. You left Passages, not great. And I know what you're attempting to do. You've talked about it. So I want you to go down to Costa Rica and try this plant medicine because I know a lot of clients that I've had just like you, they were able to turn their life around with this particular psychedelic. And Jerry said, all right, what I got to lose? So he went and, and that's where it completely turned him around, his whole experience, which is a big part of our, our company story and all that stuff. So when he came back from that trip to LA, I didn't even know that he was in Costa Rica. I just thought, well, I'm on a vacation too. This is great.

You know?

So he came back and he was this different person, completely different. He wasn't chain smoking, he wasn't doing drugs, he wasn't fist fighting people at, you know, at the restaurant like he used to do. He was this totally different guy. And I was really shocked and surprised. I'm like, how did this happen? So he told me, he explained the whole experience, the journeys as they call 'em when people are on plant medicine. Like, what happened, what he saw from his childhood that was unresolved. And I was intrigued and, but also very skeptical, to be honest. I was very doubting of this, but I went down to Costa Rica about a month later with him. This was in August of 2014. And I went down, I had my own experience with this plant medicine and I was like, this is incredible. I don't have some, I didn't think I had something I was really needed to work on, but I did. I had a lot of things that I was in denial of, and I was able to turn a corner in my life and in my career. And that's the sort of the catalyst and the spark that had Jerry and I decide we wanted to open a facility that could be really safe, really clean, have medical supervision, because the place we were at was a dive. It was just dirty, no medical care, and just this horrible experience physically around. But the medicine was incredible. The shaman was great. But we didn't think a lot of people would go for that, you know? So we, we wanted to have a place that was more inviting for people to come to.

So you did have, or he, you did have a big vision for building this then. Was a real quick question for you. When I was first exposed to ayahuasca about 10 years ago and first heard about it, it sounded like a very scary medicine to do. And I had had some experience with psychedelic younger parties. I hadn't really done anything with shamans or doctors yet, but I was scared to go and do this. Now, after just spending a week at Rythmia and doing 4 different nights and seeing about 60 people in my group going through it, it wasn't scary at all. It was, it was quite a beautiful experience. It was hard for some people. You know, we were throwing up and you get diarrhea and, and maybe you're confronting some of those childhood traumas or some sexual traumas or whatever might kind of arise. But there's nothing scary or hard about it at all. And especially in a beautiful facility that you give. How would you describe it to someone who's never done it?

I couldn't agree more with you. And it, there is this theme out in the world that this is some scary process, some horrible thing. I think it just comes from lack of awareness and understanding about the process. As I explained earlier, DMT is already in us. So when you take a little extra, it's something like feels familiar. You feel like, well, this is not weird. This is something I've felt in a dream that I had. Or I felt this sometime when I had a really great evening with my family 5 years ago and on vacation, I felt this peace. So there's something in it that's familiar. So that right there kind of helps people relax a little bit. Now, if, if I'm holding on to painful emotional trauma because I've been through some rough moments, or maybe a rough era, maybe in childhood I was abused or abandoned or who knows what, or maybe I was a military person and I was in the war. And I never really dealt with that. There's all these different things that happen in life that we go through. I'm still holding on to those emotions that I didn't have a chance to feel and let out during those times. And the reason why I didn't let them out in those moments is because when we're trying to survive, our emotions of a traumatic event get in the way of our behavioral survival. So a good example of that would be if I'm being like jumped on the streets of New York and people are trying to fight me. Well, I don't want to be scared or angry or confused. I want to be physically sharp so I can either run away or fight back. Sure. So those emotions that I'm supposed to be feeling right there, they get pushed into the amygdala. That's the part of the brain that holds our subconscious or our emotional memories. And then the event's over. I survived, I ran away, they didn't get me. And now I'm supposed to feel those emotions that I felt that I, that I blocked back when it was happening. But we don't have a good system in the West to do this. We just move on to the next event. We move on to the next day at work. We move on to the next relationship that's, that's bad as well. And we just keep going and going. And there's this whole buildup and tension of all this unresolved emotional pain that's still in our amygdala. So when you do the Rhythmia Way program, you use ayahuasca, You use ketamine, you use these different substances out in the world, and we don't have those at Rythmia, just ayahuasca. But there's a lot of different ways to do this.

Yep.

You get to process those emotions, you get to feel them, let 'em leave, and you get to do it in a safe environment. And people, that's the part people I think get a little nervous about. They think, I don't wanna relive my trauma. They don't, you don't relive your trauma. You relive only the things that are necessary so you can, what, what we have is called a psychosomatic release. And that's where you want to get out the emotion through a physical response.

So that might be the scary part is you're dealing with some emotions you haven't had to deal with or have not subconsciously dealt with. All right. I want to roll the camera back 10 years and you are considering getting involved with and building a business with a newly former addict. What the fuck were you thinking? Like, are you kidding? Like, I love the whole vision of entrepreneurs and they can sell us on this crazy vision and crazy idea. And he's, he's been successful in building businesses before. You were already very successful in your career. What was it about his vision that grabbed you? What did you buy into? What was it that had you say hell yes? Or was it a cautiously, let's just do something for a while kind of a dance first? Like, were you all in right, right at the beginning, or were you just, just the tip?

I— it was a combo of all of those things. It was a very interesting time back then. And, you know, like you said, I was I was at the peak of my career. I had no reason to leave everything in LA and move to Costa Rica and do this wild thing. However, I'm sure you've noticed this as well with your own experiences with plant medicine and psychedelics, is that oftentimes you have this emotional— it's called a consulta. It's like, it's a download of information that you can receive. Now, sometimes that sounds crazy maybe to people that you can get information downloaded through psychedelics. But the way I like to explain it, maybe in a science way, cuz that's my background, is the science psychology side of this. It's your own personal biases, your own fears, your own doubts. Those things are just out of the way when you're, when you're involved in a psychedelic process that's, that's has intention based. So what happens is I had this amazingly strong feeling that I should jump into this company with Jerry, and we should build this for people that can come and use this as a tool. Now, I was really nervous about it because we were gonna first use a substance called iboga. Now, iboga is a really strong psychedelic, and that was one we had had experience with the first time. We shifted to ayahuasca about 2 years down the road because we had all these different experiences with the plant medicine itself. And also with government regulations and all kinds of long story, but I was very, very hesitant because I knew that as soon as I signed up for this and started going down this road, that the Board of Psychology would, uh, require me to give up my license and they would require me to no longer practice psychology because I'm endorsing a, a Schedule 1 substance that's not legal in California. So I knew this was all coming., before I did it. So it was a very scary time for me. However, aside from, like you mentioned, knowing that Jerry was a successful entrepreneur, he had—

because this was, this was pre-, um, cannabis being legalized in like Colorado even, wasn't it? Or right around when Colorado was legalizing?

Right about, right about the time it was starting to get legalized.

Yes. Okay.

And so we were blazing this new ground. Nobody had thought of a medical facility that can treat people for all different issues and have a psychedelic. So I think it was a combination of my own experience with the plant medicine, but also, like I mentioned earlier in my career, I was kind of having these doubts about the Western medical model. I want to help people resolve their problems, not just treat them and remedy them like a Band-Aid. I want to actually get to the core issues and help people move forward in a better way.

Love it. It's interesting. Like now, any, any business event that I go to, there's sessions around psychedelics, there's sessions around sexuality, there's sessions around like childhood traumas. That stuff wasn't ever talked about publicly 10 years ago. That was very kind of like with your therapist or, or maybe with your, you know, your bartender, but it was never, it was never, uh, as common as it is today. You certainly wouldn't have talked about psychedelics at a business event. I mean, Jesus. Now it's like at breakfast, lunch, and dinner at every event, somebody's talking about it. What were some of the logistics to build this thing out? Because now if I said, if somebody said to me today, hey, do you want to build out a high-end resort that does ayahuasca for successful people? I'd be like, yes, let's do that. 10 years ago, I would've been no fucking way. So what were some of those logistics back in the early days to build this thing and to get it up to some kind of scale?

Scale? Yeah, well, you know, Jerry, the CEO, his background is in direct response marketing. So, so that gives you a little insight, right? Huge, helpful for this. So we had a marketing strategy that was really unique, and we had also a group of thought leaders, they call them, which I don't know what that word necessarily means completely, but it's people that have a following, people that are in the space of maybe spirituality or self-improvement. Michael Beckwith from the Agape Spiritual Center is a great example. Like, he's a thought leader who has a positive vibe. So we, we partnered with some of these people, Michael Beckwith being one of them, and we had a lot of support in the communities from these different areas. But, you know, the, the biggest challenge for me was, cuz I was in charge of the medical licensing. So my background at UCLA was in health policy and program development and all the legal sides of licensing for health agencies. So, I immediately got to work with the Costa Rican Ministry of Health. And because there was no template for a psychedelic license that was medical-based, I had to work with the government to kind of blaze new ground to come up with what are the requirements for this and what are the standard operating procedures for such a practice to even happen. So, that was probably the most challenging part of this and it took me 2 years to do it, which again, if you look, think about it, it's pretty fast. But, I had to convince this conservative Catholic Latin American government that I'm going to have people drink ayahuasca, have visions, some of them, and heal themselves. And it was just like this crazy idea that, that, to be honest, they were very good about looking at our perspective. It was, it was groundbreaking era for us in that, in the early 2016 is when it happened.

Yeah. I'm curious what you think it was that got them to come on side with you. Because almost every company in some way that's starting a new industry has to do that. Uber had to do that. Tesla's had to do that. Waymo's had to do that. What you guys are doing, I, I mean, I was at the, the main 5-day TED conference. I went for about 11 years and in 2018 I saw Rick Doblin speak and then we went to an after-hours, not a party, but it was like a 10:00 PM until 1:00 AM event for about 150 of the attendees. And we were all forced to put our phones away so we weren't allowed to take, 'cause the people that were there were like legit, legit people in the VC community, private equity entrepreneurs. And I was like, oh my gosh, all these people are doing drugs. But they weren't doing— they weren't doing drugs. They were— they were working with medicine to be able to explore and expand and to scale.

Yeah.

Do you think the Costa Rican government was more open to that because if they go back into their lineage a little bit, that— that plant medicines and shamans are more natural? Or do you think about— or did you get lucky?

Well, I think it's a combo of a lot of things. Lucky is definitely one of them. Another one is that the whole country of Costa Rica is viewed as a native indigenous land. So we're in the US and Canada, right? There's segments of the land that are considered indigenous, like reservation areas. But in the Costa Rican country, the whole country is. So I had to prove that there was a tribe here that had a lineage of ayahuasca. And so it took me a while to find them, but I did. There's some of them still live here actually, and they're still thriving. In their indigenous, you know, land up in the mountains. We met with them, we met with some of the tribal leaders, and we showed that this was a historical thing that Costa Rica had. But a big part of it was that the thought leaders, the, the politicians, the business entrepreneurs, the people obviously in the tech industry, they're all already on this sort of vibe to try to get the next level of information. And downloads to help them in their careers and in their businesses. So there was a, an intrigue that the, that the people at the top had for what was potentially gonna happen in their country. And they thought that this could be a groundbreaking moment for the country of Costa Rica to be something that could kind of set the stage for global transformation with plant medicine.

Interesting. Yeah. And I think it kind of coincided at the same time with, with, as you mentioned, some of the thought leaders. Starting to speak about it publicly. You know, we've got Rick Doblin clearly with the work he was doing with MAPS, and then you had Dave Asprey from Bulletproof was talking about it. Joe Rogan started talking about use of it. Tim Ferriss was speaking about it. Jen Hude, Tim Gray, a lot of like thought leaders were starting to explore this. I think your timing coincided nicely. Did you partner with the indigenous community in any way, or did you just have to find a tribe that was still around?

We did, and we, we're still partnered with them and They are part of our, uh, board. They, they sign certain paperwork with us all the time, and there are people that we, um, have the relationship with because we're helping continue the lineage traditions. And it used to be only oral tradition, but now they're getting more into written tradition. There's a lot of things that we're kind of help facilitate with this group of people. It's, it's really exciting. It's fun to, to talk with them. They visit on site here every so often too.

And are they paid a royalty or a licensing fee or some, is there some kind of revenue that they get as well?

Yeah, we, we do, uh, we have a set aside, um, uh, donation and like a, it's like a, it's not the same as a 501. It's not that, but it's like a similar paperwork version of a charitable organization that we fund for them. And so they use it for schools and they use it for health issues and water and different stuff. So we're very much connected to them in that way.

Well, I learned something from a CEO that I used to coach. He was doing some work up in the oil and gas industry up in Fort McMurray, north of Edmonton in Canada. And he did a lot of work with the Indian bands to allow them to do construction. And I said, you know, is there a financial side of things? And he said, yeah, there's a percentage. I said, oh, it's like bribery. He goes, no way, man. You try to bribe them, the deal is dead. You actually have to understand them. You have to care. Like, they, yes, they want their check, but they also want you to understand and to honor. And so you can't just go in and write a check and think that anything's going to work. You really do have to work closely with them. So it sounds like you're doing that today.

100%. 100%. And they take it very seriously, as we do. And it's allowed us to open a lot of doors to work with different indigenous groups in South America. So in order to work with those groups, we had to get the approval and the sort of collaboration of this local group. As well.

I wanted to ask you about, about what it's like running it today. But before I forget, I wanted to mention something. You mentioned that 10 years ago, Gerry did not have a good relationship with his kids. I was having breakfast on the 4th or 5th day that I was there, and Gerry was sitting there and his 2 kids who are in their kind of mid-20s were sitting there, and one of his sons was getting up to leave. And Gerry said, no, no, just, just wait. Just wait. I want to spend time with you. And I looked at Gerry. I'm like, Oh my God, you really love your kids. Like, you're a wonderful dad. And you could just see the love and the connection. It was really fucking beautiful. And I turned to his son and I'm like, I want you to remember this moment. And he goes, no, no, I know. Like, you could— like, he definitely has a good connection with his two boys. It was really— it was extraordinarily beautiful to see.

Yes. And that relationship was in the garbage when I first met Jerry. It was almost unsalvageable from the history of their family. So it was a— it is a such— it's a miracle, to be honest, like, that he has this relationship with his kids.

Well, I saw, I saw him get choked up when, when we were talking about that. I knew it meant a lot to him. And I think that's some of the work that you're doing with the people that come to Rythmia is you're helping them connect with their parents and connect with their own kids and connect with themselves. And I think the work is very, very important. What's it like running the business of Rythmia today with all of the people, with all the moving parts? I mean, COVID must have been brutal, but we're past that now. What's it like running it today?

I think the biggest challenge that I have is constantly bridging the medical policies with what's happening shamanically in the ayahuasca sessions in the evening. And now, our shamanic team, as I'm sure you know, are amazing. They're these incredible people and they're very committed to the process, but they're not clinically medically trained individuals.. And so my medical team of 4 medical doctors, 12 registered nurses, and a paramedic, we're constantly doing trainings and working with them, but we are receiving trainings from them as well. So it's a collaborative back and forth between the shamanic, the spiritual side of this business, and then also the logistical medical side. So for us, the, the number one thing is the customer. Of course, we want the customers to feel safe. So in a way, we lead with the medical license. People come to Rythmia for lots of reasons, but the, probably the number one reason is because we have this safety ensured by the medical license. So once people get here, excuse me, and they feel safe, they go through a medical check-in and they have the urgent care center on site for, as you mentioned, get an IV or get, excuse me, any sort of medical procedure they might need, which is very rare because everybody that comes here is very healthy and qualified. Once they feel that safety medically, then they can go emotionally deep as needed during the ayahuasca sessions. So after that, it's in the shaman's hands. Now we're overseeing the guests and we're supervising them. Nobody slips through the cracks at all. I have the case conference meeting every Wednesday. We go through every single guest. As I'm sure you noticed, everyone knows your name. Everybody is aware of where you're at in the process.

I'm talking embarrassingly knows your name. I'm like, are you kid— how do you know me? On day one, they all— it was like really, it was like, it was like going to Disney. It's really extraordinary. Sorry, keep going.

Yeah. And customer service is our huge focus. Like we don't want anybody to feel like they're not getting what they came for. And this, this process of managing this sort of dynamic, it's funny because I thought I had seen it all in my career. As a psychologist in Los Angeles, working at locked psychiatric hospitals, running a rehab, working in the UCLA Med Center. I'd seen a lot of high-risk stuff.

Sure.

But here at Rythmia, the deep process of healing that goes on for these guests is, is mind-blowing. And it happens every single week. And so to run this facility, it requires constant supervision of the people that are here as, as participants. We have to follow up with them, and there's a, a direct line of communication between all the different departments. A person who teaches a class is reporting back to us at the end of the class who is participating, who it looks like they're sleepy, who looks like they're upset or worried or scared. And then we have counselors and coaches that go check on 'em. We're constantly in this flux of movement to make sure everybody is moving down the path of their success.

Now I know that you, you've just added stem cell treatments. I don't know when those were added, but very profitable. And a lot of guests, I think 25 or 30% of the guests are doing stem cells while they're there. I wish that you would also offer some vitamin drips and some NAD drips. I think it would be really easy to plug that in. It would be a, a price point, uh, you know, a little below stem cell, but I'll bet you'd get 90% would do those a couple days a week. Um, massages and free, uh, free, free massages, but also paid. But anyway, incredible health facility on site. But it looks like now you're expanding into real estate as well. There's going to be some real estate development being done in Costa Rica. That's like a— can, can you speak to that community? And then is there any other expansion into other markets that you're working on, or, or is it just going to stay where you are?

I love all these questions. It's so exciting to talk about this stuff, you know. So what's interesting about the longevity, uh, protocols that we have with the stem cells and things is that I often speak at longevity conferences. And, what I'm talking about at these things is how at the end of a week of ayahuasca, and we have 4 ceremonies per week for people, and your body has been going through a detox with the food that we have, this amazing food, super high vibration food, and not eating dinner because you're in the ayahuasca session. So, you're intermittent fasting a bit. And then, just the blue zone of Costa Rica, All of these things combined make it so that at the end of the week, on a Friday and a Saturday, when people are receiving stem cells, their body's like a sponge. It's super clean, and you can absorb this longevity medicine into your body in a way that's next level. Because when I talk at these conferences, the number one complaint from people that buy stem cells is they don't really feel anything's happening. Now, on the medical side, we know that you might not feel anything happening. It's not even about that. But for customer service, if you're spending so much money on stem cells, you want to feel something. So it's a, it's a customer service issue. And so our bodies are very absorbent of things that are healthy after this week. So that part's amazing. So, uh, the residences is something that we had on our vision board in our mind from the very beginning. We pictured a community based around the Rythmia property, and so What that means is that somebody that comes here as a guest goes through the program, you know, they're, people are often not around like-minded individuals back at home. I mean, some people are, if you're from Los Angeles or New York or Chicago or big Toronto, big cities, yes. But people from these more rural parts of the world or parts of, you know, Central America in the middle, Kansas, for example, they don't feel that community. So having a residences area where people could come, they could live here, they could rent it out, they could visit as a vacation home, and they, they're allowed access onto Rythmia to participate in ayahuasca sessions or just come for a day and have lunch and meet the guests, go to a couple classes. So we have this whole community thing that we really are excited about. We've already sold some houses and it's very close to Rythmia. It's on the beach. It's right nearby. Beautiful area. And that's a big picture vision. To help people really have purpose in their life and to have a place where they can really, you know, have like-minded people around them. That part's really fun to do, to be honest.

I love that. One of my most known books— I've written 7 business books, but my most known is called Vivid Vision. And I love having that vision that people can actually see what's inside the mind of the CEO and COO, so then they can figure out how do you make that come true. If we can't see what you're building, we can't conspire to help that dream come true. So I love that you're using you know, vision boards and those tools. A couple final questions before we wrap. One is, how do you work with— and let me back up. Almost every successful entrepreneur is a little bit crazy, and we need them to be, right? They're the colonize Mars, right? Or put a computer on every desktop. Or, you know, Nike, when they said in 1972, crush Adidas. I mean, those are ludicrous ideas., and yet somehow they're able to get that second in command and leadership team to buy in. How do you work with the crazy, often ADD, often bipolar nature of most entrepreneurs? How do you work with that, uh, to save them from themselves? How do you be the leash to their dragon without choking them?

I love it. Yes. Amen to all of that. Jerry is such a unique individual for me. But he's not a unique individual in the world of entrepreneurs. He's very typical in that sort of wild way of living and, and thinking.

And, and, and by the way, it's why most doctors will say there's a problem with the entrepreneur is we're not like the doctors, but fuck, we're not supposed to be.

Not supposed to be every, the world wouldn't be what it is if everybody was supposed to be right.

So somebody, somebody once said that entrepreneurs have to be outside of the box. I'm like, there, wait, there was a box? I didn't know there was a box.

Yeah. You're like, what the fuck you talking about? Exactly. So what, what I learned from Jerry is that by being with, I've been with this dude since 2009, so I know him pretty well. I'm still his, I'm still his therapist even though I work with him, which is a, a little weird sometimes. But what I saw is that if I, if I can trust Jerry's business decisions, which I do, I'm gonna pick up on the emotional side. And the processing side of his decisions, not just for him, but with, for the company, because Jerry is very counterintuitive about what, you know, we should be doing next as a company. And it doesn't make a lot of sense to people all the time. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but I've seen a pattern of him doing things based on his intuition, based on his history of success, and based on the way he thinks about things, which are very detail-oriented. Almost to the point, like you mentioned, of OCD to an extreme level. So what my role with Jerry and with the company in a sense is to keep that emotional side balanced. If he gets too high emotionally or too low emotionally, then we're, we're, the whole company's at risk, including himself.

Yeah.

So I help him buffer that and kind of keep him in a, in a healthy zone. I look at it like, uh, when I had bipolar, Jerry's not bipolar, but when I have bipolar clients, they're, they're going up and down, up and down a lot. And my job was to kind of keep him in the middle where they could stabilize. And so that's basically what I'm doing for Jerry on a regular basis, almost daily. But it's, it's not, uh, something that's extreme and, and difficult now. It's something that we've gotten to a habit of, a pattern where I can just like give him a certain look or I can ask him a certain question and he knows what I'm getting at and he just gets right back on track. So there's a lot of like nuances to it, but. I had to take out my logic from my own head about what I thought the company should do. I just said, that's not my job. My job is to support this dude and to help the company survive emotionally. So that's been a big part of what we're doing and it's led to a great level of success.

Thank, thank you. It's huge. And, and by the way, there's a huge correlation, a statistical correlation between the number of entrepreneurs and the number of people that have bipolar disorder. Most entrepreneurs are very far right on the spectrum of bipolar. I have 11 of the 11 traits of bipolar disorder. The mania is why people will quit their job and come and work for us, or it's why we'll spend money on a marketing campaign that we don't know if it's going to work, or it's why we go and buy a crazy resort in the jungle and get people to go and do drugs. Like, are you— that is very manic. The stress and depression, sometimes we don't know how to deal with it, so we use substances to avoid, but, but we kind of implode, and we need to surround ourselves with coaches and mentors or mastermind communities like YPO. Otherwise, we kind of implode. So I don't, I don't think there's necessarily a negative. I think the medical community think there's a problem, but most entrepreneurs are very high far right on the spectrum for ADD.

Yes.

And I have 17 of the 18 signs of attention deficit disorder. My ex said if I was paying attention during testing, it would have been 18 for 18. Um, hey, last question I've got. I want to go back to the 21 or 22-year-old Jeff McNary, you're no, you're not a doctor yet. What advice would you give yourself to be a better leader and a better business person? Forget about the medical side, but what advice would you give to, to be a better leader and a better business person?

Enjoy the process that you're in at the moment. Do not worry too much about that next degree, that next career move, that next job. Of course, Have your, have your 5, 10-year plan, have it and follow it, but appreciate the moment you're in because that moment is short-lived and there's a wealth of information you're gonna gain from being present in those moments.

Be here now.

That's it.

Dr. Jeff McNary, the chief medical officer and second in command for Arrhythmia. Thanks so much for sharing with us on the Second in Command podcast. Yes.

Thank you so much. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Appreciate it.

Love it.