Ep. 157: "Own Your Life Shamelessly" with Jeremy Gardner

This is the You Winning Life Podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, trainer and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser. Hey everybody, welcome back. Today's guest is the founder of Made Men and the managing partner at Mystic Ventures. Jeremy Gardner is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, venture capitalist with a track record of success operating and investing in frontier industries such as blockchain technology, cosmetics, and psychedelics. He's one of the most well-known early entrepreneurs in the crypto space, and in 2014, while in college, he founded the Blockchain Education Network, otherwise known as BEN, which is a global education nonprofit. Shortly afterwards, Jeremy co-founded Augur, the decentralized prediction market platform, had the first ever ICO utility token and DeFi app on Ethereum. He worked as an entrepreneur in residence, an investor at Blockchain Capital, investing in some of the industry's biggest companies and creating the first tokenized security, BCAP. He also served as a founding editor-in-chief of Distributed magazine. Today we're going to get into a little bit about blockchain technology, men's skincare, which is a complete curveball from what you would think from somebody in the crypto market, psychedelics, philosophy, and self-care. So stay tuned. All right, Jeremy, thank you so much for hanging out. You're right now, and you're in Puerto Rico, for anybody who's, uh, wondering where in the world are you.

Sunny and warm here, I can't complain.

Yeah, I woke up, it was 62 here in South Florida, and, uh, I actually no longer have an office since the pandemic kicked in, so every once in a while I have clients meet me outside my condo on the grass, and it was that beautiful— like, it's not San Diego 60, it's a South Florida 60, so a little bit chillier.

Well, I spent my time in South Florida, so I know what you're talking about.

Yeah, awesome. So, all right, so of the billion and one things we can talk about, I'm sure there's probably like hours just on every part of what you're involved with and the different journey of your life. But, um, short of what I, you know, short of the bio that I gave before you jumped into the show, um, you know, talk to us a little bit about one, how you got into all of this stuff, right? How you started off in the crypto world. I know 2010-2011 is kind of like where that first hit me, where my cousin who was in college or just finishing college at the time was like, "Guys, you gotta get in on this. You gotta get in on this." Bitcoin was like nothing at the time.

Oh, he was super early.

He was super, super, super early. Shout out, Joey. So we all were kicking and screaming on this thing and whatever it was. But, you know, crypto is here. We know that it's gone through some challenges over the last year or two, which just kind of makes sense in the infancy of everything. Um, but what, what originally, you know, what did you know about this? How did you hear about this? Was that your first venture into this type of world? Because I know you did, you know, while you were even in college, there was some stuff that came out of this.

Yeah, I mean, I was, uh, always entrepreneurial, um, even though Most that, you know, in the small town I grew up in probably wouldn't have recognized it as that because it manifested in things like selling pot, which, you know, while entrepreneurial, wasn't very well received. But I always knew I wanted to do, you know, positively impactful work in my life. I, when I first got into college, I was at Occupy Wall Street, you know, protesting the banks. Seeing that amount to nothing. And it was actually around then, my freshman year of college, that I first came across about Bitcoin. I was reading in Rolling Stone's annual hot issue, and they had their hot black market Amazon.com, and it was the Silk Road. And I thought that was fascinating, more from, as you might imagine, the black market perspective, which I actually did find fascinating. But then when it came to the Bitcoin side of things, I was like, what is this? This seems like such an impractical technology that kind of exists for buying drugs off the internet. And so I didn't really take much interest in crypto at the time, but then I went on to work in government for the governor of Massachusetts and then helped run the first campaign of the woman who became attorney general and now is the governor as well, Maura Healey. But I was very disillusioned by politics, just as I was with activism. Just saw my 20s being pushing paper and raising money. Had this very brief period of cognitive dissonance before I transferred to the University of Michigan, where I just had kids sleeping on my couch talking my ear off about Bitcoin. And this is in January 2014. I finally read more and went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, and I discovered there were Bitcoin clubs. There was a Bitcoin club at Michigan, and then at my very first Bitcoin club meetup, I discovered there were Bitcoin clubs at MIT and at Stanford. And that same night, I got on a call with the heads of all the Bitcoin clubs and said, why don't we create an organization out of this? So it happened very quickly in a matter of weeks. And within 3 months, I had incorporated a nonprofit that had over 100 chapters in 20+ countries on every habitable continent. It was very quick because young people were hungry for crypto. There weren't a lot of resources out there. We were offering the sharing of resource, getting kids to conferences, helping getting them jobs. And now it's the oldest and largest nonprofit in the industry, the Blockchain Education Network. So That was kind of my gateway. And then through that nonprofit, I met a brilliant 18-year-old computer scientist, and we dropped out of school together, started what would become the first DeFi app or an application on the Ethereum blockchain.

Incredible. The one thing that stands out to me of that is the idea of like not doing this alone, right? You were disillusioned, you were frustrated. And I see that so much, right? We— the world, the world is a lot of chaos around us. And I see, I feel that, and I see it, I see it as a therapist, the disillusionment, what's my purpose? What's my mission? And the one thing that stood out to me most about what you're doing is how quickly you collaborated with other people.

And I think that was— that was also my background. I mean, I had done activism at Occupy. I had worked in government and on a campaign. And so it was actually those kind of community organizing skills that suited me so well for starting this nonprofit. I kind of just fell into my lap. And it helped that I had some of the most prestigious universities in the world at the starting point. And it was all just very kind of serendipitous that it happened that way. But I saw that being my opportunity, at least initially, to do something meaningful, and I jumped at it. I think I was always seeking meaning in my youth, and this really felt like something potentially important, even though around that time crypto started to fall apart for the first time. My friend Charlie Shrem, became crypto's first felon, got arrested at JFK. Then Mt. Gox, largest exchange in the world, imploded with something like 30% of all Bitcoin in circulation disappearing. And so it was a crazy time, but it was this perfect opportunity for a young person with zero pedigree to make an impact on a quickly dying industry.

Yeah, and I can kind of see that age bracket, right, of being in your early 20s, the risk-taking factor. Is probably maybe more predisposed than when someone's in their 30s, 40s, and 50s and they're looking for much more stability. Do you find that that was something that you were kind of already predisposed to?

Well, I was predisposed towards risk, but what was critical to my thinking—and huge shout-out to that author—is Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. So I just read that book and he was talking about if you look at the personal computing revolution, social media. I actually don't know if he touches on that. The industrial revolution. There are these periods in time where a few people take advantage of a new technology all within a very small age bracket, and they make outsized contributions. So whether you're talking about like Dell and Gates, and Jobs, and then Rockefeller and all the robber barons back in the Industrial Revolution. They're all born within a few years of each other. And so I'm looking at crypto, and there are not that many young people at the time. So I was like, oh, maybe I'm a little too young for this. I was definitely too young to make as much money as some of my friends because I just started with zero. But my ability to make an impact on the industry felt tangible. Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, the world's largest blockchain. I mean, he was 2 years younger than me, almost to the day. We used to— he used to sleep on my couch. We celebrated a couple birthdays together, but like, it felt like young people could really make an impact here. And so having just read Outliers, I was just like, oh, crypto, like this, this could be my generation's thing. And turned out it was. So huge shout out to Malcolm Gladwell.

Yeah, it's incredible. I remember reading The Tipping Point. They made us read it in graduate school.

Yeah. Was it Tipping Point or Outliers? I think it's— yeah.

Outliers sounds more like what you're—

Yeah, I think it was Outliers. I read all— I read Blink, uh, you know, Outliers and Tipping Point, but it's one of those books where it talked about, you know, these people being born in one generation and just having this massive impact on humanity. Yeah. And it was so fresh in my mind that I just, I, I had to seize that moment and it, it paid off in a big way.

I see that as a salient topic, right? Where You know, I'm 44. So I'm a little bit older than you. But I'm at that cusp where I went from analog to digital. Right? I was that generation that everything started like dial-up internet.

And I did too. I'm not that young. You know, I remember a world without mobile phones. I will remember a world without the internet. I'm— but I'm at the very, very end. Right?

You're at the tail, right? So right. So we're in that same generation. Millennial. Right, right. So we're in that same larger generational gap where it makes sense. And I see people like previously from like the generation that's a few years older that they just went like, you know, that whole thing of like, we're just going to go into a career we want want that stability, we're going to stay where we are, we're going to grind it through. And eventually, right, the golden pot is at the end of the, at the end of the 30, 40 years with the, you know, it's not like two generations ago where it's like you get the retirement watch, but it was still close to that. And, and impact is a word you've used multiple times. And for me, like, as one, therapy wasn't like, I stumbled into it, not realizing that I was eventually going to be doing it. Because before I was a therapist, I was doing student programming, right? Recreational nonprofit educational, like, you know, those type of things, you know, youth groups and sleepaway camp type stuff. And I was really doing therapy all day. And I realized the relationships and the impact were the key component of what was most powerful to me, to the point where I'm still in touch with so many of those now adults that were kids back then. So for you, like feeling this thing of impact, knowing that there's something in there that, you know, maybe haven't figured out yet. But like, where did you start realizing like, impact is an important thing for you? Having influence, having this, like, recreating connections?

Always. I mean, I remember I was in the third grade. I was living in Japan at the time. My dad's a Chinese history professor, and he was teaching at Kyoto University. And I wrote an essay— I mean, whatever an essay is to a third grader— on Martin Luther King. And I remember my teachers didn't believe I wrote it because they were like moved to tears by it. But like, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, like, you know, Nelson Mandela, like, were my biggest heroes growing up. And so it was— it started really young. And then also, like, the Founding Fathers. And so it was like, it was that sort of impact that really motivated me. But just for a long time, I mean, pretty much the entirety of my youth, I had no idea how that'd be achieved. But there was this sense that I wanted to do something greater than myself. So I think it always existed. Yeah, it makes sense.

And I know people like— a lot of that's stifled, right? And I think when pairing that back with the early adopter mindset, right now we're looking at— let's just talk about the AI and the ChatGPT stuff. Is there any connection for anybody who doesn't know? I mean, I don't want to necessarily break up what's blockchain and all these things, but is there any connection to what's going on in the AI world with anything that's going on in the blockchain world?

Well, I mean, I was just saying that, I mean, with that kind of tipping point or, you know, that opportunity to seize a point in time, I mean, ChatGPT, where we are now with deep learning and artificial intelligence is a similar opportunity. I mean, I'm telling every young person, I mean, yeah, you know, this is where you should focus your energy. If you have any capacity to kind of grasp what's going on here, this is where your energy should go because this is where the most opportunity is. I mean, the ability ability to use ChatGPT right now to make, to start a business that makes, you know, thousands or tens of thousands or $100,000 a month. It's just insane. I mean, I know if I was a young person right now in high school or college, I mean, I would be all over this. Uh, it's really mind-boggling.

That's so fascinating because I have on my YouTube stream, which is like suggested videos, and, um, and all of these people that are doing these things like how to make $5,000 a month with ChatGPT and then taking it over and coming up with all the ideas and then taking it over to another AI program. So it's all there, and I think it is the early adopters, like you said, are going to be advantageous in this. I see it even in the therapy world, right? I know you're now into doing a lot of investment in psychedelics, but for years, I mean, we know the history that psychedelics, right, the government shut it down. I'm sure you saw the documentary or read the book from Michael Pollan, right? And they talk about in the first episode with Ken Kesey, who is very much known in the Grateful Dead circles and the hippie heyday of the Merry Pranksters, And, you know, and the running joke was they turned the wrong person on.

In other words, like, that was like that all the time. I mean, huge fan of Ken Kesey, huge, like Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, great book, Tom Wolfe. And I, you know, think Timothy Leary was right about a lot. Some of his early research was just like instrumental in our understanding today of psychedelics. But yeah, he tried to turn too many people on, like the people you need to be turning on are the policymakers, the elected leaders, the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies. That's who needs this stuff more. I mean, psychedelics are so often wasted on the young, or historically have been, but it's the people that most need to change their minds, the people that affect the policies that affect humanity and the Earth that really need to be put onto psychedelics. And so that is exactly right. AC: Yeah.

And I say it because it's interesting. So I found out recently that my great-uncle, my grandmother's brother, both of her siblings were MD psychiatrists in the '60s and '70s. They probably started off earlier, but in 1971, one of the first articles against marijuana was published by my uncle, by my great-uncle. Yeah, by my great-uncle. He passed away unfortunately a few years ago, but wonderful, wonderful person. But that was the era, right, of anything dealing with marijuana, psychedelics. I mean, that was right there. '71 was right after, right, the love and hate. I mean, they hate Ashbury and that Vietnam War time and Woodstock time. But it's so interesting to see me now as a therapist, having to become a therapist, and seeing even my own industry, like I said, over the last couple years, who jumped on this early, who jumped on to like technology, just the whole world of technology in certain industries. Forget even like talking about crypto, like, "Oh, it's a thing. I'll put some money in there and whatever. I'm just gambling," versus people who do the due diligence to spend 10 to 20 hours on a topic, to 10 to 20 hours on what crypto is or an NFT or any of these things. But now I'm seeing it thankfully show up in the world of psychedelics, where it's finally becoming a mainstream specialization for licensed mental health professionals. So I'm curious, like, from your own personal journey of how you got involved in that world, and seeing what you're now most passionate about and advocating for. I'm curious a little bit more about that.

Well, you know, this is a bit of a contrarian take, but I'll ground it through the narrative. But when I was 11, 12, um, I started to have some serious mood, psychological issues, behavioral issues, you know, getting kicked out of school, arrested, uh, you know, serious depression, very regular suicidal ideation. And it was just— it was a really dark period. Oh, recently I think there may be some correlation to a pretty bad concussion I had when I was 11 or 12, because I've been learning about how concussions affect adolescence and can lead to moodish— mood and behavioral issues. But nobody identified that then, you know, they thought I was just really fucked up. And so I was on like 5 different psychiatric drugs, uh, and like constant therapy. Nothing worked. Um, and then when I was 14, you know, I— you know, part of my rebellion was I was experimenting a lot with substances. And one day I ate 3.5 grams of mushrooms and my entire life changed, like my entire outlook on happiness, on fulfillment, on what I needed. And I never had suicidal ideation after that. Um, a year later, I took the same dosage of mushrooms, and I just got this message that I should get off the psychiatric drugs I was on. And I did. And I haven't had a depressive episode in 15 years. Uh, and so long before this recent renaissance in psychedelics, I, I was acutely aware of the therapeutic medical potential of these substances. I've gone on to sit with virtually every well-known psychedelic medicine there is in a variety of settings. And you know, which that has only further validated my beliefs. And I've always been fairly outspoken about all this because one thing to be mindful of is that up until I was 21, I was a complete fuckup. And then virtually overnight, I was like speaking at conferences., you know, within a couple of years, a multimillionaire, and it all happened very quickly. And so I never really kind of learned to be a bit more coy or reserved about this stuff. So when I started to see an industry emerge a few years ago, when a few of my friends started MindMed, which, you know, went public and quickly achieved a multibillion-dollar valuation focused on psychedelics. And then I started to see startups in this space with some of the best advisory boards, as you mentioned. I mean, The, the, you know, the, the medical industry, therapy industry, or, and, and I could— in the academia surrounding them, um, has actually very quickly, um, come to terms with importance given the, you know, the addiction crisis that we have, the rising rates of suicide, anxiety, depression, um, you know, a generation of multiple generations of traumatized soldiers. I, I mean, there's a real desire for change that just didn't exist back in the '60s and '70s when, you know, the government position was pro-war, pro-segregation. You don't want people reaching enlightenment and realizing these things are bad. Now people are— the biggest issues in our society are matters that can actually be treated with psychedelics. And so, you know, I was seeing the deans of medical, like, Harvard Medical School, Stanford Medical School on the advisory boards of these startups. I couldn't resist the opportunity to be a part of something as big as this. In my view, it has the potential to be bigger than what I did in crypto and blockchain technology. And it felt like the very early days again. And so I bought out all the investors in my first venture fund and then started this new one. Focus on psychedelic medicine and more broadly the elevation of consciousness.

So let's talk a little bit more about that because I think that's fascinating. I'm sure people are like, "Oh, let's talk more about crypto," and I don't want to disqualify that and dishonor all the cool stuff that you've done in that world. It's so interesting that it's just been on my radar so much over the last many months. My next batch of continuing education credits is on psychedelics and mental health, It's amazing that you can get those.

I know, right? It's a testament for, for, for an industry like healthcare, which moves so, so lethargically, the majority of the time, the speed at which the healthcare industry is coming to terms with psychedelics is unprecedented. Yeah. It's, you know, and the ability for healthcare providers to actually start to get involved in this space, It's really remarkable how quickly it's happened. Oh, it's incredible.

There is a client of mine who was doing, um, started doing some ayahuasca journey, right? And was seeing a therapist that I used to be connected with in a private practice. And at the end of the day, um, felt more comfortable talking to me about what they're, you know, unpackaging what they were going through. Um, and I use this really cool modality called neuro-emotional technique, which We'll, we can talk more, my listeners have heard it ad nauseam. But it's what got rid of my panic attacks when I was about 30-ish years old within 3 sessions. And then I became trained and certified in that modality. It's a mind-body integrative medicine protocol. So I'll take what someone has done from their, right, from a medicine experience, a plant medicine experience, and then take that and run that through the protocol to clean up anything else that hasn't yet naturally kind of evolved from that experience. That's one way of doing it. But obviously, I do it with those who are not yet experiencing plant medicine and psychedelics. So the idea that like, there's people who are now looking for therapists who may or who may or may not necessarily be doing that journey themselves, but are completely in support of that journey is now evolving, because I still hear it. And I saw it in a Facebook group last night. It was in Atlanta or Georgia Psychiatrists and Therapists Referral Network. And someone was talking about like, my client is smoking marijuana all the time. And then like every single person on the started railing, like, they have to get off it, and they don't realize it, but the things that it's happening and blah, blah, blah, you know, it's no substitution for like, maybe they need to be on medication. I'm like, oh, man. Yeah. Almost there. Almost there. But you see it in certain medical models.

And I, and I'm the first to distinguish between marijuana and, you know, psychedelics in that, you know, there is not a tremendous wealth of, you know, scientific or academic evidence that marijuana is better at treating any really sort of mental illness ailments than other medications on the market. It sometimes offers equal but not often better kind of, uh, efficacy. You're seeing exponential— yeah, really greater efficacy than historical treatment, you know, modalities. And so that, that, that, that is important. And I, I think there are a lot of downsides for marijuana because, and more so than most psychedelics, has a greater, uh, you know, tendency towards abuse. I think someone that's smoking weed all day, probably unless they're like an artist, creative type that is, you know, happy in their career and their life, you know, there's very few kind occupations were being high all the time, it's probably a good idea.

Right? And my mindset of what they were saying was, my guess is, and it's probably a fair assumption, because most of these people commenting were psychiatrists, that if they weren't okay with marijuana, they're even more so not going to be okay with other types of psychedelics and/or plant medicine.

Which I have not found to be the case. Okay. But, you know, I've got a limited scope of experience. But, you know, I mean, I was just having dinner with a member of Congress, a few nights ago, you know, not a weed smoker, not a psychedelic guy, actually admitted he had done psychedelics when he was much younger, but, um, you know, much more receptive to, you know, psychedelics as medicine, you know, rather than, you know, someone just like smoking pot recreationally. And I think that's how you have to distinguish it. I am not an advocate for the full recreationalization and legalization of psychedelics. I we have a culture that loves guns and loves drunk driving and mix that with LSD or mushrooms and you're in for a bad trip. We're not a culture that can responsibly use psychedelics recreationally. There have to be pathways for responsible use or else it's just not going to end well. We're not the Dutch. Yeah, it's true. We're a very different culture. And they're reeling it back also. And that's the point that needs to be made to these psychiatrists. This is, you know, this is about supervision. This is about preparation. This is about integration. This is not about just tripping on psychedelics. And we're still early, right?

We're still so early in the now accepted research. We're still excited, the cultural acceptance of the more cultural acceptance of it in certain circles. And I'm really curious, like, as far as like, when it comes to like the fund and the investing, like, what areas are you guys looking into and supporting and We take an incredibly broad view.

I had, you know, based off of everything I told you, something I'd call investor market fit, that people that invest in my fund just trusted me due to my track record as an investor, as a venture capitalist. And so I have a very broad mandate. Now, the fund's thesis is the expansion of consciousness, and that is, that can apply to, you know, a consumer breathwork app on your phone. A sound therapy, you know, hardware-software technology used in a therapist's office. It can be a business-to-business software-as-a-service data collection program, you know, for psychedelic experiences. But it can also be a drug discovery using artificial intelligence or drug development of new compounds. It's very, very broad. And The mandate I have allows me to do that. So to suggest there's a strong focus, there probably isn't. Although as drug development and discovery ramps up, I think we'll probably focus more of our energy there because I think that's where a lot of the biggest opportunities exist. But we're also trying to invest in the infrastructure that allows individuals to elevate consciousness, ideally without, you know, a psychedelic experience. The psychedelic experience is only as needed, whereas, you know, expanding the mind, achieving centeredness, uh, you know, mindfulness is something that people should strive towards every day. Yeah, it's cool.

I'm just flashing back to, uh, having Ariel Garden, who is the founder of Muse, which is the headband, the meditation headband wearable, and—

oh wait, Aria? Ariel, Ariel Garden.

She's a co-founder, founder of Muse. So very much in the right, it's a wearable technology all about mindfulness and meditation and brainwave and mapping EEGs. And I think, I think it's EEGs. And just showing like over time and like just by getting into those things. And it's all without psychedelics. And I'm sure it's interesting, like, because, you know, going back to like the neuro-emotional technique, right? It's a mind-body protocol, we're getting rid of this physiological stress factor that's so subconscious you don't even realize rationally it's causing issues, where using technology to do pre and post studies of things. And I'm so curious and I'm fascinated by this, of using these wearable technologies pre and post with meditation, pre and post using with NET. We're doing that with functional MRIs out of Jefferson University. There's an integrative medicine department there, the Marcus Institute. Bernie Marcus is a huge— from Home Depot, huge. I mean, his name's all over bunch of different hospitals, but he's very big into integrative and alternative medicine. So they've been doing pre and post MRI studies using neuro-emotional technique. I'm so curious to see, like, you know, combining all these things like wearable technology with these mind-body tech, you know, applications, and then maybe even throwing psychedelic healing on top of that.

It's a huge part of all this. If you look at the way that LSD affected the development of the field of psychiatry and neuroscience. It, it— and ketamine as well, actually— radically altered our understanding of where consciousness stems from, how the brain works, how the, the brain responds to psychiatric drugs. I mean, modern big pharma owes so much of the science behind what they're doing from LSD and our studies behind it. I— and yet I think we're only less than 1% of the way there in truly understanding the mind and consciousness. And so, yeah, brain scanning is going to be a huge part of this. In fact, I've got a study that I kind of theorized and partnered up with the neuroscience department over at Imperial College in London using a hyperscanner. They've actually— so a hyperscanner is a, a device that scans two brains at the same time, and they've actually never used a hyperscanner for any sort of drug study, or, or in this case, psychedelic study. So, you know, our understanding of the brain is still so limited, and these EEGs, MRIs, CT scans, they don't show nearly as much as is— could possibly be going on, you know, the, the— all the neurons firing in your brain. We can like look at the brain waves, but we can't actually look at neurons interacting with one another. I mean, there, you know, brain imaging is still so nascent. I mean, this HyperScanner device has only been around for a couple of years. So it's all, you know, it's also new and it's going to improve and increase at an exponential rate in the next, call it, 10 years due to, you know, just inevitable nature of technology as it improves on this hockey stick. But artificial intelligence is just going to be this massive driver. I mean, I wouldn't be shocked if we find very— what at least empirically looks like cures to cancer and horrible neurodegenerative diseases all in the next decade simply because of the power of artificial intelligence in drug discovery.

It's so exciting. My arm hairs are sticking up because I've had another couple who do a lot of plant medicine retreats, and they're very passionate about it. And I'm having some other people over the next 6 months talk more and more about psychedelics and healing. And what I'm loving so much about what you're saying is, right, you're throwing all the data in, you're throwing all the science in, you're throwing all the research in. And I think that's what scares a lot of people off is like, okay, fine, like, I'm sure people feel better. But it's still like, right, you're talking like a scientist. You're talking like a research expert, right? And I think that that brings so much extra validity to what scares a lot of people.

Well, if I were a psychologist or a therapist, I would be scared because, um, it, it, it is the only field of science that remains, um, qualitative. It's really problematic. So psychiatry today needs to write a whole new playbook. I mean, we need to scrap the DSM, uh, we, we need to looking at the biology, the neuroscience of these things. We need to be quantitative in how we're evaluating patients, not going by some stupid handbook. Because the problem is, is two individuals can show the same, the, the same exact symptoms of ADHD, but if you scan their brain, one has incredibly low activity, one has incredibly high activity. Which means the way that it needs to be treated is entirely different. One person may benefit from stimulants, but the other person certainly will not. And so, you know, you know, if I were— yeah, if I were in psychology or therapy and, you know, you know, looking at this, I'd be like, oh my God, I'm gonna have to relearn my entire job. I mean, it was the way that psychology and therapy, it's going to be taught in the next 10 years is going to be radically altered. The implementation of low-cost EEGs and, and diagnosing people and actually using brain scans to evaluate what's going wrong rather than just doing these qualitative analyses, it's going to improve the, the quality of treatment exponentially, but it's going to be massively disruptive to the business side of things and even the academic side, because it's going to require such a deep rethinking how we get to treatment. Yeah.

And I see, because NET originally came out of chiropractic, and they found that like these unresolved emotional or toxic stressors that you're being exposed to will cause emotional symptomology, right? And also cause pain that doesn't go away. And that's kind of how that theory got evolved, like where you go in for an adjustment. Well, why isn't my body holding? Or why is this neck pain not going away? And Dr. Walker found that there's an emotional component to these chronic pain symptoms. And then how do you go through and, and clean that up? And as I've over the years as I progressed in the community and being exposed to other ways of thinking about healing, functional medicine and nutrition, right? And like, exactly like you just said, like, you know, what's the deal? You know, anything of the biochemistry? Is it toxins that you're being exposed to? Is it food that you're eating or food that you're not eating? Is it supplements that you aren't taking that your body's not necessarily making? And then why is it not making all those things? But just hearing your story about being, you know, adolescent and going with what you're going through, right? You know, functional neurology alone and hearing like brain trauma and just why people aren't processing and all of the neural challenges that people are having finally is being addressed. And like, I'm so frustrated for you, me, and everybody who grew up with all the right— in previous generations who didn't have those answers. But I'm so thankful that if there's a version of you now that's 12, 13 years old going through this, Well, look, I mean, I got lucky with the mushrooms.

Like, I, I, I mean, if I, you know, I had— when I got kicked out of high school when I was 14, a high school administrator said, you know, by the time you're 25, you're going to be dead, addicted to drugs, or in jail. And if I hadn't had those mushrooms, that would have been the case. I mean, it radically changed the path forward for my life, uh, and, and fortunately, you know, With all these, you know, FDA trials going on with psychedelics in Phase 3 trials, you have to test your treatment on adolescents. And we're going to, we're going to see massive breakthroughs in how we treat adolescents rather than getting them stuck on pills for the rest of their life. If we can actually give them a very supervised, highly prepared psychedelic experience, we actually have the ability to change their brain chemistry for the better and, and actually not require lifelong, you know, uh, treatment, which also doesn't work, right?

You know, that's what, that's what's mind-boggling.

And what's happening with MAPS, they just did this with teenagers with trauma. You know, the, the sooner you, you treat a traumatic incident, you know, which can happen in young people all the time— most of our trauma is from you know, our younger years. Um, if you're able to treat that trauma immediately with something like MDMA talk therapy, you have the ability to have that not turn— transform into PTSD, which affects someone for the rest of their life. You know, the— you know, it's, it's about, you know, very acute, immediate treatment that, yeah, they lost 5 to 8 hours and now all of a sudden throwing our healthcare model upside down. But at the end of the day, it means that this person doesn't have to receive treatment for the rest of their life. And so it's a very powerful notion that we can actually nip so many mental issues at the bud right when they start to appear, or right after an incident that will, you know, cause these issues to appear. And address it at the spot. I mean, you're talking about the ability to prevent intergenerational trauma. Because once you know, if you can prevent that trauma from being something lingering in the psyche, it doesn't get passed on to the next generation.

I can only imagine. I'm a grandchild of a Holocaust survivor. So I mean, it's— you got it.

I mean, I'm Jewish as well. Right.

So it's right in our DNA.

And just hearing our intergenerational trauma goes back a lot.

Yeah, without a doubt, right? So it's in any culture that has come from anything such as that, or any type of, right, when you say trauma is trauma, but it's, I'm just so in awe, and I'm so thankful. And it's, and it's, and it's incredible to see, you know, because you, we, I would usually think it's someone who's been like, older and has been more, you know, more in this world and done all these things. And it's finally trickling down into our age generation and our age that are making the most impact. On these things. And I really do want people who are hearing this to like, this is the simplicity of everything, is that if there's something that you are passionate about, go all in on it. And there are going to be people who are going to be like, nope, you're crazy, you're not going to make it, you're not going to do like— I mean, this, I can only imagine the conversation with that teacher that said those things to you today. If you track that person down and take that person out to lunch.

He got fired and he's working at a 7-Eleven now. He, uh, Yeah, you know, he sexually harassed a student and lost his job. Actually, every single, every single high school administrator and college administrator that got me kicked out of school has now since been fired from their job. Yeah.

Which is telling, right? Which is telling.

I've only learned that in the past year or so, but it's, it's some sort of karmic vindication. Yeah. Not to say that I wasn't a little shit growing up, but, but I mean, I got, I got the brunt end of a lot of kind of, you know, really just nasty, you know, adults in my life. And to see how every single adult that had this overwhelmingly negative impact on my life has since, you know, seen their own life go to shit is, it's remarkable.

I can only imagine, right? And even before those things happened, I can only imagine how unhappy they were with themselves. That if that's what they were putting out, if they were in this place of power and to be empowering and they just disempowered, is very sad for them. And I think that's what everything that we're trying to do is moving against that, to move from victimhood to empowerment, to create all the endless possibilities above and beyond what you even thought for yourself. And that's allowed you to get into other things. I mean, you have this men's skincare company and you're doing some cool, interesting things. If you can synergize everything, right? I know we're talking about impact, I know we're talking about things that you're passionate about. What would you say is like, "If I can on one foot, this is the absolute impact that I want to have before my time on this planet runs out. This is what I would love to see most happen. This is the impact I'd love to have most." on?

I mean, I, I think it, it's so broad that perhaps it isn't even useful, but, you know, the end goal of everything that I've done is, has been to, you know, elevate consciousness, to, to, to enable individuals, no matter what walk of life they come from, to live better lives. So whether it's the cosmetics or the crypto or the psychedelics, all of those were a means to an end to create better, happier, healthier humans. And I think it's as simple as that. I mean, it's a haughty goal, but at the same time, that's kind of what drives everything. And it's the only way to understand all the different things that I've not.

So this idea, it's— I want to break this apart for a second because this is something I work with my clients all the time, and I, I always want to challenge them to realize that the thing that they're aiming for is not the actual real goal. It's a mountain that they've created that blocks them from the real goal, that doesn't even allow them because they think it's so big. And if I accomplish this, oh my God, it'll be amazing. And I'm like, no, no, if you accomplish that, then watch And I really think that you just kind of really described what that is, right?

Right. There is no specific end goal in mind because you can always do more. Right. The second you set a very tangible goal like that as your kind of underlying motivation, you get to it. I mean, I see it happen most often with people. That have a goal of making a certain amount of money. Um, these— I— these— every single person I've ever seen do that and then reach that goal is not satisfied. You know, they're happy for a very fleeting moment, and then what next? And, and unfortunately, when it's something like money, it's just— it becomes the next money benchmark. And then, and then it's that same, you know, vicious cycle of, you know, striving, striving, striving, getting the goal and not being fulfilled. And so, you know, you have to be able to take, you know, your goal has to be something that can give you fulfillment on a daily basis. You know, even if on a daily basis, you know, the results of your actions are very limited, you know, you're working towards this greater purpose that can underlie everything you do on a daily basis. Is ideally for the rest of your life. And then you have some goals aligned with that. And in every business I've started, every venture I've undertaken, yes, there are metrics for success that I create for myself. But the greater question is, have I gotten closer to this goal that motivates me daily?

So what would, as we kind of wrap up and then we'll kind of share all the different places people can get in touch or be involved, involved. Um, one of the things that I really love working with people on is what is their purpose and mission. And once you can get aligned with that, then I think a lot of the struggles go away, because it is a discernment model of where should I be putting my time, effort, and energy, right? Aligning core values with all that, right? I'm kind of obsessed with like the whole Patagonia story right now. I just finished, uh, Yvon's book on Let Them Go Surfing and creating a whole company out of core values. And then he, right, just created the whole billion, right? He just did all this money for charity of the company. What would be some of the suggestions? Because you had this early turn-on from what you went through in the psychedelics, but knew it innately inside of you all along even when things were throwing shit at you. What would be some of the big tips or simple tips to help people discern to move towards their passion and passion?

Well, I mean, there's a Japanese concept known as ikigai, and it means reason for being. And it's a four-circle Venn diagram of what you're good at, what you can be paid for, what the world needs, and shoot, what's the fourth one? But, but I, I, I, I, I just suggest anyone looks at this. It's, yeah, I-K-I-G-A-I. And, and it, it's this incredible concept dating back hundreds of years that if you can find yourself at the center of ikigai, you will find purpose in your life.

And what you love, what the world needs, what you can be paid for, and what you're good at. So you have the— and what you're good at, your passion, your mission, your profession, and vocation is the overlapping.

Yes. And that's, you know, the older you get, the easier it is to find that. So I was talking to this congressman who recently stepped away from Congress, may go back. But, you know, I was talking to him about this concept. I'm like, look, you're the best sort suited sort of person that you have had this long career. You've been a lawyer, you've been a lawmaker, you know, you've done all this a lot of things. And so getting to that center is actually much easier than a young person, you know, knowing, you know, what you love, what you're good at, what you can be paid for. Um, you know, a lot of people have a sense of what the world needs, but those other— that self-knowledge is much more challenging. Um, but I think as you get older, it becomes much, um, easier to find yourself at the center of that circle or that diagram. I got lucky in that I kind of fell into it very young, but I suggest people put that up on their wall and just looking at it every day. And as you look at that, you know, you'll start to ruminate on, on these parts of yourself that come together into this greater whole and give you that reason for being. And so I, you know, that's probably my best advice because it applies to people of all ages. Is. But especially as you get older, it's much easier to find that. And, and when you're at that center, you know, no matter what sort of adversity you face in your life, you're, you're gonna, you're gonna have the will to go on just because you have that reason.

Love it. So what's some places people can track you down? I know you have Gonzo Gardner on, uh, yeah, on Instagram, uh, Twitter.

Uh, those are probably the best, uh, they're the only places where I'm active and then share different things that I'm doing. And so social media, you just look up my name and I got the blue checkmarks, although those are less useful on Twitter these days, but still not hard to find.

Yeah. And then, and going back into the Ben Network for a second, I mean, what— I mean, I quickly went through it. It has some really cool courses on, on just understanding blockchain and NFTs and some tax-related stuff, um, right? So anybody can sign up for that? How does Yeah, I believe so.

We still focus mostly on university students, but when we started, there wasn't a single university course in the world on Bitcoin or blockchain technology. Now every top university has them. So the resources we offer have evolved with time, but definitely for young people. And I think even the Blockchain.edu website will guide young people in the right, or any person in the right direction. There's another great website called goodbit101.com, and that's just if you're trying to learn crypto, it's the best starting point.

Awesome. And then my last question, which I, when I first started doing my podcast 2, 3 years ago, now over 150, is what are you reading and what should people absolutely be reading? Or have read?

So right now I'm reading a bunch of books on the history, politics, economy, and culture of Puerto Rico. So that's very personal to me. Try not to be a complete gringo here, but, uh, and, and honestly, uh, fascinating. I mean, if you're an American, you probably have a responsibility to read at least one of these books. I think The War Against All Puerto Rican just, you know, will give you so much insight into this island and its history. But, you know, there's so many, you know, there's so many good books out there today, especially on like, you know, self-help and like self-improvement. You know, I just got through Atomic Habits, which is great. I mean, positive habits are the cornerstone of a good life and something I struggle with tremendously personally. So definitely something I, I recommend. Uh, but you know, I find myself reading online all this like medical literature and academic studies and scientific studies, and, and, and unfortunately because of that I find myself having less time to read books. But I'm about to get a house for by myself for the first time in my life, so hopefully more time to read books.

Yeah, one of the things, just going back into a hack for everybody, right? You can take that article or any of those things that you find online and send it over to ChatGPT and say, summarize this in bullet points or whatever it is, right?

I haven't started doing that, but it's great.

So there you go. So yeah, so I really love it. Jeremy, first of all, congratulations on everything, all the really amazing stuff you're doing, on the healing you've done for yourself, the healing you're helping bring to the world. I mean, that's, for me, that's so important and so impactful. And it's so cool to see people who are are, yeah, literally putting their mouth where their money is and, um, and walking the walk and talking the talk. And it means the world to me that you were able to spend some time with us today.

And my pleasure, man. Very much looking forward to—

maybe there'll be a— there'll be a round 2 as, as the next developments happen.

And yeah, maybe a couple years from now when I'm doing something wildly different, or at least wildly interesting. Awesome. Thanks, my man. Pleasure.

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