Ep. 166- "Psychedelics for Everyone" with Matt Zemon

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, winner and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser. Welcome back, everybody, to the You Winning Life podcast. But you heard all of that in the introduction, so I'm just gonna introduce today's guest, who is Matt Zeman. He is the CEO and co-founder of Happyy.me with two Ps and two Ys, and he's the author of the book Psychedelics for Everyone. Matt has firsthand seen how psychedelics have changed people's lives from different walks of life, and his goal is to normalize the conversation and reduce the stigma around mental health and psychedelics. He has a master's in psychology and neuroscience, and he's co-founded two companies dedicated to improving mental health and well-being using the power of legal psychedelics. Now that he's launched Happy, He and his team are reimagining mental health as well as using guided ketamine therapy. He loves to share his journey with psychedelics, myths and rumors about the psychedelic medicine, and how this can become a powerful role in healing and connection, both for people that choose to use them and for those that don't. Matt, welcome to the show.

Jason Wasser, it's good to be here.

So excited to have you. As we were just talking briefly in our pregame, um, I'm in the middle of a continuing education training that is a ton of hours. And I know that even within that, like, 17 or 24-hour, you know, continuing education, I'm really scratching the surface. I know a lot of people right now are excited about what's going on when it comes to psychedelics, the legality, the therapeutics, the research, stuff that you knew about for a while, stuff that I knew about for a while, but it's finally coming to the forefront of culture. So first, I'd love to start there just before we go into what actually can be done with it. What's the healing process? What's the outcomes? But I definitely want to start as far as your personal perspective and experience as where this kind of was a thing that was hush-hush, still has a little bit of the underground, but as it's coming more to the forefront, and there's conferences and trainings, what that journey has been like for you, especially coming from a background with a master's degree in psychology.

Yeah, I'm happy to talk about all of that. It's, it's, it is interesting to me. I mean, the more people like you who are doing integrative health, who are looking at people as a whole person and, uh, and trying to make change that way, um, I see psychedelics and psychedelic medicine as just another technology, a tool, a piece of the toolbox. So I'm always careful to say that psychedelics are not a cure, it's a catalyst. Um, and I don't believe in that it's a biochemical reaction purely. It's a biochemical, psychosocial, spiritual, whole person, uh, for, for change. Um, again, I fell into this by accident. I was an entrepreneur for a lot of years, and 2019, had some friends invite me to a guided psilocybin experience, and it just completely changed my worldview. Um, had just— I went in with low expectations. And, uh, it, yeah, blew me away. I got to reconnect with my mom who died when she was 49. I was able to, uh, have kind of insight after insight into how I was leading my life and how I was not connecting with people and opening myself up for love. And, um, and I knew almost immediately that I needed to, to learn more about this. And that led to going back to school, and that led to kind of all the work I've been doing since then.

Amazing. You know, one of the things that I am finding, thankfully, especially in my own field, is stuff that I would have talked about with my professors, like we just talked about neuro-emotional technique in our earlier conversation. And when I share that with some of my professors, they're like, "Is that therapy? Are you still doing the stuff we trained you to do?" And how finally a lot of these integrative or mind-body modalities, in a way, it was very cliché for a few years, right? The big thing was hypnosis, then it became EMDR. Now finally, people are getting into the polyvagal theory of things, which I find is slowly trickling into the therapy world. The trauma stuff of, you know, Bessel van der Kolk. But as far as like, it's still a lot of talk and a lot of experiential, like you're saying, there's a lot of this biopsychosocial, spiritual, physiological, chemistry, all these other layers that you know, we talk about in the NET world, that neocortex to neocortex, rational brain to rational brain therapeutic conversation doesn't always hit the spot. And I'm curious that when you started, you know, again, with this micro, you know, this experience that you had with your friends, what was that like for you having maybe more traditional experiences in the therapeutic world? And just the grasp of understanding how efficient, how fast, how powerful this can be, coupled with maybe people's fears and concerns about this. One, obviously we're gonna get into the legalities, but two, obviously stigma and culture and whatever, all the stuff that's still stuck on that that happened in the '70s, just what that was like. Like you said, you had this in-touch stuff and feelings of love and acceptance and connection, Can you remember any fear or discomfort going in and like, "Oh, this is my friends, I trust them, I'm going to do this," and those first moments or first hours after that?

Oh, definitely fear and discomfort, Jason. I wasn't even a big drinker, let alone I wasn't a drug person. So the idea of, "Wait a minute, I'm going to take some drugs and I'm going to be in an altered state for 6, 7 hours? Are you kidding me? No, that doesn't sound good." Yeah, I was definitely— there's a lot of discomfort. Um, I think the difference is moving from theoretical to direct experience. I had been in therapy, I had done all sorts of talk things, and I, I could— I read a ton of books, I could tell you the theory, but I didn't feel it in my body. And in a single journey, and in my case it was psilocybin, I had, again, realization after realization that I knew I could say, I don't miss my mom anymore because she's here and I can feel her. And I can pull— in the book, I can pull a string from her to me to my children, and we're all connected, and that's okay. Um, oh my gosh, I'm living my life, I'm afraid of dying because she died so young, my father died young. No, that's not my story. I don't live their life. I don't have their lifestyle. Um, I'm not— that's not going to happen. But why am I choosing this? I, I prided myself on being independent. What does that mean? That means disconnected. So maybe I can switch that language from I am capable, um, but I'm also interconnected.

You just—

boom, boom. It was like somebody's taking— just, just throwing insights into me.

Um, well, it sounds like the shift between a cerebral knowing to a full embodiment.

Absolutely. In your heart and your gut and your body and your mind, all of it. Yeah. And that's— I think that's the power of this technology, that for many of us, we put things into drawers, we compartmentalize, we, we, um, we kind of live our lives in a specific way, we have a specific way of thinking. And in a, uh, with, with this particular type of medicine you can take a break from all of that, um, and you can feel it differently, and you can then choose afterwards. I mean, again, I still think the integration process— so for the best practices that Johns Hopkins talks about, other research talks about— is you need afterwards to have someone who can help you unpack it. It's not that they need to help, um, translate it for you. It's not they need to instruct you, just to help you unpack it, help you remember, help keep you on, on the path of, uh, of these insights so that you don't— so that they don't fade away, so that this doesn't just become, oh, I took a great trip to blah blah blah. This is, this is too powerful of an opportunity.

Walk us through a little bit more of that, because, you know, culturally it's the new thing. People are going down to retreats or, you know, to Loom for the weekend or whatever it is. They're going— Coachella was this past weekend. I'm sure there was plenty of, of good stuff going around there. But, um, but it seems like it's that 'You know, I do this.' There's a part of it that's becoming a little bit more of that social, maybe taking it a little bit for granted or not respecting it at the level that it could be as it's becoming more socially acceptable to participate in these things. So when you're talking about unpackaging, and I think that's really important because what I'm hearing from people or I'm seeing from some people that I know is that they just might be doing it too frequently and not doing that portion of what you're just talking about, and therefore they're not getting the full benefit. Then going back into another experience, still not unpackaging it, still not getting the fun. They're like, what's— and then, you know, in other words, then it becomes more of a dependence on what didn't I get out of it than what I wanted to get out of it. So walk us through a little bit more of what you mean by unpackaging it, what that looked like for you. I know some of the things that you're trying to help others and support others with that, what that would look like, you know, if someone was working with you on that process.

Yeah, so I think this is a really tricky area because there's part of me that says, okay, I can tell you what the best practices are. If you are looking for, um, connecting to a higher power, if you're looking for, um, discovering your true self, if you're looking for implementing change in your life. So I, I can tell you what, what the best practices are, what the research says. What I'm struggling with, or what I struggle with, is meeting people where they are. So there's— in, in the way I see it, there are kind of 3 ways people find themselves with psychedelic medicine. Some take the medical path. They either have, uh, have chosen ketamine or they've gotten into a clinical trial, and they, they really want the approval and, um, prescription from a doctor. They want that medical process. They want someone to diagnose them in the beginning and then reassess them at a different point, and they want to go through that whole process, and that's fine. And we're going to have MDMA hopefully re-legalized here in the next couple years, and psilocybin shortly thereafter. So that's That's all the medical path, and there's a place for that. But then you get into this whole decriminalization path where people are like, no, it's none of your business why I want to do this. Plants shouldn't be illegal. They're plants. They're made in nature. And these should be at the very least decriminalized and at the best legalized. And, um, I can respect that. I can res— I, I can respect someone saying I'm gonna adult, and this is nature. It's none of— leave me alone. Okay, so that's the second path. And then this third path is kind of the, the religious, uh, freedom path of, wait a minute, these are not— these are sacraments to me. Okay, and I have a sincere religious belief, and I want to use these sacraments to connect with my higher power, and I should be allowed to do that, especially in America, which was founded on religious freedom. But these are— this is not like I didn't make this up. These have been used in religious ceremonies for thousands of years. So the fact that the, um, colonists didn't want them to be used for a number of reasons— and doesn't matter, I should be allowed to do it. So there's 3 different paths. I think all 3 are beautiful, and it should all be an and. It should happen. Um, all 3 should be allowed to exist together. And that doesn't mean that— do I think there's pieces of the medicalization that make accessibility easier? Absolutely. Do I think there should be a marketplace for this that we know what we're buying so we don't have kids dying from fentanyl? Absolutely. But they all work together in this process. Does that make sense?

Yeah. And I think it's still in a tricky stage, especially— I mean, the good part is there's the documentary that came out based on Michael Pollan's book Change Your Mind, so I know that's still at the forefront over the last number of months. And it does go through and explain those three different paths like you just did really, really succinctly. It's tough because I do see it. I see it from the therapeutic perspective of having to convince the APA or any of these other main psychological/AMA medical organizations, and it's happening. And I do know licensed mental health professionals here in Florida that are doing this through trainings and through legalities and stuff like that. And then you have, like you said, these off the path where it's people people who are trained, people who do know how to use and take advantage and benefit from the therapeutic process, but it's not under any specific regulation. And then there's the people who are like, "I wanna just go to this by myself because this is my own volition, and I can also go get scotch from my cabinet over there too." Well, that ties right back into your safety question.

I mean, any of us born 1971 till today, we've lived our entire lives in a prohibition. We've been told drugs are bad, they're going to make you— you're gonna get addicted, it's gonna put a hole in your brain, um, the egg in a frying pan. We, we know that, we know the campaign. It's so funny to me, which again I didn't understand, but Dr. Nutt's study of, of the harm to self and others of drugs, the far end on the left side of that chart is alcohol. Huge harm to yourself, huge harm to others, lots of, lots of death, lots of destruction. Bad. On the far right of that chart, like a 20th of the size of the, uh, of alcohol, is things like psilocybin. There's no lethal dose. It's, it's, it's hard physically to hurt yourself with psilocybin. And I didn't know that. I, I would have put it— if you would have— if I was guessing, I would have put all those psychedelics kind of on in the same area. Um, but we as a culture, we, we have— alcohol is completely acceptable. It's totally fine to go to a business event and go get into an altered state, to get on an airplane and get in an altered state, to have an airport bar at 8 in the morning and start getting into an altered state. All that's okay with the pilot potentially sitting next to the pilot, potentially. Yes, yes. And that's changed over the last few years.

But it's—

but, but, but it's not okay for whatever reason to ingest mushrooms even if you have terminal cancer, right? That's— it seems a, uh, it seems like we, we haven't We haven't created drug laws based on science. We've created drug laws based on politics, based on control. Um, and again, I never thought about these things. I was just— I was a law-abiding, tax-paying business guy, and it just, nah, it wasn't— didn't affect me. Now I'm thinking about it more because I can see how it not only affects me, but it affects people I love. And, and, um, I mean, the greatest example right now that's so cool is this PTSD study with MDMA. And, and I mean, these are people— think about our veterans and our first responders, victims of sexual assault, where nothing's worked. The talk therapy hasn't worked, the EMDR hasn't worked, the, the, um, the electrical magnet— nothing's worked. Hypnosis— nothing's worked. And they've lived very hard lives. We see it in our suicide rates, and we see it in harm or in, in cutting and different behaviors. And all of a sudden, with— and this is phase 3 clinical trials 3 sessions with MDMA, talk therapy on both sides, and 67% no longer qualify as having PTSD. That's a huge number.

That's massive. Yeah.

And, and we're gonna— we're seeing similar results in psilocybin. Um, and, and again, what's our legal option now is ketamine, and there's beautiful results there. So we have an option, but people don't know. They don't know there's a legal psychedelic in America today available to them. And I'm gonna just— I'll stop. No, no, no, no, one more second on the ketamine.

Please go for it.

So now we have a medical model, uh, ketamine, and we have— now we have infighting though of different people. You have anesthesiologists who are like, oh, we are trained, we're the only ones trained in ketamine, we should be the ones who control this. And then you have a lot of, um, what I would call pump and dumps, where people come in and they get an IV hooked up to them and they get ketamine put into their body, and then the philosophy is biochemical but there's no preparation, there's no integration, and these people are— it works, it works despite that being a challenging experience. And then you have psychiatrists who think, okay, we should do this because we are MDs, but do they— many times they're not giving the time. And then you have therapists who are like, okay, we can't do the medicine component, but we can do the support. It's super tricky.

AC: Yeah. I mean, I give thanks to the fact that we're just at the beginning of this. And just as you were talking about the studies with PTSD and military and trauma, one of the things that I love for people who have not yet researched this, and one of the reasons why I love having guests like you— my goal is to have more and more guests in the world of psychedelic medicine, on my show. But the best that I had to offer at this point was the neuro-emotional technique research that we did at Jefferson Medical in Philadelphia, which showed that people were diagnosed with cancer previously, went in with a brain scan and a functional MRI, were read the script of the moment that they were diagnosed as they wrote it, but a clinician read it to them, mapped out where their brain was lighting up, did 3 to 4 NET sessions, went back into the functional MRI, reread the script, and all the areas went away. So we know that there's some type of physiological neuro-emotional process to this, that we can change trauma. But a lot of people also don't have generic access to an N.E.T. practitioner. There are thousands around the world, maybe a thousand, but it's also not well known the way that like psychedelics can be accessible and all the different research studies that are being done, like you said, at Hopkins and other places. So I feel like there's this great accessibility that's about to happen. I feel like that, right? Like you said, the challenges— there are clinics, and I'm hearing this, where you go and you get your IV just like you're going to like, you know, not knocking the company, it's called like a drip bar, right? Where you go and you get your IV, you're out in 30 minutes, right? That's great because that serves a massive purpose for people who need what they need, and they're getting their vitamins and they're getting their other stuff. But if we are looking— my fear, like you just said, is are we looking at it just as a vitamin? Just take it when you need it, go on with your life. But like you said, the integration operation side isn't happening. Psychiatrists, they see you from 5 to 15 minutes, right? If they're not enough time, not enough time. So they might prescribe it and they might— so I feel like you and I are very much in alignment with creating the system of people that need to work together collaboratively to make this happen. And there's maybe not enough there. And, and is that kind of, you know, talk a little bit about, you know, maybe the company that you co-founded What's the connection to that model with, with the—

stick with where you are for just a moment, because I think we got ourselves as a culture into this mess because we believe in this notion of a magic pill, that something's wrong with me. We've subscribed to that idea, oh, my, my brain chemistry is messed up and I need a pill to fix it, and I'm gonna need to be on the pill for the rest of my life, right? And I think more and more research is showing that that's just not true. Period. And we're— and then what happens with these pills? Well, we're, we're getting them prescribed from all sorts of people, including general practitioners. They're becoming a set it and forget it because they— the medical industry doesn't have the time to spend. So it's easier to say, oh, okay, I'm gonna give you this pill and, and it's gonna take 6 weeks to get into your body, and let me know if it doesn't work. That's not ideal. And then all of a sudden, people, instead of being on a pill for an episode 6 months, 3 months, 9 months. They're on it for a decade, 20 years. And then what happens? We get into sexual dysfunction. Something like 72% of people who are on SSRIs have some type of sexual dysfunction. We get into gastrointestinal issues. I mean, we can call it all these different, um, things we're seeing out there in, in the stomach world.

That's—

I, I would love to see the exact correlation between stomach challenges and the SSRIs. We get into memory loss, we get into weight gain. For some of the youth, we get into suicidal ideation, right? It's a big price tag.

And even though it works on like 40%, right, and all the stuff that it's supposed to be healing now becomes secondary side effects to the problem, right? In other words, the medicine that's supposed to solve these things, that you can have more motivation, you can eat better, you can have more positive, clear mindset, you can work out more, actually causes all these secondary challenges. And while you were saying that, we never addressed the root. We never address the root cause. And that's what I love about the functional medicine world, where you're getting to the why beyond the why beyond the why. And thankfully, I've been able to go to a bunch of workshops and trainings and stuff like that to just inform myself and know what to look for, what to ask my clients, and then who to send them to, versus that old medical model. It's, it's funny, I pre-pandemic, I had a, my last office I was in for probably 4 years, and wall-to-wall was a psychiatrist. From my office. And I not once referred, not just to that person, but to specifically to any psychiatrist, because I started asking the deeper questions of, let's talk about diet, let's talk about trauma, let's talk about, you know, all the different things, uh, that we know, right? Sleep and mold toxins and all these other things, to the point where like we started figuring out— like, I had a client that had major, major OCD, was in the bathroom 50 minutes of the first session washing their hands. And within the span of 90 days, once we figured out from an integrative approach mold toxins and other things that were affecting this person came back in 2-3 months later after I referred them to another practitioner, like, literally was touching everything in my office and like grabbed their sibling's water bottle and drank it. They're like, see, look what happened. Look how that person would have been in the system forever and perhaps hospitalized over and over again. When we look at these things, so that's like on those symptomatic sides, and forget the emotionality of that, that's just like, like you're talking about these side effect symptoms.. And a lot of that came from mold toxicity and some other bacterial stuff. We're talking about like, let's say emotional trauma. And I know this, like, I know only talk therapy only goes so far. I know meditation and hypnosis as wonderful as they are. And I trained under some amazing professors who are gurus in hypnosis. Like I still felt like I was hitting a wall. And here's the kicker, which I haven't shared with you. If you look up, I think it's 1971, the Journal of— I think it's like JAMA. Dr. Harold Kolansky is my great uncle, and he wrote the first anti-medical marijuana journal article.

Oh, interesting.

About the evils of marijuana and from the medical perspective, and it was the first article published. So I'm coming from that as a family inheritance on that side of my family. Wonderful people, incredible practitioners, did talk therapy even though they're MD psychiatrists, but they come from that old model, that MD Freudian, you know, they didn't prescribe massively, but it was still part of that culture of, you know, we're going to have you as a client for 20 years. And right, I'd go mad doing that with my clients. I could be my, my client's therapist for life, but I don't want to see you every week for life.

Yeah, I'm, I'm definitely much more a fan of what I'm calling the human model, where each each person can take responsibility for their own, their own path, their own journey, find that inner wisdom, work with people like you to help again unpack it. But they're not going to you to give instruction. They're not going for you to say, we're gonna— I wanna— I'm going to do anything to cure you. The, um, this medicine with— again, and not for everybody, but this medicine for a lot of people allows them to find that inner wisdom, to see the, the the, the ruts in their thinking pattern or the repetitive patterns that are not helping them. Um, and then once they see it, then they can take action. But I think so many of us, we get stuck. Um, and the other thing this, this medicine does is it removes shame, blame, and guilt. And that's incredible. So the story I write about in my book is about, uh, some inappropriate, uh, sexual contact with a family member 10 years older when I was a young teenager.. And I was mortified, embarrassed. Um, it was awful. Um, and I would— I never talked about it. It was something that just every now and again I'd feel my, my ears getting red, or I feel a pit in my stomach. And I knew, I knew, but it was tucked away deep in the drawer. And on one of these psychedelic journeys, I was right back there and able to— again, it was not where I wanted to be, but they teach you, uh, again, good practitioners teach you, um, is to go forward. If you don't like it, you've got to ask it, what are you here to teach me? Yeah, don't run away. Yeah, face it. So with this, in this case, I was able to re-look at this situation not as a perpetrator but as a human, as someone who was missing love, was rejected from her father, was not feeling smart or pretty, or was dealing with substance use challenges. I mean, I could, I could count the, the ways that this person felt unloved. And I could understand— not condone, but understand— why they chose what they did. Again, not the right decision, but I could understand it. And then I could have empathy, and then I could put it away. And after— and again, we're talking about 30 years later— and in one session, just, oh, that's not mine to carry. I don't need to be angry. I don't need to do this. And off we go. That's— yeah, I don't know what else can do that.

Yeah, that you're reminding me of two stories. One was a client that went off in, uh, years of struggle. We would, you know, we— it would have been in the world of the diagnosis world, addictive personality disorder, all that stuff. Um, major, major challenges. A wonderful human being with a huge heart, um, always wanting to do right, but had that, that shame and blame and stuckness and didn't know where any of this was coming from, went away, did ayahuasca out of the blue. It was like, I heard about this, I'm just gonna go do it. So I guess the, you know, the natural propensity to be impulsive in this way benefited this person. It came back a week or two later. And it's like, I think I realized that it hasn't been proven. But I came back and I realized that I think I was inappropriately touched by a family member when I was a kid. And I went to a parent, to one of my parents, and I asked them, I said, what What was the deal with so-and-so? And they admitted that people kind of talked about it in the periphery and kind of like, ah, he probably would be the type, but we don't want to look at it. We don't— right, that was that generation, right?

Right.

A lot of that culture. And, and, but we never knew, but we weren't shocked if— and this person then said, I think it happened to me. Now, Leslie couldn't prove it, but this awareness came up of like, this makes sense, and this is kind of a memory that I think I have. And that started a massive shift, like you just said, of looking at it from a different perspective. Kind of, you know, it's allowing yourself to have that paradigm shift while not being personalized in that story. So I really do, one, I'm so thankful that that happened for you. And I'm thinking about all the people who are just going through life, daily suffering, like you said, the shame part. Um, we just had a, uh, a workshop. Once a month, NET does kind of like a, uh, masterclass, and it's going through different things and different emotions. And, um, and we this weekend was talking about shame and, and its, and its siblings, and how so much of what we're doing and rejecting unconsciously is because of experiences around shame and not being enough and feeling disconnected from that. And I can only imagine in every relationship that we have, or any experience we're trying to positively create, how that self-sabotages.

Absolutely. And how many— I mean, it certainly affects both— all genders, not both, all genders. But as so speaking from the male perspective, I mean, we were told to Boys don't cry. Well, I grew up in Philadelphia. It's a— it was a tough city. There's a lot of fighting and things growing up, and that's just what we did. And then— and we're not— we weren't taught to experience our emotions. We weren't even taught to even think about our emotions. We're taught to do. I was a great latchkey kid. I was very— I was a very, again, independent, uh, capable I tell a story where we, um, we moved to the suburbs and our father had moved at this point to like Allentown. And my sister and I would get on the— this was like in 4th, 5th grade— we'd get on the train in Havertown, take it by ourselves to downtown Philadelphia, walk to the Burger King to buy food, to get out, buy a bus ticket to get on a bus to go an hour and a half to Allentown, and then cry a little bit so they would drop us off close to our father's house. He wouldn't have to go to the bus station. Wow. It was like, you would never do that today. But no, sorry, I digress. But we have these, uh, we, we aren't taught what's an emotion. Yeah. Um, oh, these are thoughts that maybe haven't been processed yet in many cases. Okay, well, are those good? Should we do anything with these? Again, these are questions I wasn't even asking 5 years ago. Um, but I think about a lot right now. Um, and these, and these, these medicines made it— one of the things I talk about is this, is this idea of, um, feeling safe and loved. And on the medicine, wow, wait a minute, I don't feel safe and loved in my everyday life. I'm married, I've been married 23 years, I have kids and good relationship. But it was a, it was an eye-opener to pick, what does it really mean to feel safe and loved, and how can I do more of How can I connect more with others? Um, yeah, it's, it's, I mean, this, I can't even, I talk so many positive things for me on this.

Yeah, I'm just reminiscing on being born in Scranton, Pennsylvania and moving to Florida, so at least, you know, yeah, so I could, I could relate a little bit to, to what it's like being up there, but we moved when I was one, but I've gone back to Scranton and I can, I can talk about feeling depressed. Yeah, and, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's a funny sad, my, my mom's mother, my last grandmother, my last grandparent passed away, uh, in November. So the funeral was in central Jersey, and both sides of my parents were originally from Scranton. And my uncle who grew up in Scranton and moved to Jersey, my mom's sibling, his wife has never been to Scranton. So she goes, "Well, how will we know when we're there?" I'm like, "When you have a feeling of depression and malaise set upon you, you know you're in the city limits." And it's this cultural context of where you grow up, where you live, what's the cultural things. Like this idea of even a latchkey kid, right? No one talks about that anymore. More. No one talks about, like, you know, just feeling emotions, what's it like to grow up in certain communities and certain places. And, you know, you and I were joking about being in Miami, and I'm like, I'm sorry, you know, like, people think it's great here, but it actually— there's so many challenges on so many levels that people think, like, you know, the sunshine heals all, but we still have our inner work to do. And I'm really so impressed. And I think, again, this is kind of why my own journey is leading into having people like you is because whatever is going to fit for someone to do their healing, I at least want to be part of a conduit to hopefully be a resource to get them to the right place. It doesn't have to be me, and I know it's not going to be me. But I want people to know that there's so many wonderful people that don't have to be, again, a licensed practitioner within a certain box or in a certain model, that are all over, thankfully, in the United States and Latin America and South America and starting to pop up more in the UK. But at least like, where majority of the people that are listening to this show can just either get in a car or get on a plane for a weekend and start something that's going to be transformational. Because you said 5 years ago, right? And I know these experiences for my own journey with NET when I was having panic attacks. And within 3 sessions, they went away. And a month later, I started my journey as a practitioner. I know that that happened for me also when I started doing a business development course that I had to let go of belief systems about being an entrepreneur and a business person versus being a therapist and a healer. And when I combine those two things together to see the radical transformation in my life, that within X amount of years, it's nowhere near where I was. And I want to go back to like, you know, 5 years from now, where I can be— when you just said like where I— where you were 5 years from now— 5 years ago, excuse me. And I want people to really get that. So is there something just off the top of your head that you feel has been the most profound of a shift? Even though you've given these little beautiful nuggets, which are tasty, right? But is there something that you're okay sharing? Is there a story or an experience that you feel like, "This is the thing that I know in the last 5 years really stands out the most to me and maybe even to the people around me?" Ah, yeah.

Just jumping into my head right now is that I'm enough, that I don't need to do anything. Um, so again, as an entrepreneur, I've spent my entire adult life, and actually a lot of my childhood life, building businesses. And, and then you can look at it like, oh, he's doing that to make money, he's doing that for to generate resources. Yeah, but at its core, I think I'm doing it because I want people to like me. I, if I, I can build this, and if I build this, you're gonna like me. You can be my employee and like me, you can be my client and like me, you can be my family and like me, but I need to provide for you. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a really— it's, it's, I have to give you something for you to like me. Yeah. And, um, and what I've seen again in this work, no, I'm worthy of love right now, and I'm able to give love. I don't have a limited supply of love that I can only give to my family. That, that is not true. So that the ability to give immense amounts of love, receive immense amounts of love, and not have to do anything to be worthy of it is a huge shift. And then from there, for me, it's like, well, then what do I really want to do? Do I want to spend my time building a business or building businesses, or do I want to spend more time connecting, having conversations, doing things like this, meeting new people? Um, yeah, it's, it's it. But that you are enough, period, is such a big lesson that then you start pulling off masks all left and right of, well, why did I do this and why do I do that? And Why did I write that letter? And why did I have this conversation? And on and on and on.

So profound. So walk us through a little bit of like the day-to-day stuff. Now, I know that you are a co-founder of Happy.me, and as well as obviously the book that I talked about in the introduction, Psychedelics for Everyone. But walk us through like when you're, you know, on your, you know, from that experience of creating Happy and some of the other things that you've been involved with from the entrepreneurial side. Um, especially as it relates to this world.

Yeah, right. I mean, right now I'm spending the majority of my time thinking on myself. So it's, it's things like I've, I've introduced a meditation practice that I didn't have before, having time for friends and relationships, trying to be really present in communication and in conversation. Um, That's all new. It was very transactional before. All right, people, we're here, we have 1 hour, this is where we need to get to, how are we going to do it? And it was, it was, uh, it's different. Or, hey friend, yeah, I'd love to see you, I can schedule time for you in 3 weeks, let's meet for lunch in 3 weeks. It's very different. So part of my day is just be present, be here, and enjoy this time, use these units of energy. And part of it is promoting, um, the information. So I don't say— there's no money in the book. I don't care if you buy the book, uh, for Psychedelics for Everyone. What I, I do hope people either read it or listen to these podcasts and get enough of this information to make a decision, an informed decision, on whether psychedelics make sense for them, make sense for someone they love, or just might impact how they vote. And we've seen Colorado and Oregon and a bunch of cities do some real interesting things. Um, yeah, so, so I am spending time there. And then on Happy I'm super excited for what they're doing, um, with, uh, trying to reduce the cost of ketamine, do it in a, in a, in a manner where people are supported with digital therapeutics on the back end, um, having incredible music and, and, uh, almost a ceremonial approach to it. I think it's beautiful, and I'm excited about what they're doing in, in that space, and then I'm doing what I can to support them. Um, but yeah, I'm just trying just to provide information and connect with people is the majority of my day-to-day right now.

So if someone's listening to this and they're like, all right, I'm ready, I'm ready to do this, where's the first place they should go? I mean, obviously, right, reading the book, watching YouTube videos, watching the Michael Pollan, uh, documentary, right? How to Change Your Mind, right?

All those things. Fungi as well, good movie.

Fantastic Fungi. Yes, damn, it's super fun, wild. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, fun stuff. Um, where would you say a step— where do they go?

So I'm going to say you have some options. So one option is to say, I'm going to do this legally, I'm going to do it in the United States. So your options: ketamine or clinical trial. Assuming that you don't win the lottery and get in a clinical trial, it's ketamine. So then I'm going to encourage you to ask this— these same questions, whether it's ketamine or— but we're going to talk about legal, but the questions apply regardless. So So it's, okay, practitioner, ketamine practitioner, um, what is your philosophy for ketamine? Tell me about it. How are you going to prepare me for the journey? What are you going to do afterwards? Are you— what type of integration support do you have? Or do I need to go get my own integrator? Do I need to work with a therapist, a coach, a somebody? Just— there's no bad anybody, just what is your philosophy? You need to decide whether you want an in-clinic approach. So maybe an IV or an intramuscular in a clinic. And if it is, well, what does that clinic look like? Or whether you want to use what's called a sublingual tablet and do this at home. If you have the space and you have somebody who can sit with you, those are all choices. But again, the questions, whether it's a telehealth company or whether it's a, a local clinic, What does this whole thing look like? What am I really buying into? Um, am I going to do 4 or 6 sessions up front with an X amount of time? Then what happens after that? What's the content you're going to provide me? So all those questions. So that's kind of the legal ketamine route. Other people might say, okay, I, I don't want— I want something different than ketamine. I want psilocybin, which is magic mushrooms. I want ayahuasca. And, uh, or ibogaine. Maybe they have an opioid addiction, um, and ibogaine is really great for that. Um, well, then you can choose to travel internationally. Okay, I'm going to go to a country where these medicines are legal. I'm going to go to Jamaica, I'm going to go to the Bahamas, I'm going to the Netherlands, Peru, Costa Rica, Mexico. Um, okay, well, that's an option. Same questions regard— forget the medicine, same questions apply. How many people will be doing this with What medical— what do you have in place in case things go wrong? Those types of questions for this. What are your ethics? What are your protocols? So all good questions to ask. And then the third path is there are churches and there are providers operating. Well, the churches are operating what they believe is a legal model. It's great. And then you have underground providers here in the States offering services. And again, the same thing: who's going to be there? How many people? What are your protocols? What's your experience? Where do you get your medicine from? Is a good question. Do you test it? Um, how do I know what I'm taking? Um, what's the experience like? How do you support me in front? How do you support me at the end? Um, so I wish it was easier here in the States, but it's, it's not. But ketamine is again, a very good first option for someone who's just trying to figure out what might work for them. One other quick thing on ketamine that's super nice is, uh, you can be on your SSRIs and start with ketamine, um, which you can't with MDMA. Um, and you mostly can with psilocybin. It's for a lot of the population you can, but not all, but ketamine you can. And that's, that's really nice.

Ah, there's like this massive rabbit hole that I feel we can take a step into. One is as humanity, but two, in these conversations. But I'm so glad, I'm so glad that there's, there's people out there who are taking these steps, right? Putting themselves out there, taking the risks also, right? As someone who's in this world, you're taking risks also. And, you know, who knows, can pop out of the corner and be like, I don't like what you're doing, and whatever it is. But But for the sake of healing, I mean, again, this is like so many experimental things in the world of psychology. I mean, what is it, the magnetic stuff and all this stuff that I'm like, "It doesn't make sense. The research on it isn't so great and you're still doing it from 40, 50 years ago and it's still happening and people are still swearing by it, but it's not really the efficacy of it. It really doesn't seem to be there." I'm not knocking anybody who is doing it, who has done it, and I'd love to hear from people if you have tried it and you did have positive results, but I haven't heard certain things be as efficient and as successful and sometimes even as gentle as psychedelics and plant medicine. I mean, obviously there are certain processes like ayahuasca where there's a purging process sometimes. But as far as beyond that—

beautiful—

even that could be right. If you're afraid of, like me, who I hate throwing up, and I hate that whole thing, right? That's my own fear, my own anxiety. That probably would go away if I did that process, right? So You know, I think that there's so many wonderful benefits to this. So, you know, again, I want to just reinforce for people to do their research. One, your, your book is, you know, is a great place to start. There's wonderful documentaries. Um, any other places that you would suggest people that you feel is trustworthy to just do some research and reading and watching?

I mean, there are over 300 academic institutions studying it. So if you feel like you can— oh wow, studying psychedelics right now, it's, it's a, it's a huge There's research coming out daily on all sorts of topics, so it's, uh, it's really kind of an incredible time to be alive in this world. So people certainly can, can type in psychedelics and blank, whatever it is that they're interested in, and there'll be something that comes up if they— or PubMed if they're looking for articles specifically on it. And what's interesting to me about psychedelics is There's thousands of years of history before, and most of that's before there was ever a medical model, period. Yeah, so there's a long history. Now, what's science doing today? That's mostly validating what the indigenous, um, communities around the world— to be clear, this is not just North American, uh, South American indigenous communities, it's European, it's Scandinavian, it's African, it's Asian, that they've known. Um, so great, I love that they're validating it. And for those who need the validation and want to see what the research says, there's tons of it there. Um, but like we started earlier on, the, uh, for many of these medicines that you— again, careful on dose, be careful on source, be careful on, on setting. Um, but they, they have a long track record. Um, this isn't something new. It's new to us, right? But it's not new. And that's, um, again, something for people to think about. So you ask, where should people go? Yeah, you can, you can Google anything. I think my book consolidates a bunch of this. Um, the, the— I tell people who are, oh, I'm interested, my spouse isn't, go ahead and watch those Michael Pollan documentaries, see if that helps. There's been 60 Minutes. There's been a lot of great news stories on this that people can go to. On the microdosing side, the, um, A Really Great Day book is a wonderful place to start. On just drug policy as a whole, Dr. Carl Hart's, um, Drug Use for Grown-ups is a great book. Whoa. Um, highly, highly recommend it.

He's a great title.

Yeah, he's an addiction specialist from Columbia And he's come out and says, yes, I'm a father and a taxpayer and a professor and a— and I understand drugs really, really well, and I do drugs. And it's hugely controversial and it is awesome. Um, yeah, I, I just— our mentality of what is a drug— we, we sit around and work and we're all drinking caffeine, nobody thinks twice about it. And again, we know that, oh wow, smoking's really bad for us, but we let that go for a long time in this country. And here we are being very paternalistic about these medicines. And I just encourage people to ask why. Why would you be so paternalistic about these medicines? Well, maybe people aren't, maybe the government doesn't want the results of these. Maybe they want, and again, we know that the Nixon administration.

Episode 1 of the documentary.

Yeah. They wanted to infiltrate the anti-war and the civil rights, and they felt by imposing harsh drug laws they could do that, and they did. And they've come out very publicly and said it wasn't about science.

It was agenda. Yeah, my favorite part of that first episode just to wrap up was when it was with Ken Kesey, where they talked about Ken Kesey and the Kool-Aid Acid.

I forgot about that.

And that was that whole— Right, that was the big with the Grateful Dead, right? The whole Dead scene and everything. I remember I don't remember who was saying it, but it's like, "They turned the wrong person on," but really they turned the right person on. But that was how that whole Kool-Aid acid test and that whole world of, especially around the Grateful Dead culture of that time. So it's so interesting to see the politics, the sociology of it, the history of it, and like you just said, the full admittance of, "Oh, no, no, we had a very specific agenda and it wasn't about healing, it was about control. And, um, we're trying to—

and it spread. It was our country, we spread it around the world. It wasn't like this, um, pre-'71. Um, and again, and then we get into, were things, um, were there a lot of people using this recreationally and causing people to be scared? Absolutely. But what we reported on, what we said happened, didn't happen, right? And, um, and again, I can certainly understand the, uh, the decrim nature movement saying, I'm an adult and this is a plant, leave me alone. I get it, I get it. I think you can have it all. You can have all three paths.

Yeah, especially with all the science now coming back, like you said, to validate it for those who need it validated. So awesome. So everybody out there, you know, if you know some— if you're interested in more of this, please check out Matt's book. It's Psychedelics for Everyone. Um, and obviously can— I'm gonna leave in all the show notes and everything, um, how to get in touch with Matt. And, um, Matt, is there any, you know, place directly that you would specifically like to share with them to, to contact you?

My website's a great place, mattzeeman.com. I have some videos on there and some free guide to microdosing. We brought that up, um, if people want to— are interested in just the current best practices in, in that space. And then, um, I'm really active on LinkedIn, so if people are— have questions Feel free to— I'm here to support. So if I can answer a question, feel free to drop me a line.

Awesome. And obviously for everybody else out there, if you got any benefit from this show or you know someone who will, please forward this on, right? I don't do sponsorships. I just want this to be like Matt's intention is to share the information, to get people talking about things that are helpful to them at different levels. And You know, again, it's also a thanks to guests like Matt sharing his time with us and is helping this be heard by more people who can— this can benefit from. So until next time, Matt, thank you.

And Jason, thank you. I appreciate the work you're doing and the holistic approach that you're bringing to this and then introducing topics and tools like we're talking about today. So thank you.

My absolute pleasure. All right, guys, we'll see you all the next episode. Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at You Winning Life.