489: Rewiring PTSD and Healing Trauma with Mike Zeller

Hello, hello everyone, and welcome to The Michelle Chalfant Show. I'm thrilled to be here with you today. I hope that you're doing well during this crazy holiday season. You know, I don't, I only have like a little bit of my house decorated and I'm gonna just say that I'm okay with it. I don't think I'm gonna go all the way this year. I'm done. This holiday just sort of snuck up on us right after Thanksgiving. So it's been a little bit of a mad dash for me this whole month of December with holidays, but Anyway, hope you guys are having a wonderful holiday season. I have such a good show for you, you guys. I'm so excited. Today on the show, we have Mike Zeller. It is a deeply— it's not only powerful, it's vulnerable, and it's even deeply educational. He is going to help us take a different look at trauma, the nervous system, and what becomes possible when healing is approached from every level of the human experience. We are going into NAD therapy. That's NAD therapy optimization. We're talking about metabolic health. We're talking about somatic therapy and psychedelic guided. I'm going to say it like this, guided psychedelic work. So he gets into it. His wife had severe postpartum PTSD after the birth of their daughter, and he walks us through that journey. And how it led him to the career that he has today. So such a great show. Here we go with Mr. Mike Zeller. So welcome to the Michelle Chalfant Show, Mike Zeller.

Hi, Michelle. Super excited to be here. You rock. And this is gonna be a ton of fun today, I'm sure.

I just said I can't believe I've known you since 2018. That's a long time.

Yeah, I was still in my thirties.

We've changed a lot since then as far as— I mean, the world has changed a lot. And that's— and, and I had listened to a— I don't know if people like go back and listen to Instagram Lives. I'm, I'm thinking some people do, but I remember sitting on the beach many years ago. I think I was in like Dominican Republic or something, and I came across a Live that you did, and I'm like, oh my gosh, we, we have to talk about this. I was listening to a story about your wife and what had happened with your wife and your journey from being happily married and everything wonderful, and then you had a child and your entire world fell apart and it was filled with trauma.

Yeah.

And I'm just going to leave it there, and I would love for you to share your story and then get into how you— and you helped your wife move through this trauma and all the things. So let's just— if that's a good place to start, I felt like that.

Yeah. So in 2018, we got married, but I was in the midst of a massive financial reset. I lost like a million dollars that year and went through a crazy— like, all my cash cow businesses kind of disintegrated and then went through massive partnership split and all this stuff. And then we went through a season where I basically was in fight or flight. I didn't even know what fight or flight was, but I was basically in fight or flight for about 2 years. And then we get pregnant with our daughter in October 2020. My wife at the time is a 3-time suicide survivor, but she'd been totally mentally solid, good for the whole time I'd known her, which was like 5, 6 years at that point. And then pregnancy, I, I think she got prepartum. I don't know if it's a technical designation, but she started having trauma flashbacks and PTSD flashbacks. And she was barely eating. She was like eating Filet-O-Fish, strawberry ice cream. We had like 15 types of strawberry ice cream. And, and she was just barely eating anything, you know, couldn't keep anything down. And then she started having flashbacks about her overwhelming childhood. She was one of 11 kids, basically grew up in a cult, very abusive, narcissistic, abusive, like extreme narcissist, not just like a little on the spectrum, on towards the top of the spectrum for both mom and dad. And she just said she was the oldest of 11. So she's taken care of all these kids. And so once we had our daughter, our daughter would cry and would literally start triggering her nervous system back into her childhood trauma. And I didn't understand trauma at the time. I hadn't read any Peter Levine work and like connected as deeply with you as I am now. And like, I had very little understanding. I was like, and I was a peak performance coach. I was into peak performance psychology. I understood that, but I did not understand trauma. And so it didn't compute. And so I started for about the first year, I'm just trying my NLP stuff. I'm trying a bunch of other things and spending money on $500 on supplements. Finally, I read actually early in the first year, I should say, once we had our baby, I read Peter Levine's Healing Trauma. I was like, boom. Oh, there. That's what's happening. She has PTSD. Actually, I didn't realize she had PTSD at the time until about 6 months later. I was like, oh, she's got severe complex PTSD. And so, and then I just was binging on trauma books, binging on psychedelics eventually, because like once I got her into somatic psychotherapy, she's making progress, but she'd feel great for like 8 hours. And then she'd be right in the line of fire around our daughter and our daughter would cry for like 30 seconds. And then boom, she's spiraling right down. And I would even carry my daughter into the street screaming or yell at my wife, get out of the house, get out of the house, go, go, go, when my daughter would start crying, because I could see cause and effect and I understood the subconscious mind enough. But for basically the first year and a half, we were pretty freaking stuck. And she would say, I don't want to be wife, I don't want to be mom, I don't want to be alive almost daily. And if she didn't say it, she was thinking it.

Yeah. Dang, dang. I'm thinking of your poor wife. I'm thinking of you, this beautiful happy time having a baby. I remember hearing, I think on your live, like she would curl up in a ball sometimes for 8 hours and just sit there and couldn't even function.

Like, yeah, panic attacks 3 to 5 times a week. I didn't even know what a panic attack was until—

oh my gosh, what is happening?

Wow.

Yeah, that was the first year and a half of your daughter's life, you said?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So unbelievable. Okay, so then what did you do? Like, so then what, what, what started working?

Yeah, so I started putting together— I, I looked at it almost like as a perfect recipe. It's what it started clicking. I was like, there's not a silver bullet. The somatic psychotherapy was helping, so I had hope, had a glimmer of hope. Then she was also sleeping 10 hours a day, 2 naps a day, 400 milligrams of caffeine. So like just dragging. And she was 31 at the time, and I was like, what is going on here? And so then I looked into metabolic health, NAD, started doing NAD IVs, which are really painful, but I noticed her energy, her mood lifted like for 2, 3, 4 weeks after an NAD IV. So I was like, okay, there's something there too.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, I want to pause. Like, if you could define, like, what does— for people that don't know what NAD is, like, what is NAD?

NAD is the core building block of basically cellular energy. If you look at the metabolic Krebs cycle, like how your body utilizes, makes, and creates energy, NAD is the core cellular fuel for 500 cellular processes, as I learned later. So she was severely deficient, which I've seen a lot of my postpartum clients, severely deficient. They're not even aware, the husbands aren't aware. They're like, why don't I feel like myself? I can't lose the baby weight, whatever. And once we got her NAD optimized, we Which took us, once I figured it out, took me about a year. It then, she went from sleeping 10 hours a day to sleeping 7.5, feeling bright and cheery, going back to hot yoga again, like feeling really good without caffeine. Like her caffeine intake dropped 90%. But then like she basically felt great for about a month and a half. And then she was, broke her foot and then she was kind of stuck around her daughter a lot. Again, and it started triggering her PTSD again. And I was like, okay, there's something else that is not NAD, the somatic psychotherapy is not enough. And that's when I started exploring psychedelics. I had my first little journey with mushrooms with some buddies. I didn't tell my wife, I told her that we were going to do microdose. I did a full dose. As you would have said, no, it's stages, blah, blah. And I was like, I have to be the poisonous mushroom eater. And I did it and it was so blissful. So happy. And I talked my wife into doing it when we got back and we'd already watched like the Netflix series, How to Change Your Mind and a few other things. And sure enough, that like, that was one of the happiest, most magical evenings was her first like little 1 gram dose of psilocybin where we laughed and had so much fun. And she was the happiest I'd seen her in 2 and a half, 3 years that night.

Wow. Wow. And did that hold? Did— now, did you notice a difference after that?

Yeah, for the next 24 or 48 hours, but then she kind of went back. And what I started putting together the pieces is, and I just started trying to get the psychedelic facilitators to do parts work or do trauma work with her while she was on the medicine, but they wouldn't. Not because they didn't care, that's just not their training and they don't know, right? They didn't know how to do subconscious kind of no somatic trauma work. And so for 4 months, we'd have these beautiful psychedelic experiences about once or twice a month. She'd feel great for 48 hours. We'd, we'd feel great. We wouldn't fight as much. But it's kind of like, you know, you go up this beautiful high and you're basically the same person on the other side. You just had a beautiful escape. And then I was like, okay, I talked— I spent a month and a half talking to her therapist. Actually, her therapist was much easier than my wife, but I spent a month and a half talking my wife into doing a guided session with her therapist. And I got her therapist to do it, who's an amazing somatic IFS therapist. And sure enough, that February, end of February 2023, 5-hour journey. The next day, our daughter, again, our daughter would cry for 30 seconds, would trigger her childhood trauma. The next day, our daughter has like an 8 or 10 minute temper tantrum meltdown. She's like, 2 years, less than 2 years old at the time, about 2 years old, and flailing on the ground screaming. And my wife sits there and laughs, noticing how silly she's being. And I was like, whoa, she's never done that.

Dang.

And then I was like, okay, is it going to stick? And then sure enough, it stuck. And then it allowed me to start de— bringing my nervous system out of a PTSD, anxiety, hypervigilant state of like, what's going to go wrong? What's going to go wrong? To everything's okay. And now my wife, I would say that's the night we— she was cured of depression and about 90% cured of her complex PTSD.

So I'm not, you know, I'm thinking— I wasn't even thinking about all the trauma that you went through being with your wife around all that. Like, wow.

Yeah, I think it's— I think you can catch PTSD from, from your, you know, spouse or family members if you're in proximity enough where you're just in this state.

Well, you're, you're, you're living on guard, waiting and ready for her to have her panic attack or to have her fall off and go into God knows what. And then you're thinking that your daughter is going to cry, like trying to predict that and try to— I mean, you, you have to live on high alert. Like, your nervous system, of course, is like, okay, we got to keep things calm. How am I going to do— I just can't even imagine what you went through.

Yeah. And I didn't know very well how to self-regulate at the time, and I'm— and eventually, obviously, figured that out. But I had moments where I worked 10 minutes away in a coworking space like WeWork, and I'd get a text and then I have to bolt out of the WeWork, drive 80 miles an hour down West End with flashers on. So like, because I'm like, what the hell's going to happen? Is my wife and daughter going to be okay by the time I get home? Because she was just in a— she was panicking, freaking out, and in a trauma state. So yeah.

Wow. Okay. So is, so tell me then, where does the neuro rewired process come from? Is that part of this that you're doing? Tell us about that.

Yeah. So I started creating after that session with my wife's therapist. My wife's therapist said she didn't want to do any more sessions off the books just because it's not fully legal in the States in most parts. And I get it. And so about 6 months later, I started guiding other entrepreneurs and leaders through what I now call my neuro-rewire process, which is basically a metabolic health optimization, which is where we do NAD testing. We literally test finger prick blood test so we can see before and after where you're really at. About 80, 90% of my clients that battle depression or battling depression or complex PTSD or PTSD or postpartum, every single one of them pretty much has low levels of NAD. And, and so I can pretty much diagnose. And then if I get their energy up, yeah, then that is like we've taken one problem off the table, right? Where they're feeling good. And, you know, your brain is 3%, your body uses 30% of your body's energy, 3% of your body's weight. And so if you're deficient in cellular energy where you're waking up and just feeling like you're going to slog through the day, then we got some challenges to overcome. And so that's a key component. I have some other advanced supplementation and I'm testing for neurotransmitters at different points if need be. And then I also look at rewiring. You know, I mean, we're both in the healing space. I think of healing, it's psychological or cognitive, it's emotional, it's somatic, and it's spiritual. So it's not done until all 4 levels are hit. And sometimes there's ancestral stuff that's happening that we're dealing with. And so then the parts of the psyche, like I consider myself a pretty astute, pretty astute at parts psychology and trauma work around the parts. And, and so I kind of go in and help those protector parts or disempowered, you know, unresourced parts feel loved, feel, do the inner child work, move through, feel safe to relax and let more resourced or more empowered parts of us to take over. And then looking at the somatic and then looking at how's your environment when you get home, your relational patterns, your work. Are you in work that's meaningful and aligned with who you really are? Sometimes I've had clients that we cleared everything, but then their work was like just such a deficit that they were despairing. And until we realigned their, their career, they were still stuck. As well.

So can you, before we move on from there— and thank you for all that, and I think I agree, it's so important. You have to hit every layer— the mental, the physical, the emotional, the spirit— all, it's all very important. Talk a little bit more about NAD or NAD therapy. I'm seeing it everywhere, and I remember when you had mentioned it, I started looking into it like 6 or 8 months ago, whenever that was, and I was like, yeah, I can't stop seeing it now. Everywhere I go, there's signs, NAD therapy, and you get supplements, you can get the IV, all the things. Can you go a little bit more into what is?

Yeah.

Who, who would need it? Is it just someone that's depleted in energy? Is it for depression, anxiety? Talk a little bit more about it.

Yeah, great question. So one of my friends and collaborators now is one of the top experts in the world in NAD+. His name is Dr. Jin Shih. He's founder of jinfinity.com, and he found the type 1 diabetes gene back. He's a health and disease researcher. But in his drug testing supplement testing at University of Florida and Medical College of Georgia saw this massive problem of a lot of supplement companies, even drug companies were testing and creating products that were approved that were basically bearing no results. They were underdosing, overdosing, creating issues. And so there was no before and after. So he started and he found that, that NAD+ was one of the key molecules for a lot of disease prevention and anti-aging. So if you put it, I would say it's neck and neck with stem cells. And so as we age, by the time you're 50, you're at about half of what you started with. Now there's a few different modalities. The most common modalities that you see advertised are NAD+ IV, NAD+ shots, patches, and supplements, of course. The shots, IV, where you're actually getting the molecule of NAD+ and you're getting it injected in your blood, the molecule is too big to pass through the cell membrane. So it actually, it hits your cellular plasma. So it still has some beneficial effect because cellular plasma is where your, your mitochondria are basically utilizing certain elements out of the plasma to create energy and all that. But the most important aspect is actually getting the cellular nuclei. So, you have to do a precursor, which is usually NR or NMN. NR is TruNigen, which is one of the biggest brands. It pop— they popularized the field about 20 years ago, started coming on the market, but it's not nearly as effective as NMN. But if you get your NAD levels up, like my NAD levels now are healthy 12-year-old. I, without caffeine, without, you know, anything super extreme, I can you know, go till midnight. I can play basketball and guard the fastest guy or the most athletic guy that's in his early 20s, even though I'm 46 now. And now I'm not quite as fast, can't jump as high, so it doesn't— it's not like I'm 21 again, but my energy, my stamina, my endurance, my mental clarity is unbelievable. For like, I can outplay, outwork, whatever, most 20-year-olds that naturally are younger. And I wouldn't— when I— before I started taking this NAD powder from Genfinity, and I had an IV clinic where we were doing an NAD IV in Nashville, and then I learned about this powder and the testing, and I was like, okay, this works better than the IV and it costs 20% of the price, and I don't have to go through this painful IV.

So actually, everyone says it's really painful when you get the—

yeah, yeah, it's like you're gonna sucker punch to the gut and you're getting your wind knocked out of you.

And then so you're saying the powder is better?

Yeah.

Okay.

Because it gets actually into your cellular nuclei. So it's better for longevity, for stamina, for cellular health. So it helps prevent a lot of the major causes of aging, like cellular senescence. You hear about that or, you know, things like that. Inflammation reduces inflammation.

Really?

Wow.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've read really great things about it. And, and the person that would— that, that we should— that should look into it, let's just say, would have like— what are the symptoms? Is it just low energy, depression, anxiety? Like, what would—

low energy is definitely going to be a key factor. If you have anxiety or high levels of anxiety, higher stress, or you're just like you're a peak performer and you want to be at your best Right. Under, under the age of 20, about 25% of the population is lower than optimal.

About.

Wow. Yeah. So even little kids like the founder of GenPheny, his daughter, his like 8-year-old daughter, takes the powder every day since she was like 6 because he tested her and he's like, whoa, you're actually really low.

And she's—

they're Chinese. So Asian Americans are a little more susceptible.

Okay.

But also if you're on, if you're about the age of 40 or above, you're almost guaranteed to be pretty deficient.

Really interesting. So it's not even necessary then to get tested. It's okay just to take it. Like you can't take too much of it basically.

It's very safe. It's yeah. Most people over the age of 40 are deficient. And if you are noticing any stamina issues, et cetera, you're, you're probably deficient. If you don't feel like your best energy. Yeah.

And then how long does it take for it to see effects of that? Like how do you, when—

1 to 2 weeks typically.

Really? It's that soon?

Okay. Yeah. Where if you do it twice a day, you will get to optimal, like usually double your, like if you start at the optimal level is 50, I'm at 64 right now. Mm-hmm. But I started in my like lower 20s, for example, even though I didn't get tested, like looking at how I felt, I regret not testing at the time. But, you know, when now, like, I'm 64, if you take it 2 weeks, 2 times a day, you're going to feel amazing and you're going to feel like the best version of yourself energetically, assuming other things are at least halfway decent in your body. If you're eating fried chicken and drinking alcohol and key lime pie all the time, you're going to have a little trouble. I can overcome that.

Yeah, thank you. So can you say, where would we find this? J-I-N-Finity?

Yeah, J-I-N-F-I-N-I-T-I.com. That's the brand. Okay, I have a discount. I don't get an affiliate, but I have a 20% off code that's just Restore20, so it gives people 20% off their first order.

Restore20. Okay, we will— I'll put that in the show notes. That's perfect. Thank you for that.

Yeah.

Okay. So talk about how psychedelics open up the nervous system and the subconscious in a way nothing else has.

Yeah. So, you know, you and I are past our neuroplastic heightened states because you have two major windows, 0 to 7, 16 to 24. Once we're past that, we're basically a cooked turkey with microchanges, unless we go through a massive abrupt, painful, like life change, like cancer diagnosis or move to a new country, lose our go through a divorce, whatever. And then when the challenge— but even then you're still kind of a cooked turkey. Well, 90% of our— yes.

Okay.

So if we take the medicines, like, meaning some of the most common psychedelics, ketamine, you see ketamine clinics all over the place. The neuroscience shows you have it, you have two major windows when you do psychedelics. First is acute subjective experience. That's when you're out on the actual high. Then the next window is called their critical period reopening. That's like the lingering effect. Okay. And when you do ketamine, you've got a 1 to 3 hour acute subjective effects and a 24 hour to 48 hour critical period reopening. Psilocybin, MDMA are very similar, which is 3 to 6 hours of opening. So you uncook the turkey for 3 to 6 hours and you can go in. It's like you can go in the program and change the code. You can change how your iPhone is responding. You can change the programming. And our, most of our default responses, our unconscious mind, like Dr. Bruce Lipton said that the subconscious mind processes about 20 million bits of information a second. The conscious mind, 40 to 50 bits. So in other words, the subconscious mind or the automatic processing is roughly 500,000 to 1 million times more powerful, which is insane. So the whole— all of life change is dependent on do we get access to the subconscious mind?

Yep.

If we don't, you're basically the same person. 90% of your thoughts— Joe Dispenza says 90% of your thoughts today are the same they were yesterday, right? So you got this 3 to 6 hour window. That's when I say like, I'm gonna do the subconscious surgery. I'm going to clean up the cancer in the background. And I mean, you're present when you're doing MDMA, you're still conscious. You're not off in the galaxy. When you do a little, a lot of psilocybin, you can be off in the galaxy. But, um, and then LSD, you have this window that's like 8 to 10 hours. Ibogaine, which is amazing for addiction, uh, opioid addiction, it can cure opioid addiction in 2 to 3 days. Same with traumatic brain injuries. Like soldiers, like Navy SEALs, all that are going over there getting cured from— with ibogaine treatment centers. It's very abrasive and hard though. But then you're on the back end, you're lingering effects with psilocybin, MDMA. You have 2 to 3 weeks of almost like you're a 4-year-old child where you're moldable and changeable and things can get anchored. And LSD is like 3 to 4 weeks. Ibogaine is like beyond 4 weeks. So you have this map, you can create, we can recreate this massive opening of change and we can, and that's why it's so amazing for PTSD, so amazing for depression. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk talks about, I mean, he headed the whole MDMA trial, the last one.

Wow. Oh wow. I didn't know that.

Yeah. So he spearheaded it and that's when he was infuriated when it got declined through political pressure of ultimately big pharma.

Oh yeah, of course it did.

Of course. Yeah, because like, you know, if you're getting—

doesn't cost a million dollars, so yeah, you know.

Yeah.

And if people are getting relatively very inexpensive and it creates huge change, so of course it wouldn't get passed.

Yeah, yeah. Let's, let's give them Lexapro for the next 20 years.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, wow. Okay. So I don't even know where to go. There's so many questions I have around this or comments. What I wanna be clear about is that the way that we're talking about using psychedelics is not, hey, I'm going to the bar this weekend and let's everyone take some mushrooms. This is doing it in a therapeutic dose, or excuse me, a therapeutic setting, getting a therapeutic dose. And it's a very beautiful experience. It's a very therapeutic experience when you have a facilitator with you and you are sitting with them. Oftentimes, again, you have eye shades on, you're listening to beautiful music that is taking you through what we would call a journey. And that's where the rewiring— and you're right, like, man, weeks after, days after, it's like everything, the lens with which you see the world is is different. It's just different.

Yeah.

And that's why it's so important if you do choose to do something like this, there's something called the integration period that's post—

yeah—

journey, or post-sitting with this medicine. That's the most important part.

That's the reason.

I mean, it's not just— yeah, it's not to say that the journey is not important, but it's like, holy moly, post-journey is wildly important because that's where all the change can happen.

Yeah, yeah.

You don't want to go back to what you're doing before.

Yeah, yeah. And like, my— I had a client session yesterday, a 24-year-old girl. I've worked with her, her dad, and her mom. So I basically did two sessions with her dad, then her dad finally got her mom to come, who was, yeah, ripped with anxiety. Like, and they come from a deep Christian tradition and faith, so like There's also a lot of fear around it because of that. Well, after they did— after she did— the mom did the session, she's like, we're sending our daughter.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And she was hung up on for 2 years, been stuck in depression, anxiety, replaying a massive breakup. Yeah. And the shame and the stuck energy and the embarrassment and the suffering and the anger and the resentment. So she was stuck in this loop. Yesterday we worked through it. We got the energy unstuck. So, you know, I almost think of it as like part of what I do is cure emotional constipation.

Yeah.

And I get it moving through.

I like that, actually.

We got a big drop-off at the beginning, and then it starts.

Yeah.

And then really good. Yeah. And so now she's texting me this morning. She's not replaying the same scene that she replayed 100 times a day. She's feeling really good in her body. She got access to joy. I mean, you're familiar with the Hawkins, you know, Maps of Consciousness scale. So it's like, yeah, we can get access to love and joy. It's almost like, look, the medicines are retraining our nervous system. Hey, you don't have to be stuck in fear or anxiety. There is love. Like my wife, first time, first time we did it, I was like, oh, she's laughing for the first time in 2 years. She can get there again. There is hope. There's evidence she can get there again. How do I make that? How do I figure out? Let's get all the crud out of the way. Let's strip away all the stuff that's blocking it.

Yeah, you mentioned again, we were talking before about how it opens up the nervous system. And yes, so it's a subconscious kind of thing. It's rewiring. Talk more about the nervous system. I feel like I want to go there a little Yeah.

And you and I both have done enough work. We've studied enough. I look at the medicines are not nearly as impactful without the support of the trusted guide or trusted therapist or trusted healer or coach.

Yep.

Because the medicines are creating the opening. But if I— the opening might last, like I said, with MDMA, psilocybin, 3 to 6 hours. But if nothing happens with that opening, no one steps in that portal and cleans up the stuff. Helps you clean up the stuff. So like, then you're basically the same person on the other side. And so what I— my process when I'm guiding people, like yesterday, I got, you know, she's 24 years old, I asked her, and we'll say her name is Sarah. Sarah, once we're in the state and the medicine has kicked in, I'm like, hey, let's ask your body. And I got her into— out of her head, into her body with regulation, breath, you know, all that somatic Yeah, I was like, let's ask your body to show you a memory from the past that it wants to let go of, that's been holding on to. Yeah, third memory we worked on was the breakup, but there was two other ones, two other smaller ones, but they were still like— she had so much shame and embarrassment around one of them. Yeah, and we worked through it, and then we did inner child work. We— she held her little 4-year-old self that felt— and she's like— and then I'm asking her, all right, how does she feel? Can you help her breathe? Can you help her see that she safe, I'm actually doing somatic work on her 4-year-old self, helping her. And then, and then you can literally see the tension from her body that she's carrying in her neck and her shoulders. Yeah, fades. And then we move to the next one, and then we move to the next one. And, and so it's recalibrating how she's seeing herself on the inside, how she's feeling about herself. But the, again, the nervous system, the nervous system gets stuck. We got to give it an assist. And, and if we just do the medicines alone, sometimes there's, I'm not going to say they're not unhelpful doing them alone because they can be and they often are. But for the deepest work, if we're dealing with real, you know, sexual trauma, complex PTSD, major stuff. And sometimes I've had clients, like, the first memory we worked on was their pet bunny Hop Hop died at age 2 and a half.

Yeah.

And but their body integrated a message and said, hey, you know what, you can't keep the things you love alive. And then guess what she feels at age 39 about being a parent?

Exactly.

Oh, nope, not gonna do it. And she thinks it's because she— her family upbringing, which was not perfect either, But also her body had encoded a message that, oh, you let your pet bunny die when you were 2 and a half because it got outside and got frozen in Canada. Wakes up the next morning, hop hop is stiff. And now her body says, oh no, you're never going to be a good mom. Don't even go there.

So then how in the world are you supposed to find a partner and all the things? Like if you have that belief, we get blocked. It's wild. Okay, so if someone's listening, I also want to be clear about something. I want— let me ask you this question. Talk about addiction, because people always ask the question like, well, what if I become addicted? Don't— what if you're doing it too much? How— all the things like, what is your experience with that, or what is your knowledge around that?

So certain substances are more addictive, that is for sure, and you have to proceed with caution. The most legal medicines. And I'll show you for the people— I can't do that. I can't do screen share. But if you look at 2010 Lancet study on the biggest drug safety study ever done, thousands of participants, you know what the most addictive and dangerous substance or a drug available, you know what that might be?

Alcohol. I don't know.

Alcohol.

Yeah.

It's almost 10 times more addictive or dangerous than mushrooms. Which is like, stay away. Or LSD. LSD, you cannot overdose. You can take 10,000, 10,000 times the amount of LSD that you're legally supposed or recommended to take therapeutically, and you won't die. You'll just have a crazy journey for about 36 hours.

What about, you know, some people might argue that ketamine or, or again, mushrooms.

Ketamine is addictive. Ketamine. So ketamine is my least favorite. Because over time, to get the same effect, you need to continually increase the dose. And it is a little chemically addictive. Not— I mean, it's not like cocaine or alcohol or tobacco. So it's not that.

It's not the same kind of addiction then, right?

Yeah, correct. Yeah. And then MDMA is very, very safe. It's right up there with mushrooms and LSD, but it— you could be addicted a little bit or driven towards the feeling because it gives you a bliss and an escape and then it can create serotonin issues. But basically you're not going to get addicted to— there's no way you can get addicted to mushrooms or LSD. You can take it too much where you're just like disoriented and not aware, but very few people do that. But it's far safer than the legal medicines we have, like alcohol, painkillers, cannabis, tobacco, like these things way more available. Way more dangerous, like 3, 4, 5 times more addictive and dangerous.

Yeah, I agree with you. I, I would encourage anyone to read books by and go watch the Netflix series or the Netflix show with Michael Pollan. I mean, just get out and start doing research. And that's the first thing that I would encourage anybody to do. Certainly don't jump into anything at all. Like, go do your research. And if you decide to do something like this, when it comes to finding someone, interview. Again, I cannot emphasize enough, make sure the person that you are— the term is sitting with— is very, very well-versed and knowledgeable. This is not the kind of thing you're buying off of a street corner and you're going to go sit at home by yourself or with some dude you met like on the street corner. That's not at all— this is a— this is why they call it plant medicine versus a drug. We're not buying drugs here. This is truly a medicine. It's natural. It's from a plant.

Yeah, exactly. And, and yeah, and they're powerful. The other thing—

very powerful.

I had almost had a client that was in a marriage crisis back in 2024, live in Houston. The wife buys some mushrooms from someone else, goes and does a big journey. She did 3 times the amount of dose that she should have done.

I hear this.

Very scary.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you can't do anything while you're on the mushroom journey. It's just going to show you colors and you're going to be, etc. You're going to feel things and go through things. It's not demonic, but it was just scary. It was disorienting. It was the totally wrong medicine.

Yep.

She should have done MDMA with her husband because they were stuck in a lot of stuck anger and emotions and resentment. And they— yeah, I could have got them unstuck. And she'll probably never do the medicine again.

Yeah, because she was given the wrong— you have to do your research. And now with ChatGPT, like, put into ChatGPT, like, what is a, quote, healthy dose for my first time? I mean, get backup. I mean, my husband, in probably— it was 2017, I'm trying to think of the house I was in in Nashville— he came to me, he's like, I'm gonna start microdosing. I'm like, I'm like, like, you're taking drugs? I was absolutely furious. I'm like, no, you're not doing that in my house. He's like, I'm gonna do my microcellulose tea. And I was like, I was absolutely like, I am anti-drugs, I am anti-all that stuff, right? This is 2017, so this is like when it's sort of like bubbling around, you know?

Yeah.

Where are you getting it from? It's like the dark web. I was like, right? So anyway, he ended up doing research and, and found someplace, but again microdosing since then. It's like very common, and I've, I've done it several times, and you don't even notice. And it does— the people that I know, I have several people that I know personally that have microdosed, and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm so much more alert, it's helped with my ADHD. Like, it's— you don't, you don't feel like you're on anything because you're taking, is it 1/10 of a gram of, let's say, mushrooms or whatever it might be? They're really beautiful. And, and again, I was someone that was like, literally wanted to kill my husband when he said that. And since then, I started doing my own research back from 2017 until now, and I continue to research and finding Michael Pollan. And I mean, way back when, I'm talking like 6 years ago, it was on 60 Minutes. Yeah, like Anderson Cooper, 60 Minutes, had it on Sunday night and was like— and you can Google it and see it. But he had people and he was showing the brain studies and he was showing people that were overcome. They had overcome the PTSD. One woman was terminal, she had cancer. She's like, I'm not afraid of death, bring it. Like, I don't care. It was like, what? So yes, I have sat therapeutically several times now with mushrooms and MDMA and it's the most, yeah, it's the most beautiful thing I've ever done in my life. And Speaking of nervous system regulation, it is one of the two things that I've done in my life that completely changed my nervous system in a matter of 5 hours. Like, I do the yoga, the meditation, the breathwork, the journaling. Like, I, I've done this for 20 years, and coming out of my first psilocybin journey, I, I was speechless. And people continue to tell me, they're like, you're so much more relaxed, you know, than when you're in your 20s and 30s. I'm like, I, I know, and I really do owe a lot to plant medicines. But again, I cannot— this is not the kind of thing you're going to buy off of a street corner. This is— I cannot emphasize enough, find someone. And, and many, many therapists now, and guides such as yourself, are opening up their practices and offering this on the side. And because unfortunately, and it really is unfortunate given the fact that mushrooms cost nothing, yeah, that They're not legalized. And like you said, they're not addictive, not legalized yet. We, you know, they're illegal anyway. But to just ask around, find the right people, and it's a beautiful, beautiful— can be a very beautiful and very healing and therapeutic experience. Yeah, for sure.

I love that. And spot on too, Michelle. Like, and you can start with microdosing where you're basically taking a supplement and it boosts your neuroplasticity.

That's all.

It's great for preventing Parkinson's, Alzheimer's. You get more cognitive function.

The studies coming out with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, mind-blowing, mind-blowing, like what's coming out. And we're only going to see more and more and more of it. So yeah, it's definitely changed me. There is no doubt about it. And it's fast, much faster than, you know, working with someone for 10 or several years. Yeah, but again, that's, that's my lane. And if, if anyone listening says she's crazy, that's okay, you have your right to your opinion. But holy moly, please do your research around it. And I was terrified. I don't know about you, Mike, but God, the first time I did, I was like absolutely terrified.

And then I was—

you take low dose and you get into it, it's like, oh my God. You want to know what I feel like? It's just you and me. I want to come close and say this. For me, I was like, oh, this is God. Yeah, it really makes me want to cry because, you know, I went to Catholic school and then— excuse me— that never made sense. Yeah, you experience what we would consider to be God, and it's not scary, not judging, not awful. It is the most beautiful merging of all that is. And I have spent many journeys crying, and because I'm in so much bliss and unconditional love, and I'm like, this does not exist on our planet. But no, and it's real because I'm able to take it with me and I can tap back, back into it.

Exactly right. Yeah, I look, I look at it as like, man, we're opening up new exit ramps off the highway. We're familiar with anxiety. That's a great exit ramp. We've been there a lot. We're familiar with anger or stress or hard work or whatever. But now you got ineffable bliss. You got a radical sense of peace and oneness. Oh, oh, that's possible. I can feel that.

Yeah.

Oh, oh, I may not go there every day, but now it's available to me. And as I go there more and more, then I unconsciously start taking that exit ramp more.

You got it. It's an unconscious thing that it becomes the new way that you exist. I found I really started to love myself in a much deeper way because I, I was shown who I was during a lot of these journeys, you know, several journeys. I'm like, oh, that's who I am. Like, wow. And it's not just seeing it like a movie because it's an experience. Not to mention the people that I have talked with over the years that have had, I mean, radical, radical healing experiences. Someone very close to me in my family had horrible irritable bowel. I couldn't leave the house till 10 AM every day. Could, could not leave the house. And after he did one 5-hour journey, yeah, of mushrooms of psilocybin. When I tell you, it is 100% gone. 100% gone. And he lived with it for 20 years of his life. Like, horrible, irritable, had to be near a bathroom sometimes till 11 AM, changed how he had to work. Like, he couldn't freaking leave the house. Yeah, one journey. And it was beautiful. Just to give people just a perspective of what happened, he was brought back. And I've spoken with several people that have had experiences like this. Of course, there are millions to choose from, but he was particularly brought back back to— it was almost like the Ghost of Christmas Past. He said he felt loving beings all around him. He was brought back and shown, like, his childhood, different aspects of what had happened with his father, with his father's drinking. And he was traumatized by a lot of these things. And then he came out of it and it was gone, like the angst that he'd carried for all these years Angst was gone. And with the angst, he said these spiritual beings were with him and they said, you're done with this. And it was like, whoosh. And he goes, okay. And then the next morning, he, he's still shocked by it. Like, just, it's gone.

I, I believe it because it's an energy.

The energy shifts, right?

You know, exactly. And the energy is neither created nor destroyed, but it just transmutes and moves through. And now it's somewhere else, and it's not in a state of suffering.

And the perspective shifts that we have, that we're given, it takes our limited perspective that humans only have, a very limited perspective, and blasts it wide open. And you see all these different— and it's not just seeing, it's experiencing. You're in this movie and then your whole world changes. It's just— anyway, I, I'm, I'm a huge advocate with the right person, again, because And I keep saying this because I have heard stories where people go, oh yeah, I've done it twice, I can serve medicine. No, you cannot. Yeah, no, you cannot. You need to be well studied, well versed like you are. And people— there are several people in the world that are well versed. Find the right person.

Yeah, I should add too, one of the biggest things that I see for couples or individuals that are really deeply stuck— yeah, I've seen people basically like one of my clients I offer— the wife was really gung-ho. The husband wouldn't do it, but she had committed infidelity like 5 years ago. They had not had sex in 5 years since the infidelity.

Wow.

And the rest of their life, for the rest of their marriage, it's still— it's 2 years later now. Years without sex, years without connection. And because they were hung up on an old paradigm that was driven by political agenda, meaning psychadelics were banned not because of, yeah, the dangers and studies in the 1960s, but because so many hippies or people that were against the Vietnam War were against Nixon. And Nixon said carte blanche, anything associated with hippies, I'm going to end the movement. Even though we now know this Vietnam War was a totally bogus waste of time that created legions of suffering. That our culture is still dealing with. Like, how many of us have known someone that had a relative, a parent, a grandparent that was a Vietnam War survivor with PTSD that didn't even— we didn't even have diagnosis of PTSD until 1983 because the Vietnam vets. So crazy, right? So we had— so these things were banned and we allowed alcohol, we allow Lexapro, we allow all these major drugs that have cause women to gain 40, 50 pounds.

Mm-hmm.

Or these other things that are creating suffering and not actually healing. They're just band-aiding.

Yeah, they're band-aiding. They're numbing out temporarily. Yeah, band-aiding.

Yeah, they help in certain cases. So I'm not saying absolutely no, I'm just saying they're not curing in general. And it was a political movement to ban all these medicines. And, and so that's— I had to wrap my mind around because, you know, '80s, '90s, I'm born in '79, like it was all the D.A.R.E. to Say No against drugs. Your brain is, you're on drugs with a little egg frying.

And you remember that? Yes, I do remember that.

And now I'm, I'm smarter than I was before. I'm more alive with certain medicines, not everything.

Yeah.

Anyway. And I have multiple friends that are psychedelic neuroscientists now. So I'm getting deep insight into what's actually coming down the pipeline research-wise and is verified.

Well, that's exciting.

So yeah. Yeah.

So exciting. So if somebody is, is listening and thinking, well, how do I choose which one? Again, I would say, do your research and just, again, we're thinking, talking about like psilocybin, which are the mushrooms, psilocybin. We have MDMA, which otherwise For me in high school, people called it ecstasy.

Yeah.

And then the third one would be LSD. And of course there are several others we can go. I, I've done podcasts already on ayahuasca several times and there are so many others. We're just keeping it to these three for this time though.

Yeah.

But choosing which one would be, I always think of MDMA going heart, opening the heart space. Great for couples therapy, things like that. Right. But psilocybin too, honestly.

Yeah, it can do 100%. Yeah, it can be very somatic and emotional as well.

Yeah. And then LSD, I don't know anything about LSD, so I don't want to comment on that. You can comment on that.

Yeah, LSD, LSD is phenomenal. It's a little bit of a wild card. You could do the same dose, same person, same setting, and 3 times 3 different experiences. So it can be a— it's very healing and very transformative. It has more neuroplastic effects, meaning it's creating more flexibility in your brain, but it actually can be very heart-body where you can feel very happy as well. It was Steve Jobs' favorite medicine, so that was really cool. I mean, he wouldn't work with anyone intimately that hadn't done LSD. He felt like you were too in the box as a thinker. Wow.

Wow. I didn't know that. Yeah. Oh, Mike Zeller, this was so great. Tell everyone, where would they find out more about what you do? Tell us what you do and website and the whole bit.

Yeah. So on all the social media, The Mike Zeller, you can find me there. That's Z-E-L-L-E-R, YouTube, Instagram, et cetera. On all my psychedelic-related work, it is basically somewhat offline. You have to ask for a link to some extent. Mainly because it's, it's not fully permittable across the US. And yet I'm committed to it and committed to supporting because I want people to find healing and transformation. And if I didn't, if I cared, if I was waiting on the FDA, my wife would not be here and my daughter would not have her mom. And so I see people in the trenches struggling. I lead, I do a lot of private work with leaders, entrepreneurs. I have a whole team of facilitators that I'm training. And then, so we have, I work with people all over North America and even Europe. And then I have two retreats. One is called Upgrade Your Identity. So think of it as a very gentle, loving Tony Robbins-like experience with psychedelics. Actually, one of the top psychedelic neuroscientists in the world is my co-host for that retreat. I will not share his name, but we're doing deep subconscious belief reprogramming on that and patterns, stuck energy, somatic work, et cetera, ancestral, past life type stuff, and then divine relationship Relationships is my other kind of flagship retreat where we work with medicines to create radical loving connection, work through divine conflict, create this beautiful transformative union with your partner or future union with a future partner. If you don't have a partner yet, then it's still an opportunity to arise, to become more of the man or woman you want to be. But I love doing this work and I love pointing people in the right direction. So even if I'm we don't work together, I'll do everything to support anyone that is interested as well, because it's what saved my wife's life and our marriage. And so I have a lifetime of gratitude.

Hmm. Thank you. Thank you. That's beautiful. Thank you. We'll put all of that in the show notes, of course. So we really just want to say thank you so much for being, for being here with us today. Really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you. And thank you for your vulnerability. I mean, this is a lot. I know you shared a lot about your family, and thank you. Really means a lot.