In this interview, Mike recounts his wife’s battle with severe depression, complex PTSD, and suicidal ideation that intensified during pregnancy. After exhausting conventional approaches—supplements, prayer, journaling, breathwork, meditation, neurofeedback, somatic psychotherapy, and NAD optimization—he turned to psychedelic‑assisted therapy after hearing research from Johns Hopkins and popular podcasts. Mike describes his first psilocybin experience (2.5 g in nature) as a flood of gratitude, followed by group sessions that sparked laughter and joy, and later MDMA sessions that generated love and empathy, dissolving resentment between them. Recognizing the need for guided trauma work, he eventually secured a therapist willing to conduct deep trauma healing during a psilocybin session, after which his wife reported being 90‑95 % cured of depression and complex PTSD. The conversation shifts to the importance of treating psychedelics as sacred medicines, not recreational drugs, emphasizing the necessity of authentic, reverent facilitators, proper safety protocols, and integration work. Mike uses vivid metaphors—highways with exit ramps, skiing on fresh snow—to illustrate how psychedelics open neuro‑plastic pathways that, when combined with tools like Internal Family Systems (IFS), Neuro‑Linguistic Programming (NLP), somatic experiencing, and peak‑performance psychology, can rewire the mind. Both speakers stress the ethical, legal, and cultural dimensions of psychedelic use, caution against unsupervised consumption, and discuss alternative non‑psychedelic strategies for rewiring the brain.
Chapters
The metaphor I often use with my clients is it's like you're going down the highway and there's exit ramps, and one of them represents Disney World, and it's just amazing, and there's happiness and love and joy over there, and you've never been able to get there. You've been driving by that every single day and seeing your friends go over there and your family members go over there, but you've been stuck.
Oh, I'm interested. What was your journey with this? Clearly you would have had some experiences yourself to identify this powerful way of healing. What was your experience?
Yeah, so, you know, in October 2020, when my wife, uh, got pregnant, she began, uh, her most recent depression battle, and this was the worst one of her adult life. Um, you know, she attempted suicide 3 times before the age of 21. But when she got pregnant, it created an avalanche of mental health battles, hormonal issues, all the things. We tried a lot of stuff. We went through all the supplementation, all the prayer, all the journaling, all the breathwork, all the meditation. And— or not all of it, we did a lot. I'll just say a lot. Then, we did neurofeedback, we did somatic psychotherapy, we did NAD optimization. All those things had an impact. Especially, but the two biggest kickers, let's say three biggest kickers, NAD optimization because she was definitely operating in a state of severe fatigue and her metabolic function was way off. And so, if your brain's 3% of your body weight uses 25-30% of your body's energy, well, now she's operating in deficiency. So, brain fog and inability to feel like herself was severely deficient. As we got her energy up, It wasn't enough though, because our daughter would cry and my wife grew up in a very traumatic childhood. She was the oldest of 11 kids and kids were screaming all the time and she's a highly sensitive person, which is another designation kind of like autism or whatever. She was really struggling with this overwhelming stimulation. Our daughter would cry and would trigger her complex PTSD and her PTSD would be triggered by an infant, but our infant is going to cry, our toddler is going to cry. So, we had 2.5 years of deep, you know, she was having panic attacks 3 to 5 times a week, complex PTSD, and that's essentially generally considered incurable, deep depression, suicidal ideation, all that. She would say on a weekly, often daily basis, "I do not want to be a mom. I do not want to be a wife. I don't want to be alive." And so, I was like, "Okay." And then, I'm listening to Tim Ferriss podcast and Huberman Labs and researching and I start saying, "Oh." Maybe psychedelics are the gateway because Big Pharma doesn't have an answer for curing. They have processes for managing mental health, not curing. Well, the research I was hearing from Johns Hopkins and other tests and trials and studies, it was like 70% results, 70% effectiveness of curing depression from sometimes 1 or 2 or 3 sessions. And I'm like, Wow, okay. Then, I finally did a journey and it was a magic mushroom or psilocybin journey, 2.5 grams with 4 other buddies and it was out in nature. And, it was one of the most profound experiences of my life. I remember sitting there. I had never done drugs. I've never been in drugs. I barely drink alcohol. I'm pretty healthy, all that stuff. But, I remember sitting there and being flooded with gratitude. And, in a way, yeah, I saw the fractals and images and all that stuff, But, I was flooded with gratitude in my nervous system. I was able to access gratitude that, you know, 1,000 days of the gratitude journal never gave me access to. And, I was like, "Oh, something's changed here." And, I came back and got my wife to do it with a couple other family members and we had an absolutely beautiful evening. And, I was like stunned with how much we laughed. My wife was in a deep depression spiral and we laughed and laughed and laughed for like 3 or 4 hours and it was like her body needed to feel joy. I need to feel laughter and happiness. And same for my, my brother and sister-in-law. And then two, two more sessions, and the first time we did MDMA, I was flooded with love and empathy for my wife. All my resentment and frustration faded away. All my wife's judgment and resentment towards herself faded away in those moments. And then we could see each other with all without all the negative energy. And it's like we were able to reconnect. I was like, okay. And then as I dug deeper, then I started realizing that portal, the research was showing me, hey, I think my intuition said it's that window while she's on the medicine. I kept trying to get my ceremony, ceremonial guides to guide her and do trauma work while she was on the medicine, but they didn't know how to do that and they didn't want to do it. And finally, I talked a therapist into doing deep trauma healing while she was on a psilocybin journey. And that was the night that she would say she got cured of depression and about 90-95% cured of complex PTSD.
Oh, magical. Thank you for sharing that beautiful story. I want to also acknowledge what you're saying and speak to the respect and the reverence that we must have for these sacred sacraments. It's not But this is not a conversation that Mike and I are having of go out and find some mushrooms and eat them. This is an opportunity for you to understand that this is a sacred healing ceremony, should be treated as such. Um, you find the, the medicine carriers or the shamans that are authentic, that can do this, that understand it, that have reverence and respect for this. And if you are to do something of this, we know, for example, now in Australia, um, and many countries around the world, um, it's been decriminalized. It's now available through you know, different types of psychotherapy. I would say I would not want to sit in a room with four walls and two therapists and having it done. I would rather do it as a part of a sacred healing ceremony. But just to be clear, we're not saying you go out and just do drugs. By the way, in my hypothesis, it's not a drug, it's a medicine. It is by nature. If there's a problem, nature has the answer. But it's important to understand we're not just advocating go out and do something. This is something that's coming up in conversation. I remember when I started my journey with plant medicine, I've sat in over 100 ceremonies now, and, and one of my shamans originally said to me, when the medicine finds you, you will know in your heart if you are ready or not. It may be now, it may be later. You can research it, you can meditate on it, you can do your studies as Mike is saying. And then when you realize, and if you realize that, yeah, this is something I'm interested in, then you can seek out and find the appropriate professionals and shamans that are respectful of the sacred ways, that will hold you in a safe space, because that's equally as important as having the experience in itself. Man, I love how you can share about this and just really go to the point where, hang on, we tried almost everything for all of these years with so much pain. You know, I don't want to be alive and I've got a little one. Like, just imagine that energy in the household. And then speaking to the transformational power of these plants, I think, and also MDMA-assisted therapy, as you mentioned, I think is phenomenal. Outside of this tangible tools for people out there going, that's great, I love it, I'm open to it, let's see what I can find. Outside of that, what could one do now to start that rewiring journey without these sacraments, perhaps?
Yeah. And let me add, I love what you said earlier too. The tools are really powerful, and you sh— it's like getting into a Ferrari, a race car Ferrari, right? You don't, you don't jump in, go down the track at 200 miles an hour without any training. And, and so having the guide, at least 50% of it is the proper guidance, because the medicines create the opening. What you do with the opening, if you don't have the right guidance, the right safety, and the right dosing, and so You got to know, have people that know what they're doing. And also, if you have trauma, because a lot of people doing the medicines, deeper stuff can come up. People in my work, when guiding clients, my clients don't have bad journeys, but it's because I know what I'm doing and I'm trained and I'm studying. I'm constantly learning and I don't take on— I'm not doing ayahuasca, for example. I'm not guiding people through ayahuasca journeys because I'm not trained in that. That's too much. Or LSD. So, you're creating a sacred opening that you got to treat it with reverence because, again, your nervous system while you're on this medicine is more wide open than any point. So, I got to know, I got to love and care for my people and recognize, pre-screen appropriately, know the health side effects because there are health risks. It is very safe when done properly. There's a misnomer. These medicines are less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco when done properly.
Absolutely.
The right safety and protocol.
Yeah, that's why I said the difference between drugs and a medicine, because drugs can be used for many different ways, but a medicine is truly something that is natural that can be applied as a healing ritual or ceremony and will have those tremendous healing effects. And so even though sometimes, you know, the TGA or whatever said that is a drug, I say, well, you named it a drug, but this has been used for thousands of years from lineages around the world in sacred healing ceremony. So who are you to say that it's a I understand that it needs to be seen and respected in a way, but at the same time, who are we to judge something that Mother Nature has brought to us forever? We need to protect our people, but at the same time, I don't think we should be restricting ourselves from these sacred plants that have such answers. And I honor you, Mike, for the authenticity that I can feel, for the heart that shines through with your compassion when you speak of these things, because you're absolutely right. If we can hold it as a sacred ceremony with the reverence and respect for the person and their traumas, then wow, I totally see how this rewiring process is possible.
Yeah, you're spot on. And also even like MDMA, for example, is a derivative ultimately created from MDA, which is sassafras, a naturally occurring compound. It's just more easily chemically manufactured. But the other element too, so the medicines create the opening and the way I like to think of it is like, and then I'll go to the other tools as well because the other tools are especially effective for healing while on the medicine or post-journey. So, I think of the medicines like, have you ever been skiing on white powder, like freshly coated mountaintops? Yeah. Right? It's nice. It's beautiful. Well, the medicines, when you do the journey, you do MDMA, psilocybin, sassafras, whatever, ayahuasca, which I don't recommend for the majority of people, by the way. You have to really be called to it. But you get coated with— it's like white powder on the mountaintop of your nervous system. But if you don't do anything with it, it's just like you got this beautiful snow. But if you do something with it and you go down the slopes and you ski and you enjoy it, it's like you're creating new neuro grooves in the pathway of your mind. Those neuro grooves are there afterwards. The metaphor I often use with my clients is it's like you're going down the highway and there's exit ramps, and one of them represents Disney World, and it's just amazing, and there's happiness and love and joy over there, and you've never been able to get there. You've been driving by that every single day and seeing your friends go over there and your family members go over there, but you've been stuck. Or that other exit ramp represents the Taj Mahal, and it's a beautiful palace of abundance and joy and freedom. Can't get there. Well, now, while you're on the medicine, it creates this neural pathway where you can go down the highway and take that exit ramp. At first, you're used to taking the exit ramp of suffering, of excuses, of fear, of doubt, of anxiety, whatever. Or just malaise, you're just kind of apathetic or not as at your best, or you're grinding it out, you're succeeding externally, but you're not succeeding with joy. Now you have that Exeramp to be able to bounce off and go over there. And yes, after the medicine wears off, you can still take that Exeramp. You're not going to be as likely to take it as you were while you're on the medicine, but now you actually have that choice. and as you continue making that choice and you reinforce that choice, now that exit ramp becomes more familiar than the one with McDonald's and the one with all the other suffering. And this exit ramp brings you to bliss, brings you to love and harmony and freedom, right? So that's while you're on the medicine, the tools that I use and I see most effective. You have to understand psyche, the human psyche, because there's protector parts that that often will come up. Like, I did a session yesterday. The wife who I'd done a private session with, with one of her friends, she had all— we had to work through her protector parts because she had experienced rape. She'd been molested. She'd been adopted, had tremendous abuse as a kid. Like, she's actually tried 90 different things. And the most powerful thing she's had done yet was the first session with me. And you know, almost 15 years of trying to heal herself. And, but the protector parts came up. I do IFS or Internal Family Systems. I do NLP or Neuro-Linguistic Programming and somatic experiencing. And I also do a lot of peak performance psychology, but I only do that after I've worked through a lot of the trauma because I want to get the junk out of the trunk before I reset.
