Transcript excerpt from a YouTube conversation where Niraj Naik interviews a speaker (a doctor) about legal risks of openly working with psychedelics (mushrooms, ayahuasca) and Kambo frog medicine. The speaker describes operating in Mexico/Jamaica where substances are legal or tolerated, recounts being outspoken about Kambo while working in London emergency medicine, and downplays fear of legal consequences.
You know, the actual conventional legal view on psychedelics, whether it will ever become a legal thing. Like, aren't you risking yourself being a doctor, putting yourself out in the limelight, doing this? Could you go to jail for this stuff like that?
I guess I probably could go to jail. I never really thought about it. I think I move around so much and I'm based in Mexico that I don't know, like, no one really cares what I'm up to. And I've not actually been holding any mushroom retreats of yet. And actually I was in Jamaica for that reason last month studying at a retreat center called mycomeditations. Because. And the whole reason that they're based there is because mushrooms are legal there.
Right?
Like let's go where it's not legal. Because I know that the retreat founder had issues with the law in America where he was dishing out mushrooms to people and got into a lot of trouble. So for sure, I think in Mexico everyone and their dog is running the ayahuasca ceremonies and whatever. And I think as long as you don't get involved in the cartel, no one really cares. Certainly, I guess if I stepped foot in London and someone reported me and I don't know, I can't imagine why the police would be wasting their time with me, to be honest. But as a doctor, when I was working in the ER or A and E as we call it in London, I was really vocal about the cambo because I was working with it and I was known as the crazy frog lady by my colleagues and peers and my consultants because I would tell them about it. Because I knew I was leaving medicine so I wasn't concerned about keeping my license. I had none of the fears or concerns like that. So they would just, I'd be like, go away and read, read the research. Because back in the 1980s there was quite a lot of research done on the secretion and it was actually hailed as like one of this fantastic peptide by a man who went on to nearly. I don't know if he won a Nobel Prize when he was a runner up. Anyway, quite a well known scientist back in the 80s and I, so I turned, put everyone onto the research and then they found it and said, wow. Yeah, actually looks good. No, no one cared, no one reported me to anyone, so.
