Tens of Millions Are About to "Trip" Legally | Psychedelic Concierge ep.1

39 million people have identified in the United States as psychedelic curious. Psychedelic medicine is white hot. The growing popularity of psychedelics as an assist in therapy. But there's no really good resources for where to go. Microdosing of mushrooms is ripping through the middle of the country.

I am so encouraged by psychedelics. You know, it's like a retreat, but never in the world of longevity. And of course, you have to be very careful when talking about psychedelics because they're extremely powerful. It needs to be done properly with a licensed professional.

And it's sweeping through because there's no other solution. And it's been shown to break a heroin addiction in one session. DEA just recently asked Health and Human Services to reschedule psilocybin off of Schedule I. Tens of millions of people are about to have a psilocybin mushroom experience. Welcome to the Psychedelic Concierge Podcast. I'm Zappy Zapolin, and today we're going to talk about how the psychedelic renaissance is here, but the infrastructure isn't. I would say right now psychedelic medicine is white hot because we just went through the pandemic, which was traumatizing for people. We've got potential world wars. I mean, we're all realizing that we can't go back to what used to work or we thought would work—talk therapy, antidepressants. That kind of thing. And so everybody's looking for themselves. They're coming into their doctor, they're talking to their friends, and they're saying, hey, what's next? And the biggest evidence we have is that 39 million people have identified in the United States as psychedelic curious. What's exciting about that for me is that a lot of those people are going to want to be guided on their journeys. And so we've got this situation which is that you've got all these curious people, but there's no really good resources for where to go. So a lot of times people, they'll go online, they go on Google, they search psychedelics, and up come a few ayahuasca places, maybe a mushroom place in Jamaica, and they're like, oh, okay, I guess I'm supposed to do ayahuasca. But maybe they don't need ayahuasca. Really, they'd be better off if they had San Pedro or ketamine or iboga if they have an addiction profile. So people just don't know where to start, and the internet is where they're starting, but there's nothing there. And so for me, I think the most important moment that we have right now is that we've got all these curious people, and then we have secondary necessarily have this moment where the DEA just recently asked Health and Human Services— that's run by RFK Jr.— they asked for a recommendation to reschedule psilocybin off of Schedule I, which is where it's illegal to use or even to study. And so the reason that's so relevant is that when cannabis recently got rescheduled from Schedule I to Schedule III so it can be studied and doctors can give it to patients, that a similar thing is about to happen for psilocybin mushrooms. That they reschedule that off of Schedule 1 to another schedule. And what's exciting about that is that because psilocybin mushrooms have already had a Phase 1 clinical trial, they will be available to use under the Right to Try Act, which Donald Trump put into place during his first term. And it was basically used for cancer drugs where if you found a cancer drug that you wanted to use that had gone through a Phase 1 clinical, so you knew it was kind of safe, but there was no long-term data, that you had the right to try it. And so psilocybin mushrooms haven't fallen under that yet because they are on Schedule 1. But as soon as Human Health and Human Services and the DEA shift that, all of a sudden tens of millions of people are about to have a psilocybin mushroom experience. And as we know, in the 1960s when psychedelic medicine hit society, it changed everything. Art, culture, music, business models, everything changed. And so in this moment, we're about to have the same thing, but in the '60s it was able to be suppressed suppressed, put into prohibition because there was only 2 or 3, you know, nationwide television stations, and it was very easy for the government and people that didn't want to have it there to suppress psychedelic medicine. And but this time there's no putting it back. So you're going to have millions of people trying psychedelic medicine coming up, culture changing, and where that goes I think is going to be absolutely incredible. The exciting thing about Susie Q from Atlanta, who's never done psychedelics before but curious, and where do they begin, because Maybe they don't know anybody. They don't have that kind of network. But the reality is that psychedelic microdosing of mushrooms is ripping through the middle of the country. PTA Moms and Mothers for Mushrooms is an actual group that's out there. It's ripping through the country. And we on the East Coast or the West Coast, we're always thinking, oh, we're changing laws and we're on the cutting edge, not realizing that in Middle America, This is sweeping through and it's sweeping through because there's no other solution. Talk therapy is not going to work. These people have already been on antidepressants and anxiety medication and they're drinking alcohol to try to cope and all these things. So in this moment where the scientific research is there, the anecdotal evidence, celebrities are coming out included in, in the psychedelic world, these moms and the typical housewife in America is having this incredible experience and sharing it. We are still in a gray area. So it's very important that when somebody who's not familiar with psychedelic medicine and doesn't have that access, it's really important to find a proper source. That is still something that can't happen on Google or Craigslist. So it's gotta be very intentional because a lot of the products that you see in gas stations or online, they're not real products. They're either some mushroom that's being promoted as psychedelic, or they have some type of an effect that's gonna feel like something happened, but it wasn't psilocybin mushrooms that's got mycelium that's going to rewire your brain. So very important that people know their source. There are a lot of churches that are opening up right now, some mushroom churches that have a legal way to get medicine. But if you're a church— and there are many of them now and they're expanding rapidly all over the place— their members are actually allowed to use psychedelic mushrooms and other plants as long as they're doing it for spiritual purposes. In our Psychedelic Concierge program, we connect our members with churches that already have that legal status, firm footing for them. In Oregon, it's interesting because you can see how much people want high-quality medicine, especially these days with fentanyl and different things. People know you really gotta know your source. Well, in Oregon, there was a mushroom store that was open for a while. Government came in and shut it down. But during that time, there was a line around the block all day long. It was a huge business for those folks. We think sometimes that these are just the very progressive states that are taking these actions on psychedelics, like California or Massachusetts or something like that. But in fact, West Virginia and Mississippi just both put forward ballots in their state for access to psychedelic medicine and for psilocybin research to take place in their state. So these are some of the states that you would never think in a million years would be behind psilocybin or psychedelic medicine. West Virginia, Mississippi would not be the states you would think of, but they've been so ravaged by this opiate epidemic that they've thrown up their hands and said, we have no solutions. Maybe these mushrooms, they look like they're safe, they look like they're effective. Let's do this for our citizens. So as much as we think that this is just the very progressive states, I'll give you an example that you would have never thought of. West Virginia just allocated $20 million for ibogaine research. And ibogaine is extracted from an African root, iboga, and it's been shown to break a heroin addiction in one session. And it's amazing reset of your neural connections, but also it does a physical reboot on you. And it's been shown with veterans to be very effective. There have been some movies out, there have been some Joe Rogan episodes about ibogaine. If West Virginia puts $20 million into ibogaine, the research that comes out of there is going to be so much better than anything else in the state that they have to offer that I believe access is going to happen. And one of the things that I really think is going to happen is that the veterans through RFK Jr., through the VA, are doing their own research with psilocybin mushrooms and ibogaine. And so when the veterans start to get the ibogaine en masse, and all of these veterans are getting that, you're going to have a situation where we're going to be able to look at the data, say, a year from now, because RFK Jr. said he wants these veterans to get access to these things within the next 12 months. So once they get access, the data that comes out in that year is going to be so profound, they're going to be like, wow, suicide rates are down 50%, we're giving out 50% as much medication as before, let's get this out to the rest of society. And so through the veterans and through all that research, you are about to see ibogaine penetrate for addiction. Witi tribe in Africa that procure the iboga, and they've been using it for tens of thousands of years, that tribe uses iboga to get in touch with their ancestors. It's an ancestor-based religion, and so they take it to commune and to get answers. And I've taken a lot of people, celebrities regular folks down to do iboga or ibogaine, and the transformations have been incredible. I'll say one of my best testimonials is Lamar Odom. I brought him down to do ibogaine, and he's been clean off of hard drugs for the last 6 years since ibogaine. And he called me up the night after Kobe Bryant died. Lamar Odom called me up and he said, Zappy, he goes, I just got to tell you this. He said, last night I knew as a lifetime addict that I could use drugs and everybody was going to give me a pass on it. He said, but since the day of the ibogaine, he goes, just didn't have the desire to do it. And I was like, wow, wow. I actually recently went down to Mexico where iboga is legal. Ibogaine is legal. There's a number of clinics down there, and I brought a group down to do iboga with a shaman. And it's very important you do it with somebody who's a facilitator and that there's a medical staff there. And the transformations were incredible. People drop trauma, shed trauma that's been with them their whole life. And usually it's sort of like a one and done thing with the iboga and the ibogaine. But it turns out there are more layers. You keep shedding layers and layers from this. There's a lot of now anecdotal evidence that the iboga, if you were to microdose it, it can actually reverse Parkinson's disease because it's building new neural pathways in your brain. And so this is breakthrough science. This is the future of not just addiction support, but of healing PTSD, significant trauma. And what I love about it is it's 24 hours. So you go down there, and you have this experience over the course of a few days. You go down and do iboga or ibogaine and you're taking basically one dose. You're going down there, you prep for it, you get all your medical stuff in order, and then you have this iboga or this ibogaine journey. And through that process, you are going back and cleaning all these things because a lot of times I've found is that people have this trauma inside them or things that trigger them and they're like, why is that triggering? It doesn't even make sense. Well, because your ancestors, your grandfather, your great-grandfather, all of their memories and all of these things are stored in your DNA. And so things that trigger you that you don't even understand, in order to get rid of that, you've gotta go in at the root DNA level is what, uh, the science says. And what I love about it is with the veterans, just recently on Joe Rogan, he had Governor Rick Perry, the former governor from Texas. The evolution of him as an individual, as it relates to ibogaine is absolutely incredible. He had always been told drugs are bad, everything's terrible, don't do this. And he wound up seeing Marcus Luttrell, the famous veteran from the movie Lone Survivor. He was a friend of his, and he saw that he did ibogaine, and he totally resolved all of this war trauma and things like that, childhood trauma. He was like, wow, he's like, I gotta put away my preconceived notions, my prejudices that I've always had, because here's my friend and it's benefiting him, and it's a plant that's growing out the ground. Fast forward now, Rick Perry has now done ibogaine himself, went down to Mexico and did it. And so to have somebody like him as an ally is so huge. That's why Texas has put tens of millions of dollars in ibogaine research. It's part of why other states like West Virginia and Mississippi are starting to do the research, because they have these huge populations of people that are addicted to drugs, in and out of state institutions and things, and there's no solution. And iboga and ibogaine represent a real solution. The 39 million people that are psychedelic curious, that 74% of them say that they want a guide to help them with their first journey, a lot of these people, the best thing they could do is to start small. That's always my recommendation. Inch your way in. So when people say, oh, I want to take mushrooms, well, start with a microdose, because a microdose is actually sub-perceptual. That's what it means. You're taking so little that you don't really know that you took it. And in that state, almost like homeopathy, you take a little bit of the medicine, your body knows what to do the rest. When you take a little bit of a psilocybin mushroom and you maybe have a little bit more energy, a little bit more joy, that's a powerful thing. But then you get to step it up. You go to 2 microdoses and see where you're at with that. This is the way I think everyone should start taking psychedelics in this country. The prohibition that's been put in place, a lot of people don't know why it happened, is that you had a perfect storm happen in the 1960s where the Vietnam War was happening. The government realized people weren't going to go out and fight if they were expanding their consciousness using psychedelic medicine. You had the medical establishment that was putting out their antidepressants, and they didn't want competition from something like mushrooms that could potentially resolve your problems overnight. And third, and most sort of sinister, is the alcohol industry, because the alcohol industry knew that there was a day like 2026 that was going to come where especially younger people were gonna start taking psilocybin mushrooms and cannabis instead of alcohol. And they knew it and they were like, we have to suppress this. So they spent millions of dollars doing really strong propaganda, telling people how dangerous these things, you're gonna lose your mind. And they would spend money against that every single year. And so people have been very disrupted in their thinking. We've had this perfect storm that's kept these things away from people. People, even though the states are waiting for the government, waiting for the DEA and Health and Human Services to make the move to say yes, this does have medical value. Because right now they're on Schedule 1, and Schedule 1, the definition is no medical value and highly addictive. Now psilocybin mushrooms have been proven to have major benefits and also are one of the least addictive substances on the planet. So that's false. It shouldn't be in that bucket in the first place with heroin and cocaine and things like that. It was misclassified. And so when you think about that, people will say to me, well, maybe they're just not ready to bring it out, maybe the science isn't there, and that's why it's still on Schedule I. And I'll say, okay, well then, if the definition of Schedule I is no medical benefit and highly addictive, then why aren't cigarettes on Schedule One, some people might claim that alcohol has some medicinal value, but cigarettes, zero. So I think it's just all these really cool anecdotal things that are happening, like Conor McGregor going down and doing ibogaine. Well, now people get to watch him over the course of the next few years, like they're watching Lamar and some other folks, and they get to use that as a reference point to see with their own eyes what happened. My motivation is to make sure that when people get access to these compounds, that they use them in the right way and they get fit. And the only way really to do that is through education and putting people in the right set and setting. So the right mindset and the setting is where you do it and who you're with. And by training guides and having people who can chaperone these people through the process and help them to integrate, they're going to have an incredible experience and then they're going to tell their friend and so on and so on. So I think it's just very, very important with all of the 39 million people with 74% saying that they want a guide to help them and to chaperone them. The training that has to take place right now, because psilocybin may be available as soon as tomorrow for a greater society. We have to train these guys as fast as possible. And as an example, MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Science, they're the ones that were bringing forth MDMA as a medicine for PTSD along with therapy. And that didn't go as planned, and they didn't get the approval in the way that they wanted to. To. But leading up to that, their organization thought they would need 30,000 trained guides just for MDMA. So when you put on that psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, San Pedro, all these different medications, you're talking about probably a million guides are needed right now. And so we have to educate those people. And Psychedelic Concierge, this program, is dedicated to training people in everything that you can do already. It's legal. You can guide somebody, you can prep them, you can help them to integrate. Those are all legal now, and there's so many people that are having these experiences that as you get trained in this space, you can help somebody to have— go from having a good experience to getting— changing their lives and getting everything they could out of this. Thank you for joining us today and for being interested in the psychedelic renaissance and trying to figure out how you fit in here. And we're excited to be that resource for you. We know as a here. This is a very exciting moment, and we hope you'll reach out, DM us, and be part of this movement.