I had this incredible conversation with Melanie Curtin about my journey with plant medicines and psychedelics. We went deep on what these experiences have meant for my own healing and how they can be used as powerful tools for growth when approached with the right intention and container.
I shared some of my most vulnerable moments on medicine, particularly with ayahuasca and combo. One story I told was about sitting on my back with this grapevine above me during a psilocybin journey, feeling the medicine literally move through my body like a vine wrapping around my heart and just gently, lovingly pulling it open. Those experiences of complete surrender, of feeling held and supported, they've changed me at a level that's hard to put into words.
We talked about resistance and how some of my most challenging trips became my most healing ones. There was this night with ayahuasca where nothing was happening for me, ceremony after ceremony, and I realized I was angry, actually whining at the medicine, at the feminine for not showing up for me. The moment I stopped resisting and said, "I'm ready, meet me," the medicine hit and took me exactly where I needed to go.
The thing I really wanted to get across is that these medicines aren't recreational party drugs. They're powerful healing tools that need to be approached with respect, proper guidance, and community. I came into them through men's work with people who knew how to hold space, and that made all the difference. Whether it's the physical purging with ayahuasca or the complete vulnerability of needing help in ceremony, these experiences have taught me how to surrender and actually be with whatever's present.
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Jason Lange: Step by step, actually feeling the medicine almost like it was a vine moving its way through my body, wrapping its way around my heart, and then just gently and lovingly pulling it open. Just pulling it open.
Melanie Curtin: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Dear Men. Always happy to have Jason Lange with me, my co coach and facilitator extraordinaire. Today we're talking about psychedelics and healing and trauma and all the things. This is one that's been requested and we've been wanting to do for a while. So I'm excited to get into this topic because I think there's just a lot of hope and possibility and also some sort of misunderstanding or perhaps not. Not a lot of clarity around what psychedelics can actually help with and what they can't help with. So, yeah, Jason, you have a wealth of experience when it comes to psychedelics and some strong opinions that I love hearing about. So I would love to hear, maybe to start just about your own introduction to psychedelics and how they've served you in your journey.
Jason Lange: Yeah, so I've done a few, probably not as many as some, but I've done enough to know where they fit in my growth journey and how they can support that and also what their limits in support of that are. And for me, I was pretty much a straight edge guy until post college, really, even including alcohol, I just wasn't. Wasn't comfortable kind of stepping into those spaces. But as I got into my healing journey, particularly in my early to mid-20s, I could feel the desire growing. Right. Like, wow, there's these experiences other people talk about and I would like to have them quite simply. And so my first experience, I was so lucky compared to a lot of people in that I did not really come into them how a lot of people do, which is more recreational. So. Right. Just something we do in high school or college or at parties or at concerts. Not that I haven't done those things, but my entryway was actually through some men I knew through men's work who were, you know, really into certain medicines. And one of whom in particular facilitated me and a friend and, like, just totally guided me through the experience and did an amazing job of preparing me and setting the container and then being present for me during it. And like an awesome environment in the mountains of Colorado, and it was beautiful. And that was a very short one. That one's called salvia, which is a plant you smoke that has a psychedelic effect. And it was awesome. For me, it was just fantastic. Very healing, very nourishing, very energetic. Definitely no kind of time distorting. Went to. Went to some other places, and that juiced me for a while, you know, that was like, wow, that was. That was really good. That was really powerful. Um, it was mostly just a positive experience. And then it wasn't until maybe five years later that I kind of really knew I was ready for the next wave. I had moved. I had made a lot of changes in my life. I had been in men's work. I had done some therapy. And that was right around the time, kind of in the. I don't know what you would call the 2010s. I don't know what we have the word for that yet. Early last decade, when ayahuasca was really starting to show up in different transformational communities, and that was one that really kind of scared me and piqued my interest, I kind of had a sense, okay, that's going to happen at some point. I don't know how to access it. I don't know where or how to fight to find that, because I had moved and I had different communities. And anyway, it showed up one day talking to some good people at a party. It's like, hey, I'm going to do it, you know, in a month. And I was like, wow, can you. Can you get me invited? And I went. Needless to say, my first couple journeys past the salvia were with ayahuasca, which I would not actually recommend. Now, on the other side of. Of my. My experiences, I think there's just a smoother on ramps to. To kind of lead you there. But my first couple journeys, I had zero psychedelic impact in terms of, like, the medicine I was. Parts of me were still so resistant, so deeply yearning, but so deeply resistant to the medicine that it just didn't land, it didn't hit. And that caused an incredible growth for me in itself in those first couple journeys.
Melanie Curtin: I just want to pause you in terms of terminology. We're using the word medicine, which is used in many cultures to describe what in the west. Sometimes we will say drugs, but when Jason's got medicines, he's talking about the plant medicines or the psychedelic medicines that are used. And ayahuasca can have a psychedelic property of dmt, is that correct? For people who are tracking?
Jason Lange: Yeah. The main psychedelic in ayahuasca is dmt.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And is that true for salvia as well?
Jason Lange: No. Salvi is a different thing, different molecule.
Melanie Curtin: Okay.
Jason Lange: Yeah, yeah. Dmt you can get through ayahuasca where it's, you know, digested, so it's A bit more of a. It's a different experience than. You can also smoke DMT directly, which is a much, much different thing that I've done done before. And. But that, that's a good point here in that. So the idea, you know, when I said I, I got lucky in terms of the context I came in, I came into the context that these are tools for self awareness, growth and healing. So in my mind, what we would call medicine and how they were traditionally used in a lot of cultures, and particularly first nation cultures, where there are parts of rites of passage and growth. And there were usually lineage holders in each tribe who were watching this and tracking this with people, which is super important as we'll get to a little bit talk about a little bit later about what's different about how they're being used now. But I went on from there and I kept going back to the medicine of Ayahuasca because I knew it had an experience for me that I was still yearning for. And you know, it's first experiences for me were triggering all kinds of stuff, of feeling left out and stuff works for everyone else and not me. What's wrong with me? Which actually were powerful, powerful journeys for me that brought up a lot of intensity and a lot of feelings and a lot of wounding in my nervous system that started to, started to heal over time. But from there, you know, I could tell stories about each journey because each journey would be incredibly epic and, you know, they each have a takeaway in my life for powerful reasons that would take a long time. But that was one of the medicines that absolutely changed me. Like, it just, it just changed me that one. And you know, that one can be one of the more challenging ones you can do as a person. And it's kind of because of that, it has a bit of a feeling of like a rite of passage when you can come through those experiences. Some people tend to, you know, see the stars and cosmos and have oneness and unity. And for other people, it can be one of the most just challenging, dark, gut wrenching experiences of their life. Because there's a very strong physical component to ayahuasca. In particular, a big part of that medicine is that it's also a purgative. So both spiritually and physically, it helps you release and move.
Melanie Curtin: Jason's talking about vomiting and also sometimes purge your digestive system. So when I did Ayahuasca, my biggest purge was actually the next morning when I, when I, when I pooed. And then I felt a lot better. So it can move through your system in a lot of ways. But when he says purgative, it means bringing stuff up and out. Bringing stuff up and out. Whether that's vomiting or some other way, it's purging.
Jason Lange: Yeah. So purge can look like all kinds of things. With Ayahuasca, it often looks like vomit, it can look like tears, it can look like sweat, it can look like diarrhea, it can look like laughter, it can look like orgasm, it can look like bodily shakes. It can look like all kinds of different stuff that your body releases through that medicine in all kinds of different ways. And if you're not prepared for that, it can be really scary. So it's just, I would say the most challenging moments I've ever experienced in my life were on that medicine of just sheerly feeling in complete hell. There's a unique thing in that, in that it can bring up discomfort and it's a full blown psychedelic. So it has a quality of time distortion. So it's, wow, I feel awful. And I have no sense of when now is and when now might be over. That can be one of the challenges that I certainly had to surrender to in that. But it did. It did bring a lot of tremendous growth and healing to me. I mean, there were. There were evenings I would vomit, you know, a dozen times. Just no idea that there was that much in my system to release and be completely physically exhausted by the end of that. And I met a lot of great community through that medicine. I had some powerful internal shifts in that medicine and definitely had some just deep, deep healing in my body in terms of releasing in physically being confronted with different anxieties and pains and fears that had been latent in my nervous system for probably, you know, as long as I was born. In a lot of ways, it's kind of the magic of it. There are studies that, where they've put people into fmr. FMRI machines with Ayahuasca. And the interesting thing about it is it kind of the medicine is unique in that it activates two parts of your brain at once. It basically activates your reptilian brainstem. The oldest part of our brain, that's just pure sensation, pure survival. The part of us that's online from our youngest age, then simultaneously it activates the most advanced part of our brain, the frontal cortex, and which gives us a perspective on ourselves. So you can have this weird thing of being totally in the raw sensation, but also somewhat seeing it for the first time. And it's that unique blend that I think has really brought a Lot of attention to ayahuasca and other psychedelics in the last years, and that people are definitely using them for addiction recovery. In that I've met people firsthand who. This isn't everyone, but some people who have been longtime addicts of different types, and one or two sessions of ayahuasca, and they're done. They're just done because they can see. They feel the pain, and they see it at the same time in a way that once that light bulb's on, of, wow, this is the impact I'm having on myself in my community in the world, which is really powerful. So that one also in particular, and then. And then I just want to speak to a couple others, is really important to do in strong community. It's actually. It's kind of set up to. Be ingested in the container of community, where there's certain types of music that carry you through, that come from various countries in South America where they have different lineages and different tribes of music that helps give you something to grasp onto, to move through those journeys. And I can say without a doubt, there are times that that music was like a light in the darkness of just something to grasp onto and to know that those sensations would pass. And so it was from there, actually, that I went back and kind of did some other ones, you know, so I've had experiences with psilocybin, which was probably my most powerful oneness experience.
Melanie Curtin: Psilocybin or psilocybin, Just so everyone knows. Magic mushrooms. Yeah.
Jason Lange: Yeah. That was probably the first time I did a really heroic dose, as they call it, in one of my men's groups with. That was.
Melanie Curtin: Heroic dose means a lot.
Jason Lange: Yeah, Heroic dose is like.
Melanie Curtin: It's a real thing.
Jason Lange: You're committing to something happening, and there's no way out. Like, once you go in, there's just no way out other than time. And that was an incredibly positive one for me. That was. Had a lot of oneness and did a lot of healing work around grief and a lot of the things I've talked about on the show before around touch and my nervous system and growing up. And I can still remember to this day sitting on my back. I got to do it outside somewhere where there was this guy and some grapevines above me, and I had this just incredible relationship with this grapevine that was growing in this backyard, like, dangling down off a rafter where I was able to grab onto it and, like, was kind of, like pulling into it and just feeling completely supported. Completely supported and held and had an Experience of step by step, actually feeling the medicine almost like it was a vine moving its way through my body, wrapping its way around my heart, and then just gently and lovingly pulling it open, Just pulling it open. And this is where, you know, we've heard the cliches before, but just feeling so much at peace and at ease in that moment and just having the strongest sense that, like, wow, I wish every human being could have this experience. Just wish every human being could experience this level of love and unity once in their life. Because the, the, the trick about oneness as we often talk about it in spiritual communities, it's really easy to talk about, but it's really only an experience you can have. You can only ever point towards it with words. It's just psychedelics aren't the only way to have that, but they're one of the most powerful. And psilocybin and mushrooms are still one of my favorites. They're a good combination of heart opening. Depending on the dose you do, they can just be mostly a positive experience. They can also be a much deeper experience, like ayahuasca. There's a little bit more range in terms of, at least for me, in terms of what I could expect with those. And I like them personally a lot.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. I also think that the context in which you're doing psychedelics is critically important. And so, for example, I did ayahuasca in a tent with probably 40 people. There were a lot of people, maybe 35, but it was a full tent. And I went. It was in Joshua Tree. And so I was driving from LA with someone I didn't know, but we were carpooling to the organization through which I did it, organized, you know, helped people find rides. So I didn't know her very well. We got to know each other a little bit on the way out. She was the person I knew the best in the tent. I didn't know anyone else in the tent. I didn't have any deeply safe, trusted people around me. And I think there's something about your consciousness, your human consciousness that can feel really supported just knowing that someone there has your back in a ceremony. And when I did mushrooms in a different, you know, different stage of my life, they were grown by my best guy friend. I did them with my best guy friend during the day in a park. There were trees. It was like fucking dope. And the best part of mushrooms and psilocybin, which is the same thing, I'm just putting them together so that we get used to that, is, was I went in with that intention of, I want to feel the oneness. I want to feel it. I believe it intellectually, I understand it, I grasp it, but I want to feel it. And I really did. And the best part was it was very relaxing, Very relaxing. It was not difficult. And, you know, it wasn't ayahuasca. For me, ayahuasca was really hard, as I think it is for a lot of people. But it. It's also not an apples to apples comparison because I didn't have anyone in that tent that I loved and trusted. So I did psilocybin with my best guy friend outside during the day in beautiful nature. And I did ayahuasca in a dark tent with people I didn't know and. And shamans I didn't know. Right. That was the first time I was meeting them. I had no relationship or context. And they did their best to create that between us. We did a sharing circle at the beginning, we did a sharing circle at the end, et cetera. And. And the other thing that we can probably talk about later, but I found the integration process really hard after ayahuasca. And I've talked to a couple of people who said the same thing, that they were completely depleted. It took them at least a week to recover. It was a big deal. Whereas the recovery from psilocybin, I just felt great for like a few days. I felt really connected to nature. I had. I don't know if it's a restorative experience, but similar to what you said, Jason, I had the feeling of being held. The feeling of being held by life and really the divine mother. Like, I had this image of being a baby monkey that was just sleeping with mom, with mama monkey, just completely comfortable in a hammock. I don't even know if monkeys do hammocks, but in this. We were in a hammock and it was just safe, slow. It was basically mushrooms were like this dream that I didn't want to wake up from. It's like, this is a great dream. I'm loving this dream. I feel so relaxed. And that feeling state of just being with mama monkey, just being relaxed was an anchor point for my meditations after that. So it was a peak experience, which I'm sure we'll talk about, that I was able to use in my spiritual growth. Right? It was. I was like, oh, this is what it. This is what people mean when they talk about love. And I'm not talking about romantic love. I'm talking about the love, the pure love of. I am held I am because I hold space for a lot of people. I do for a lot of people. I am a provider of love for a lot of people. But that was an experience of, oh, this is what it feels like to just relax and be held. I'm not providing, I'm receiving. And I think that because of my childhood trauma and the way that I grew up, that experience was truncated. It was sort of cut off. And I became the caretaker of my mom's feelings in many ways, very, very, very young. So I was in a state of hypervigilance and not really able to relax and be held because I was constantly on the alert for. For her. And many of our clients have a similar experience in whatever regard. Maybe it was an alcoholic parent. Whatever it was, it was something where I have to be on guard and alert to make sure that I'm safe or my siblings are safe. And that really affects your nervous system. So for me, psilocybin was a much more relaxing and restorative journey itself. And it was also an easier integration into my life. And the context was different. Right? The context was different. And then, you know, we can. We can get to the rest of it. But other journeys I've had have also been with people I love, who have my back, who know how to move energy, who are with. I feel with, you know, held. And those were much better experiences. So it's hard sometimes to separate out what is the medicine and what is the context of the medicine. And they're doing a lot of research at Johns Hopkins on psilocybin. And my understanding is that when their patients are doing psilocybin, the therapist is physically in the room with them. They prep them, they have a whole conversation about, you know, something scares you, turn towards it, see what it has to teach you. And I'm right here. And in addition to that, they have their loved one or a few loved ones in the next room. So their beingness knows I'm held. There's. There are a couple of folks here holding. Holding me. And I really believe there's something about that that can also change the experience, because human consciousness is kind of malleable. You know, there's.
Jason Lange: It's.
Melanie Curtin: There's a lot going on in those. In those spaces.
Jason Lange: Yeah, totally. Yeah. I'm realizing this. We could do hours on this, on this subject. So I've done other things. I've definitely done, done, done my experiences with MDMA and LSD and Hoppe and Combo.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, let's explain those for people, because they're not going to know that, especially the last two. Cause another question I sort of had for you, which is what quote unquote counts as a psychedelic? Because I think some people would maybe say that MDMA doesn't quote unquote count. I would count mdma, also known as Molly, which you know, back in the day they say Molly would be mixed in with ecstasy. Just so people know which what we're talking about. But some other people might say it's not a psychedelic. I would argue all the things we're talking about right now fall into that category. But be curious about your.
Jason Lange: Yeah, there's a range here. So, you know, the broad term psychedelic would mean altered state within psychedelics. There's this idea of entheogens, which are things like mushrooms in ayahuasca. And I would say LSD that actually change the way your brain is experiencing the moment. And so you have, you know, you can have distorted time, distorted visuals. Those are kind of classic pieces of a lot of what we would call psychogelics. And a lot of the entheogens are, you know, come from plants in specific. So a lot of tribal cultures use, use entheogens in various different ceremonies and rituals.
Melanie Curtin: This would also include something like peyote, right?
Jason Lange: Yeah, peyote. San Pedro are definitely amongst that. You know, things like LSD are more. It's, it's man made chemical in a sense and ketamine and some others that are kind of in the world now are part of that as well. But what I would say is the broad umbrella of psychedelic meaning altered state, meaning my state was one thing and I took the substance and it changed to another. We'll cover all of these things like hop A, which is a tobacco you inhale through your nose, has an altered state, but it's not like time distorting. Um, you don't really see patterns or anything like that. It's just more of a kind of. For me it's always a deeply embodied experience. Just like, oh, I'm here, boom on. And then combo is something that's just, it's an altered state in the sense your body basically gets super sick for a very short time and thinks it's being attacked.
Melanie Curtin: This is frog poison, right?
Jason Lange: Yeah. So combo is another really popular one these days. It's, it's comes from a very specific frog in the rainforests that has a certain type of venom that impacts us and causes our immune system to go into hyperactivity. Um, it's, it's not super long, it's maybe like two hours. I actually can't quite remember I did it a couple times, but it's intense. Cause they. They basically burn a little hole in your skin and they apply it to your skin and then immediately gets sucked into your bloodstream. And. And within seconds, it's like the experience of getting sick in real time. Your heartbeat goes up, you start to feel inflamed, and then there's a ton of vomiting. But it's an incredibly healing. It's one been one of my favorites.
Melanie Curtin: Let's actually pause there. Cause I want to hear about, let's say, a combo journey that you did. Because we're talking about the physical symptoms. But a lot of times you get a download or, you know, something happens during the journey. It's a spiritual practice. So let's slow it down for one minute and talk about a combo journey that you remember and what you got out of it. And also, did you set an intention before going in?
Jason Lange: Yeah, combo. Like ayahuasca in a lot of the plant medicines from South America tend to be heavily ritualized. So there's a lot of intention, setting and music and procedure and ritual and very long lineages going very far back into tribes in terms of how do you use these things and why you use these things. So the. My combo journeys were actually initiated. I did them with my wife because we met someone at Burning man who led them and was talking to us about some of the research coming out about combo and epigenetics. Epigenetics is basically the part of your genes that you can change. So there's certain wiring we come in with, but there's also all these different. I think they call them peptides that you can turn on and off that change the expression of that gene. So we're actually quite malleable, which is one of the things that's quite amazing about these. Anyway, he was telling us about those and we knew we wanted to have a child. And it just became super clear, like, oh, wow, this would be an incredible gift to our offspring to do some deep healing work on ourselves and our lineage. And so that was our overall intention going in. We did three ceremonies in a row, three days in a row. And, um, I think it was my trying to remember based on where I was in the room. I think it was my second day on that one. Um, you know, I just set the intention of have your way with me. Whatever you need to do to me to. To heal me, please do. And that was one of the first ones where I actually went unconscious for like, I don't know, 10 seconds, it wasn't super long, but I was held. I was, you know, I had one of my best friends holding space in that. And it was so blissful, though so hard to explain of the coming back from that. Of just like, total, total nothingness to coming back that even though I was totally in agony from a lot of vomiting. That one's just like, you just have a stomachache and you're really hot and you're sweating and it's like fevering in real time, but then it kind of passes, you know, fairly fast. There's no. There's no time distortion there. So I could be super uncomfortable, but I could open my eyes and have a conversation with you of like, wow, this is super uncomfortable.
Melanie Curtin: And the intention, then the. The reason. The. The reason. The reasoning behind it is this is helping to unclog the drains. Is that right?
Jason Lange: Yeah. That one in particular flushes your whole body, your whole lymphatic system. I mean, they have research where this venom in particular, it, like, bonds to certain peptides with water in the inside of us, and it'll, like, flush your whole lymphatic system. I mean, I was. The time I did that, I was seeing a personal trainer who teaches a very specific. It's not quite muscle testing, but it's a way to see what parts of your body are turned on and turned off. And it turns out a lot of us walk around with a lot of our body off, and it causes all kinds of stress for us. And I came back from combo and I laid down on the table, and it was insane. My whole body was just on and solid, every muscle without having to turn anything on. It was just an incredibly. I came out of that just feeling like golden thunder. Just like, wow, I feel strong, I feel clear, I feel clean. Um, and it's one I look forward to actually doing again soon. Um, and that one, you know, combo is kind of like ayahuasca in that. Part of the reason you do it is. It is challenging. It's about learning to be with your experience no matter what it is. And that was one I really, really had to lean into with Combo. And I would say combo and one specific ayah ceremony I had were powerful. Me in that. Powerful for me in particular, in that they were the most surrendered I've ever been of. Just like, I actually cannot care for myself here. The IO journey I'm thinking about in particular, you know, I had to ask for help to be carried to the bathroom, and I had to have men, you know, unzip my pants, pull my pants down, make sure I was seated on there. And it was. I mean, I can even feel the tears now of just like, being that. That open and that in need of others was not something I was used to walking through the world with. And these, you know, were men I'd never been before, but it was just like, I. I can't do this. And that was such a profound, profoundly healing experience for me to be able to just totally surrender like that to the caregivers of that ceremony.
Melanie Curtin: I think this is a good time to talk about surrender, because that word can be very, very triggering for a lot of people, especially abuse survivors, sexual abuse survivors, domestic abuse survivors, domestic violence in the home, alcoholic parents. Anyone that had a feeling of chaos or being out of control often does not want that feeling in adulthood. They do a lot of things to construct their lives around control, around whether they're conscious or unconscious of that. And we've seen it. We've seen it in clients and friends, in ourselves. I've certainly seen it in myself. And that. That learning how to surrender to life is, I believe, one of the greatest gifts of medicines, different kinds of medicines, in that they do generate. They. They incapacitate you. Some of them, they incapacitate you. They make it so that you must surrender to life. You must surrender to now within that you can resist, you can try to resist, you can resist. And what I've experienced is, that's the most painful part. Resisting the medicine, resisting the surrender, resisting the, okay, I allow this. I'm here. I'm willing to be healed, right? I'm willing to be healed. I'm willing to be changed, I'm willing to be moved. I'm willing to be moved instead of, I must have everything exactly the right way, otherwise I may die. And that, I think, is that that part of our consciousness that is rigid and needs to be in control is there because it helped protect us for a long time. And so I think for a lot of us who do. Who do medicine or who are interested in it, there's an element of just. Just know that this is going to be part of it. Your relationship to surrender is your ability to allow the medicine to move you is going to be part of your journey. And for many, it's a really hard part. I think maybe you can even speak to that, Jason, of just resisting that, that part, that surrender part.
Jason Lange: Yeah, I've had to come to terms in my life with my body's mostly in. Resistant to the moment a large portion of the time just in all kinds of ways, that's part of what I'm rewiring. But yeah, in terms of. So this idea of resistance, and this is just my belief, so this is anecdotal, based on experiences I've had and I've witnessed in others. The idea of a bad trip, I think, goes hand in hand with resistance. And so what I've experienced is like the worst trips. And what I've helped guide other people through in bad trips tend to be when that controller isn't allowed to relax. And so there's a. I'm not okay with the experience I'm having, so I'm resisting what is in the moment. And that tends to be the seed of a lot of bad trips. And that's why psychedelics, as powerful a healing modality as they are, can be used incredibly recklessly if you're not given a container for what you're walking into and don't know that part of what's going to happen for you is your ability to surrender and your resistance are going to come to the forefront. And so if you're not prepared for that journey, prepared for that, it can be extraordinarily painful, scary, and re traumatizing. Quite honestly, you can get re traumatized by these things. But the ability, the real superpower of some of these, particularly, I would say ayahuasca, is whatever it is you're resisting experiencing. She is what they tend to call ayahuasca, the grandmother, uh, she has a feminine energy she is going to bring to you. She's going to bring it to you to be with and then to release. And so, you know, I had an epic experience once. I had been doing a couple journeys and had had some powerful journeys. The medicine had been working for me. I invited a friend out to sit with me in Ceremony. I was. Anyway, it was just great. I was, like, comfortable in that community, was preparing for a night I was so deeply doing my work. Went up and had my first sip of ayahuasca. Nothing happened. Second sip of ayahuasca, nothing happened. Third sip of ayahuasca, nothing happened. I'm, you know, really just kind of stone cold on my mat, sober. And, you know, four and a half, five hours in. Ceremonies happen, music has happened. People have had these incredible openings and journeys. And I'm having that experience again of, oh, my God, I thought I'd gotten past this. I'm stuck again. It's not working for me. And on the third sip, my shaman, you know, she looked at me and she was like, are You. Is there anything you're resisting? I was like, no, nothing. I'm so here. I'm ready to do my work. Um, and then as the night went on and ceremonies closing, I realized that I was angry. I was pissed. I was like, oh, my God. What? What the fuck? I'm here to do my work, and I want to heal, and you're not working for me. And where are you? You know, I basically started having this conversation with Grandmother Ayahuasca, AKA which then extrapolated to the grand feminine in general of like, where are you? I'm here. I'm ready. I'm mad at you. And, like, why aren't you working for me? Why aren't you working for me? And like I said, there's this interesting thing with the medicine where you can be having these deep experiences, yet a part of you gets popped out. So you can witness it. And as ceremony is wrapping, I'm noticing I'm upset, and I'm noticing I'm whining a lot. Just, like, whining at the feminine, like, where are you? Where are you? I'm so mad at you. I'm here to do my work. And that was the moment where I was like, wow, I am totally in resistance to this medicine right now. I'm not wanting to purge, and I'm wanting something from her in a specific way instead of just being with what she's here to give me, which was a deep, uncomfortable feeling of purge. And I hadn't purged the whole night until then. And I really realized, like, oh, I've been managing that. Like, I've been afraid to go back there. I've been managing that purge. I've been managing that purge, and I've been whining. And that was when, you know, I just had this incredible moment of stillness and clarity and started with this relationship to the feminine of being, like, wow, okay, I'm gonna stop whining. And I basically just said, you know, I'm ready. Meet me. I'm ready to be met. Meet me, world. I'm not chasing the feminine anymore. I'm here. Whatever experience you have for me, I'm here. Meet me. And then I stopped resisting. And within four seconds, the medicine hit, and I went on a very long solo journey full of lots of. Lots of vomiting that was painful, but less painful than resisting, and took me on an incredible, incredible experience. But I think that idea of just being aware that you may need to surrender to whatever experience it's given to, that's coming for you, coming through the medicine for you and that, that you can come in with all the intentions you want in the world and some of these medicines will be like, nope, that's not what you need tonight. That's not what your body is calling for tonight. And the flexibility to just be a yes to that and know that you know in some of these medicines you're going to be confronted by whatever you don't want to be confronted by is, is I think just part of the healthy container because then when that stuff comes it's not like a total shock to the nervous system. And so that I want to bring a little bit more structure to what I'm sharing here because I'm realizing I'm just kind of all over the place with these medicines in the idea of psychedelics. But that they I think are absolutely an incredibly important part of a healing journey. And the, the trajectory of them has been interesting in that, you know, some of these come from indigenous cultures where they were used for many, many, many years. Very specific set and settings with very specific communities and tribes and cultures where those medicines were held within so structures that supported people in using the medicine in a specific way. Then even here in the west, there was the initial explosion of psychedelics in the late 50s and early 60s by a lot of scientists and researchers and investigators of mind who were doing actual research then that all got shut down because of all kinds of different things that our culture wasn't ready for by the 70s and it all went underground. We're now living in a really unique time in that those two worlds are now meeting in that a lot of the wisdom from shamanic traditions and cultures from South America in particular are here. That is one of their great gifts they're bringing to the world right now is the healing modalities of some of these plant medicines in specific. And then there's a lot of research coming back now in actual rigorous scientific inquiry about how can some of these different substances be used for healing and addiction and ptsd. And some of the results are just mind bendingly good. Like no pharmaceutical can touch the overall impact of things like psilocybin and ketamine and some of these other things that they just don't even quite understand how they work. So it's there. There's an interesting thing happening right now and this is what I want to highlight is that if you're feeling called to do this as part of your healing journey, what I would recommend is going into one of those two paths. So finding a community that's connected to, to an Actual shamanic lineage with the medicine, whether it's been passed down generation to generation. The amazing things about those types of communities is they often grow those medicines and then the person holding space for you and administering it is from that lineage. And there's a real deep power in that. And they know how to handle pretty much every experience. And the other option would be through the more medicine and therapeutic world now, which is we can't even give you up to date information because it's changing so fast state by state right now in terms of what's legal and what's coming online, that you can in certain states now go on facilitated psychedelic experiences with an actual trained psychotherapist who's going to guide you through that experience. Particularly with psilocybin and mdma, the organization maps. MAPS is a great starting point for what's going on in that world. But the idea being, if you want to use these for healing, which is I think what we're arguing here, that these are an important developmental component of healing, of being able to access traumatized parts of ourselves, of our nervous system, of our attachment system, and re experience those energies and allow our body to start releasing them and simultaneously to give us a different experience of what's possible in the moment. So you mentioned earlier, like a state experience. The idea of a state experience is we're experiencing something non ordinary in our reality. With psychedelics oftentimes or. Any of these medicines, it's like they can kind of give us a sneak preview of how we could possibly be living day to day in our nervous system. Now the thing is, they're not permanent. All of them will pass. And this is kind of where we can start to pivot into some of the problems of a psychedelic alone will not do all your healing work. It has to be held in a greater container of growth and healing and integration. Meaning it's like we have the sneak peek into what's possible, but then we have to bring it back into a structure that supports that becoming our new reality. Because otherwise the medicine itself at some point will fade. One of the powerful things about it and why integration is so important is particularly ayahuasca and mushrooms actually promote neurogenesis, meaning they actually allow the brain to grow new neuronal pathways, which doesn't really happen past our mid-20s. Like that all really slows down other than a few specific instances in life. This is one of the rare places where you can reactivate like your actual brain chemistry and wiring and why it's super important for you to have Some structure about what you're going back into after a journey or after a ceremony.
Melanie Curtin: Notably, meditation is another way of stimulating neurogenesis. And for example, I established a meditation practice after mushrooms and was able to kind of refer back to that, that feeling state which extended the healing. It wasn't just this one experience, it was then bringing it into life and continuing with. Because there are plenty of other ways to support your nervous system besides psychedelics that are incredibly restorative. And one of the, There's a man who recently established one of the first psychedelic institutes in the uk, if not the first psychedelic institute in the uk. And I listened to him on a podcast and he talked about, listen, no psychedelic on the planet is going to replace a close friend or a group of close friends. Strong social ties, I'm telling you, are going to support your life in a way that no medicine will ever be able to do. And this is a guy who's devoting his life to making psychedelics accessible to people for healing. And he sort of went on like that about other things, you know, exercise, getting enough sleep, meditation, being with people you love. You know, his point was these are extraordinary and they can feel magical and they're not magical. It's equally as important that we're being supported in our lives with the right mentors, with the right social groups. We've seen tremendous transformation in the clients we work with by being in a men's group, by being in a healing men's group with no psychedelics involved. It's not like this is required for a spiritual journey. And I was really touched by that assessment. Since this is someone who is passionate about psychedelics. This is not someone anti psychedelics. This is someone that's very committed to helping traumatized people get access to medicine that can help them. And his point was it's not the be all, end all. It's really helpful. It's not the be all, end all. And there's really interesting research being done at Hopkins and other places on mdma, on Molly, what's known as Molly colloquially. And their protocols are very specific. They have nine sessions, they have two prep sessions, they have one molly session, two in between sessions, one molly session, two wrap up sessions, and the MDMA sessions. They're doing therapy. They're doing therapy, they have, every client has a male and a female therapist throughout the protocol. They spend the night on site when they do the MDMA and they're, they're doing therapy on the mdma. Now, MDMA is unique in that you can't, you could not do therapy on ayahuasca, man. There's no way you could do anything, really, on some of these medicines. But on mdma, you're lucid for much of the journey, depending on how it's. How it's going, but for most people, pretty lucid. So people that have gone through the protocol, they say, you know, it wasn't all blissful, but it was all important and it was fulfilling and it helped me. For example, there were rape survivors that talked about. Not because one of the things that MDMA in particular does is suppresses the amygdala, which is the. I'm oversimplifying this. So for those that are. Will nerd out on it, you'll know that that's not exactly what happens. But for the purpose of this discussion, the amygdala is basically our fear and terror and aggression response. And so it sort of. It mutes that. And so you're able to go to places that your body or your nervous system is extremely resistant to talking about or working through for good reason, and that's sort of toned down. And there are many people who've said what this rape survivor said, which was, before this experience, I felt isolated and alone, and now I feel connected to everyone else who's gone through this. So I feel part of something. I feel part of something. And that makes all the difference because that feeling of isolation and aloneness and loneliness and there's something wrong with me. Ness is the root of so much angst and suicide and lists go on. But all of the. All of the sort of negative experiences as a human tend to come out of. I feel alone, I feel different. No one understands me, I'm bad, no one's going to love me. All of that sort of smallness and isolation, and I think there's something powerful about a felt experience of, oh, I'm actually part of this. I actually belong. And that is beautiful. And it doesn't last to your point. So there's the actual experience and then there's what you do with the experience and how it's integrated. And again, I would just also sort of name like that. Protocol is very held. You have a male and a female therapist with you the whole time. The same people are supporting you through your whole protocol, your whole journey. And you spend the night on site, you have breakfast the next day. It's like, it's very human. It's very loving, it's very held. It's, you know, it's within a context where you're being supported and it can feel. It can feel, yeah, it can feel a lot safer that way than for example, what you were saying recreationally or when you're not prepared for, you know, some shit's gonna go down and we're gonna be here with you. You're not alone. It's going to be hard and we're with you.
Jason Lange: Yeah, it's a great point. So in the shamanic tradition or in the new therapeutic modality, there's always someone there holding, literally holding the space. In shamanic traditions, the person will often do a little bit of medicine, but they are so deeply versed in it. It's, you know, it's, it's just like a dose that doesn't impact them generally. They're, they're able to just be present. And I think you're speaking to something important here too, that the, the different medicines are going to be used for different things too. So this is why, you know, finding someone you can talk to about these different things to know what kind of healing experience you want is going to be important. So something like MDMA is an. And pathogen, right? So it's at, you know, like I said, the ayahuasca kind of focuses on the frontal cortex and your brain stem. It activates those two. MDMA is different. It just, it activates the middle, the limbic system, really, the emotions and safety and feeling connected and just, you know, tends to be a pure heart opener that allows for a feeling of safety. And safety is often one of the necessary requirements for healing. So it can be a really powerful, powerful tool and they're using that a lot, particularly with veterans and people with deep ptsd, to be able to safely know that those experiences happened. They're over. And here in this moment, I'm kind of safe in a facilitated container where something like ayahuasca is. It's not a social medicine in the sense you're often in a group and there can be music, but it is not about face to face contact and processing or any of that. The whole purpose of it is only you can be with what she's bringing up for you. And that's a very different experience. Again, if you're not prepared for that, you can be pretty shocked, right? Like, no, the point is not that someone, you know, unless it's an emergency, is really going to come be with me. So you kind of got to know what you're looking for in these things and really spend some time finding some trusted sources. So here I'm just going to speak to some dangers that are present and that's that interest, particularly in some of the shamanic medicines like ayahuasca, has exploded in the west and has become unhooked from lineage. So it's come unhooked from a lot of the tribal cultures it was brought forth in, meaning a lot of Western people are now administering it from a purely Western context. And that has an impact, Right. To be regularly doing a large amount of ceremonies on something like dieta, which is when you do a bunch in a row and you have very disciplined and diet and whatnot, you were in a tribal context where people knew you and were tracking you over time, which is not something we're often seeing. There's a type of eco tourism that has sprung up with ayahuasca, where it's like, fly in, do a couple ceremonies and then like, adios, you're healed. Which is never the case. Right. There's always the aftermath and you just want to be really careful who you're going to trust with that journey. And I'm a little bit conservative in that sense that I would recommend someone who's either connected to a therapeutic modality, meaning they have professional training, or deeply connected to a shamanic tribe or ritual chain of those medicines. So it's actually held in a deep lineage and context about how that medicine is used and how it's been passed on. Because if not, you know, there are horror stories of what happens to people, people dying, people having psychotic experiences and not coming back and not being held or being re traumatized. Like, know that that is a possibility, particularly with things like ayahuasca and dmt. Not so much mdma. Yeah. Or even psilocybin.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. Especially if you have any kind of family history of mental illness or other. If, you know, you have a traumatic background, unprocessed trauma, just be mindful of that. And I would say, as we're turning to near the end, I want to talk about accessibility and what's actually accessible to people that they can do within a therapeutic context. And what's sort of like a gentler on ramp? Because you did mention you wouldn't recommend ayahuasca to start. I would definitely not recommend ayahuasca to start. Definitely not. I think that psilocybin is a lot more gentle. I also have only done it once and that was my experience. And I've talked to people who had really hard psilocybin journeys. So ketamine is legal now in many states if it's administered therapeutically, meaning from a trained, usually a psychotherapist. But what else is accessible that you would actually recommend? You know, I know hape, which is Portuguese. The word happy is from Portuguese and it's spelled R A P E in case anyone is looking it up. It's spelled like rape but it's pronounced hape and it's not rapey, we promise, but something like that. I think hape is legal because hape is tobacco. So there are. Some of these medicines are legal. It's going to depend on your state. Your state. Yes.
Jason Lange: And actually even your city.
Melanie Curtin: Some cities and also your comfort level with, with all of this. But some things are quite accessible now. Some things not so much. But what would you say, you know, to someone who's sort of curious in terms of learning more?
Jason Lange: Yeah. Well, what I would say is if you're interested in altered states for healing, a good, a good on ramp if you've never done anything before, are two that we haven't talked about. One is a gentle one that called cacao, which is just like pure raw cacao that's done in ceremonies. That is a bit of a heart opener. It's very gentle, it's very easy, it's very communal. It's just good to get to warm your body up to having altered states, just that simple, that they can be a positive experience. So that's one. Another one I would recommend to people, if they've never done it before, to prepare themselves is actually not even a medicine, it's just holotropic breathwork, which is a very specific modality.
Melanie Curtin: I was going to say the same.
Jason Lange: Thing created by Stanislav Grof, who was one of the psychedelic pioneers back in the day. But the amazing thing about that is you can absolutely have altered state, altered consciousness experiences and you're completely, you are in control the whole time because you can always just change your breath. You just reduce the intensity of your breath and you come out of the experience. So that's a really good one for you to kind of ooh, I'm going to dip my toes in. How deep do I want to go? How's this feeling what's coming up for me, which is really powerful and then you know, from there it kind of just depends on your locality. What I would say is what John Hopkins has found is that particularly with psilocybin, the lower the dose, the higher the self reported chances of having a positive experience are. So people that basically dose around 1 gram or less have very positive experiences. Maybe not the most mind bending, but if you've never done it before, that's a way you can almost guarantee it's just going to be a pleasant experience for you, is to start with a nice, just low dose that'll kind of elevate your mood and make you feel good. It's one of the main things that, you know, some of these things are as powerful as a lot of antidepressants. And that's one thing I do have to mention before we go, that if you are on any kind of SSRI inhibitor, antidepressant, you really have to be mindful of what medicines you're going to use. And you need to talk to your. Your clinical psychotherapist because some of these have very, very bad interactions.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, talk to your psychiatrist before you.
Jason Lange: Yeah, psychiatrist. That's the word.
Melanie Curtin: Medicine. Outside of the.
Jason Lange: There's a lot of contraint.
Melanie Curtin: There's some contraindications. Yes.
Jason Lange: You just want to be careful. And if you have a history of schizophrenia at all in your family is another one that's really important.
Melanie Curtin: Yes.
Jason Lange: But otherwise, you know, certain cities now, I think Denver, Oregon, they just went psilocybin legal. So it's coming really fast in terms of what you're going to have access to in different parts of this country. And again, you kind of just need to know that this is an important part of a healing journey. But I would say it has to be met with practice, intention and community. If you have those things going in your life and then you want to bring these on, they can be incredible accelerants to your healing journey and can actually give you experiences that can be very hard to come by otherwise. You know, the. A lot of these altered states are possible with deep meditation and training, but they can take a long time. And yeah, the plant. The plants can kind of give us a glimpse of what's possible before we've kind of gotten there, but then it gives us an anchor, a waypoint for what's possible in the world. And that's part of what I experienced that one time on psilocybin is, wow, I wish everyone could have this experience because I feel like if everyone had this experience of unity and love in their body, we would act differently in the world. Right. We would actually fundamentally exist differently and make different choices in terms of what we're doing to the environment and to each other. So you can definitely start on the maps organization. They have a lot of good research there. They'll have some of the different places you can go to, particularly for psilocybin and mdma. To start with hape, you can just order it online. But again, I would really suggest trying to find someone who has experience with it because it's, it's from a lineage as well.
Melanie Curtin: So I would strongly recommend that you do it within a container. Not.
Jason Lange: Yeah, so someone can guide you through that journey. Even if it's just a friend who's done it a lot and can kind of hold your hand. It makes a really big difference to just know I'm being held in. This combo is pretty popular and pervasive these days. Ketamine is definitely being used in clinical areas. So for a lot of these different things, like I said, they're using them to treat long term depression, ptsd, addiction, and we're really just getting started with what they know about these. The author, Michael Pollan has been doing a lot of writing about the new wave of how these are particularly being used in terms of clinical and healing. So you can check. I can't remember the name of his latest book, but you can definitely check that out. Just Michael. Yeah.
Melanie Curtin: And I would also just mention that I think that we still don't know enough about how medicines impact women and men differently. I know that for me, medicine tends to hit me fastest in a group and hardest in a group. That's consistent. I think some people are more sensitive to medicines and I know that in the west, in terms of Western medicine, often clinical trials are done on men. So we don't always know about the effects on women because of the culture we live in. So I just wanted to mention that, I think to highlight what Jason said, for example, about psilocybin is starting with a very low dose is a great idea because then you can see what happens to your body, mind, and for some people that is going to be enough for very sensitive nervous systems. And especially if you have, you know, if you eat in a clean fashion, if you are, you know, on your journey already, right, you're, you're, you don't have a dense nervous system, right? You're already, you're sensitive, you have a lot of awareness already, even just physical awareness. You're, you're probably going to have more of an experience faster. So it's good to start slow. And then I also just wanted to echo holotropic breathwork. Breathwork is a modality that has also been used for centuries around the world, I mean, since the dawn of time, to generate altered states in a safe fashion, meaning you can change your breath at any time. When we're talking about holotropic breathwork, essentially we're talking about hyperoxygenation. We're talking about, for example, that rhythmic breath where you're bringing a lot of oxygen in quickly. It can create an altered state. It can do things to your hands. You can have all kinds of experiences on it. I've been doing holotropic breathwork regularly for the past few months, and I definitely get downloads and meditate afterwards. And it feels similar to medicine. The kinds of states that you can get into without a substance are also possible with holotropic breathwork. And there are practitioners, there are classes depending on where you live. I just wanted to also throw that out. That, of course, that's completely legal. No matter what state you're in, physical state or country, you can find that kind of thing.
Jason Lange: Yeah, there's all kinds of virtual classes now in the COVID world. And then the full deep dives are still a facilitated thing in terms of you have a buddy who's present for you the whole time, so you can totally surrender into that experience, which is really, really something and really powerful. Um, and, you know, this is definitely just something where diligence pays off. So don't feel a rush and don't feel like you have to do these things. What I've tended to found is, find is that they kind of. We feel a call at some point in our life, and then we know, okay, this is something I feel ready to engage with. And through some intention and then through some receiving through the world, the connections will open that you need. And that takes some time. You know, get to know the community, get to know the leader, get to know the medicine, get to know what to expect, talk to other people who have done it and be really clear about, you know, what you might want to get out of it in terms of your healing, what you're bringing to the bringing to that medicine in particular, and what you might want to get back from it and how that's going to serve you and your community and your relationships.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And as we start to wrap up here, also just want to reiterate that you are in control of your boundaries. If you're at a ceremony or something's going on that doesn't feel good to you, remember that you're an adult, because sometimes we get into a free state. So just know you're always the arbiter of what feels good and what doesn't in terms of your intuition around who you're working with. And just because you paid, for example, just be be aware, be, be online. You know, you are. You are in this. You are. Your intuition is there for a Reason. And you are able to work with whoever you want to and not work with whoever you don't want to.
Jason Lange: So the last thing I'll share is just an important piece that comes from one of my teachers. And that's so one of the dangers I have seen too. Again, just my last red flag is people can become addicted to the states. Whether it's psychedelics, whether it's weekend workshops. We've probably all met people, oh my God, I feel so good. The workshop. And then a week later it's like I'm myself again. This doesn't feel good. I got to go do the workshop again, whatever that may be. The idea with these things is not to get lost in the fireworks of the state, the visuals, the heart opening, whatever that might be. It's to have an experience and an anchor of that that you can then bring back to your sober state. So the idea of these is we want to take these temporary states and make them into permanent traits. And that's what we really mean by integration. You need practice and you need community and you need healing going alongside those. Because it's all still going to come down to no matter what kind of amazing journey or experience or heart opening or neurogenesis you have, you'll be back in your daily life and it's going to come down to a microsecondition where you have to make a choice about what I want to do in this moment with my body, with my breath, with my relating. And that's where the real work is. And we just hope that these deep experiences or these altered states give you something to source from in that moment. So then you're actually enacting it in a different way.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. Also, hot tip, don't schedule big shit for the next day. Try not to, you know, don't I, like I did psilocybin at like pm and I was like, I'll be fine by '.
Jason Lange: Clock.
Melanie Curtin: I had a meeting, I went to the meeting, it was fine. I mean, I made it, but man, I wish I hadn't had a meeting, scheduled anything for the rest of that day. So just be, be mindful of. I think we're used to cramming our schedules full in the west. And uh, you know, I, for example, took at least two days off after Burning man and had people, mentors told me, don't do anything after this. You're going to need time to integrate. And I was so glad because I knew people that came back and went to work the next day and I just couldn't imagine that. So be. Be mindful of the integration period and be gentle with yourself.
Jason Lange: Yeah, yeah. Easy gear shifts. Give yourself time.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And if you are interested in the work Jason and I do. I know we referenced clients a couple of times. You can do a deeper dive than.
Jason Lange: The podcast by going to Evolutionary Men training.
Melanie Curtin: And there's a free training for you there that we encourage you to do.
Jason Lange: T.
