Be The Change! You Want To See In The World
May 21, 2024

Transforming Trauma: Josh Hailu's Mission to Heal Through Psychedelic Medicine

Transforming Trauma: Josh Hailu's Mission to Heal Through Psychedelic Medicine

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Have you ever pondered the healing power of unconventional medicine? Join us as Jerry Dean Lund sits down with Josh Hailu, an ex-military officer who now champions psychedelic medicine for treating PTSD. Venture into Josh's personal narrative of confronting PTSD, the shortcomings of traditional treatments, and how his life-altering encounters with psilocybin mushrooms have propelled him to create PsychX. Together, we tackle the stigmas of mental health and the complex legal landscape surrounding psychedelic therapy, illuminating Josh's mission to support veterans, first responders, and others grappling with trauma.

Embark on an exploration of psychedelic experiences and the profound insights they can foster. We unravel the crucial aspects of set, setting, and integration that shape the therapeutic process, delving into the remarkable intelligence of fungi and their potential for catalyzing significant psychological shifts. This episode is not merely a discussion on psychedelics; it's an examination of their intricate relationship with our ecosystem and their revered capacity for instigating change when approached with intention and respect.

In our quest for understanding, we bridge the gap between traditional healing and contemporary mental health practices. Learn about the diverse durations and impacts of substances ranging from ketamine to LSD and MDMA, and the sacred context in which ayahuasca ceremonies unfold. We scrutinize the prerequisites for engaging with psychedelic therapy, emphasizing mental preparedness and the need for caution. Whether you're intrigued by the burgeoning field of psychedelic medicine or seeking alternate paths to mental wellness, this conversation offers a poignant glimpse into the transformative power of these therapies and the ongoing pursuit of emotional resilience.

As a First Responder, you are critical in keeping our communities safe. However, the stress and trauma of the job can take a toll on your mental health and family life.

If you're interested in personal coaching, contact Jerry Lund at 801-376-7124. Let's work together to get you where you want to be and ensure a happy and healthy career.


Podcast Website www.enduringthebadgepodcast.com/
Podcast Instagram www.instagram.com/enduringthebadgepodcast/
Podcast Facebook www.facebook.com/EnduringTheBadgePodcast/
Podcast Calendar https://calendly.com/enduringthebadge/enduring-the-badge-podcast
Personal Coaching https://calendly.com/enduringthebadge/15min
Host Instagram www.instagram.com/jerryfireandfuel/
Host Facebook www.facebook.com/jerrydeanlund

As a First Responder, you are critical in keeping our communities safe. However, the stress and trauma of the job can take a toll on your mental health and family life.

If you're interested in personal coaching, contact Jerry Lund at 435-476-6382. Let's work together to get you where you want to be to ensure a happy and healthy career.


Podcast Website www.enduringthebadgepodcast.com/
Podcast Instagram www.instagram.com/enduringthebadgepodcast/
Podcast Facebook www.facebook.com/EnduringTheBadgePodcast/
Podcast Calendar https://calendly.com/enduringthebadge/enduring-the-badge-podcast
Personal Coaching https://calendly.com/enduringthebadge/15min
Host Instagram www.instagram.com/jerryfireandfuel/
Host Facebook www.facebook.com/jerrydeanlund

Chapters

00:14 - Healing Trauma With Psychedelic Medicine

15:20 - Psychedelic Experience and Integration

19:32 - Psychedelic Healing and Community Integration

30:49 - Psychedelic Medicine and Healing Modalities

37:41 - Mental Health and Wellness Conversation

Transcript

00:00:02.706 --> 00:00:05.052
Welcome to today's episode of Enduring the Badge podcast.

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I'm your host, jerry Dean Lund, and if you haven't already done so, please take out your phone and hit that subscribe button.

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I don't want you to miss an upcoming episode.

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And, hey, while your phone's out, please give us a rating and review.

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On whichever platform you listen to this podcast on, such as iTunes, apple Podcasts and Spotify, it helps this podcast grow and the reason why, when this gets positive ratings and reviews, those platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify show this to other people that never listened to this podcast before, and that allows our podcast to grow and make more of an impact in other people's lives.

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So if you would do that, I would appreciate that from the bottom of my heart.

00:00:38.801 --> 00:00:43.250
My very special guest today is Josh Hailu.

00:00:43.250 --> 00:00:44.453
How are you doing, josh?

00:00:45.621 --> 00:00:46.444
I'm doing great today.

00:00:46.444 --> 00:00:47.267
Thank you, Jerry.

00:00:47.267 --> 00:00:47.829
Thanks for having me.

00:00:48.320 --> 00:00:49.445
Yeah, thanks for being on.

00:00:49.445 --> 00:00:59.189
I'm going to talk about something that I think is really fascinating to me, and I think that the audience, too, will find it fascinating as well.

00:00:59.189 --> 00:01:01.093
Something kind of new.

00:01:01.093 --> 00:01:03.948
So, josh, introduce yourself to the audience.

00:01:05.939 --> 00:01:07.483
Yeah, so my name is Josh Halu.

00:01:07.483 --> 00:01:37.061
I am the founder and CEO of a company called the Psychedelic Exchange or PsychX, and our company creates retreats for veterans with PTSD, using psychedelic medicine to cure mental illness as opposed to treating symptoms, which is the current kind of approach of mental health treatment, with pharmaceutical medicine and talk therapy.

00:01:37.061 --> 00:02:28.753
My journey to psychedelic medicine, with coming out of the military after spending seven years as an active duty army officer and West Point grad graduate and army Ranger and Blackhawk helicopter pilot and you know, war veteran and uh and also child of of suicide, losing my father when I was, when I was really young, and experiencing a lot of trauma from childhood through the military and then through wartime and getting out of the military when everything slowed down and I got out of that high operational tempo that I think a lot of your audience experiences through first responder work, military firefighter, you know all of the police officer.

00:02:28.753 --> 00:03:13.054
You really are in this very high intensity occupation that becomes very normal for us and you know when you step out of kind of that line of work, you realize how abnormal it actually is to experience a lot of the events that we experience Traumatic, you know events, losing friends, seeing very traumatic experiences happen before our eyes and then living with those things and oftentimes there's a stigma around asking for help and you want to show more of your tough exterior.

00:03:13.054 --> 00:03:43.750
And it took me struggling for years, coming out of the military about four years, before I finally learned about psychedelics actually, and I was enrolled in the VA and started getting care for mental health and put on antidepressants and all of that and wasn't really finding much success maybe some numbing of my symptoms, but certainly nothing helping me address the underlying issues that were leading to my depression, my anxiety, my PTSD in general.

00:03:44.591 --> 00:04:02.503
And then I learned about psychedelic medicine for the treatment of mental illness and became fascinated by it, really jumped deep into the research and saw just the incredible results from ongoing clinical trials and started to understand, you know why.

00:04:02.503 --> 00:04:16.134
Why psychedelic medicine isn't medicine isn't widely available yet, going back to the war on drugs and the evolution of the legality and regulatory environment around these medicines, which is rapidly changing.

00:04:16.134 --> 00:04:28.295
And once I discovered the medicine myself for me it was psilocybin mushrooms, or what you would refer to as magic mushrooms my life radically changed in that moment.

00:04:28.295 --> 00:04:32.199
For me it was psilocybin mushrooms, or what you would refer to as magic mushrooms, my life radically changed in that moment.

00:04:32.199 --> 00:05:11.646
I had my first mushroom trip or experience and it was a profound shift in my ability to process all the traumatic experiences that I've had to that point and finally really recognize in myself how I was holding myself hostage to a lot of emotional baggage and trauma and carrying so much into the way that I operated and the lens that I saw the world through in terms of self-loathing, self-hatred, survivor's guilt, holding onto grudges and resentment and anger.

00:05:11.646 --> 00:05:35.745
And over the course of my first psychedelic experience and I've had many others since then I really learned forgiveness and gratitude and self-love and kindness and literally from you know, from hours one through six, you know, coming out the other side and then doing a lot of deep work on the other side and really integrating that experience into my life.

00:05:36.026 --> 00:05:45.487
Moving forward, I was able to start living a lot more fully and a lot more happily with gratitude and joy and love.

00:05:45.487 --> 00:06:11.560
And so then from that point forward I started continuing to bring psychedelics to other friends who were veterans, who I knew were struggling and seeing just profound shifts in everybody that I introduced to the medicine medicine.

00:06:11.560 --> 00:06:13.826
And about a year ago I kind of had a wake-up call telling me to really pursue psychedelic medicine more broadly.

00:06:13.826 --> 00:06:33.249
And I had to get over a lot of personal stigma around being like a West Point graduate, former army officer and figuring out how do I reconcile, you know, finding so much like salvation through what we would call drugs and reframing in my mind.

00:06:33.488 --> 00:07:03.970
You know what these medicines really are and deciding that it was, you know it was very important to me, a personal mission and journey for me to do as much as I can to bring these very healing modalities to as many people, you know, as many people as I possibly can, particularly starting with the veteran community because that's near and dear to me, but certainly, you know, with plans to expand to other first responders, trauma survivors and then more more broadly in general.

00:07:03.970 --> 00:07:06.461
So that's, uh, that's a bit about my background.

00:07:07.283 --> 00:07:11.413
Yeah, that's awesome and I came up with like 20 questions from that.

00:07:11.413 --> 00:07:14.704
But Josh, how did like so?

00:07:14.704 --> 00:07:29.887
There's already a stigma to like right Seeking help for mental health, but right, you kind of touched on there's also probably another stigma about turning to these psychedelics for mental health right To change that.

00:07:29.887 --> 00:07:32.488
I mean, how do you overcome that?

00:07:32.488 --> 00:07:45.158
What do you tell people Other than probably what you just told me, which is very fascinating and I've like seemed to be like you went from somebody like maybe being numb to you know, just open up yourself.

00:07:46.821 --> 00:07:48.043
Yeah, it's a.

00:07:48.043 --> 00:08:15.384
It's a challenging transition to make in isolation, certainly, which is why I think destigmatizing the medicine and seeking help and creating community, which is another part of what we're doing with the psychedelic exchange, is so important to us, because it is very challenging first to ask for help I mean, even even prior to asking for help, to even recognize that you have something maybe wrong with you.

00:08:15.384 --> 00:08:21.221
Ptsd or trauma shows up in you know, very different ways for everybody.

00:08:21.221 --> 00:08:39.162
I do believe that everybody, or nearly everybody, has some form of trauma in their lives and usually happens at a developmental point, you know, in time, or in a traumatic experience that becomes kind of your residing perspective going forward, because you know you just learn to carry these things.

00:08:39.162 --> 00:08:51.576
And for me, or for anybody else, I think that life really begins when you take your healing journey seriously.

00:09:06.299 --> 00:09:09.855
And and owning your mental health, just as as important as owning your physical fitness is is the one of the most important things you can do.

00:09:09.855 --> 00:09:18.599
When you think about you know, I like to think about the analogy of of an airplane safety brief, where you you know you're told to put on your oxygen mask on before helping others.

00:09:18.599 --> 00:09:34.475
Right, you can only be the most impactful, you know, loving, caring, creating force that you can possibly be as a human once you've really taken care of yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually.

00:09:34.475 --> 00:09:40.903
And those components in life aren't isolated, they're very intertwined.

00:09:40.903 --> 00:09:55.256
Having a good mentality, having a good emotional, you know, a good, good emotional, you know, place in life is to me just as important as being physically fit and exercising and eating a good diet.

00:09:55.256 --> 00:10:16.787
Right, ignore your, your mental health, just like you can't ignore your physical health and say, oh, it's up to the doctor to put me on medicine if I'm, you know, if I'm unhealthy and eating poorly, right, you have to take in my, in my opinion, you have to take ownership.

00:10:16.787 --> 00:10:31.008
You have to know, like you are, the steward of your body and your mind and you have to take ownership of, of understanding proper exercise and proper nutrition and understanding proper mental fitness.

00:10:31.008 --> 00:10:41.802
And I think that's so important because mental fitness really leads to all like unlocking all of the other potential for living life to the fullest.

00:10:42.724 --> 00:11:56.144
And you can't just offload that to to the system, you know, unfortunately, because the system has existed for, you know, for many years, decades, um, with with very specific modalities like traditional therapy or, you know, pharmaceutical medicine that's kind of designed to keep you taking a pill a day for the rest of your life, and certainly therapy and traditional medicine has its place in the toolbox of mental health, but it's important for individuals to know all of the tools that are available to you, as opposed to you know, certain mental health professionals sometimes aren't trained in all these different aspects, or a lot of individuals don't even understand the legal framework for psychedelic medicine or how to even go about prescribing or adding it into your, your care model, and like when you start to peel back the layers of understanding what these medicines actually do and why they're so impactful.

00:11:56.144 --> 00:12:00.476
It's something like for me at least, I couldn't, I couldn't look away from so.

00:12:00.476 --> 00:12:13.220
For instance, I mean, there's many different types of psychedelic medicine or medicines that fit underneath the psychedelic medicine umbrella, several of which are either legal or in phase three clinical trials.

00:12:13.220 --> 00:12:27.379
So, like currently, ketamine therapy is available and legal in all 50 states and incredibly effective, although it's being used in what's called off-label use, so it's not actually FDA approved for the treatment of mental illness.

00:12:27.379 --> 00:12:32.909
It's being used to treat mental illness but approved for like surgery or other things like that.

00:12:32.909 --> 00:12:53.648
But, like MDMA and psilocybin are both in late stage phase three FDA trials, and MDMA is actually slated to be approved by the FDA later this year, specifically for the treatment of PTSD, which I think is gonna be game changing.

00:12:53.740 --> 00:13:06.006
But just to give you a little statistic which I think when you hear these kinds of things it really opens up your mind to like oh well, maybe that is for me, why shouldn't I explore that?

00:13:06.460 --> 00:13:33.011
So, for instance, mdma in the clinical trials are showing incredible results and, just to paint a perspective, over 70% of the individuals who participated in the clinical trials for MDMA, who had PTSD, lost their PTSD diagnosis altogether, meaning two out of three individuals who who participated in these clinical trials were cured of ptsd.

00:13:33.032 --> 00:13:35.357
All right, like you don't really hear.

00:13:35.658 --> 00:14:16.905
Cured in any other type of like you know, like I mean, curing cancer is like you know, that's like it's something that we've been working on forever, but like curing a mental illness through, through like a series of a few treatments over the course of a few weeks and living a completely different life after the fact, when maybe you know and in your head you're like, well, I guess I'm just going to go to therapy or for the rest of my life and you know, take, take medicine or or just suffer in silence, right, like it's a complete shift in perspective of how you can truly like, own your mental health and seek out medicines or modalities that are radically different than than the norm.

00:14:17.746 --> 00:14:24.644
And once you start to experience that or learn about it, I, you know, I, I feel like you.

00:14:24.644 --> 00:14:27.429
You should find it's should find, at least for me.

00:14:27.429 --> 00:14:32.369
I found courage to want to figure out what that felt like.

00:14:32.369 --> 00:15:06.394
What that felt like to not wake up feeling dread about every single day and just wanting to, not caring what happened between getting out of bed and getting back in bed, you know, and just trying to make it through that, that part, instead of being excited about each and every day and finding connection with other people and finding love for yourself and with your family members and, you know, finding joy and going to your kid's soccer game, like just just the normal aspects of life that are really really challenging for individuals who struggle with significant mental illness.

00:15:08.039 --> 00:15:10.587
Yeah, what would I mean?

00:15:10.587 --> 00:15:14.610
What would it look like, or what does it feel like to take psilocybin?

00:15:14.610 --> 00:15:18.802
Like for somebody in the audience, and I'm guessing it's probably different for everybody.

00:15:18.802 --> 00:15:20.104
Is that true?

00:15:21.966 --> 00:15:25.072
everybody's experiences is certainly unique.

00:15:25.072 --> 00:15:27.999
I think that the general like how does it feel?

00:15:27.999 --> 00:15:44.804
Aspects are are consistent and each, each medicine will produce, you know, slightly different effects or very different effects, but the the, the outcome and and also the process is very similar.

00:15:44.804 --> 00:15:45.427
Right, it's kind of like.

00:15:45.427 --> 00:15:46.370
It's kind of like.

00:15:46.370 --> 00:15:57.753
It's kind of like a fresh snowfall over well-worn, you know ski tracks and allowing you to take a fresh perspective and rewrite your narrative, what that feels like.

00:15:57.753 --> 00:16:17.052
So, so, oftentimes, you know, you, you lump drugs into this singular category and and unfortunately, because of our historical war on drugs like psilocybin, mushrooms which just grow naturally out of the ground are currently a schedule one substance in the same category as like meth and heroin.

00:16:17.052 --> 00:16:28.123
But a psychedelic medicine and an experience feels like work, right, it's not an escape.

00:16:28.123 --> 00:16:32.999
Certainly there's aspects of of recreational use, mind expansion use.

00:16:32.999 --> 00:16:38.595
Right, like it certainly enhances the way music sounds and the way colors look and the way food tastes.

00:16:38.595 --> 00:16:43.373
Right, like there's, there's, there's all those aspects to psychedelics, certainly, but when?

00:16:43.373 --> 00:17:14.275
But when you're really taking them therapeutically and it should be taken with proper facilitation, preparation, facilitation and facilitation should take into account proper what's called set and setting which is the right mindset you don't want to be in a healthy mindset going into it, or a prepared mindset and the right like physical environment, um, and then the integration, which is one of the most important features, is like how do you come out of that experience and integrate that experience into your life?

00:17:14.275 --> 00:17:28.688
So it's not just like going on a crash diet, losing a bunch of weight and then just going right back to your old habits, right, like, you actually have to integrate the experience into your life, like that whole, that whole life cycle of a psychedelic experience.

00:17:28.688 --> 00:17:34.337
Um, is, is an intensive process and does feel like work.

00:17:34.337 --> 00:17:56.644
So when you, you know, when you take mushrooms, for instance, the you typically will like set intentions, you know and think about what you want to tackle during, during the experience but then you'll hear a lot about you have to surrender to the experience because you know mushrooms are for as as just to take them as an example are really interesting substance.

00:17:57.226 --> 00:18:47.155
There's, um, you know there's, there's, there's plants, or there's, there's like plants, and there's animals and there's fungi, which which is its own kingdom, and it's an incredibly intelligent organism and a lot of people aren't really familiar with how intelligent fungi are, but it's like yeast they convert sugars into alcohol or it's like all you know, whenever anything decays in a forest, right, like that's, that's, like those are that's, you know, mushrooms or fungi that are coming up and decaying it, right they're, they're very active in the process of of like transitioning and evolving things in our world and go very unseen, like in the roots of all the trees, or when you reach up and grab soil from the ground and you have all those little strands like that's.

00:18:47.155 --> 00:18:54.705
That's all part of the fungi kingdom and it's part of like how we all the, you know everything gets fed and it's really important to our entire ecosystem.

00:18:54.705 --> 00:19:00.258
But it's not not that well understood, but maybe I'm getting off a little tangent.

00:19:00.258 --> 00:19:08.018
But mushrooms themselves, like, when you take them, you allow that like they, really, they really um they.

00:19:08.018 --> 00:19:20.277
I mean it's kind of like they, they know, they know what they're doing in a certain way, right, like you're you surrender to allowing this, this medicine, to um, kind of take like in.

00:19:20.837 --> 00:19:26.233
In my experience, it takes you on these kind of emotional, emotional journeys.

00:19:26.233 --> 00:19:45.821
So, yeah, you'll feel maybe a physical, like body load and a mental load, but you'll really feel kind of an overwhelming emotional, um feelings that will pull your mind into interesting, you know, very important directions of your life.

00:19:45.821 --> 00:20:13.355
So so very often and and widely recommended that you wear like an eye covering, an eye mask, when you're in a psychedelic experience, because then it you, you cut off your your optical, you know field and you go in inside and you know, while you're going inside, the medicine kind of helps you direct to like places that are creating the most, the most pain or the most emotional overwhelm.

00:20:13.355 --> 00:20:26.894
So for me it'd be like visiting my younger self in childhood, losing my father, and reconciling that or, you know, or wartime trauma and and revisiting what those experiences were.

00:20:26.894 --> 00:20:46.986
And while I'm revisiting those experiences, I'm reframing them in a new perspective where I could have come out of an intense firefight in the military and carried a lot of survivor's guilt and trauma from that experience.

00:20:48.088 --> 00:20:52.865
But the reframe, you know, you come out of it and you're like, oh, that wasn't my fault.

00:20:53.267 --> 00:21:12.173
You know like I don't like, in fact, and it doesn't honor my, my, you know my, my friend or my, you know, army buddy or whatever, to live my life like in this way, like it's actually, you know it's it, it's not, it actually honors my friend more to live a full life and you know, carry their memory.

00:21:12.815 --> 00:21:18.295
You know open-heartedly, instead of like making my life worse because they don't, they no longer exist.

00:21:18.315 --> 00:21:36.952
So these, these, these narratives that you play out in your head, the, the psychedelic medicine like often helps you direct your attention into these very traumatic experiences that you've had that really create a lot of your subconscious reactions, emotional reactions, and reframe that narrative.

00:21:37.615 --> 00:21:46.340
And then, once you've been able to reframe that narrative, it no longer holds power over you and you're no longer anchored to these narratives that don't serve you and you get to reframe how you really perceive your life.

00:21:46.340 --> 00:22:16.653
And once you're no longer anchored to these narratives that don't serve you and you get to reframe how you really perceive your life, and once you're on the other side of that, you're like like a lot, a lot more, a lot more in life, like feels lighter and makes more sense, and you can extrapolate those instances into other parts of your life and really start to feel a lot more connected to yourself, connected to your community and and and less a victim of circumstance and more more the the driver of your, of your life.

00:22:16.653 --> 00:22:27.865
So it it they really help you stop being anchored to the past, arrive in the present, live in the present and and be hopeful about the future.

00:22:30.849 --> 00:22:33.034
How long does like this experience last?

00:22:33.034 --> 00:22:42.077
Like you know, if I take it and does it last like six, eight hours, or, and, or does things happen for like weeks later too?

00:22:43.905 --> 00:22:44.647
It's a great question.

00:22:44.647 --> 00:22:46.815
So different medicine lasts a different length of time.

00:22:46.815 --> 00:22:52.026
Like you can go in and get a ketamine infusion in a clinic and you're in and out of there in under two hours.

00:22:52.026 --> 00:23:02.286
Um, a mushroom trip usually lasts in the four to six hour range, um, lsd a little bit longer.

00:23:02.286 --> 00:23:03.592
Mdma is you know about six hours, so they're a little bit longer.

00:23:03.592 --> 00:23:06.344
Mdma is you know about six hours, so they're a little bit longer.

00:23:06.344 --> 00:23:15.144
Right, then they, they follow kind of a pattern of you know come up and then a peak, you know, for a few hours in the middle and then and then a come down on the backend.

00:23:16.407 --> 00:23:55.047
But you are processing things for, certainly, for you know, days, if not weeks, after the fact and even with, like, if you go in and go to a ketamine clinic, for instance, you might, you might sign up to do like a four, six, eight session, like package, and you'll do like two sessions a week for four weeks or something like that, and and every time you're kind of like working through more and more and and and achieving, you know, greater levels of, like mental peace, um, but but they carry forward.

00:23:55.047 --> 00:24:01.805
So, like, a lot of people will never need another session again after one session.

00:24:01.805 --> 00:24:10.815
Other people can have really transformational experiences on on several ketamine sessions and then maybe we'll do like one ketamine session a year.

00:24:10.815 --> 00:24:13.548
You know, kind of like as a a booster, if you will.

00:24:13.548 --> 00:24:22.474
Um, but like the once you, once you get over that, that, you know that first big one have like very significant transformational experience.

00:24:23.376 --> 00:24:31.546
Um, you, you have, you have a lot more of your control of your emotional life and direction.

00:24:31.546 --> 00:24:51.005
And in the days and weeks and months after the fact, the statistics I quoted you earlier about MDMA, for instance, those effects of curing PTSD, those are looked at and sustained for the six-month and the 12-month mark and beyond after those experiences.

00:24:51.005 --> 00:25:07.598
So they certainly sustain in the time after the experience, a lot of those, like I talked about, the integration phase that becomes part of the new perspective that you're looking through at that point.

00:25:07.598 --> 00:25:30.926
So you are going through, like in my, in my experience, and you know, with, with, with you know, people that I've worked with you go through this evolution and you can recognize the patterns as they come up over the next few weeks until until, slowly but surely, they become part of your norm and your baseline.

00:25:32.490 --> 00:25:33.751
That's pretty awesome.

00:25:33.751 --> 00:25:38.359
What does experience look like at your facility?

00:25:38.359 --> 00:25:39.906
Do you have a facility that you do it at?

00:25:41.048 --> 00:25:54.057
So we do what's called ayahuasca retreats, and ayahuasca you may have heard of this before.

00:25:54.057 --> 00:26:12.394
It's like a traditional brew from South America indigenous tribes and it's made up essentially just of two plants that are boiled down and taken together in a ceremony setting.

00:26:12.394 --> 00:26:22.450
Um produces a as like a psychedelic experience over the course of several hours, and traditionally it's done in a, in a ceremony setting, with, you know, multiple participants and a facilitator.

00:26:22.450 --> 00:26:26.696
And so we'll do these, you know we'll.

00:26:26.696 --> 00:27:07.928
We'll do these, these retreats, like at different locations, you know, outdoors on retreat, or you know in, in different, you know buildings or facilities, but in, historically, you know, a lot of people will leave the country, or a lot of soldiers's like non-profit organizations that'll take soldiers out of the country to participate in ayahuasca retreats and be able to um, be able to like, go through these transformational experiences, because they're illegal in in the country unless are, unless performed under um, under like a church that's's that's allowed to do it under the religious freedom act, which is how we operate.

00:27:07.928 --> 00:27:16.651
So um, so yeah, if you signed up for a retreat with us, you know we would likely host it in Las Vegas.

00:27:16.651 --> 00:27:20.286
That's where we're based out of Um, you know you'd, you'd fly in.

00:27:20.286 --> 00:27:53.686
We'd have a facility, we'd have probably two or three days of the medicine work, which is like in the evening, and then during the day you would have typically other other healing modalities, like you know, like, like we work on meditation and breath work, yoga, um, like these types of these types of other like health and fitness modes of of of healing that integrate very well with the medicine work.

00:27:53.686 --> 00:28:21.055
And really we focus heavily on a community setting because, like, while while I do believe there's a lot of benefit in going to a clinic and healing with ketamine or healing with MDMA, I think there's a lot of power in natural medicine, like natural plant medicine healing, and certainly in conducting these in a community setting.

00:28:21.134 --> 00:28:38.997
So, going through a ayahuasca ceremony with a group of a couple dozen veterans, you know, for instance, um or firefighters, or you know whoever or sometimes we will do, like you know male only retreats, you know women only retreats.

00:28:38.997 --> 00:28:46.594
So going through, you know, with gender specific, where you are really connected, like the, the medicine really helps you both connect to yourself and connect to the community around you.

00:28:46.594 --> 00:29:06.453
So you really get not just the perspective of connecting with yourself better but seeing, you know, your brothers and sisters who have had similar, their own version of traumatic experiences, like go through their healing journey, and usually you know you share a lot afterward about your experience and you recognize that.

00:29:06.453 --> 00:29:10.805
You know trauma is very universal and makes you feel a whole lot less alone.

00:29:11.266 --> 00:29:25.872
And then when you depart from these retreats and these experiences, you get to have community, you know, because it's oftentimes hard to go back home after these experiences and like reground yourself in your, in your former life.

00:29:25.872 --> 00:29:35.570
Um, because you're you're changed, you know you're, you're you're changed and you want to sustain that change and community really really helps a lot with that.

00:29:35.570 --> 00:29:41.308
It's you know, it's like you know, I mean it's you could, you could equate it to going to rehab.

00:29:41.308 --> 00:29:54.413
You know, like going to rehab and coming back and like now you don't, maybe you went for for alcohol, you no longer drink and all your friends still hang out at the bar and you're like, well, now how do I, how do I fit back into this life?

00:29:56.236 --> 00:30:00.943
Is the only thing that you can do in Vegas is the ayahuasca.

00:30:00.943 --> 00:30:04.210
Or can you do the psilocybin in Las Vegas too?

00:30:05.315 --> 00:30:21.471
We can do ayahuasca and then we can also do another medicine called Bufo or 5-MeO-DMT, which is it's a toad venom, which is, you know, it's directly from a toad in the Sonoran Desert.

00:30:21.471 --> 00:30:30.068
It's a much shorter, it's like a 15, 20 minute experience, but a very transformational experience in and of itself.

00:30:30.068 --> 00:30:35.626
So we are able to do both of these medicines, but we're adding more.

00:30:35.626 --> 00:30:50.662
Each one has its own, you know, has its own benefit, like I mean, for the way that I discovered psychedelics, like I talked about earlier, was was mushrooms, and and I had no idea how to source them or find them.

00:30:50.662 --> 00:30:54.718
You could sign up for clinical trials and you could, you know, figure out how to do, how to do it.

00:30:54.718 --> 00:30:57.865
That way you could maybe find a drug dealer, I guess.

00:30:57.865 --> 00:31:06.569
I I decided to learn how to just grow the mushrooms myself and consume them myself, and this isn't the preferred way to do them.

00:31:06.569 --> 00:31:15.969
You really should have community and facilitation around and you're really jumping into foreign, unfamiliar territory.

00:31:15.969 --> 00:31:23.826
But I was pretty desperate and very curious about the experience and didn't like didn't know how to go about finding it.

00:31:23.826 --> 00:31:29.400
Um, so there's like different, I mean, if it also is very state dependent too.

00:31:29.400 --> 00:31:47.505
So, so, um, oregon and Colorado and I think Michigan's coming online and um and California are um legalizing or have legalized or decriminalized at the state level psilocybin and some other plant medicines, but primarily psilocybin at this point.

00:31:47.505 --> 00:32:00.705
So you are able to go to psilocybin retreats in Colorado, in Oregon for sure, and have proper facilitation and receive the medicine and all of that.

00:32:00.705 --> 00:32:17.928
But that's kind of unfolding in a similar way to the way that the cannabis industry unfolded, which is that tricky balance between the federal level and the state level and while the state decriminalizes it it makes it for a challenging environment.

00:32:17.928 --> 00:32:33.955
I mean it'll be really interesting to see how it evolves once, like mdma, becomes legalized, because that will really be the very first time a medicine, psychedelic medicine, is legalized specifically for the treatment of a mental illness.

00:32:33.955 --> 00:32:46.884
And when that happens, you know, I expect that there will be a rapid, a rapid change in in the regulatory environment to make some of these other other medicines more, more permissive.

00:32:46.884 --> 00:32:54.248
And psilocybin is in phase three trials also expected to be approved in the next year or two after after MDMA.

00:32:54.288 --> 00:33:00.203
But yeah, for the moment we we use primarily ayahuasca, which is truly a beautiful.

00:33:00.203 --> 00:33:03.710
I mean each medicine has its own, you can call it kind of like spirit.

00:33:03.710 --> 00:33:10.096
But ayahuasca is a very beautiful medicine because it is like mushrooms, it is just.

00:33:10.096 --> 00:33:16.161
It's just, you know, straight plants, essentially Drinking in a brew.

00:33:16.161 --> 00:33:32.626
You know it's been cooked down in a brew, you know it's been cooked down, um, but but it's shared in a, like I talked about, in a ceremonial setting, with somebody usually playing music, and it really helps kind of move the energy and help you process the trauma and you're you're in a group environment.

00:33:32.686 --> 00:33:33.654
So it's it.

00:33:33.654 --> 00:33:44.846
It feels safer and maybe more sacred than sitting in a, in a, in a clinic, you know, with with somebody with a white lab coat on Um, but uh, but yeah, that.

00:33:44.846 --> 00:33:50.078
So we're, we, we really believe, you know deeply in this medicine and we source it right.

00:33:50.078 --> 00:34:06.248
We resource it from a long lineage of of of ayahuasca vine, from, you know, from Peru, from where this, this medicine, originally um comes from I mean, how healthy do you have to be to do these different types of medicine?

00:34:07.355 --> 00:34:09.418
like your general health, like physical health?

00:34:11.280 --> 00:34:17.925
physical health is not as important as mental health.

00:34:17.925 --> 00:34:22.731
Um, I mean, certainly physical health is important.

00:34:22.731 --> 00:34:23.291
The the.

00:34:23.291 --> 00:34:44.659
The biggest barrier to uh, to psychedelic medicine is, um, typically like significant mental disorders like bipolar or schizophrenia, um, schizophrenia because it, you know it, because you're already kind of detached from reality and the environment.

00:34:44.659 --> 00:34:52.719
The experience is very real when you're in it and it could destabilize you even further Bipolar and some other like depression.

00:34:54.222 --> 00:35:05.202
Some medicines like ayahuasca can impact the like SSRIs or things that operate on your serotonin um on on your on your serotonin receptors.

00:35:05.202 --> 00:35:20.449
So we'll often, you know, do, we'll always get, you know, get um medical history and if anybody's on these kinds of medicine, we'll work with them to work their way down from um, from their dosage, so that they can sit with the medicine.

00:35:20.449 --> 00:35:27.288
But truly it's a very safe medicine to use.

00:35:27.288 --> 00:35:33.228
It's a highly impactful medicine that you can sit with.

00:35:33.228 --> 00:35:50.835
But everybody, from alcoholics to individuals with PTSD and trauma and depression, you know, to individuals who are suicidal, and we've we've seen them all and we've seen them all completely transformed after after sitting with the medicine.

00:35:50.835 --> 00:35:53.744
It's, it's really, I mean it's, it's remarkable to see.

00:35:55.376 --> 00:36:01.889
Yeah, I bet, I bet Be super interesting to, to witness and also to you also to be a part of something like that.

00:36:01.889 --> 00:36:09.927
Josh, where can people find you and learn more about this and potentially see you in Las Vegas?

00:36:11.170 --> 00:36:17.467
Yeah, so we're at psychxcom P-S-Y-C-H-E-Xcom.

00:36:17.467 --> 00:36:25.166
We're currently rebranding right now, so we're going to see some changes and updates on our site coming soon.

00:36:25.166 --> 00:36:44.362
That's going to really allow people to access our retreats a lot easier and get on waitlists and find out information, because we're really trying to ramp up our capacity so we can get as many people healed as possible as quickly as possible and start to really build out our community.

00:36:44.362 --> 00:36:55.096
You can also follow us at the Psychedelic Exchange on Instagram, or you can follow me at my personal Instagram, at the Josh Halu and at any of those places.

00:36:55.096 --> 00:37:03.260
We'll be putting out a whole lot of information in the next few weeks and over the next few months as we really ramp up our operations.

00:37:03.260 --> 00:37:25.860
Like I said, we really launched about six or eight months ago and are building up as fast as we can and really just incredibly passionate about doing this work and bringing this medicine and these healing modalities to as many people as we possibly can, and we're gonna be evolving very quickly as we continue to grow.

00:37:25.860 --> 00:37:28.702
So yeah, thank you so much Jerry.

00:37:29.195 --> 00:37:30.621
Yeah, thank you so much for being on.

00:37:30.621 --> 00:37:32.521
Thank you for sharing all that information.

00:37:32.521 --> 00:37:45.528
I find it super fascinating and I'm sure people are curious to look to other modalities you know for their mental health and thank you for bringing those to people that are in need.

00:37:46.411 --> 00:37:47.155
Yeah, absolutely.

00:37:47.155 --> 00:37:56.163
It's my pleasure do an assessment of your.

00:37:56.163 --> 00:38:16.527
You know your, your mental, emotional fitness and and and take ownership of it, take it seriously, know that you are in the driver's seat and and your life, your quality of life can, can, can be vastly improved when you really, when you really take your healing journey seriously and and don't overlook your, your mental health.

00:38:17.576 --> 00:38:20.021
Yeah, I 100% agree with you.

00:38:20.021 --> 00:38:22.717
Thanks again for being on, josh, I really appreciate it.

00:38:23.400 --> 00:38:24.784
Yeah, my pleasure, it was a great conversation.

00:38:24.784 --> 00:38:25.206
Thank you, jerry.

00:38:25.206 --> 00:38:25.936
Yeah, thank you.

00:38:27.639 --> 00:38:28.862
Thanks again for listening.

00:38:28.862 --> 00:38:33.780
Don't forget to rate and review the show wherever you access your podcast.

00:38:33.780 --> 00:39:00.885
If you know someone that would be great on the show, please get a hold of our host, jerry Dean Lund, through the Instagram handles at Jerry Fire and Fuel or at Enduring the Badge Podcast, also by visiting the show's website, enduringthebadgepodcastcom for additional methods of contact and up-to-date information regarding the show.

00:39:00.885 --> 00:39:10.626
Remember, the views and opinions expressed during the show solely represent those of our host and the current episode's guest.

Josh Halu Profile Photo

Josh Halu

Founder and CEO of The Psychedelic Exchange

Josh Halu, Founder and CEO of The Psychedelic Exchange, is a dynamic leader committed to revolutionizing mental health care through the innovative use of psychedelic therapies. His background, steeped in military leadership from his time at West Point and as an Army Officer, fuels his dedication to a critical mission: bringing the number of veteran suicides down to zero. With his deep understanding of mental illnesses, including trauma, depression, and PTSD, as well as the unique challenges faced by veterans, Josh is pioneering new approaches in mental health care. He strives to transform the landscape of treatment and support for all, while destigmatizing the use of psychedelic medicines for mental wellness.

His work in this field positions him as a key figure at the forefront of combining veteran care with groundbreaking therapeutic practices.