[00:00:01] Luke: Well, you finally got your dress from India.

[00:00:04] Alyson: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Went on a whole shamanic journey to arrive here, this caftan. I think it took approximately three months, a customs and border patrol argument. It got sent back to India, resent back here. Yeah, I've never had to work so hard to wear something.

[00:00:25] Luke: I think you got caught up in the tariffs drama or something.

[00:00:29] Alyson: I did, and I was like, "What is this? What's happening? Why am I paying a tariff for a caftan?" It was the weirdest thing ever.

[00:00:36] Luke: That's what you get for being a prudent economical shopper. You're a cheap date when it comes to that stuff.

[00:00:45] Alyson: Yeah, yeah. I guess I feel good about that.

[00:00:48] Luke: You would've been a great fashion stylist.

[00:00:51] Alyson: Finding really, yeah, high quality things for not crazy prices.

[00:00:55] Luke: Yeah. Because the thing is with that world, which for those listening, by the way, welcome to Episode 610.

[00:01:03] Alyson: That's pretty crazy.

[00:01:05] Luke: Our Q&A chat. Yeah. But the thing about working as a stylist for a living is that your client's expectations and taste very rarely, I could even say never match the budget.

[00:01:21] Alyson: That makes sense.

[00:01:22] Luke: Yeah. So they send you all these reference pictures of all these--

[00:01:26] Alyson: Other editorial shoots with like Gucci and--

[00:01:29] Luke: Yeah. Like, I want it to look like this. My budget is $100. So you would've been good at that. Part of the knack of it being able to deliver something that looks fantastic without going over budget.

[00:01:44] Alyson: Well, this place that I got this and some other things, I found it a few years ago, and it's a store in India, and it's like all these incredible Indian designers. Really high-level designers. I think I paid, gosh, I wish I could remember more accurately, but this was actually on the higher end of things. I think this might have been 165, which that's not pennies to me, which is to you. But yeah, it's gorgeous.

[00:02:20] Luke: I love that even after living in New York City for 15 years, you still have a humble Indiana girl in you.

[00:02:30] Alyson: You have to remember, when I was living in New York City, I was living on my own trying to find my way as a single woman in arguably the most expensive city in the world. And so I still had to watch every single penny. I lived in little tiny studios, and it was tough to make ends meet many months.

[00:02:53] So yeah, I wasn't able to tap into some of those fancier stores. Although, the last thing I'll note on that was I do want to honor the mini showrooms who worked with me. How did I even get linked into that world? Was it my friend Juliet? I don't even fully remember. Actually, I think maybe some designers had started to attend my shamanic journeys.

[00:03:22] I think that's how that circuitry got started. But as you know, in New York City, and maybe in LA too, there's just tons of designer showrooms for celebs to go to, or there are new pieces and collections to get explored. And somehow I got linked into so many epic ones.

[00:03:40] So before all of my public speaking or my events, I was able to go into these showrooms and just pick things. Most oftentimes I would have to bring it back, but sometimes they would gift really beautiful things to me. So that was a godsend for sure, because I was living on a real tight budget.

[00:03:58] Luke: Yeah, we were talking about this the other day. To live comfortably in that city, you have to be exceedingly wealthy.

[00:04:08] Alyson: Double exceedingly.

[00:04:11] Luke: I can't believe how expensive it is there.

[00:04:16] Alyson: I was really paving some powerful paths and a successful entrepreneur, and I was still riding the subways pretty much everywhere, having to work with showrooms to-- because I was doing so many talks and so many events, there's no way I could have afforded to look really great in each one of those wearing something new and, yeah, eating the food. Just everything. I definitely did not have my own personal driver, and I got rid of my car when I moved there. So it's a whole different way of living when you're a New Yorker.

[00:04:52] Luke: So today folks, we've got a Q&A AMA episode. Some listeners have submitted questions. So if you were one of those listeners, thank you for doing so, because it gives us some fodder to play around with. Sometimes when Alyson and I do these episodes, we'll have some topics at hand, where we just chat, and I love doing those.

[00:05:18] But the past two, I think we've looked at each other like, "Do we have anything really interesting going on, or valuable that might be of interest to other people?" And we're like, "Not really. Let's save up some life until we have some things that we can share about."

[00:05:31] And we're about to have some things we can share about that might be of interest. But I love answering these questions because it's much more fun to do so than sitting in our YouTube or social media comments and trying to type them out myself.

[00:05:47] Alyson: Yeah. We've got a pretty good range, but I was joking before we could call this one the addiction AMA because there's a enough of those that came in.

[00:05:56] Luke: I took a quick glance at them, and I was happy to see that that's something that I love to talk about.

[00:06:02] Alyson: Well, are you ready?

[00:06:03] Luke: Hell yeah, girl.

[00:06:04] Alyson: Is you brain fired up? Are all gears fine?

[00:06:06] Luke: As fired as I will be. I have my Update drink over here. Oh, also, I'll let people know the show notes in case there's anything clickable or anything you want to follow up on, will be located at lukestorey.com/610.

[00:06:23] Alyson: Okay. We will get this party started with a non-spiritual or addiction-related question. This one comes from Taylor, and he or she asks about water. "Can you tell me the right process to go about getting a reverse osmosis water system put into my house?" That seems to be a growing interest/concern for a lot of people these days.

[00:06:48] Luke: It's been a concern of mine for, I don't know, 25 years or something. I think you sent me something about golf courses recently.

[00:06:59] Alyson: Yeah. There was some sort of teacher expert online who says four of his non-negotiables around where he's going to live, and one of them was, he wouldn't live within two or three miles of a golf course because of the water.

[00:07:12] Luke: Yeah. I saw another post about that yesterday that's pertinent to this question because we live close to a golf course. Not because we play golf, but it just happened to be the case, which is actually frustrating because you drive by the golf course and it looks like a beautifully manicured park.

[00:07:30] But you can't go in there. You know this. I'll tell the audience. Driving by that golf course, which is a five minute walk from here, for the past three years, I went on ChatGPT, and I was like, "Yo, what's the deal with the golf courses around here? Can we pay the membership and just go walk around there?"

[00:07:52] Alyson: Which I told you would not work.

[00:07:54] Luke: But I thought, I want to find out for myself. Or even, cool, I'll go rent a golf cart and just go cruise around the golf course, but not actually play golf. And it turns out it's like, a, you can't do that. B, it's a $100,000 a year to join or something.

[00:08:10] Alyson: Yeah.

[00:08:11] Luke: But anyway, to the point of water, I looked into it a little more yesterday, and the primary concern there has to do with the chemicals, pesticides, and so on that they use on the grass, on the turf, getting into the water supply. So it seeps down and gets into the aquifer essentially. So it seems like most of the toxicity around golf course is related to your water more so than the air. The air is more of a problem if you live in an agricultural area where it's being sprayed and everything's airborne.

[00:08:49] Because they're not flying planes over the golf course to spray them. Well, there are planes above us spraying us with chemicals, but not for the golf course. So water filtration, purifying your water to me is something I've done so many podcasts about, starting in 2016, almost nine years ago.

[00:09:08] I probably have, I don't know, 30 hours of water content. And the reason that I'm so interested in water is because I believe water is a conduit of consciousness. And it really is just so fundamental to our health. And if you think about your body, we know that on a weight level we're at approximately 70% water.

[00:09:36] And molecule for molecule, we're about 99% water. And the way that I've looked at that is the process of cremation. When you cremate a body, you're left with a little urn of ashes for a 200-pound person. Where's the rest of that person? It evaporated because it's all water.

[00:09:58] Alyson: Hmm.

[00:09:59] Luke: So your blood, all of your tears, obviously every bodily fluid, your plasma, everything in your body that carries nutrients and toxins in and out and so on, is all dependent upon water. So I think it's a really important question, really important thing to address. We have a system that was created by a company called Ophora.

[00:10:27] And there's been a bit of controversy around their bottled water that they sell in retail. I haven't looked that deeply into it, but we've had our system since modified by-- and I'll put this in the show notes. I believe they're called Elite Water Systems. They're going to have to forgive me if I got the name wrong.

[00:10:50] And so that's who we're working with now, and they're much more affordable, because the system that we had was quite expensive. And so in terms of reverse osmosis, it gets a little bit tricky because the way that you want to filter the whole house system is dependent on what the source water is, if you're on municipal water or well water and the quality of that water and what toxins are present, and also the hardness level, like the mineral level of the water.

[00:11:25] So reverse osmosis is good in theory, but it's not that practical to do reverse osmosis on your entire house, because you would just be burning through filters and things like that so quickly. And just the maintenance would be insane. So our system has a first stage filtration and softener set up, which is in the garage that gets out the bulk of the toxins and hardness and things like that. But it's still not at that pharmaceutical grade cleanliness that you would want for drinking, but it's totally safe to bathe in and things like that.

[00:12:04] But for drinking water, I'm a little more particular. So there's a secondary filtration system in the kitchen that does remineralization, reverse osmosis, and also adds oxygen and structures. Oh, and then we have the Aǹalemma whole house structure in the garage.

[00:12:22] So to clarify that question, if you want all of the water purified in your house, there are systems that do that, but they're not that do that well, like Elite Water Systems-- again, we'll put the correct name if that's not it in the show notes-- where you can make your water in the whole house totally safe for bathing and things like that.

[00:12:43] But for drinking water, that's where I would want to go reverse osmosis. So you'd want like a redundant system. There's a company called Mitolife that makes a really great seven-stage under sink filtration system that's going to give you very affordable-- I think it's, don't quote me, I don't know, somewhere between 1,500 $2,500 or something like that.

[00:13:09] So you could not do any filtration on your main water in the house, which I don't advise. But this is budget dependence. And as long as you have one sink where you can at least get really clean drinking water, that would be the move. But unfortunately, because our water, municipal water specifically, is so gnarly, you have to do one first pass and then a refinement pass for the drinking water.

[00:13:38] And we'll put a bunch of links and resources in the show notes. Also, it's worth mentioning because we get this question a lot, and that is that I have a beautifully curated and searchable website, which you can find at lukestorey.com/store.

[00:13:58] Alyson: That he worked for four years on making, so please go visit his website.

[00:14:03] Luke: Alyson's mic just fell down. We'll fix it in a minute.

[00:14:05] Alyson: It's in my lap.

[00:14:06] Luke: Let me just finish this question and then we'll make an adjustment. At least, that happened when I was talking and not you. So if you go to lukestore.com/store, I've neatly categorized all of the different things that I use and recommend. I don't sell anything.

[00:14:23] I just link out. It's all affiliate links. It's one of the ways that we fund the podcast. So you can go to the water section, and anything and everything that's in there has passed my sniff test in terms of me really vetting those products, most of which we have. Or if I found something that's a viable option that's more affordable, for example, the Mitolife under sink system, we don't have it because we had something else.

[00:14:47] But I've looked into it deeply, and if we hadn't done what we'd done, that's the one I would use, for example. So people can go there if you ever have questions and just search, and you know, if it's listed in the store, then that's the one I recommend for whatever that's worth.

[00:15:04] Alyson: Okay, let's go right to one other water question because I think this is as equally important. Earnest is asking, "I listened to a podcast where you and Ian Mitchell talked about a Spanish study and deuterium depleted water, bringing the body to a range where cancer cannot grow. Do you know where I can get my deuterium levels tested?" And I would never know about this, I don't think, had I not been married to you, but I know we drank that fancy deuterium depleted water. 

[00:15:35] Luke: Deuterium depleted water is so freaking expensive. Yeah, it's hardcore. So I got that water just for you.

[00:15:46] Alyson: Hmm. Well, and Cookie too.

[00:15:47] Luke: Yeah. And oh, Cookie drinks 10 parts per million, which is super anti-cancer and really great for you on a number of reasons. But the volume of water that she consumes is low enough where that's affordable. But lately I've been dipping into your water supply a little bit just because I'm working on a little bit of a deuterium project. So we'll link to the prior episodes I've done. He's talking about one of the Ian Mitchell episodes, but I've done, I want to say 2, 3, 4 episodes specifically dedicated to this idea of deuterium.

[00:16:24] And so for those listening that don't know what we're talking about, deuterium is just a form of hydrogen that exists in the environment, and it's referred to as heavy hydrogen. So it's something that's natural in the environment and is much more prevalent in coastal areas than it is in mountainous high altitude areas for some reasons that I forget that a smart person told me years ago on the podcast.

[00:16:51] But the basic, like, explain it to me like I'm five issue with deuterium is it's not a poison. It's not a toxin. It's just a natural element that's in our environment, and hydrogen is abundant in our environment, and hydrogen in and of itself is really good for you. But this particular type of hydrogen is not so great for you.

[00:17:14] And the reason for that is it has a negative impact on your mitochondria and energy production and metabolism. So this heavy hydrogen is in foods like carbohydrates, sugary foods, processed foods. Even a lot of supplements have a lot of deuterium, probably not that meaningful because you're taking such minute amount of a substance if you're taking a capsule supplement.

[00:17:45] And it's in the water. And so in ocean water and most tap water, it's about 155 parts per million. And most people, if they test their levels, are going to be, I think, somewhere around that range, 144 to 155 parts per million. And what happens is this deuterium over the course of your life builds up, and it gets into the mitochondria and slows down what are called nano motors.

[00:18:18] And those are the little engines that make your mitochondria hum and produce ATP, which is where we get our energy. So it's gumming up the works if you can imagine putting cookie dough inside a gear mechanism. It has to work much harder, and it makes it less efficient.

[00:18:36] And that has a lot to do with cancer because cancer has a lot to do with energy production. So it's not an anti-cancer treatment in the sense of a detoxification or something like that. It just has to do with the amount of energy your body has to have a functional immune system, etc.

[00:18:56] So the only way you can really lower your deuterium levels is by drinking deuterium depleted water. And there's not many people know about this, but there's a bit of misleading marketing out there with some companies that produce water and sell water commercially, and they'll market it as deuterium depleted when it's, say, 135 to 139 parts per million, which technically speaking is less deuterium than your average water.

[00:19:33] But you can go to high altitude springs and find water that's 139 parts per million. I think the water we used to get in LA was around 136, 138. True deuterium depleted water to me is when you're getting down to the 100 parts per million, 85, 65, etc. The water that we get is called Litewater, and it's 10 parts per million.

[00:19:58] And as I said, it's really expensive, but you don't need to drink 10 parts per million, although Cookie does, because that's just an overkill. So what you can do is you can take the 10 parts per million water and dilute it with spring water or filtered water, whatever you're drinking, to bring it up to 85 parts per million say, and it still has a therapeutic effect.

[00:20:20] So the way that you deplete deuterium using the water, which is the fastest and most effective way to do it, is you can think of a glass of water that is muddy. So you have a glass of muddy water, murky water. And you would pour clear water into that glass until it displaces all the muddy water.

[00:20:42] And that's what happens with the water in your body. So if you're drinking on a consistent basis true deuterium depleted water, over time that water begins to displace the water in your system and allows you to get rid of the deterrent buildup in your body. So it's really powerful practice, but it takes a bit of time.

[00:21:07] So you might drink  deuterium depleted water for, say, three months. You test before and after, and you'll find that your levels go down. And I've done that a number of times, and it works. It gets lower. Specific to that question, I know I go overkill on the answers because I know a lot of people that are listening to the answer won't even understand the context of the question.

[00:21:29] There is a company called Litewater, which is where we get our water, and they also sell deuterium test, and I haven't done it in a while. The last time I did it, it was a combination of saliva and breath. So there's a little tube. You breathe into it. It collects the condensation. Then there's another tube that you spit into, and they get the parts per million of the deuterium in both of those liquids.

[00:21:52] And they basically come up with a value that is in the middle of those two. So there's a ratio between the two, and that's how they figure out your basic number. Now, a friend of mine asked me about that a few months ago via text, "Hey, I want to do the  deuterium test." I'm like, "Yeah, well, Litewater sells the kit, and they ship it to you, and then you send it back and you get your levels."

[00:22:13] And he said something like, "Well, how can I trust that? Because it's like they're selling you the problem and the cure." I know one of the owners of that company, Robert Slovak, and I believe his integrity. I don't think they're selling fake tests or skewing the results just to sell you more water.

[00:22:32] So that's who I would use to do the test. And I'm curious actually, to do one of those tests for us now that I think about it. It'll be a little bit off because you've been drinking the water for a few months and, now I've been dipping into that water. But it'd be interesting to see what our levels are now and then check them again in a few months because it's fun.

[00:22:51] I like quantification. I want to see that something is objectively working and not just in my mind or some placebo or fantasy. So I think that's really good to do. And if I was someone, and this is definitely not medical advice, but if I or someone I loved had that diagnosis, I would be drinking the 10 parts per million straight up, and that's all I would drink.

[00:23:19] And also eating a high fat or keto diet is also really helpful because saturated fat in and of itself is also  deuterium depleted. Deuterium gravitates away from fat and toward carbohydrates and sugar essentially. It's really interesting too. Coconuts, the fatty part, the meaty part of a coconut is deuterium depleted while the water is really high in deuterium. It's the way plants and nature get rid of deuterium is they put it into the fruit. It's really interesting.

[00:23:55] Alyson: Go figure. Nature knows what it's doing.

[00:23:59] Luke: Yeah. Actually, I was talking to a guy on the show a couple of days ago, which will probably have come out-- I don't know if which one will come out first. Mike Wilkinson. This might come out first. And he does all this research about ancient giant trees and plants and animals and things like that.

[00:24:16] And he didn't have an answer, but one of my curiosities was around the idea that there may have been times in the past where the deuterium levels on the surface of the earth were much lower and that enabled things to grow much bigger, because they had more metabolic energy and potential.

[00:24:37] He didn't have an answer to that. It's my pet theory. And my theory was based on ice core drillings and samples from ancient glaciers that are very low in deuterium because that's an indication of the levels that water used to have tens of thousands of years ago versus the average, as I said, that we have in water now, which is 155.

[00:25:00] Alyson: Wonderful. And I'm sure people would be able to find it, but the light and Litewater is L-I-T-E, I think.

[00:25:07] Luke: Yes, yeah. And we'll put it at the show notes, lukestorey.com/610.

[00:25:13] Alyson: Okay. Let's go to--

[00:25:15] Luke: And also Litewater, just as a side note, I think all they sell is the 10 parts per million, which is really potent. I think they have instructions on how to properly dilute it, because the math gets a little nuts. And they've realized that people have a hard time with that. And so there's, I think, pretty clear instructions on how to maximize the value of that water so that you can dilute it and still get a therapeutic effect.

[00:25:44] Alyson: Okie dokie. Would you like to hear from Rochelle?

[00:25:48] Luke: I would love to hear from Rochelle.

[00:25:50] Alyson: Rochelle, it is your turn. She is diving into ancestral living. "How long before and after the sunrise should we get outside to get the red and other beneficial wavelengths?"

[00:26:03] Luke: Oh man, that's a great question.

[00:26:05] Alyson: Boy, you're asking the right guy.

[00:26:07] Luke: I was so pissed this morning. I slept in until 8:00, and I missed that, the golden hour of the morning. People often complain, understandably so, that all of these biohacks and supplements and all these technologies are so expensive, and I agree.

[00:26:29] And I think that the more people become interested in these technologies and the more people that buy them that can afford them now is going to create more public awareness and more demand so that they become less expensive and more accessible to more people over time. Things like red light therapy, saunas, etc.

[00:26:52] But when people say, "Oh, I can't be healthy because I can't afford it," the thing that I always reply is, and this isn't just me being cute, it's really the truth, that by far the most powerful interventions when it comes to health and vitality are free because they're gifts from nature.

[00:27:12] And the sunrise to me is-- sunrise and sunsets, but especially the sunrise as it sets the tone and biochemistry for the entire day and the following night-- the sunrise to me is like the most powerful thing that anyone anywhere can do for their health. And that has to do with obviously circadian biology, hormone regulation, neurotransmitter regulation. The downstream effects of just watching the sunrise, at least for 15 minutes in the morning.

[00:27:43] Alyson: And also the Vitamin Ds.

[00:27:45] Luke: Vitamin Deez, not sun.

[00:27:48] Alyson: My favorite t-shirt.

[00:27:49] Luke: We got to bring back the lukestory.com Vitamin Deez t-shirt. That was a good one. It's still there. I just need to wear it more. And for me, the subjective effects, and I keep the curtain open in the morning so the sun wakes me up, but today it didn't.

[00:28:08] If I can catch that sunrise, just my mood and energy that day are exponentially better than if I didn't do that. And also paradoxically, I find it much easier to fall asleep that night when I watch the sunrise. The light is the most potent medicine in the universe, period.

[00:28:33] Alyson: Well, there's a reason that there were for thousands and thousands and thousands of years and still are sun worshipers.

[00:28:42] Luke: Yeah. Sun gazing, baby. Yesterday, actually, I managed to get out in the backyard right after sunset. And I was doing the sphinxs out there, doing some cat cows, looking at the sunrise, and it was freaking epic. One thing you want to note is it's best to be grounded when you're looking at the sunset.

[00:29:05] And that has to do with the electromagnetism and the negative ions that you get, the DC current negative ions that you get from touching bare skin to the ground, preferably like wet grass or sand at the beach or a lake, if you can get there. So for me, when I'm inside the house on the second floor, I always touch the grounded wall because the rooms up here are shielded.

[00:29:30] So when you touch the wall, you're grounded because the walls are grounded. It's how the EMF shielding works. And if I can get outside, I do that. Specific to the question, different people have different opinions on it, but for me it's the first hour from the time you can see a peak of the sun coming up over the horizon.

[00:29:52] Really, there's going to be red and infrared light probably-- there's some of it all day, but the biggest bang for your buck is going to be in that first hour. Now, not everyone has an hour in the morning. People have kids. People have jobs. You can't just go sit and stare at the sun for an hour.

[00:30:09] So for me, if I'm busy, I'm going to at least try to get 15 minutes in. And I also don't eat anything, especially anything carby or sweet before I've looked at the sun. So the sun is first step to tell the body where we are in relation to the cosmos. And that informs all of the biochemistry to get ready and say, "Hey, it's daytime. Hello."

[00:30:37] And this is also the problem with blue light at night because we haven't evolved to have the sun in our visual field after it goes down, which is what bright and white AKA blue light does at night. You're telling your brain that it's still daytime when it's 11:00 PM or 1:00 AM, and that's, I think, one of the top two or three most detrimental things to your health.

[00:31:07] So watching the sunrise, at least getting that first 15 minutes or so. And also the good news is it works even if it's cloudy. You're still getting red and infrared light, even though it doesn't appear to be that color. Near infrared light is invisible to the naked eye. So that to me is the number one therapy.

[00:31:26] Throw in some breath work, some intentionality, goal setting, prayer. Anything you can do to get yourself psychologically, mentally, emotionally prepared for the day is a great way to spend that time.

[00:31:39] Alyson: I get into my heart first, and I really bring my focus and energy and breath into the center of my heart where I feel the most peace, where the divine truth is most alive. And then lately, shout out to my friend, Lauren, I shared with a few friends my vow that I finally came up with, and that inspired her to share with me what she has done with her kids.

[00:32:06] And you breathe and get connected to your heart, and then you say, "Peace begins with me." By tapping your thumb to the tops of each fingertip as you're saying each word. So peace is with your index finger tap. Begins is with your middle finger. With is with your ring finger. And me, you're tapping your pinky finger. And that has been really beautiful for me.

[00:32:31] Luke: That's cool. I didn't know you were doing that. That reminds me of the Kundalini yoga-- Sa Ta Na Ma, Sa Ta Na Ma.

[00:32:38] Alyson: Yeah, exactly. And there's more details to it, but that's maybe for another time. But with this, I'm sure most people know, but I don't want any new sun worshipers to do this incorrectly. You're not supposed to stare right into the sun.

[00:32:51] Luke: Oh, thank you. Yeah. On the sun gazing tip, there's two things. One is as naked as you can possibly be because your entire body is a solar panel. You have photoreceptors on every inch of your body. And so as naked as you can be in that morning sun, obviously you're not going to get sunburned because there's not UV happening yet, or at least very little.

[00:33:14] But you really ideally want to get your entire naked body in that beautiful red and infrared light. Staring at the sun is a good disclaimer there. Depending on where you are in elevation and how much the actual first morning light is obscured, it's going to have less or more UV light in it.

[00:33:39] So if you live in a valley and your sunrise is the sun coming over our mountain, there's already dangerous levels of UV light by the time you can actually see the sun itself. The way that the ancients have laid out the practice of sun gazing is by gradually getting used to it over time.

[00:34:02] And you build up an inner solar callous where, say, you're in the desert or you're looking over the sea, and you get the sun right when it pops up and it's super orange and super red. I've been looking at the sun when I'm in that position forever, and it hasn't hurt me. But one way to safely do that is to look in the direction of the sun, but not right at it. And I'm talking about the hour of sunset or the hour of sunrise.

[00:34:32] So what I'll do, especially if I miss it or if I'm a little early to a sunset or a little late to a sunrise, is I'll just fix my eyes 45 degrees down so that the sun light is still shining in my eyes, but I'm not looking directly at the sun. So if you look up or look down or even look to the side, without directly staring at it, you get the impact. You get basically that data through the optic nerve without damaging your eyes.

[00:35:02] But yeah, I would just say in general, I would not advise anyone stares directly at the sun at any time. And there are people that are very skilled at this and train people how to safely do proper sun gazing.

[00:35:18] Alyson: Yeah, maybe think of it as focusing on the sun's aura as opposed to directly.

[00:35:25] Luke: Yeah, yeah, totally. Or even sometimes I'll squint my eyes so that I'm not getting that much potent light. When we go out to the lake here sometimes, if we're a little early and there's still a lot of blue and the sun's very bright, I'll just squint my eyes so that not as much light gets in, until it gets far enough down on the horizon or should say out on the horizon. So that I just get-- I love getting that last little peak though when it's orange and red. It just feels so nourishing.

[00:35:55] Alyson: Yeah, you're super into it.

[00:35:58] Luke: Yeah. I'm like, I'm pissed if I miss the sunrise or the sunset. When we take walks, I'm always like, "Hurry up, Cookie. We're going to miss the sunset.

[00:36:05] Alyson: I know. I'm like, "Leave the dittle girl alone. She's sniffing."

[00:36:08] Luke: We'll be too early, and I get annoyed because I didn't get the golden light. Yeah, it's a whole thing.

[00:36:12] Alyson: Yeah, you're very impacted and into it. What is the other thing? Thankfully most of the time in Texas, it's sunny here. But every once in a while, we'll get a stretch of a week or two where it's really cloudy and you're just so angry about it.

[00:36:32] Luke: Yeah. Oh, another thing I do too is, when I wake up and go into the bathroom to take a shower, I turn on the little mini red light in there and just blast the whole room with red light. And I do that just every day, whether or not I caught the sunset or not, because I just want maximum red light exposure in the morning. And even with that, I don't stare directly at the red light. It's just ambient.

[00:37:00] Alyson: And I refrain or I retract. It's not that you get angry, but you do get more down when the sun isn't out. What's that? What is that called? Not the seasonal blues.

[00:37:14] Luke: Seasonal affective disorder.

[00:37:17] Alyson: The SAD. You get real sad.

[00:37:21] Luke: I'm very, I don't know, tuned into light. I have some friends like that too. Yeah, I would have a very hard time living somewhere like the UK or where I grew up in Northern California where it's foggy and just gloomy out all the time. Yeah.

[00:37:40] Alyson: It impacts you.

[00:37:41] Luke: I get super bummed.

[00:37:42] Alyson: Yeah.

[00:37:43] Luke: Yeah.

[00:37:45] Alyson: All right. Julia, it is your turn, your question. Thank you for sending this over. She says, "I admire your journey of recovery and the insights you share in your podcast. If you're comfortable discussing it, I'd love to hear about your experiences during your struggles with addiction. What do you think you were like during those times, and how do those experiences shape your perspective now?" Well, that's an entire podcast all in itself, like a whole episode.

[00:38:14] Luke: Yeah. And I've done a few where I focus on that a bit more. So Julia, thank you for listening to the show and asking the question first and foremost, and we'll put some other episodes where I've focused on that and in a much more long form. But yeah, it's wild with my experience of addiction.

[00:38:35] It's been 28 years coming up on 29 years since I was just plucked out of that by the grace of God. And it's funny in that when I look back on those times, which I've been doing a lot lately because I'm writing about that particular period of my life in the book that I'm working on-- and so I've been looking back on that, and it's a strange phenomenon because it feels like it was someone else's life and like it was a million years ago.

[00:39:18] I just can't imagine living like that. And simultaneously, it's so visceral and so fresh that it's like I can close my eyes and be right back there. It's a interesting, I guess a lot of memories are like that. There's a part of you that feels close to it and a part feels far.

[00:39:40] Alyson: It is like with me and my running. If I see a road race or track on the television, I feel so removed from that world, and it feels so foreign. But that's literally all I did from two and a half years old through college. And yeah, it doesn't even feel like this lifetime in most respects.

[00:40:07] Yeah. I don't know what causes that and if everybody experiences that, or only people who those previous chapters really deeply traumatized them or shaped or impacted their lives. If that's how it feels to those people only, I don't know of that.

[00:40:24] Luke: It might be more so that way with experiences in life that are imbued with a lot of intensity.

[00:40:33] Alyson: Mm-hmm.

[00:40:33] Luke: I think that has something to do with the contrast because I did a lot of things earlier in life and those only feel like a long time ago. You know what I mean?

[00:40:43] Alyson: Doesn't have that trippy thing.

[00:40:44] Luke: And that doesn't feel like, oh, that was a totally different person. Like when I was a kid riding dirt bikes or something, I'm not like, "Whoa, that was me. It doesn't have that. But I think just because my day-to-day, the way I spend my time, but more so just the way I feel in my skin, the way that I interact with the world and other people is just the way I think, the way I feel.

[00:41:10] Everything about me is so radically different. That's the part that it's hard for me to imagine the way I used to be. But I think the part that makes it more immediate is the intensity and the pain of those periods, the struggle. It's just like, [Inaudible]. Just gives me the willies, if I really get into it because it was just so dark.

[00:41:35] So to her question, what it was like for me and what I was like was quite a long period because I started using drugs when I was very young. 8, 9, 10, started experimenting. I was probably addicted by the time I was 11, 12. I had a break because I was sent to boarding school from 14 to 16. So I was sober at that point after getting arrested for burglary.

[00:42:09] Alyson: Were you trying to find pot?

[00:42:11] Luke: Yeah, I was. Yeah. I used to break into houses and rob them of drugs and money and things like that. And so the house that I got arrested for breaking into, I was looking for drugs. Yeah. Unfortunately, they didn't have any. All I could find was alcohol, and I was only 13, and I hadn't really discovered alcohol yet.

[00:42:37] I discovered it. I've been drunk many times, but it wasn't my medicine. So all I could find was alcohol. And I went in the house, stole a bunch of shit, including a couple bottles of brandy, went home, got drunk, and then walked back to the house to steal more stuff

[00:42:55] Alyson: That's what got you.

[00:42:57] Luke: Yeah, that was a rookie move there. And in so doing, I got caught. Anyway, so there was a two-year break of sobriety when I was a teenager, and obviously my life improved dramatically. And then there was a lot of healing during that period just due to the nature of the therapeutic troubled teen cult-like school that I was in.

[00:43:21] But when I got out at 16, I don't know. I don't think I understood how the phenomenon of craving works. I just thought, well, I know I'm not supposed to do drugs because I had problems with it before, but I thought I could dabble a little bit and be unscathed. But I immediately fell into addiction worse than ever.

[00:43:45] And so from 16 to 26 was a 10 year period of just a downward spiral. And I look at all drugs, whether they're psychedelics and plant medicines or crack and heroin or whatever they are, they're just tools. And they have a purpose, and they have a use. And some of them can be beneficial at times for different reasons, and some of them can be deadly.

[00:44:15] And it depends a lot on context and also on what those particular substances are. And so now I just think of it as, I have different boundaries with different things, and some of those things are very boundaried, and I won't touch and probably will never touch, hopefully, for the rest of my life.

[00:44:36] While there's other things I've found, even in sobriety to be beneficial in the realms of plant medicines and psychedelics, which I don't think is probably appropriate or great for anyone that is sober or wants to stay sober. But that's been my path. But what I was like, to her question, thinking back, there were two sides.

[00:44:56] The utility value of addiction for me was that drugs enabled me, and alcohol enabled me to feel more free. They really provided an escape. And I really needed escape because I had so much inner turmoil that was a result of childhood trauma and just things that I experienced as a kid, neglect and abandonment and all the classics that typically lead to addiction.

[00:45:24] And my addiction also had a lot to do with just geographic luck. I grew up in the Bay Area, and in the '70 and '80s-- I'm sure now too-- but there were a lot of drugs there. It was a very drug rich culture. And so they were very easy to access when I was a kid, which was probably, at least at that time, more so than, I don't know if you lived in Idaho or something. You know what I mean?

[00:45:57] Just the culture was really saturated with drugs. And so that's why I started so young. So I would say on the positive side, I felt like I didn't commit suicide or get into really overt self-harm because I at least had some medication.

[00:46:19] It's like, rather than going to a doctor and getting medication for the emotional and mental issues that I had as a kid, because no one really knew I was having those issues or knew how to help me to deal with them, I self-medicated, and I did a really good job of doing that.

[00:46:36] Alyson: But couldn't that also be looked at as like a slow suicide?

[00:46:40] Luke: I guess so. Yeah, there's definitely an element of self-destruction there. Probably part conscious, part unconscious because there's a lot of shame and self-hatred involved in the addiction cycle for me. But I look at it as, although it got super dark and there was a lot of pain involved, but drugs were really helpful to me because those were the only resources I had. You know what I mean?

[00:47:12] And I also had a lot of fun. When I moved to Hollywood when I was 19, I had no rules. There was zero authority. I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I ran with a lot of older people. For whatever reason, most of my friends were like 10 years older.

[00:47:30] Alyson: That's when you had your cat named Ted?

[00:47:32] Luke: I had a cat named Ted, and a cat named Lucy. Yeah, man. I'm living behind the Chinese theater on Hollywood Boulevard. I'm just going wild, and I had a lot of fun. And so I remember my mom telling me once the night she dropped me off at rehab in 1997--

[00:47:55] She didn't tell me this for a while because she wanted to support my sobriety, but at one point, she said, because I got wasted, hammered drunk the night she took me in, I wouldn't even go. I wouldn't leave the bar at the airport. She came to pick me up. She's like, "Let's go. We're going to go do the intake."

[00:48:16] And I was like, "We need to go to the bar." But she said to me, she said, "Man, Luke, I hesitated to tell you this in your early sobriety, but you were such a fun drunk. You were hilarious. You were so gregarious and just entertaining." That's how I was when I was high and drunk. I was more myself.

[00:48:39] Alyson: Hmm.

[00:48:40] Luke: Because I didn't know how to do that any other way. So there was a lot of fun, a lot of wild times. The drugs and alcohol didn't really make me mean.

[00:48:53] Alyson: You were not throwing bottles against the wall.

[00:48:56] Luke: Yeah, no, I wasn't that guy. I wasn't that guy. I was way more fun. And it allowed me to be more extroverted and less insecure.

[00:49:04] Alyson: I remember you also saying it helped you be comfortable around girls because you were shy.

[00:49:10] Luke: Yeah, totally. Totally. And also playing music. I had terrible insecurities about my talent or lack thereof. I had stage fright. And yeah, just approaching women and all of those things. So it gave me a sense of confidence that wasn't real, but it was better than not having any.

[00:49:33] So on the positive note, it was super fun. But the thing about addiction is that it's progressive. It never improves. If you're truly addicted, it doesn't just wear off or become manageable. It progresses, and it gets worse and worse, and you become more dependent.

[00:49:52] And then of course, I should speak for myself, I would develop a tolerance for different substances. And then no matter how much of that particular substance I would do, I couldn't get that desired effect anymore. And then, so I would have to start playing armchair chemist and adding all different substances together. And then I was cross addicted to all kinds of different drugs at the same time, by the end, which gets very difficult to manage and very difficult to afford.

[00:50:22] Alyson: Yeah, that's a lot to keep up with.

[00:50:23] Luke: Yeah. It's hardcore. So on the positive. On the negative for me, what happened I think was I became so captured by shame. I just had so much shame about who I had become and my behavior, and there's so much deception and lying that was necessary in order for me to keep that going.

[00:50:57] Most people, if they care about you at all, aren't going to sit by and watch you kill yourself. Most of my friends were also like drug addicts and things like that, but none of them were as bad as I was. So there was a lot of pretense and masking and hiding and sneaking around and trying to pretend like I wasn't doing what I was doing.

[00:51:21] And over time, I found it necessary to gravitate toward lower and lower companions, people that were worse off than I was because I needed the access that they provided. And it was also part of the denial system. If I spent time around people that were much worse off than I was, then I was able to delude myself into thinking that I wasn't that bad.

[00:51:47] So there's a lot of psychological self-deception and trickery that goes on there, but underneath that is just a deep sense of shame. And so I really felt so badly about who I was. I just didn't value myself or have any respect for myself.

[00:52:06] Alyson: Two quick questions with that. I guess one is more just like a statement of curiosity. It's so interesting how, even though you were the one consciously making the decision to hang out with folks who were more addicted than you, like that was a conscious game plan. Like, I need to find out where those people are and get linked in with them.

[00:52:32] So you make that conscious decision. And then when you're in that, then you disassociate from the fact you consciously made that decision so that you can then look and be in denial about how bad yours-- do you get what I'm trying to say? That's a very strange--

[00:52:49] Luke: Addiction is a mental illness.

[00:52:53] Alyson: Yeah, yeah.

[00:52:55] Luke: It's centered in the mind. It really is. So for example, one of my many denial mechanisms was around heroin. And most people, when you think of a junkier heroin addict, you think of a needle user, and that's not very well respected.

[00:53:17] There's a mystique to it in a sense culturally. There's some pretty cool heroin addicts in history. Keith Richards, Basquiat, Lou Reed. There's a certain allure to that, but when you're actually in the room watching someone shoot up, using toilet water, it's not that sexy.

[00:53:39] So for example, if I was smoking heroin and I'm in a room full of people that are all shooting heroin and pawning all their guitars and shit, and they're just very dysfunctional, then it was easy for me to go, "I'm not a junkie because I'm not them." But I needed to be around them because they were the ones that had the dope. You know what I mean?

[00:54:04] Alyson: Yeah. And you consciously knew that, so you could get linked into that, but then you would still delude yourself. That's just so fascinating.

[00:54:11] Luke: Yeah. It was a metric of comparison that allowed me to feel like I'm not that bad.

[00:54:19] Alyson: It's like you were doing your own mental gymnastics on your own self, not just to others.

[00:54:25] Luke: A lot of gymnastics, Olympic level are necessary.

[00:54:28] Alyson: Yeah. You could have won the gold. You were a gold medalist.

[00:54:32] Luke: To sustain addiction for years, you have to get really good at creating your own reality.

[00:54:40] Alyson: Yeah. Hiding from yourself so masterfully.

[00:54:45] Luke: Yeah. We were talking about this a couple of days ago. I don't remember how this came up, but--

[00:54:48] Alyson: I asked. Well, I wanted you to tell them.

[00:54:50] Luke: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, right. You're like, "Tell some of your wild some of your wild stories."

[00:54:54] Alyson: Because that one's really fascinating.

[00:54:55] Luke: But speaking of the denial and that idea of lower companion, I don't know, people that have an alcohol problem, or even some people I've met that have issues with opiates are able to maintain some semblance of civility and maybe even pay their rent and have a job. They can function to some level.

[00:55:20] But when it comes to some other drugs, like crack, for example, you're not going to do crack for very long and keep your shit together. So that was one for me about which I was always really embarrassed and I was very ashamed that I used that drug, because it's just so vile.

[00:55:40] And the things that it compels you to do and just how instantaneously addictive it is and how desperate you are for it when you're addicted. Many people that you see on the street that we would just think of them as a homeless person. Now there's all kinds of other drugs out there too, but crack is really one that will bring you to your knees figuratively and literally quickly.

[00:56:06] And so none of my friends, even as bad as they were, were really okay with me using crack. And most of them would've never done it with me. And those that did, didn't really take to it like I did. It was just like we're getting wild every once in a while. But it became a daily thing for me.

[00:56:27] And so I knew that I shouldn't be doing it. I didn't want to do it. It was mortifying that I was doing it. And every single time I did it, when I was done, which was only because the sun came up and the dealers went away, and I ran out, I would always break the pipe. You smoke crack with the glass pipe.

[00:56:48] It's the only way it really works well. And when I was done and I knew I was done because it was over, the party was over, I would break the pipe, and I would write it off. I would pass a lie detector test. I am never ever, ever going to do that. That was the last time.

[00:57:07] Because just the level of depression and suicidal ideation and just darkness, it's just truly a demonic energy behind that stuff. And then I'd crash out for a few hours, wake up, start drinking. Once I got alcohol in me, the spirit of alcohol would possess me. And then I'd be out there on the street to buy crack again.

[00:57:34] Alyson: About what time would that be each day when you'd head out?

[00:57:40] Luke: Oh, probably 10:00, 11:00PM.

[00:57:44] Alyson: Oh my Lord. Oh, that lifestyle.

[00:57:48] Luke: Go until 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning.

[00:57:51] Alyson: Oh my Lord.

[00:57:53] Luke: Yeah. Back and forth to the spot all night. Because that particular drug runs out really fast. It only lasts two minutes or something, and you got to do another one. But yeah, so that answer her question. That's what it was like. You have the years where it was still working, and I would say the benefits outweighed the consequences.

[00:58:20] And then there was an even longer period where there were little to no benefits and a lot of dire consequences both in my external life and my ability to function in any adult capacity and also just my mental health and the emotional pain and the spiritual disconnection. That toward the last few years was pretty much all there was. But once I was caught in that cycle, I didn't have the resources within myself to stop.

[00:58:56] Alyson: Is there anything else you want to say or clarify about the last part of her question? And how do those experiences shape your perspective now?

[00:59:05] Luke: How they shaped my perspective is, I think I have a really high capacity for empathy, not only for people that have struggled or are struggling with addiction, but just anyone who's experiencing a lot of emotional pain and mental health issues. I get it. I remember for years-- it still happens every once in a while.

[00:59:38] When I lived in LA there's a lot of homeless people there and a lot of people struggling with mental health and addiction just out on the streets. And I'd drive by some guy about my age pushing a shopping cart, sunburned, dirty clothes, unwashed dreadlocks from just matted hair.

[01:00:03] Just someone who's been like out there living that life for a long time. And I think to myself like, how is that not me? What happened? I know what happened. The grace of God is what happened. And a surrender happened, and a calling in my soul that put me in the position to accept the gift of grace.

[01:00:33] But that's something that I really value about that experience, is I have a way of just feeling compassion for people that are having a rough time. I know what it's like, and I'm sure many people have had it rougher than I did, but it's in my own subjective experience, man.

[01:00:59] I can go back there and just be like, "Holy shit." So there's a permanent and very consistent state of gratitude because I know where I came from. I'm sitting here with you as my wife. We have a beautiful home. I've created a career out of just exploring teachings, modalities, information that's been helpful to me. Sharing it with tens of thousands of people. I make a positive contribution in the world.

[01:01:30] Alyson: You've got this beautiful little girl.

[01:01:32] Luke: Beautiful dog. I've got Jarrod here running the gear. I've got great cameras. I'm able to produce what I feel is pretty good quality media. Every measurable part of my life is just such a gift. It's so beautiful.

[01:01:46] So there's just a unbreakable gratitude for my life on the external, but also for how I feel on my worst day. This morning, as you know, was no party. I had to deal with some work that was being done in the house that just couldn't be done any worse.

[01:02:11] So I'm having to really step up and deal with that. And that's not something I enjoy doing at all. I'm a lover, not a fighter. And this morning I had to fight, and I'm probably going to have to fight more. I mean fight by just advocating for what's right.

[01:02:28] Alyson: Uncomfortable conversations.

[01:02:31] Luke: Yeah. But even in that, it's within the context of wow, this is a really great problem to have, because there was a time I was living in someone's freezing ass garage in Echo Park, California, driving a busted ass 1995 Nissan Maxima, and doing telemarketing for a job or getting people to sign petitions in front of Whole Foods and being just--

[01:02:56] Alyson: Or you also worked at that Italian restaurant, and how weird that then so many years later, your wife and her Persian cat are moving across the country from New York City to live in a home just at the top of the hill from that same restaurant that you were-- what was it? You started as a driver delivery guy, and then they--

[01:03:16] Luke: No, that was when I first got sober. I had waited tables periodically when I was an addict. And so I played music and I waited tables during the day, which I couldn't sustain very long because eventually I just didn't have the mental capacity to do that. The complexity of that work was too much for me, put it that way.

[01:03:40] And just showing up. I'm up until 9:00 in the morning, crash out for a couple of hours and then be waiting tables at 11:00. Still completely wasted. So yeah, that didn't work out. But I got sober and I was like, "What am I going to do?" I have no education. I have no skills. I have nothing to offer the world. So I went and got a waiter job. It's still there. It's a great restaurant if you live in LA. It's called Pace. It's in Laurel Canyon. Really great Italian restaurant.

[01:04:04] Alyson: We had one of our first dates there.

[01:04:05] Luke: So that place opened. I go in. I show them my old resume. They hire me, and I start waiting tables. But between the time I had dropped out of the server scene and came back in, computers had come out back and mighty. You wrote it on a little notepad and hung it up in the kitchen and the cooks made the food and then you brought it out.

[01:04:24] But they had this computer system, and my brain was so fried, when I was newly sober that I couldn't keep up. And so they demoted me to being a delivery driver pre-GPS, which meant I would be driving around mostly the Hollywood Hills with what was called a Thomas Guy, and it's a big Mac booklet.

[01:04:42] Alyson: Oh my gosh.

[01:04:43] Luke: And that's a very tough area to navigate for anyone that you know has lived in LA. So yeah, I'd be there getting lost, and the food would be cold by the time I arrived. And so they wouldn't tip me because they were pissed at me. So those are the things I reflect on. I go, "Wow, I'm just in a completely different world now." And I owe that to the teachings of the 12 steps.

[01:05:06] Alyson: Mm-hmm.

[01:05:07] Luke: I followed--

[01:05:09] Alyson: And your mama for taking you down--

[01:05:11] Luke: And my mom always, yeah, my Eskimo.

[01:05:13] Alyson: And your dad for taking you to that boarding school. They both played really big roles in you getting sober.

[01:05:19] Luke: Yeah. Thank you for that. That's true. So yeah, those are the things that I think, I appreciate about it now. And also it drove me to have to take my spirituality seriously. That was the only way I was going to be able to get and stay sober, was to really not play spiritual, but to actually do it, which is to apply spiritual principles, truths, laws in my day-to-day life, which is what I did this morning.

[01:05:51] I had a problem that happened with the house, and it's not like I had to sit down and read a book about now what principles should I apply to this situation? It's just communication, accountability, honesty, integrity, boundaries, acceptance, surrender, knowing the line between the things I can control and the things that I can't, all of that.

[01:06:20] Everything that I do in my life is informed by the principles that got me sober because they're the principles that restore and refine your character and establish and maintain a relationship with a higher power. And turns out thankfully, that those are the same tools that you can use to have a great life and to move through your experience with less suffering.

[01:06:45] Alyson: I think this is more of a spiritual question, but I think it segues really well from the last one. This one's from Annie. She asks, "How does one start feeling connection to the divine again, when dealing with years of fallout from trauma that's caused long-term disconnection." So yeah, if you've had a big gap.

[01:07:10] Luke: Yeah, that's a good question. The thing about the thing about God, whatever word you want to use for that creative force, that is really cool, but also for me, really hard to remember is that it's always operational. It's always present. It's always responding to my thoughts, feelings, and words, whether or not I'm aware of it.

[01:07:46] And I discovered this really day one in rehab in 1997 because I never prayed in my life. I started praying, and my cravings for drugs and alcohol just vanished out of thin air. Gone instantly and never came back to this day, 28 years later. And that was a massive clue for me because it showed me that regardless of how shitty I felt, how hopeless I felt, how depressed, how anxious, and the fact that I had less than zero faith, that these silly little prayers were going to do anything, that there was any God to hear them, that it still worked.

[01:08:30] And so this is something I still remind myself of, is that even when I feel disconnected from God, it's on my end. That it's impossible to be disconnected from God because there's nothing other than that in existence, right?

[01:08:46] Alyson: Yeah, God is everywhere.

[01:08:47] Luke: And that all might sound nice, but if you've gone through some trauma or you're in the emotional waves of depression and anxiety and hopelessness and all the things, you can even believe that and know that, and it doesn't really help you feel any better in the immediate.

[01:09:07] So my practice is to continue with my prayer, continue with my meditation, continue with, I don't say spiritual study, but contemplation. I still read David Hawkins books all the time. I listen to his lectures. I was listening to one this morning. It's like I don't find I'm chasing teachers like I once did.

[01:09:30] Not that I was chasing them, but there were different teachers or teachings that were most appropriate for my level of development or what I was working through right at that time. So there's people that I used to be very inspired by or learned a lot by, and they were really good for that particular time in my life.

[01:09:47] But now I wouldn't find it as fulfilling. But there's a couple of my go-tos that I feel like will be useful at any stage of my spiritual development. So I do those things even when I'm having a hard time, even when things are going really well. It's just a non-negotiable. And at the same time, I don't expect myself to do the spiritual thing perfectly.

[01:10:16] And there's days that go by and I realize like, "Wow, I'm just in my own little world here, and I've totally lost the awareness that there's something bigger and greater at play here that has my back and wants to do nothing but support my highest good."

[01:10:33] And so to me, if I was having a hard time reconnecting, which happens sometimes, reimmersing myself in listening to lectures by spiritual teachers that I respect from whom I've learned, to be reminded of the benchmark of consciousness, to keep holy company, to be around people that are at a generally higher level of consciousness than myself, or at least around the same altitude.

[01:11:10] Alyson: Speaking of holy company on nature walks, it sounds so simple, but a lot of the most powerful things that changed my life, especially when I was going through my divine intervention. I was living in the concrete jungle. I was living in New York City, but I would go to Prospect Park every single day in Brooklyn, and that was one of my biggest saving graces, was just staying as closely connected to the holy company of nature as I could, even living in New York City.

[01:11:37] Luke: Oh, I am so glad you said that because I forgot about that. Just yesterday morning, when I was doing my little sun gazing routine, I was out there hugging the oak tree, just going, "Oh my God, thank you. Wow." And that might sound insane to some listening, but I felt better.

[01:11:55] Alyson: Yeah. I'm sure the tree did too.

[01:11:57] Luke: Yeah. Tree did too. Exactly. But yeah, the holy company inspiration and also just community. There's something to be said for the love entrainment, whether that's a yoga class, a meditation class, a 12-step group, a Course in Miracle study group, going to lectures by spiritual teachers provided their authentic. Many aren't, as I found out the hard way.

[01:12:22] But it's like surrounding yourself with, to your point of nature, the energy field that's supportive of where you want to be to find resonance. Because when we feel disconnected, and in her case of coming out of a traumatic period, it's like there's the pain body aspect of ourselves that's in resonance with more pain, so it wants to go to social media, to toxic television, to drama with other people who are also still caught in their pain body.

[01:12:57] There's attractor fields on both sides of the equation. There's attractor fields that draw our higher self into higher awareness and coherence, but there's also attractor fields that draw us back to the place that we're trying to evade.

[01:13:14] And so mental, emotional, spiritual hygiene, I think, is really important in order to reestablish that connection of just being acutely aware of what energies, what influences serve us and which don't, and getting very serious about how we discipline ourselves and boundary ourselves into energies, people, places, practices that support us.

[01:13:43] Alyson: My biggest one, which I know we share is surrender because when I had my spiritual awakening and divine intervention, it came through the vehicle of me being stuck in a nearly two-decade long cycle of relationship abuse. And as smart as I was, capable as I was, "successful" as I was externally-- I was a national champion, endurance athlete, and working in television. Television host, radio host, all these things.

[01:14:22] That's where that saying I came up with, winning but lost. I was winning so much on the outside, but so lost on the inside, and I could not seem to figure out how to pluck myself out of a 16-and-a-half-year cycle of allowing my body to be abused and used and having such low self-worth, I just could not crack that code.

[01:14:44] So it required divine intervention and a spiritual awakening. But through that, thank God, I could sense that the next big step for me was surrendering and finally communicating to my own soul and heart, God and Earth Mother. Mother, okay, fine. I'm ready to get out of my own way. Show me the way.

[01:15:04] And through that, my last little bit of advice would be to really tune into what spiritual allies can be of most benefit in allowing you to reconnect to your true nature, your soul's calling. And for me it happened to be Jesus, even though I was never religious growing up. I did not attend church hardly ever. But Jesus has been my main guide since my awakening, and the power animal realm came in, those four main guides, the black jaguar, bear, deer, and frog. And that was my support team.

[01:15:41] It's a great team. And that got me through the top-- at the time, it was the scariest time of my life. I've since experienced one scarier probably, or equally as so. But if you're not clear on who you would want to safely invite in to be your spiritual otherworldly support and helping you remember who you really are, I would recommend taking a lap around a metaphysical shop, and you will be drawn to, whether it's the Egyptian section, or the chakra section, or the pendulum section.

[01:16:11] There will be a clue within those types of stores that will let you know this is the category or the tool or the spiritual ally who can most help me right now. And just locking into that support.

[01:16:26] Luke: Beautiful.

[01:16:26] Alyson: Saved my life.

[01:16:27] Luke: Yeah, 100%.

[01:16:28] Alyson: I could have been one of those stories.

[01:16:30] Luke: 100%.

[01:16:34] Alyson: I was that girl. I was her. It took me many years after I got out of that situation to have the additional awakening that I was her. Those stories you hear of the women that just are in denial and can't seem to get out, I was like, "Oh my God, that was me." Okay.

[01:16:55] Luke: Oh, one other thing on that note, and that is, it's really helpful to me to maintain a level of self-awareness that shows me when I'm doing, thinking, or feeling something that interrupts my connection to the divine. So it could be, for me, negativity, just complaining about my life, about other people, about circumstances, giving energy to things that I can't control, anger, and resentment, dishonesty, phoniness, selfishness, being self-centered, being greedy.

[01:17:46] The seven deadly sins. You know what I mean? Lust, craving, wanting things, feeling like whatever I have isn't enough. Those from my framework, the way that I've grown in this area, is calling them character defects or shortcomings. It's like there's behaviors, ways that I operate that not only don't serve me, but specifically block me from the experience of God.

[01:18:13] The way David Hawkins would talk about the divine is that it's like, the sun is always shining, but on a cloudy day, we feel like the sun, AKA God, went somewhere, disappeared, abandoned me. It's gone. It's like, no, there's just clouds that I put in the way that are obscuring my experience or relationship with or to God. And so that's one of the hygiene pieces for me, is just being as impeccable as I can about things that I think about, the way that I speak, the things that I read.

[01:18:47] Alyson: One's own behaviors and patterns too.

[01:18:50] Luke: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because I'll get cut off. It's like this morning, I had every right to be mad because I hired someone to do a job and they're not doing it right. So there's a number of different ways to handle that. And I was very aware that if I didn't monitor myself, that I could go into a victim spiral, a resentment spiral, a revenge punishment spiral.

[01:19:19] There's a lot of different patterns that I developed over the years that, a, wouldn't give me the outcome I'm looking for, and I know that just from experience, just earned wisdom of being a dumb ass and doing things in counterproductive ways. But I also don't want to be cut off from my relationship with God.

[01:19:38] I don't want to be cut off from that feeling of connection. And if I give energy to those negative emotions and thoughts, that's what'll happen. And all of a sudden, I start feeling more and more isolated. And then my nervous system says, "Cool, you're back in the animal state, so you're going to experience the feelings of being an animal, which is being terrified all the time." Or feeling like I need to dominate, control, all of those things.

[01:20:04] Alyson: A hypervigilance.

[01:20:06] Luke: Yeah. I just want to be in-- have an equilibrium. So I'm by no means, as you know, me and my wife that lives with me, not perfect at any of it, but those are the things that I'm always aiming for, to keep that connection.

[01:20:21] Alyson: We've both grown in our equanimity abilities and capacity even since we met. Gosh, there was one other thing that pinged in super quick to say as you were at the end of that sharing, but I guess--

[01:20:36] Luke: About that question?

[01:20:37] Alyson: Yeah. It was just towards the last little bit that you were sharing. There was a little button thing for me to share that pinged in, but it--

[01:20:45] Luke: About scanning yourself for the things that block you from God.

[01:20:52] Alyson: It was, yeah, when you were talking more about how you could have gotten into the anger or the revenge about the work that wasn't done to the capacity and level that they assured us it would be. It was something after that.

[01:21:07] But anyways this one's really intriguing to me, and I hope you have a good answer because I want to be able to support Shannon and her family. She says, "Our teenage son is addicted to gaming." Now, I know you were never a gamer. I was never a gamer, but still it involves addiction. She said a brain scan showed inflammation from excessive gaming. "We've tried energy work, joined ScreenStrong, and hired game quitters, but he's becoming more resistant, refusing chores and school unless he gets his devices back." So he is like--

[01:21:41] Luke: Oh, man.

[01:21:43] Alyson: Yeah. "Any thoughts or words of advice on gaming addiction and motivating our son to engage in treatment?" So that's a big question. I know.

[01:21:50] Luke: Damn.

[01:21:51] Alyson: I know.

[01:21:52] Luke: Yeah, I have to admit, I feel somewhat ill-equipped to speak to that, one, based on the obvious fact that I'm not yet a parent. And two, that particular issue is pretty new in just terms of culture. The only way I could relate to it really would be just phone addiction, which I'm always monitoring. I think sometimes I'm doing better than others on that.

[01:22:27] So I'll just preface it by saying that, don't shoot the messenger here. Definitely not an expert in this area. And it sounds like she already has been exploring some resources with modalities or people who are familiar with this. But what I will say is that when it comes to codependency, taking care of yourself is the best way that you can help the person in your life that's addicted.

[01:23:03] And that's really tricky when you love someone. As I can only imagine, a mother loves their son, I don't know what that's like, but it's got to be pretty damn strong. But with me, I have two brothers and a wife and obviously friends and people that I love. And the tricky thing about being a bystander to someone else's addiction, no matter what that addiction is, is that it's incredibly painful to see someone harming themselves and to be totally powerless to compel them to stop.

[01:23:36] And so there's varying degrees of that experience as the bystander from hardcore codependency where you actually become addicted to the person who's addicted and your entire life revolves around trying to fix and control them, which is the way that you self-medicate, avoiding the shit that you need to be dealing with.

[01:23:59] It's a cross addiction, and if you want to learn about that, you can watch the show Intervention. Whew. You see entire family systems that are just so enmeshed and stuck in that particular dynamic.

[01:24:15] Alyson: They end up housing their addict daughter in their basement and driving her to go score the drugs and paying for them just because they're like, "Well, if I keep her close, I know she's not going to die today." Or just all the bargaining. It's really, yeah.

[01:24:28] Luke: Yeah. So on the more advanced end of the spectrum, that ends up in a situation where everyone is sick. And I don't know. If mom here is in that place, if she listens to this podcast and asked the question the way she did, I'm assuming she's done some work on herself or is in a higher level of understanding and going like, "Wow, why won't my son get on board with the help that we're trying to give?"

[01:24:57] But yeah, I would just emphasize the importance of self-care, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, disdain, grounded within oneself, and the higher meta understanding that each soul is here to learn their own lessons and have their own experience. And this is really hard in addiction because sometimes someone else's experience can be really hurting them.

[01:25:29] In the case of drug addiction, it can be quite literally fatal. And so something that I had to reconcile a few times over the course of 20 years or something in my own recovery was becoming friends with someone or trying to help a newcomer. And for whatever reason, they didn't want the help, wouldn't accept the help, wouldn't take direction, wouldn't do the things that they needed to do to sustain themselves.

[01:25:59] And some of them died, or some of them just went back out, and they're back on the streets doing their thing. And then I'm driving by and like, whoa, the shopping cart guy that I described. I'd see someone panhandling in front of 7-Eleven. I'm like, "Holy shit." Two months ago they were sober and cleaned up their act and had a job and their family took them back.

[01:26:20] And now just like, boom, they're back in it. And through those experiences, I learned that each soul is on their own agenda, but also their karma and God's plan for them is on their own agenda. And I'd never begin to try to understand what that is. And that's much easier to do when it's not your son.

[01:26:42] Alyson: Right. That's my next question, because it says specifically our teenage son. And again, I know that you've already given the disclaimer, you're not the best person to answer this, but when it is a more of a minor, let's say we know this person's less than 18, what about the dynamic though of like when your dad forced you to go to that boarding school? When your mom, I guess you somewhat willingly got in the car with her? She didn't grab you and throw you in the car and throw you into rehab.

[01:27:17] But like that whole dynamic pondering of like how forceful can and should one be, especially when it's a teen, and they're dependent on you, a minor living in your home. And again, I know you don't know them and you can't do a exact prescription, but what is that like with rehab energy?

[01:27:37] Luke: Yeah. In that situation, there are consequences that can be implemented. There are boundaries that can be set. There's a very hard line approach to codependency recovery, which is like, cool, we're cutting off the internet. You have 30 days to move out and get a job. Good luck.

[01:28:00] There's the tough love. And I'm not saying any of these applies to this particular person, but there's a diverse range of approaches from super hardcore tough love. I'm going to surrender to this for my own sanity as a parent, as a friend, husband, wife, and I'm drawing a line in the sand, and I'm leaving it up to God. They're going to make it or they're not. Which some therapists and addiction specialists, that's their hard line and they take that approach.

[01:28:33] So the spectrum of discipline, boundaries, ultimatums, to full blown unconditional love and compassion is obviously very individual. But thing about addicts that I can say for sure, and I'm sure this is true of every addiction, including games to some degree, is that an addict's going to keep doing what they're doing for as long as they can get away with it.

[01:29:05] If no one intervenes and makes your life more difficult, then you're only going to address your addiction issues when they cause you enough pain. Because addiction is so inherently self-centered and selfish because it's a survival mode operating system, that even if you love the people that your behavior is hurting, you truly love them.

[01:29:34] What you love even more is controlling the way you feel through your addiction and controlling your experience. So unless you're cut off from support and enabling, even if you're hurting other people, most of us are going to keep on doing it. But if that person says hard no, stop sign, pass. I'm going to take care of myself. And stops enabling, then sometimes that helps facilitate that person's own suffering to the point where they hit a bottom and willingly on their own volition choose a path of recovery.

[01:30:10] So what I would recommend for this person-- those are just ideas I'm just tossing around. Maybe something will fit. Maybe something will spark something else. And it sounds like she's already explored some of this, but there are definitely experts in the realm of family dynamics and systems and recovery codependency.

[01:30:32] And this goes back to the self-care of taking care of your own mental, emotional health and sanity, is to seek counsel that really understands the dynamics of these issues to help find a balance because--

[01:30:51] Alyson: It brings to mind that grandmother Sarah, who did that family constellation work that I went to. It just pinged in, just an idea.

[01:30:59] Luke: Yeah, yeah. Because it's like when I've tried to help addicts, sometimes I've just had to surrender and just like, they're going to do what they're going to do. And I just let them know that the door's open. My heart's open if you ever want help, if you ever want to change.

[01:31:15] Alyson: I just heard, I'm not saying that this is this particular mom, Shannon, but I just heard in my head, a mom saying, "Yeah. And my son is 15, and he lives at home." I can feel the fear and the response to a statement like that.

[01:31:31] Luke: Yeah.

[01:31:32] Alyson: It's such a scary place.

[01:31:34] Luke: My heart goes out to her because, like I said, I just, I don't know what that's like. I know it's got to be really hard. The closest thing I had to that was, I was a few years sober, and my younger brother, Cody, who was a little rapping gangster, maniac--

[01:31:53] Alyson: Cash Cody.

[01:31:54] Luke:  Cash Cody.

[01:31:55] Alyson: Shout out.

[01:31:55] Luke: He had moved to LA and got an apartment, gotten kicked out of the apartment for some violence, just say that, and then came over to my house and asked me if he could move in with me for a while. I love my little brother to death, but why did he get kicked out of his apartment? Because he carries guns. He fights with a lot of people. Does tons of drugs. He's living in the underworld that I just barely made it out of.

[01:32:31] Alyson: Mm-hmm.

[01:32:32] Luke: No way, dude. Not even for a second. I wasn't, "Oh, let me sleep on it." I was just like, took one look at him. I'm like, you just got chased by the cops out of this place because of the shit he was into. I'm like, I'm not bringing that into my sanctuary. So I wasn't his parents, so it wasn't as hard, but I also knew that taking that stance was an act of self preservation and that the results of that might have been him getting hurt or dying or going to jail.

[01:33:03] Alyson: Mm-hmm.

[01:33:04] Luke: And I was willing to take that chance. As it turned out, years later, he's sober, living his best life, and thanked me specifically for not helping him by allowing him to move in my house, even though at the time he wanted to kill me, hated me, the thing.

[01:33:21] Alyson: Yeah, yeah. And those are the steps because I'm thinking of a couple of scenarios even in my life path that decisions I had to make that were incredibly challenging, but truly out of a place of love where you know it's going to automatically mean the demise of a relationship and potential extreme misunderstanding and anger back towards you.

[01:33:46] And all of the layers that go with these types of scenarios. But when you hold that line, when you just have that clarity within you, what is best when you choose yourself and the health of you, your own home, your own family, and you also know that in the biggest picture, you're choosing the biggest love line you can hold for that person, as difficult as it is, that's when you just have to give it completely up to faith in the divine, and just hold that line, as hard as it is.

[01:34:16] Luke: Yeah. That example was a rolling the dice, but either way it turned out for him, I still won because I kept my sobriety that I'd worked so hard to achieve.

[01:34:27] Alyson: And you didn't self-betray.

[01:34:28] Luke: Yeah, I didn't self-betray. I kept my own sanity. But it could have gone the other way too. And then I would've had to reconcile that and the possible guilt or self-blame or anything that came with it. Oh man, if I would've just let him move in, he wouldn't have ended up in that DUI or the car accident or whatever it was. But I don't know, I think at that time, there was nothing more important to me than my  sobriety.

[01:34:53] Alyson: Yeah. There's a clear knowing, as hard as it is.

[01:34:55] Luke: Yeah. It was just not an option, but I was also aware that I might regret it later. And thankfully I didn't.

[01:35:04] Alyson: Okay, we'll go to John next. Oh, actually no, this one is from Adam. I think you'll enjoy this one. It's one of your areas you get most passionate about. "How important do you think endogenous DMT is to consciousness expansion?" I just opened a whole can of worms here.

[01:35:25] Luke: Gosh, I don't really know. There's some debate as to whether or not different practices of breath work, chakra work, [Inaudible], all these kind of things-- some people like Joe Dispenza think or claim that there's things you can do that release endogenous DMT into your system.

[01:35:58] And there are other people who think that's not true. So I don't really know if that's true personally, because I can't prove it one way or another. But I can say that I have had some pretty profound visual and fairly psychedelic experiences without taking any substance-- doing breath work, when I was doing a lot of Kundalini yoga, some of the really long workshops that are four hours long.

[01:36:28] You're doing all kinds of work with your energy, and I experienced some pretty transcendent states. But I can't prove that that was a DMT kind of experience. So I'm not really sure. I can say that using DMT or 5-MeO-DMT has definitely been beneficial to me on occasion.

[01:36:56] But that's been done with a lot of care and intentionality. I'm not going to a rave or burning man or something and doing it just for fun. Not that I have any judgment on people that try to do that. But I think anything you can do to expand your awareness and get in touch with those parts of yourself that are outside of the linear physical domain into your spirit, soul, God as the unmanifest-- not the God that we see and feel and touch, but the God that's intangible yet we know is there-- there's something very unique about the DMT space in that regard.

[01:37:49] And so, yeah, it's hard for me to imagine what my life would've looked like had I not had those experiences. But making whatever that is that people say is DMT happen without taking anything, yeah, it requires a lot of dedication to practice. Some people report that going on darkness retreats.

[01:38:11] And I think there's some scientific validity behind that if you're in the dark long enough. I think the idea is the tryptophan-- there's a cascade of chemicals in your brain that have to do with tryptophan, serotonin, melatonin, yada yada. There's a cascade of them. I forget the order. And one of the end metabolites is dimethyltryptamine.

[01:38:33] So it's scientifically been proven that endogenous DMT does exist and also that that is likely the experience people are having when they're in the dark for so long. Because if you don't see light, you're going to produce melatonin. That's one of the things about like blue light. That's the whole beef with blue light at night, is you stop melatonin.

[01:38:55] Alyson: You know what that just brought to mind, and I'm not really trying to get us to unpack this or dive into this. And also I can hear Cookie scouring the house looking for us. She's like wondering--

[01:39:06] Luke: Cooks, we're up here.

[01:39:07] Alyson: Here she comes. If you're listening, you'll probably hear her coming up the steps. Come here sweetheart. Over here. Get on the rug so you don't hit your toenails so much.

[01:39:15] Luke: There we go.

[01:39:16] Alyson: She was looking everywhere for us. Hello, Peanut. Hearing you describe it in that way, specifically with the darkness retreats, it brought to mind how when a shaman, a human experiences what I am coming out of, which was a most intense three-year initiatory phase where I was very much in the "cave," and that cave was more energetically and spiritually.

[01:39:56] I wasn't actually sitting in the cave of some of the temples we visited and whatnot. Cookie's currently-- she has her post dinner energy surge. Cookie, you're becoming too much a part of this episode than we intended, sweetheart. Why don't you come over here and lay down. You going to throw up? That's a good girl.

[01:40:21] We can never get mad at her because she's so darn cute. But when someone is in those voids, those types of initiations where you're doing the deepest, scariest, most intense, potent work of your life, especially for a duration like that, and then that initiation seems to be coming to a close-- because I've been describing the phase I'm at now where people are like, "How are you? What's the latest?"

[01:40:51] I'm like, "I'm just in the first phase, exiting this cave. I'm adjusting to the light again." It brought to me a pondering of what you said applied though to those initiatory caves where you're doing the darkest work. And then when you come out-- I wonder what my version of having an expansion of the DMT, but applied-- am I making any sense at all?

[01:41:19] Luke: Yeah.

[01:41:20] Alyson: Oh, okay.

[01:41:22] Luke: Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting, the part about acclimating to the light again.

[01:41:30] Alyson: I've been describing where I'm at in way to people.

[01:41:34] Luke: Yeah. It's interesting because it's like if you go to the movies in the daytime and you come outside, it can be very jarring. It's much like integrating a plant medicine experience. You're back in the airport and you're going like, "Wait, what?" How do I the face--

[01:41:50] Alyson: I should have booked three more days at the Airbnb.

[01:41:51] Luke: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But I think that there definitely is a master key in that these molecules exist in our body and receptors for different-- exogenous molecules exist. We have an endocannabinoid system. We have opiate receptors. We have the downstream effects of neurochemistry that create DMT. So we're yoked to the environment using that neurochemistry. It exists in us for a reason.

[01:42:28] Alyson: What are three main things that DMT provides? What does it do for people?

[01:42:34] Luke: I would say broad and heightened awareness to get out of the hypnosis of context, and the tangible, linear experience, and broadening out to more of a, yeah, a wider awareness--

[01:42:59] Alyson: A softer, more expansive.

[01:43:00] Luke: Yeah, witness. Being the witness observer. And in peak experiences of it, the witness and that which is being witnessed merge into one to where there's no difference anymore. So I think the DMT space, whether it's through practice or through substances, is a bridge between duality and non-duality, even if it's just a peak, a momentary peak to go, "Oh, wow, everything really is all one thing."

[01:43:40] Alyson: Mm-hmm.

[01:43:40] Luke: Which might take you 40 years of meditation, but it could also take four minutes of DMT, and you could experience the same thing. But the 40 years of meditation is probably a better way to actually integrate it into your experience in a meaningful way to really get it to be less than an idea and something that is actually the way that you experience life.

[01:44:07] Alyson: The last little button that was pinging in is how when we were having dinner with our friends just the other night and you were-- I'm just saying this to the folks joining us and listening. DMT and Bufo land, those historically, they're just not my lanes, they're just not areas that I'm super called into and will resonate. And I'm called into different paths of spirituality and other types of medicine.

[01:44:32] But when you are sharing the story of your bufo experiences, Luke, and how when some people have that night school experience after or get back into the Bufo experience and the one, two, or three days after they have the ceremony and they're back at home, but then they're reactivated.

[01:44:53] And I just remember one pondering that you tossed out is that what might be going on there is it's like it's opened up the endogenous DMT within that person by sitting with Bufo or sitting with the medicine.

[01:45:10] Luke: Yeah, it might be.

[01:45:11] Alyson: We don't know that.

[01:45:12] Luke: Yeah. That's interesting. With that one in particular, that is a very unique and trippy effect. I remember when I was a kid, when people would talk about the hippies doing LSD in the '60s, flashbacks. I'm sure many people have heard of having a flashback.

[01:45:30] I've never had that with any substance. Once it's metabolized and out of my system, it's gone. There might be some residual, memory of the experience, but I'm not in the experience again. But with 5-MeO-DMT, it's pretty common. And I'm not sure. I'm sure there's someone scientifically speaking that might know like, oh, you stored a little bit of it. You didn't metabolize all of it.

[01:45:56] And so there's some of the substance that you put in your body still there. I don't know how that would work though, because you'd pee it out in the course of a couple days. I don't know how it could still be hiding in the nooks and crannies of your biology.

[01:46:10] So that was my armchair theory, that perhaps your neurochemistry is being reminded of something that it already knows, and maybe it's opening some pathways where you start to release it on your own. Just a theory. I don't know if that's true.

[01:46:30] Alyson: Yeah.

[01:46:31] Luke: But it's pretty cool. It can be scary if you're sleeping and it happens. It's a little bit unnerving. But as we were also talking about the other night, in 2020 when I had that experience here in Austin, there was a couple of days afterward, man, I was having the most beautiful, just super long meditations, and I was just blissed out. I felt so good.

[01:46:53] Alyson: Ecstatic dance party for one.

[01:46:56] Luke: Yeah.

[01:46:57] Alyson: Luke Storey was the one attendee to his own dance party, and he does not normally dance.

[01:47:02] Luke: And I wasn't on anything. I tapped into that field, and the field persisted. And maybe part of that field persisting was something going on in my own system.

[01:47:15] Alyson: Yeah. Cool. You want to do one more?

[01:47:18] Luke: Yes.

[01:47:20] Alyson: Okay. Let's close her out with a supplement, more biohacky question from Jojo and Chris. I always love that name, Jojo. One of my sister's high school friends that she's still friends with, her name is Joanna, but we, they call her Jojo. Anyways, "What are your top tips for maintaining a good healthy testosterone level? Does the herb, no, I don't know how to pronounce this, tongkat ali work?" Tongkat?

[01:47:51] Luke: Yeah. It's said that it does. And I guess to be really qualified to answer this, I would've had to have done some recent testing to see what my levels are at 54 years old. But I can say I know the feeling of when my testosterone levels are high in terms of focus, drive, ambition, libido.

[01:48:16] There's markers if you're self-aware. You can tell if you're feeling that kind of strength. So some things that I know have helped me with that-- that herb is pretty widely known to help with testosterone, but it's not one that I really applied. I would say in terms of things that you can take, the number one would be the Surthrival pine pollen extract, which is also buffered with nettle extract, which helps the testosterone because there's testosterone in pine pollen.

[01:48:56] Pine pollen is like tree sperm. And so it's sprays pollen all over the place, and that's how it pollinates things. But taking just the pine pollen without the nettle, you can risk converting a lot of that testosterone to estrogen. And so Daniel Vitalis, who formulated it, was really smart by putting the nettle in there, which stops or limits that process. And that's the thing with taking things that raise your testosterone.

[01:49:25] It is dependent on each male's individual system because some of us can have a lot of testosterone but not much free testosterone. And a lot of that gets converted.

[01:49:37] Alyson: Also another example of why it's so important to get really highest quality supplements. Because if you get a supplement from somebody who doesn't really know what they're doing, you can do the exact opposite thing that you are trying to do.

[01:49:49] Luke: Yeah, you can give yourself man tits. A couple of other things are ice baths, red light therapy, watching the sunrise has a lot to do with your hormonal health and balance. Also limiting ejaculation. I would say the number one thing that kills it on every level would be watching porn.

[01:50:14] Because that's a whole psychospiritual level of depletion too. The pine pollen. Oh, sun exposure, sunbathing without getting burned, but full body, naked sun, including your wedding tackle. Of course, I'll repeat, not to the point of getting a sunburn. Some people have less or more melanin.

[01:50:40] People that are more fair skinned are obviously more prone to getting sunburn. So you don't want to go spread your legs at midday solar noon because you heard it on this podcast. But I'm out in the sun naked all the time, and I can feel that vitality in my body when I'm doing that.

[01:50:59] Alyson: Do you also tan your chocolate starfish?

[01:51:02] Luke: Not in the yard because you would know it, but that light that I showed on our last episode we did together. It's called the Chroma D-Light, and it's got really powerful UVB and also red light in it. I've been doing those every day and do so nude and get every single inch of my skin covered with that thing very briefly. It's like a five-minute treatment because you can get a sunburn from that light.

[01:51:33] Alyson: Including the starfish?

[01:51:35] Luke: Including everything, honey. I refuse to refer to--

[01:51:38] Alyson: I was trying to--

[01:51:40] Luke: Any part of my body.

[01:51:41] Alyson: Fish for you to say it.

[01:51:43] Luke: Yes, I will not. I'll leave that up to you to say. But yeah, I'm sure many people saw the butthole sunning trend with these ancestral people and stuff like that. And I actually did a little research on it just to see if there was any validity. And there's one study from 1929 or something. There's not a lot of science out there on that, but--

[01:52:02] Alyson: I don't know how it can't be great, the sun entering into one of our few portals. It's very relaxing, very soothing.

[01:52:10] Luke: That's what I'm saying. It has to do with-- as I said earlier, your body is a solar panel, and you have photoreceptors all over your body. And the way different parts of your body process signals or frequencies or data from light is different depending on how thick your skin is in those places and how much blood flow you have in different places and things like that. So I just feel great getting sun all over my body. I do the bottoms of my feet. I do everywhere, just about every day.

[01:52:44] Alyson: Because when you do those more sensitive portal areas that don't normally see the light of day, there's all those nerve endings too.

[01:52:51] Luke: That too. Yeah.

[01:52:52] Alyson: I'm just hypothesizing here, but to me, when I'm just seeing it with my mind's eye, the energy of the sun hitting those nerve receptors and then entering the body through that pathway, it looks to me to be pretty incredible.

[01:53:08] Luke: Makes sense to me. Light is the master switch to everything going on in your body. And when your body's running properly and is in coherence with different spectrums of light at different times, it just makes everything function better. Yeah.

[01:53:28] Alyson: I like that we ended on the chocolate starfish note.

[01:53:31] Luke: Yeah. If you're going to go there, I'll follow you wherever you want to go.

[01:53:36] Alyson: Oh, wonderful. This was fun.

[01:53:38] Luke: Actually, we will name the episode the chocolate starfish.

[01:53:40] Alyson: Chocolate starfish. Yeah.

[01:53:43] Luke: The master key to longevity and enlightenment.

[01:53:47] Alyson: But what about the header photo for that episode? Are we going to have to demonstrate what we're talking about?

[01:53:53] Luke: I'll do it. I ain't scared.

[01:53:54] Alyson: Oh goodness.

[01:53:55] Luke: We'll put the little black sensor bar over the details.

[01:53:59] Alyson: What do the people call that? Clickbait? But it would be real. It's not just clickbait.

[01:54:04] Luke: Yeah, it would actually deliver on the promise of the clickbait

[01:54:07] Alyson: No one would be disappointed.

[01:54:09] Luke: Definitely not.

[01:54:12] Alyson: All right. As per usual, this has been fun. Cookie, thank you for being the girl.

[01:54:16] Luke: Oh, sorry, I forgot. One of the main things is sleep hygiene.

[01:54:20] Alyson: What do you mean?

[01:54:21] Luke: Poor sleep wrecks your testosterone. Getting good delta sleep. And I've done a lot of episodes on how to achieve great sleep. But yeah, sleep deprivation wrecks your testosterone. And getting a lot of sleep at the right time does a lot to support testosterone production. Oh, no, that's sperm. Never mind.

[01:54:44] By the way, I'll just say this. For men that are planning to conceive, testosterone and sperm are obviously two different things, although related. I learned the hard way that two things wreck your sperm production. One of them is heat, so hot tubs, hot springs, and saunas, really bad for sperm production.

[01:55:03] And the other one is by taking testosterone, which I did an experiment with a couple of years ago for like, I don't know, three months, a really small dose just to see what it felt like. And I always was taking saunas, and I didn't know that. So when we were early in the conception journey, I realized my sperm were tanked. Thankfully, you can bring them back. But that's good to know if you're trying to have a baby.

[01:55:27] Alyson: And the solution that we agreed to was that because he didn't want to not go into the sauna we have, is that he puts an ice pack on top--

[01:55:36] Luke: Yeah, that works.

[01:55:37] Alyson: Of his penis and balls.

[01:55:41] Luke: Well, under technically, but yeah.

[01:55:43] Alyson: Oh, well, you support. Okay.

[01:55:47] Luke: Yeah. Keep that part. It's fine to get your whole body hot. You just don't want to get your nards hot. That's the issue.

[01:55:52] Alyson: Yeah. Keep the nards chill and cool.

[01:55:56] Luke: I wonder if kids still say that. That's what we said.

[01:55:57] Alyson: Nards. I don't think anyone--

[01:55:59] Luke: Dude, you kicked me in the nards. Have you ever heard that even?

[01:56:02] Alyson: I have. I'm not that much younger than you, but I think people younger than me probably don't know what nards is.

[01:56:09] Luke: Yeah.

[01:56:10] Alyson: Nards. There was a word I thought of the other day. Gosh. Darn it. It was a good one too. It's like a word you just do not hear it all anymore, but it was such a classic.

[01:56:21] Luke: I wonder if kids still say narced

[01:56:25] Alyson: He narced on me.

[01:56:25] Luke: Dude, you narced on me.

[01:56:27] Alyson: I think that more young folks know narced than nards.

[01:56:33] Luke: Okay.

[01:56:34] Alyson: That would be my guess. We could run a poll. That could be what you put up next on your Instagram.

[01:56:40] Luke: Yeah, for the questions.

[01:56:42] Alyson: Yeah.

[01:56:42] Luke: If you have kids, do they still call nuts nards? And if you rat on someone, do you still call it narcing?

[01:56:50] Alyson: Yeah, you could do one of those social media story polls, and then you can see the percent of-- yeah. Okay. Anyways, we're going off the rails here. I'm getting tired or hungry or something. Thanks for listening.

[01:57:04] Luke: Thanks for joining me today. Thank you for being my co-host. For those that want to hear Alyson talk more, of which there are many, I think the next one we do, we're going to chat about some things going on in life. So thanks for humoring me and also helping me to answer people's questions.

[01:57:22] And the show notes here again are lukestorey.com/610, and we'll make sure to link to anything and everything that might be clickable if you want to do further research or explore some of the resources we mentioned.

[01:57:34] Alyson: Yeah. Bye.