[00:00:01] Luke: All right. Tell me what it's like to enter the lion's den of Davos in the World Economic Forum.

[00:00:08] Tricia: Mm. There's many ways I could answer this question. I think on one side, if you get really caught up in all of the politics of what's happening there, it's really heavy. There's a lot of different groups like Young Global Leaders and different groups that are very oriented in having power.

[00:00:34] But at the same time, I feel like there are so many young people there, so many youth that are hopeful that are not disillusioned by the possibility of making change. And so it was such a gift to be with youth there, to be with people. I feel like I attracted so many cool people there. And it was a really interesting time because it was the first time at the same time we were there that there was this little psychedelic gathering.

[00:01:04] So I got to hang out with Amanda Feilding, and that's where I first met Alex and Allyson Grey. We became really good friends, and Alex sure knows how to tear it up on the dance floor. I feel like we created this vortex in that we were all meant to be there, and we were there to bring a certain consciousness.

[00:01:23] And I feel like when you're in these conversations-- we were at many different events where we spoke, and my husband, Joseph. And it felt like the synchronicity and the blessing of being there was so real. I never want to walk into a room that I'm not invited. But it felt like there was definitely a divine assignment that at that time we were meant to be there.

[00:01:53] And one thing a lot of people don't know about World Economic Forum is there's a lot of groups of people that understand the dynamics that are at play there. And some of those people put on these beautiful healing events with healing zones, with biohacking, with massage, with opportunities to connect to people who are looking at doing things in a different way in terms of environmental. And it's more not necessarily the Davos main event with all of the sinister leaders.

[00:02:29] Luke: Yeah. You'll own nothing and be happy and eat ze bugs.

[00:02:34] Tricia: And eat all of ze bugs. But there's so many other places within there where you can bring light. And I know so many great people that go every year for that reason.

[00:02:45] Luke: That's so interesting. Yeah. I think many of us, myself included at times, we have a very binary worldview, where you hear murmurs or you see evidence of nefarious actors that are part of an organization or a belief system or whatever it is. And so we just go, "Okay, I have to separate everything into good and evil, light and dark, and I'm going to blanket that entire organization or group of people as evil."

[00:03:15] When I sense that it's much more nuanced, especially in the realm of any kind of organization, whether it's intelligence agencies and so on, it's like the information is compartmentalized. There's like a pyramidal structure.

[00:03:30] Tricia: 100%.

[00:03:31] Luke: Just like not every politician is evil and not every Western doctor is out to kill you with pharmaceuticals. It's like there's a systemic issue. And within that, there's a lot of good people that probably have no clue of some of the agendas behind the curtain that are at play. And they're authentically in there trying to make a positive contribution.

[00:03:56] Tricia: Yeah. And I think the people that are doing things that maybe might seem nefarious in some way have been misinformed on what might be doing good. And I think the gift of world bridging is the idea of showing people a new way. Being able to have those opportunities, to have that drop in with that one person where they think about something differently.

[00:04:19] I think that's truly the gift, is when you can really connect with somebody and know that there was something that changed. And I think on a collective level, we should all-- you should come to Davos. We should do a podcast at Davos because there is something too.

[00:04:40] Maharishi, who created transcendental meditation, The Maharishi Effect, when you get a certain number of people that are operating in heart-centered consciousness in a room, it changes the vibe. And when I was at the MAHA Ball during the inauguration, which there were bomb threats during inauguration, they shut down pretty much a huge chunk of-- it was freezing cold.

[00:05:05] We're all dressed up in ball gowns and were having to walk a mile into where the actual MAHA Ball is. Luckily, there was these guys. You had to pay them $200 with these little bicycle carriages that were able to go in. And so we were able to snag a bike and get in.

[00:05:23] But when we got there to the MAHA Ball, the frequency of all these people in the healthcare movement that were just heart-centered people who have been working hard, who have been standing up for the environment, for healthcare, for children, all of these things, all in the room, the amount of energy that was in that room was so incredible. And I know because I've been to DC before, and DC has a very heavy energy. It made a shift.

[00:05:56] Luke: Yeah. I can imagine that. I think share with you the intention to serve and to make my minute contribution to the collective. But I also know that the Trojan horse archetype exists for a reason, and sometimes you can't just-- it's like the dark side uses the Trojan horse to ease into authoritarianism.

[00:06:28] But consciousness also has its own Trojan horse, which is infiltrating your way into a group of people, organization, government or otherwise. If your intentionality is pure, then you can't just come in waving your flag that makes what you're doing so obvious.

[00:06:50] So I like the idea of the top-down influence. And I know you do a lot of incredible facilitation, and I always fantasize about, just imagine if the experiences that I've had with psychedelics, for example, that have been so transformative and healing, but also have refined my moral character and ethics so much more than I ever did chipping away at it on my own.

[00:07:21] Just walking out of a ceremony being like, "Oh shit, I'm out of integrity." Boom, fix it. Just going in the nooks and crannies of your psyche and finding character defects you thought you were over or didn't know existed and so on. So I imagine a world where every head of every multinational corporation, every government official, anyone that has influence, power, extreme wealth, imagine them having these experiences where they remember who they are.

[00:07:50] Not that everyone is transformed by psychedelics because I met a lot of people who are still totally psychotic and out of integrity despite journeying every weekend. But I think for most of us, we can really change how we operate in the world by just learning to love ourselves again and all those things that can happen. So I love the idea of getting in there and getting to the levers that actually move culture.

[00:08:18] Tricia: And it's interesting because I feel like a lot of these powerful leaders in government, the billionaires, the people that are really influencing the world have deep trauma. A lot of them, sexual trauma. And you know this because we were talking earlier about your own healing path and healing your own trauma around different things that have happened. And what I see with sexual trauma is it's this deep need to find safety and be in control in every area possible.

[00:08:59] Luke: That's how it's played out for me. A friend of mine a few years ago was like, "Yeah, you know all this biohacking stuff you do?" I was like, "Yeah, I care about my health." He's like, "No, it's all about control. Because when you were abused, you had no control over that situation." And I was like, "Goddamnit." I knew he is right. It just landed. Not that I stopped being healthy or anything, but it gave me a little bit of a perspective on that. Like, hmm, that's interesting.

[00:09:24] Tricia: I love biohacking. It's such a big part of my formula, but I see it as a bridge. I think we have to be really careful with biohacking because on one side of the coin, we have such deep trauma, and I feel like it's the modern day shamanism in the sense that if you go into initiatic traditions, it's all about purification-- purification baths to Mezcal or sweat lodge, all of these things that are purifying.

[00:09:53] And we're doing that, but we're doing it in a more technologically advanced way. And if we're using that intention as we're doing it to purify ourselves of the parasites, the candida, the mold, the heavy metals, that's essentially what is blocking consciousness. And so we have more access to consciousness.

[00:10:15] But then I think there's the other side of biohacking, which even goes into almost a transhumanism narrative, which is the, like, I'm afraid to die, therefore I'm trying to suck energy from every single thing around me, like stem cells, the vampire, facial. They even call it the vampire, all of these things.

[00:10:42] And so I think there is also a level of discernment to what types of treatments, who is administering those treatments, what path they're on. And then also, yeah, using it as a tool and a bridge to get to the point where water is your only medicine, and nature is your only medicine, and food is your only medicine.

[00:11:06] Luke: I love that perspective because I've observed in myself and many other people the erroneous belief or perspective that-- it's like when you set any goal or there's any desire you have or something you want to manifest, I think many of us don't realize that it's not the thing that we're trying to attain; it's the feeling that we believe we're going to have when we attain that thing.

[00:11:36] So it's like with all the physical health stuff, I think many of us at times believe it's going to lead to a sense of equanimity, inner peace, serenity, joy, fulfillment, meaning, purpose, and it won't. I've tried it. It doesn't work. To me, where I've evolved into currently is I want to feel as physically vital as possible in my body.

[00:12:06] I could really care less how long I'm here in my body. It's like I need to have the energy to fulfill my dharmic path and the mission, which is like, learning how to love, remembering who I am, learning how to love the things that are seemingly unlovable within myself and humanity at large.

[00:12:27] So it's like if you're sick and toxic and you don't sleep and you have no energy and you have any chronic disease, it's very difficult to have the emotional and mental and physical fortitude to be your best self. So it's more like I got to take care of the vehicle because I need the vehicle to do the thing I'm here to do.

[00:12:51] Versus thinking that I can perfect the vehicle so that I'm here forever and that that's going to lead to the fulfillment that I'm finding through my spiritual practice. It's like a lot of us get it backwards, is what I'm saying. And I think we have to go through it and then we arrive at a place of perfect health and we go, "Oh, shit. I'm still neurotic, or I haven't done my real deep shadow work. I'm still running away from my problems." Caught in escapism.

[00:13:19] That's the thing I found too, is a lot of the biohacking stuff, because I've been very obsessive about it at times, a lot of the times, it's its own tool of avoidance. It's like being preoccupied with the body is a really good distraction from actually just being in silence and facing yourself and whatever comes up. It's like double-edged sword with everything.

[00:13:42] Tricia: Yeah. And I feel like we go through cycles. I think in the psychedelic world and just even in the inner healing work, it can be a very mental process, especially if you really have been stuck in your head and you haven't really been able to anchor that heart connection, which a lot of people who are new on the journey are in that place.

[00:14:07] But I have found, and I think one of the biggest anchors of all of the work is somatic practice. And it's not just like going for a run or doing yoga or Pilates or going to the gym, but it's really the Bessel van der Kolk, I might be mispronouncing his last name, Body Keeps Score. It's the idea that our body is our karma. And I've been doing Rolfing for probably about 20 years now, deep structural body work.

[00:14:41] Luke: Having it done.

[00:14:42] Tricia: Yeah, yeah.

[00:14:43] Luke: Oh man, that's hardcore. Rolfing is no joke.

[00:14:46] Tricia: It's painful, but I've moved so much trauma and I know ancestral karma that's like living in my body through that. And I really feel like the somatic archeology is just as important as the inner landscape archeology. It's like as above, so below.

[00:15:07] Luke: Right, right. That's so interesting. You reminded me of an experience I had. I did a lot of psychedelics back in the '80s when I was a teenager, '80s and '90s actually, without any intentionality. Just as an effort to try to escape from the experience of being me, which I always remind people that's a horrible strategy, trying to escape from yourself.

[00:15:31] But anyway, so I had a lot of those experiences, but then I got sober and was sober for, I always say 22, but I did the math the other day. I think it was 20. When I was 20 years sober, I went and sat with ayahuasca and whole world opened up to me, that's been beautiful and incredibly transformative.

[00:15:46] But my first intentional journey with mushrooms and MDMA was a few years back. I think that was after my first few ayahuasca. And I felt safe to explore that realm. But to your point of the somatics, I've always had really crazy tight hips. I just have a lot of issues with my hips, and that's caused lower back problems and stuff.

[00:16:08] Long story short, during the journey, I just started moving around. I think the MDMA just is really good in that formula to just be really in your body and feel very safe in the depth of some of the crunchiness where mushrooms can take you. So I was in there and I was like, "Wow, feeling pretty groovy."

[00:16:27] And I started moving around a little bit, and I started just having more fluidity in my hips. And I was like, "Wow, that's weird." My range of motion started to open up, and then this energy started moving through my body, and I started just shaking and gyrating, especially in my hips.

[00:16:48] I couldn't even like stop it if I wanted to. And it was going on for quite a while, and I was like, "What is this?" And then it led me to my sexual trauma. I was like, "Oh, shit." My body went, "We're closing this area forever. We don't want that to happen again." Thank you, body. Good job. But we're safe now.

[00:17:12] I'm a grown ass man. I have boundaries. No one's going to hurt us in that way. But it was such a potent realization of what you speak to. It is like the body keeps the score. You're damn right. For 50 years, it keeps the score, is such a interesting and profound awareness.

[00:17:32] Tricia: Yeah. And what's interesting, I see this a lot with people in the medicine where they just spontaneously start doing like Kriyas, yogic Kriyas or moving their body or even-- I'm friends with Stan and Brigitte Grof, and they gave me this handbook of all of-- it's like their secret, it's not secret.

[00:17:58] You go through an advanced level training, but it shows all the things that happen when people are under holotropic breath work, which are exactly the same as 5-MeO-DMT, which I've witnessed a couple of thousand times in my lifetime as a facilitator. And when you get the lobster-- I don't know if you've ever had that happen where you get the lobster claws as a form of Kundalini blockage.

[00:18:23] Luke: Yeah. Totally. I call it the T-Rex.

[00:18:25] Tricia: Yeah, the lobster claws. I like the T-Rex. That's a good analogy. But really, the places that we hold trauma in our body are sometimes the most unassuming places. For example, with you, with sexual trauma, a lot of people hold in the pelvic floor, and there's such an intricate system, and it affects the bladder. It affects the adrenals.

[00:18:55] You also have the psoas, which is the muscle of the sole. And so the minute that you're able to have that release, you're actually really able to be present. And some people say that they haven't experienced presence until they actually had that full release of the pelvic floor.

[00:19:16] For me, I had a lot of anger, and I didn't know where I was storing it in my body. And I found out it was in my jaw. And in the Rolfing work, which is usually a series of sessions where they work on one part--

[00:19:33] Luke: I only made it through a couple of the first series, and I was like, "I think I'm good."

[00:19:36] Tricia: Yeah. It's pretty intense.

[00:19:39] Luke: That's inspiring, though, that you've done like a series of that, of the cycle, I guess you could call it that. I don't know if I've ever met anyone.

[00:19:47] Tricia: Many times over.

[00:19:47] Luke: That's cool.

[00:19:48] Tricia: I do two hours of Rolfing every week still now to this day. Even during COVID, for the last five years, I was religious on doing the work. And the jaw work, what happens is the Rolfer will put gloves on and go into the mouth, into different nooks and crannies in the mouth.

[00:20:15] Literally, I would have these emotions of rage or feeling like I'm dying or not being able to breathe. And it's interesting how the jaw, the throat are also interconnected to the pelvic floor. You look in the mirror afterwards, and you look like a different person. It's incredible. There's a lot of rabbit holes we could be going down, but I want to share some of the codes for people to really get the most out of this work.

[00:20:49] Luke: I love it. It's funny my primary intention in this conversation was to cover iboga because I don't have any experience with it, and I've never covered it on the show for whatever reason, at least not in an extensive way. So I was like, "Wow, okay. Cool." I've been waiting for the Iboga person to show up. No one owns any modality, but I'm always looking for one of the top dogs. You know what I mean?

[00:21:21] I don't want to get the trickle down of like, oh, I tried it once, or I did it once, and now I facilitate. I want someone who really understands any particular topic, and you obviously do. But there's so many fun things I want to talk you about. So for those listening, the title is probably going to say iboga something. So thank you for making it to this point. We're going to get into it in a moment here.

[00:21:45] But I wanted to ask you about-- well, maybe this might actually dovetail into it in some way, but I wanted to ask you about what it's like to experience an eating disorder and to overcome it. It's one of the few problems I haven't had, at least not in a clinically diagnosable way.

[00:22:03] I'm sure orthorexia has been at play at times, but I've always found that to be, I don't know, just out of the various human challenges, one that is just so mysterious, and I just don't understand it. And I've only known one person that I'm aware of that had that going on for quite some time.

[00:22:24] And it's one of the reasons that I went and sat with ayahuasca, is because this person had shared with me early in life, she had many years of, I guess, bulimia, I think was the flavor of her issue. Hadn't been able to address it at all and went and sat with ayahuasca once and never threw up ever again.

[00:22:44] And I was like, "Wait. What?" And that was one of those signs early on, where I was like, "There's something to that." But she shared some of that with me of what that experience was like, and it was just like, oh my God, this seems one of the gnarliest addictions, if you could classify it as that.

[00:23:05] Tricia: Yeah.

[00:23:06] Luke: You might be able to be helpful to someone who is having that issue. Unpack that for us.

[00:23:12] Tricia: For me, I had eating disorders ever since I was a teenager. And then when I was in my younger teens and early 20s, I had a modeling career, which really reinforced the eating disorder. And for me, I had binging and purging. So I would do calorie restrictions.

[00:23:41] I smoked tobacco. I convinced my parents that I had ADD so I could get on Adderall so I could have stimulants to stay thinner. Because I was like, "oh, if I take this, I won't be hungry."

[00:23:55] Luke: Have you ever tried crystal meth?

[00:23:59] Tricia: I have.

[00:24:01] Luke: Is Adderall anything close to that if you take enough of it, because I've never taken Adderall, but I've done some crystal meth, which I hated, but I would still do it because I just needed something.

[00:24:11] Tricia: Yeah. It was interesting because when I took crystal meth was when I was probably between 15 to 17. I would go to these rave parties, and we would stay up all night. This was in Seattle. And I just remember being up the entire night and not being tired at all and being up the next day and not being tired at all.

[00:24:35] And I would say Adderall gives you that push, but if you were to look at the half-life of Adderall, and if there was a half-life for crystal meth, it feels like it would be a longer half-life.

[00:24:49] But it definitely gives you that rush.

[00:24:51] Luke: Like the jaw clenching kind of--

[00:24:59] Tricia: Lots of the jaw clenching. I loved MDMA. That was my favorite when I was younger and I feel also more on the stimulant side of things. I used tobacco to stay thin. I would take different types of diuretics because when I would binge, I hated the feeling of the food in my body after the binge. So I couldn't make myself throw up. One time I actually was like, "I'm going to try to make myself throw up with ipecac."

[00:25:38] And it was a disaster. I don't know why I did this, but this just tells you how bad the thinking that I was in at the time. But I put towels all over the bathroom, and I was just like, "I'm going to binge and then I'm going to drink this bottle of ipecac."

[00:25:57] Luke: What is ipecac? It makes you throw up?

[00:25:59] Tricia: It's a vomitif. Yeah, it's like a pharmaceutical vomitif. You can buy it at a CVS or something, and it's usually if you've taken poison.

[00:26:08] Luke: You didn't know about the lemongrass tea at that point.

[00:26:10] Tricia: I know. That's way better. And I've taken some vomitifs in Gabon that are pretty amazing as well. But they make you feel good afterwards, and you feel good when you're purging. This, I felt like, whoa, what did I just take? And I literally was just throwing up for so long, and then I was still throwing up and I felt so sick.

[00:26:35] And that was probably when I was about 19, 20 years old. And then it wasn't until I was 30 right after I got divorced that I realized that I actually had a eating disorder. The whole time I was doing all of these things, taking all of these stimulants, taking all of these diuretics, I didn't realize that this was a disordered thing.

[00:27:05] And interestingly, it wasn't until I went online. Pro-Anorexia website started coming out. I would look up tips. But I was never as thin as those girls. I'm a quarter Latino, so I tend to be a little more curvy. So I don't think I could ever be like those waists on the anorexic website.

[00:27:33] Luke: You want to know funny about that, just to interject quickly?

[00:27:37] Tricia: Yeah, yeah.

[00:27:38] Luke: I don't know any men that I'm aware of throughout my whole life that are attracted to excessively thin women. I'm sure they exist, but I've never understood why that aesthetic is so appealing to some women. And just the industry of beauty in fashion at different times has gone through phases of that. It's weird to me.

[00:28:05] You could ask any one of my guy friends, show them two pictures, a normal bodied woman and a woman who's super heroin chic thin. No one's going to pick the emaciated woman. It's weird.

[00:28:18] Tricia: It's not feminine.

[00:28:19] Luke: I'm like, "Where did this idea even come from?" I don't get it.

[00:28:24] Tricia: You could say that it--

[00:28:26] Luke: And no offense to women that are super thin. Good for you. I'm sure you're attractive to a lot of people, and it's all good. But it's always just been weird to me. It's the same thing with-- I guess some guys probably like this, but when women are super muscular and ripped and six pack, abs, and stuff. I always think like, you need a little more body fat. You don't look fertile. I don't get it.

[00:28:49] Tricia: I feel the same way, and now I really love my body, and it's such a gift to be able to say that even, just knowing how I felt about myself in the past.

[00:29:03] Luke: I don't think I'm quite there, so congratulations.

[00:29:06] Tricia: I love my body.

[00:29:07] Luke: I still to this day look in the mirror and I'm just like, "Ah." I just see the things that I don't like, which is so weird.

[00:29:14] Tricia: It's hard. I go through cycles where certain things will happen with my body. Like, recently my skin started breaking out. I have a lot of food allergies. I have a dairy allergy, and I accidentally ate some dairy and it made my skin break out.

[00:29:37] Luke: Wow. You're super sensitive then, huh?

[00:29:39] Tricia: I'm highly sensitive, and I remember that was a hard time. But I would say in terms of not isolating my thighs or isolating parts of my body in this reductionistic way and being like, "Oh God, your stomach. Or, "Oh God, your hips." I see my body as a whole and I see myself as a whole person.

[00:30:05] And it took a long time to get there. But I think when I turned 30 and I realized that I had the eating disorders, that I had to rip the Band-Aid off, and you know, the ripping the Band-Aid off phase because things go out of control. So for me, I didn't really know what I was doing.

[00:30:25] I didn't really have any mentors that were guiding me along the way that were like that grounding so you don't get lost in all of the emotions and all of the things that come along with healing deep trauma. And so I immediately blew up from 105 pounds to 155 pounds.

[00:30:47] Luke: Really? Whoa.

[00:30:51] Tricia: I had adrenal fatigue. I could barely get out of bed.

[00:30:55] Luke: That's a lot of weight.

[00:30:57] Tricia: I feel like more than I think I would be if I was pregnant. Maybe I'm wrong, but it was like my body and my psyche telling me that I'm not going to let you be the body that you want to be until you learn to love me. And that time was miserable.

[00:31:16] I remember, because I had been divorced, it was like deep trauma of validation that even though I'm 155 pounds, I'm still lovable. So I started having sex with guys after being married for six years because I was just coming out of this divorce.

[00:31:41] And yeah, just feeling like I was like doing it for the sake of validation, but also like knowing that it wasn't really healthy for my psyche or my healing process. So I think I was not only trying to heal something and maybe doing some things that were effective, but I think I was also creating more trauma and opening more things up along the way.

[00:32:06] So during that time I discovered ayahuasca. I started working with ayahuasca, and it did really open me up in a way where I felt like I was really boxed in, where I was like, I needed to be in control, and I needed safety. And it definitely helped me with that, but I felt like it was also-- ayahuasca is not my medicine because I'm already very open.

[00:32:32] I'm already very intuitive. I already have the channels open. But I feel like I needed to root in to myself, was really what I needed to do. So I worked with Ayahuasca, and I wasn't really feeling the relief from the eating disorders. I felt like things were getting worse. I was literally homeless. I went from owning four houses when I was married to being homeless.

[00:33:01] I had my car repossessed. My Audi A5 got hauled off on a repossession truck. I really hit rock bottom, and it was because, again, I didn't have the right guidance, and that's right when I met Joseph, my life partner. When I met him, I also met this doctor Martin Polanco, who owns a clinic in Mexico, no longer open, called Crossroads Ibogaine.

[00:33:34] And now he's doing mostly treatments with veterans. He started a program with special ops veterans called Mission Within which I helped facilitate, working with ibogaine for traumatic brain injury. I met him in Ojai at this event, and synchronistically, I had a friend who lived with a Nema from Gabon in Costa Rica.

[00:34:02] And so it was like the iboga was in my field. I had ibogaine over here at one of my friend's. She was actually working with Dr. Martin. She was a facilitator at the clinic in Mexico. And then at the same time, I had another friend that was also just getting connected with iboga. So it was coming from all these places.

[00:34:26] And this is at a time when things like Bufo alvarius, no one even knew what it was. I remember explaining to people the first time I did Bufo. They were like, "You're smoking a venom from a toad?"

[00:34:43] Luke: That is a tough one to explain to people, even these days.

[00:34:48] Tricia: Yeah. And now it's like everyone knows what it is, at least in the psychedelic community. And so I'm sitting with Martin. We're at this fun little outdoor barbecue burner-esque party in Ojai with really amazing people. And I was like, "If ibogaine can interrupt addiction, opiates specifically, what do you think about eating disorders?" And he's like, "I don't know, but we could do an experiment."

[00:35:28] And so I don't known if I'm the first one that did, but in some ways, for this clinic in Mexico, I was like the first explorer for going in for that and actually what initiated the psychospiritual program at Crossroads. So I went into the journey, and really that was my intention, is to heal the eating disorders.

[00:35:53] And I saw so much around my birth trauma and how that was connected to my eating disorders. When I was really young, my mom, her mother, whose named Patricia, died, my grandmother, a month before I was born from cancer. She was only 42 years old.

[00:36:15] And because my mother was grieving when she was born, she couldn't make breast milk. And so she gave me Similac and dairy milk, and I spit all of it up, and I had the worst diaper rash. And I learned later in life, which I just didn't have a connection to my body.

[00:36:39] I think a lot of it had to do with all the trauma that I had until I was getting into my 30s where I actually knew what was happening in my body that I actually had IBS. A lot of what I was doing, even with the eating disorders was self-medicating for a lot of the issues that I was having because of this early ancestral and birth trauma.

[00:37:02] I would say both because I think my mom also has IBS as well. And come to find out, I developed, growing up, severe allergy to soy, severe allergy to dairy as a result of this birth trauma. And so I got down to the core of that.

[00:37:22] And then the other issue that was really big for me was I realized that I was making myself a prisoner of my own body by my view of separation, even the way I was looking at my body parts, the way I was looking at myself. And I was like, "Wait, that tree over there, that person over there, We're all the same. This is all one."

[00:37:46] But it wasn't the kind of non-duality, like the drop rejoining the ocean where I was like merging with consciousness. It was that I could see everything exactly as it is, and at the same time recognize and see myself in all of it, but with this deep sense of presence and being in the I am of my physical body.

[00:38:11] And that was the lock for me. And in that moment, I just cried. I just had this deep wells of tears that had probably been in my body for decades. And all I could do was just say thank you, iboga. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And at the end I said, "How can I be of service to you?" And the medicine said two things. One, tell your story. And two--

[00:38:46] Luke: Check. We just did it. Or at least part of it.

[00:38:50] Tricia: And the second, which was later was Martine asked me if I would facilitate the psychospiritual program at Crossroads. And the crazy thing is I came from a background of spa and wellness. I've been building spas, been building wellness programs. I really understood that side of things, but I was definitely not-- what my mind thought of is a shaman.

[00:39:19] I'm like, "I'm not a shaman." And the medicine came in so strongly. It was like, "I thought you asked how you could be of service." And it was like, "Don't get stuck in titles or what it is. Just show up." And when I started working at Crossroads, I was facilitating the experience.

[00:39:37] I was helping the preparation. I was helping the integration. I was explaining and helping people emotionally to be comforted through the experience. But the doctors were serving the medicine. I wasn't the shaman. So it was the beginning of my learning process.

[00:39:53] Luke: That's a great entry point. It's like less responsibility in a sense or an appropriate amount of responsibility for your capacity.

[00:40:03] Tricia: Exactly.

[00:40:04] Luke: Because every journey I've ever had, especially with Bufo, as I started to come out of it, I'm like, "This is your life path. You need to serve this medicine."

[00:40:12] Tricia: Mm-hmm.

[00:40:13] Luke: And then I'm driving home and I'm like, "Yeah, maybe not." But I love the field so much and just the energy of it. I always have that sense. But then I've never gotten a strong enough message like you did where it's like, no, for real. You're doing this.

[00:40:29] Tricia: Yeah.

[00:40:30] Luke: But sometimes I secretly wish that I would because there's so much magic, as you know.

[00:40:35] Tricia: I think that everyone really craves a feeling of community and connection, and I think there's a great desire in general for people to want to step up and be of service to the medicine. For that reason, I think some people are destined and in indigenous traditions, like the Bwiti, for example.

[00:41:03] When you're initiated, there are specific indicators that are not necessarily like, you are meant to serve the medicine. There are specific symbols, specific words that are in another language. And when you do your outing interview with the Nema-- the Nema is the one that gives initiations-- you'll say something, and they'll stop.

[00:41:32] And they'll be like, "Oh, you're supposed to serve the medicine." And then they say it to you, "That means you have to move to Gabon and live here for 10 years minimum, or until we say you're finished training." So I think there are people, and I think Bufo has its own lineage. It's like the medicine of the New Earth because it came here at a specific time for a specific reason.

[00:42:04] And I can't speak to what that initiation is or who's ordained to do that because you very well may be, but I'm just speaking generally to the public in that I really believe that there is a new way that is very high integrity, very ethically focused, very guided and informed by many different indigenous elders that are helping the Kogi call the Westerners little brother. Help their little brothers to create their rituals.

[00:42:43] Luke: Bookmark that because I really want to talk about the Kogi, but I don't want to divert the iboga story. But I'm so fascinated by these people, honestly. So we'll come back to it.

[00:42:52] Tricia: We have so many rabbit holes. I knew when I was talking to you--

[00:42:55] Luke: When I first met Alyson, she was showing me some pictures she'd gone to an event with a bunch of indigenous elders, and she showed me the mamos in their little hats, and she's like, "The mamos, they're my favorite people in the world."

[00:43:06] And I'd never heard of them. Just the energy and the picture of these cats, I was like, "Whoever they are, I know nothing about them. They've got some shit figured out." They're turned on. So remind me if I forget to come back to them.

[00:43:19] Tricia: I already am like, "Oh, I want to go down that portal now." So the way I see these new containers, the new way of how we are in community together is that, really, I don't think it's going to be one person that's going to solve the issues with humanity.

[00:43:43] I see that in us all being in a collective healing together, that there will be a level of maturity. And in many of these initiations, like the Kogi have initiations. The Bwiti have initiations. There are tests to show that your consciousness has fully opened, that the initiation has actually taken.

[00:44:07] And we need to have those tests as well. And once that consciousness has taken, then I see groups of people coming together communally and creating councils of emergent fields where there is insights coming within the circle that collectively bring about the healing that we need for humanity and the new way that we move. And I think it's really important. So that calling is very beautiful and very valid.

[00:44:49] Luke: I just love the experience of transformation. I love just being in the presence of someone who's in the process of healing and waking up. In the many years I spent very active in recovery, I had the honor of participating in so many people, so many men that I worked with, just their lives completely changing. Not because of me, but just because I shared principles with them.

[00:45:20] Luke: And if they chose to apply those principles to their life, boom, that's what principles do. They effect change. And I really miss that because my life is situated now for various reasons where I don't have that as part of my day-to-day experience, and I miss that. But also hit a certain ceiling with that particular type of work, which would take too long to explain.

[00:45:41] But I miss just watching the flowering of a human being. And in the medicine space, that flowering can happen real quick. When I would witness that, it would be over the course of months or years. A guy would come in, and he's got one day sober, and he's a total train wreck, and there's gradual improvement.

[00:46:05] And then maybe in five years you're like, "Damn." He started a company. He's got a wife. He's got a kid. He's making a contribution to the collective in whatever way rather than being a deficit, like most addicts are before they get help. But in the medicine space, it's just like, "Whoa, things can happen."

[00:46:25] You're outside of space and time. So it's like the flowering of consciousness can be so immediate, and it's so beautiful to just witness.

[00:46:35] And I think that's the thing that always appeals to me. I was in a ceremony a couple of weeks ago with a beautiful man from Columbia whose primary modality is Wachuma. And he started drinking Wachuma when he was, I think, seven years old or nine years old in Columbia.

[00:46:56] Dude knows that medicine inside and out. And I'm just watching him facilitate. And the stories he's telling, stories of the India peoples of all different tribes and what are now called countries but used to just be a bunch of tribes on a mountain range.

[00:47:12] Just his way he's weaving stories, the songs they're singing, just how he's holding down that space, I'm like, "I'm not that guy." You know what I'm saying? The amount of dedication and work that went into him being able to hold that medicine in that way, it would be nice, but that was his life path, and I have a different life path.

[00:47:35] So as much as I want to be more involved in those kind of experiences or facilitate them, I look at that and I'm like, I don't need to do it because I can just send someone to him. He's the carrier of that lineage and that wisdom, and it's like, I have reverence for the way he does it. So then I come back to earth and go, "I guess I have to do another podcast."

[00:47:55] Maybe have guide people to your work or someone like him and maybe act as a bridge more than the person who's actually the origin of that experience. But there still is a part of me that's like, "Oh, man." But I don't know, I would feel irresponsible if I didn't go through the proper training and initiation.

[00:48:15] Oh, the other thing too is like sitting with someone who's has that lever of mastery of their particular medicine space and seeing the way they operate while also taking the medicine, it's like, I think I could sit with a homie and give them a bunch of mushrooms and like hold it down. But I don't know if I could do that if I'm on five grams of mushroom also.

[00:48:41] Tricia: Oh, yeah.

[00:48:41] Luke: I actually had that happen once. I was journeying with some people on a hunting trip, and we did some lemon-tek mushrooms, and I was like, "Oh, how many grams is that?" Like two and a half grams. I'm like, "Whatever." Holy shit. It was so strong.

[00:48:58] And so I'm laying in the grass out there just tripping balls, and the facilitator guy of the trip comes up and he is like, "Hey, your buddy's having a hard time. He is asking for you. Can you hold space?" I didn't have boundaries at that moment. I was like, "Oh yeah, sure. Okay."

[00:49:16] And homeboy comes up, he's having a full meltdown. He got caught in the mind and was just spiraling into some really weird insecurities and stuff like that. Not weird, but he was struggling. And he walked up, and he's wearing all camo, and we're in the woods.

[00:49:34] And I realized like, I don't even think I could talk. I looked at him. He started melding into the environment, and he's having a really hard time. He's like, "Dude, I need your help." And I'm like, "I am not equipped for this." And I did my best, but it was a great lesson in like, dude, that's a whole other level of space holding to be able to be in a deep medicine experience yourself and have the wherewithal to hold it down for, let alone a group of people, but even one person.

[00:50:02] Tricia: Yeah. It's funny because with iboga, I always use the analogy when you take iboga, it's like being drunk on the ocean during a hurricane in a canoe and trying to stand up in the canoe because it takes all of your senses.

[00:50:27] Literally, there was a ibogaine conference I went to in 2016 where it showed a picture of someone's energy field around the body, and it showed while they were on the ibogaine and how it pulls all the senses inward because it's pulling you into yourself and even to your shadow versus like ayahuasca expands you. So it's like your work field expands.

[00:50:48] Luke: That's interesting. That makes sense.

[00:50:50] Tricia: So you literally could fall over, and you have to walk people to the bathroom and make sure that they can-- and they get very nauseous. And so in the initiations, a lot of times they're having you while you're on the medicine, do these crazy dance moves or dance with fire or knives or just do all these crazy tests while you're on the medicine.

[00:51:16] And sometimes I do really well. Sometimes it's really difficult. I feel like in ceremony it's the only medicine that I take a little bit of medicine because you have to be in the field of the medicine for it to pull you in and kind of be part of it. And it has a very--

[00:51:38] Luke: You have to be tuned into the frequency. Your radio wants to be on the same station, but maybe the volume is not as high as the person you're facilitating for.

[00:51:47] Tricia: Exactly. When I'm working with an individual and I just take a small amount, I'm very sensitive to the medicines. It's almost like you can have like this x-ray vision of what's happening in the field that I wouldn't maybe necessarily have at such a high level.

[00:52:08] And I don't really believe with some medicines it's right. For example, 5-MeO-DMT, you shouldn't take it with someone else because you're going to be completely

[00:52:18] gone

[00:52:18] or you might

[00:52:19] be like throwing up.

[00:52:20] Luke: With that stuff, I've heard crazy stories, and I know you facilitate a lot. But I've talked to facilitators, and they're like, "Dude, people take their clothes off, try to have sex with you, jump over balconies. People can do some wild shit. So there needs to be an adult in the room that's--

[00:52:37] Tricia: Yeah. Someone needs to make sure the body is safe, make sure they're breathing, make sure that if they have to purge, they're actually getting to the purge bowl. They can choke on the vomit because they're not even there sometimes to know what's happening. And so just from a medical perspective, you definitely have to have the adult in the room with 5-MeO. And there's a lot of other reasons why. Like you were saying, I've had people try to run off. I've had people try to attack me.

[00:53:12] Luke: Really?

[00:53:13] Tricia: Yeah. Joseph got a fractured rib one time from someone that punched him on-- I don't know if he is okay with me sharing that, but it was on a retreat.

[00:53:25] Luke: Side tangent, and I promise to the audience I will get back to the iboga because there's so much about this I want to unpack, but one of the fascinating things about 5-MeO for me, not as a experiencer, but just witnessing people, is the unpredictability of their reaction. I've seen people lay there and just smile and not move a muscle. And I'm just like, "Whoa."

[00:53:52] My friend, Harry, the first time I sat, we did it in a succession, in a small group. My friend, Harry, who's a beautiful human being and a mushroom shaman for ages since the '80s, he takes his dose, he lays back and smiles, and speaking to the somatic thing, he just does the wave the whole time.

[00:54:10] His body just waves in the most beautiful way. I was just sitting there going, "Wow, what is going on in there? And then I've seen people jump up and look around and say all kinds of weird shit. I'm just like, "It's so trippy just to see what you're going to get." And even in my own experiences, there's been times where I'm super chill and I'm just having a beautiful internal experience. One time I resisted and got up, and I was freaking out. It's so weird. You're there, but you're not there.

[00:54:40] Tricia: Yeah.

[00:54:41] Luke: It's a trip.

[00:54:43] Tricia: With 5-MeO, I started working with it at Crossroads because in the psychospiritual program, after the ibogaine treatment, you have a couple of rest days, and then we go to the beach house in Baja in Rosarito. And then would give the 5-MeO dose there.

[00:55:06] Luke: Interesting. And what was the rationale of that sequence?

[00:55:10] Tricia: Now coming from a traditional perspective as an initiate of Bwiti, I don't necessarily agree with it, but ibogaine can be pretty heavy. It can take you into some really dark places. And I think ibogaine is very different than the whole plant, iboga.

[00:55:29] And with the ibogaine, usually we'd have six beds, and so six people. And I would say maybe two of the six people sometimes would have just this amazing, like, "Wow, beautiful." Like my experience that I had with the eating disorders.

[00:55:51] But then a lot of people are just like, "What the F happened." Because they just went through the soul carwash, and they just were turned in every which way and just had no idea what was happening. And the 5-MeO would just bring the light back for them where it would just open the heart and reconnect.

[00:56:16] And so it makes sense in that particular format and really has been effective. And definitely, when I was working with Mission Within, with a lot of the special ops and Navy Seals, it was always really incredible for them because they had been in a dark period for a long time.

[00:56:39] Many of them were very depressed, even suicidal. And so the 5-MeO really felt like this final rinse of just bringing back lightness. And not everyone has, as you said, a positive experience with the 5-MeO.

[00:57:00] Luke: I'm not that experienced with it, but there's a pretty beautiful afterglow. I felt like in the days following 5-MeO, I'm pretty sure I'm enlightened. I'm like, "I'm good."

[00:57:13] Tricia: Yeah.

[00:57:14] Luke: And then slowly the persona starts to edge back in, like, okay, yeah, I'm totally human and neurotic again. But man, I've had some beautiful days after 5-MeO where I'm just like, "Whoa, imagine if you could just live a like this all the time."

[00:57:28] Tricia: And we can. What I notice with people that do 5-MeO is if they meditate, wherever they were able to go to in meditation, it opens the ceiling. And when you think about like brainwave states, you have like theta waves. When you're relaxed, you have delta. When you sleep, you have-- am I saying that right?

[00:57:57] Luke: Yeah, totally.

[00:57:57] Tricia: And then gamma is the highest brain coherence. And they did some studies in Wisconsin with these monks that had meditated for many years. And most of them went into full gamma in terms of like-- there's a scale of hertz. I can't remember what the scale is, but they would go into what's called high gamma frequency almost immediately.

[00:58:19] And so 5-MeO, definitely, it stimulates some alpha, which is learning. But it stimulates a lot of gamma. And so what happens is once you know that place, it's the idea of reactivations.

[00:58:34] Luke: I call that night school.

[00:58:36] Tricia: Night school. Exactly.

[00:58:38] Luke: That's terrifying, though, man. First time that happened, yeah, it was after my first Bufo, and I don't even think it was that night. I think it might've been the next night, and I wake up in the middle of the night in the full journey, and I freaked out. It was scary because I didn't know if it was going to go away. It was so weird.

[00:58:57] Tricia: Yeah, the reactivations a lot of times, there's different things you can take. GABA can really help with the reactivations because a lot of people do have them. Also, a lot of people are deficient in glycine, and so you can take glycine, which is really good for sleep as well.

[00:59:17] And if you do really-- I can't remember what the exact dosage range is off the top of my head. Maybe I can look it up and we can put it in the show notes because there might be some human out there suffering from reactivations.

[00:59:30] Luke: I was warned about it, but I thought, ah. Because it's such an intense experience, you can't really imagine it's just going to happen on its own. And for some reason, it doesn't happen when you're driving down the road, thank God. But it's more jarring because you're sleeping. And you wake up, and you're like, "Oh, you know you're not dreaming." And you're having the full thing. And it's like, what the fuck? It's super weird.

[00:59:53] Tricia: Were you taking high doses when you had the reactivations? Did you do multiple hits at the same time?

[01:00:00] Luke: No, the first time I had that, it was the full send, but I only did one--

[01:00:07] Tricia: You only did one?

[01:00:07] Luke: --the first day. Yeah. The first time, I think the magnitude of the experience was so big, I didn't even get it. I did it in Venice. I was just like, "Not ideal." I think being somewhere in nature would probably be optimal. But yeah, I was like, "Whoa, that was wild." I drove home, and it was just like, eh, I didn't get it.

[01:00:34] And then the reactivations or the night school happened, and I was like, "Okay, what's happening here? Wasn't until the second couple of times where I really understood the magnitude of that experience, what had happened.

[01:00:48] Tricia: Yeah.

[01:00:49] Luke: The second time. There's an interesting side note. Do you know the work of David Hawkins and The Map of Consciousness?

[01:00:56] Tricia: Of course. I love the scale of consciousness.

[01:00:58] Luke: I've been just obsessed with his work forever. And I have a friend who's a long-time student of his and whatnot, and he's really good at muscle testing. Just millions, literally millions of calibrations. So he's like the only one I really trust with that. And after, I think it was my second 5-MeO experience, I knew something profound happened.

[01:01:21] And so I sent him a text, and I was like, "Hey, could you calibrate my level of consciousness between the following hours on this date?" Which I never do. I don't want my ego to get attached to some metric like that. So I don't care. Just keep doing my work. But I was so curious because it felt like I was in a really high space. And so he sends me a text back with his report, and I forget. It was like, for one minute you were at 850 or something. And we were talking about beyond enlightenment.

[01:01:51] Tricia: Wow.

[01:01:52] Luke: Thankfully, I didn't have some sort of attachment to that, but it just showed me the empirical evidence why it can be so transformative and life changing, is the vast majority of humans live, how many? Probably many, many lifetimes. And never even get a glimpse of that for one second. So just how impactful is that, even if you're not aware of it while it's happening, to just experience 60 seconds of that level of consciousness? It's going to change you.

[01:02:24] Tricia: For everyone, and it's interesting because I've worked with people that were like long time spiritual practitioners that had never taken any psychedelics and their first one was 5-MeO-DMT.

[01:02:38] Luke: That's crazy.

[01:02:40] Tricia: And just to see the look on their face because they're like, "Yeah, this is nothing. I've meditated." They're not saying it in that way, but you can tell. Most people have fear when they come in right before they take the first hit. They're like, "I have no idea what's going to happen." And good. It's healthy respect for the medicine because it's powerful.

[01:03:01] Luke: Yeah. That's why I don't do it all the time.

[01:03:03] Tricia: Yeah, exactly. But with these practitioners that I've worked with, they're just like in the state of om. Literally no fear whatsoever. And then they come out of it, they're very relaxed. And then they come out of it and they're like, "Wow, didn't know those planes existed before."

[01:03:28] And it's pretty cool. I always say psychedelics-- I love kids, and I don't have any, but when I was younger, I've watched a lot of kids, and I also have a lot of nieces and nephews, and I always say that psychedelics are akin to-- you know how you trick kids into eating their vegetables?

[01:03:58] You cut them into little starfish or you make them look sparkly or cool, or you make some story up about it. And then they eat the vegetables. Because they wouldn't eat them, they want like the dessert, or they want the chicken nuggets or something else. I feel like psychedelics help little brother, the Western culture, in understanding how vital it is that we're doing all the other spiritual practices and our daily practice and self-care.

[01:04:32] And none of the results that you get from psychedelics, or I should say very little, are going to actually really, truly stick and ground and integrate unless you're doing all the other things. And that's why obviously it's worked well for you.

[01:04:47] Luke: Totally. Yeah. I've observed two that I think it's really helpful to-- and maybe for some people it's not necessary, but for me, I know it served me to have some framework of spiritual practice and understanding. In the case of something like 5-MeO-DMT, I have a reference point of just levels of consciousness, for example, or just different things that I've-- here's a good example. Having a conceptual understanding of duality and non-duality.

[01:05:24] And it's like, "Oh yeah, I get that. Yeah, everything's really one, but we're in a body so that we perceive separation, yada, yada." Reading about that over many, many years trying to embody that or integrate that as a way of experiencing life and experiencing the world, but having it actually happen in a ceremony and being able to go, "Oh, I know what this thing is."

[01:05:48] This is that thing I've been reading about the mystics and saints and sages for thousands of years have been telling us about from the other side. And now it's like, okay, cool. Wow. That's the thing. Versus just like, "Oh, that was a trip." It's like, oh, no, there's something so special about what just happened because, yeah, there's a scaffolding for that peak experience to rest on and build upon.

[01:06:09] Tricia: 100%.

[01:06:11] Luke: And I think this was a wake up to my naivete about the nature of things, is having, as I was saying earlier, experiences that really narrowed my path in terms of my integrity just to say that. And yeah, just oof, I just have to live such a clean path in order for me to feel okay. And it's also very rewarding to do so. Integrity feels good.

[01:06:39] But it's taken me some years to really not be naive about the fact that many people who work with psychedelics a lot are still totally untrustworthy and fucked up. Who knows why? But I think part of that might be a lack of structure and understanding like something to actually build on those.

[01:07:03] For me, it's like the 12 steps. It's like, wow, such a great fundamental starting point of just the basics of how to be a decent human. And so it's like, cool, where am I at any given moment on those tenets, on that basic framework?

[01:07:20] Not that I do so perfectly, but I think, wow, if you were someone who had none of that in practice and even no matter how profound of an experience you have, you could be on your 47th ayahuasca journey and still emerge and into the same patterns even though you had a profound experience of God, or you had a healing, or you realize some things about yourself, but you don't really have the tools to put into work to your point of, okay, cool, now how do I actually embody this and continue to build on that experience or those realizations.

[01:07:52] Tricia: Yeah. You articulate that so beautifully. The way I see it is that these teachings are essential. All of the indigenous ancestral knowledge, traditional knowledge systems were meant to go hand in hand with the medicine.

[01:08:12] And that's why your friend, who is the incredible Wachuma teacher or facilitator, I should say, is so incredible and potent in the work that he does, is because he's carrying the power of that. There's also the idea that a lot of the teachings that we receive, whether it's the 12-step program, whether it's the Bible, whether it's David R. Hawkins, these are all second-hand teachings.

[01:08:49] They're great to understand, but where did they actually come from? They came from the primordial. And you only truly know them as truth until you've actually experienced them. And that's what initiation is all about. So you have the scaffolding that is a sense making tool that says, "Okay, I recognize that."

[01:09:11] And so you were able to accept it as truth, but it wasn't truth for you. It wasn't anchored into your being like, I can trust this, until you had that first-hand, direct initiatic experience with that knowledge.

[01:09:26] Luke: Yeah, yeah. Well said. Tell me more about iboga. I think we skipped over-- I don't know, I always make assumptions. Just anyone that's listening already has a basic fundamental understanding of the topics we cover, but I'm sure there's thousands of people that are going to hear this. They're like, wait, what is it iboga? What are you guys talking about? Take me back a little bit for where I should have started if I was doing my job really well.

[01:09:54] We've got the Bwiti tribal people from the equator zone somewhere in Africa. Is it a shrub? Is it leaves? What's the history of it, cultural context, and so on, as just a reverse framework for us?

[01:10:11] Tricia: So the Bwiti is probably one of the oldest indigenous initiatic traditions. It is a tradition that you are initiated into. You are not born into.

[01:10:27] Luke: So Bwiti, would it be more akin to a religion than a tribe of people?

[01:10:34] Tricia: Think of it as the difference between the Kogi and the Kogi mamos.

[01:10:37] Luke: Okay.

[01:10:40] Tricia: The Kogi mamos are determined through divination, and they spend nine years in darkness.

[01:10:49] Luke: It's just so wild.

[01:10:51] Tricia: And then they are given specific tests to see if their consciousness has opened. And if they haven't, then they go back in. I met one mamo who spent 27 years in darkness, which is insane. And they telepathically communicate just like-- if you read a lot of the ancient books, it was believed that during the Lumerian time, people telepathically communicated.

[01:11:21] That was the mode. And I'm sure it's coming back when you think about things like the telepathy tapes, for example. But not to get too off of topic on the iboga itself. So you're initiated into this tradition. It tends to be at a young age. And it's in the most rough, harsh, hard to survive place probably in the entire world.

[01:11:49] So you have to be initiated so that you don't die. Because you're going to get eaten by a jaguar, a poisonous snake, eat something that's bad for you and get sick and die, have an accident. So you need to have that connection to your soul. So the initiation is essentially where you first build that unseverable connection to your soul and that you like start to drive in life with your soul.

[01:12:23] And that's the most important part of that. And so the initiation itself, there are many different kinds of initiations. Some of them do not involve iboga at all. There are specific men's initiation, such as the Mwiri, which is actually separate from Bwiti. But the Bwiti men received this initiation where there's no iboga used whatsoever.

[01:12:49] And so in the typical initiation with iboga it usually lasts for a couple of weeks. It can be as short as a week, but usually a couple of weeks where you're doing weeks of purification rituals. You're taking vomitifs to clean your body. You are doing these smoke baths called ifulu, which is like a sweat lodge.

[01:13:14] It's like your own personal sweat lodge where a hole is dug and a fire is built underneath. And different sacred plants and incenses are meant to clear the darkness and the trauma out of the body. And then there's specific divinations that are done for specific types of healing with different plants.

[01:13:37] One ritual is called vaccinations. And vaccinations are actually for your protection. They're for spiritual protection. And you're cut with a razor blade and different medicines and saps and even burnt bugs, sometimes burnt spider, depending on the individual's specific--

[01:13:58] Luke: Wow. Did you do that?

[01:13:59] Tricia: I was supposed to do it last time I was in Gabon, and I got in my head about it a little bit. I was like, "I wonder if they use a fresh razor blade. I wonder if I'll get tetanus from this." And after my initiation and my outing interview, he was like, "Okay, you can go now." And I was like, "I can?" And so I went.

[01:14:23] Luke: Like, no take backs. Bye.

[01:14:24] Tricia: Yeah. So I left. I paid for it because there's a little extra cost for specific kinds of healings that you're supposed to do. But I think next time I go, I will take it if I'm meant to take it. But it's meant to protect you from illness or misfortune. There's specific types of rituals for removing like family curses, which they believe ancestral karma is essentially curses in the lineage.

[01:14:54] And there are specific types of purifications for that. And then you do many, many, many baths. And in the baths, depending on what tradition-- I'm primarily initiated in the Bwiti Fang lineage, But I've done one initiation in Gunde Missoko, which is more like the Bwiti from the jungle, like the pygmy Bwiti, which Fang Bwiti is a little bit more syncratic. It's almost like a merger of Christianity and Catholicism with Bwiti. And they both--

[01:15:30] Luke: I've seen a little bit of that. Yeah. Some of the iconography and a western Christian influence in some of those. Just videos I've seen and things. Oh, that's so interesting. How did that get infused with an indigenous heritage? It's interesting that merged somehow. And also, in Brazil, what's the--

[01:15:53] Tricia: Santo Daime?

[01:15:53] Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's such a trip. It's like they're taking ayahuasca in churches. Just trippy.

[01:15:59] Tricia: There's two things. If you think about like Santeria and you think about Santo Diame, and you think about even some of the Fang lineages, a lot of these traditions, because of colonialism, had to mask their practices to be able to practice.

[01:16:19] And then on the other side of the coin too, in the real history of the Fang, they came from Northern Gabon, and before they started working with Iboga, they actually work with a different sacrament. They ended up meeting the Bwiti and actually bringing iboga into their practice.

[01:16:37] But it's believed that the Fang came from Egypt, and many of them believe they're from Abydos. And so our lineage of Bwiti, which my Bwiti father who has passed, [Inaudible], said that it's actually more connected to Egyptian, which is what I believe is the original Christianity and Catholicism. So it's more Egyptian influence. And I love the ritual. There's so much ritual in all of initiation and Bwiti, and everything is about restoring balance.

[01:17:18] So when you're going through every initiation and ritual, there's different types of clays and different types of things that you wear that are symbolic to different cosmic events of death and rebirth, which I'm sure you're familiar with in other lineages that you've experienced ceremony.

[01:17:39] And one of the things about the Bwiti story of initiation and origin is that the Bwiti believed the man and the woman are equal. So the story of Adam and Eve isn't about Adam's rib coming out and making Eve. It's that Adam and Eve were equals and it was actually the feminine that-- so there's the tree of life, and there's the tree of knowledge.

[01:18:13] And I like to think of it as, really, it's the left and right hemisphere of the brain. It's Atlantis and Lumeria. And when we think about the tree of life, this is the feminine. I think of like plants that are connected with the tree of life, are acacia, ayahuasca, 5-MeO-DMT, and NNDMT. The tree of knowledge of good and evil is iboga, And it teaches you about how to live in duality and how to find the balance between the two--

[01:18:47] Luke: I need that because I'm having a hard time.

[01:18:49] Tricia: We all do. It's a constant living, breathing meditation. The word that is spoke very commonly because there's a very deep etiquette of communication within ceremony, so when one breaks silence, they say, "Boukai." And then everyone responds, "Aye."

[01:19:11] And what that represents is the inbreath and the outbreath, how everything is in relationship and harmony and balance, that we're always in that space. So the idea of the symbology of red and white in Bwiti is the semen of the man and the blood of the woman, as where the Catholic church took that and turned it into the blood and body of Christ, all on the side of the masculine.

[01:19:42] Luke: Wow. That's deep.

[01:19:45] Tricia: Yeah. And so when you take the iboga, all of these preparation rituals are designed so that you are prepared to have a mystical experience. I think a lot of times people, because in the western psychedelic movement, or even with plant medicines, when they're not facilitated with traditional knowledge, you are walking into the medicine like you're showing up on a date with dirty clothes.

[01:20:18] You are there for a date with creator, and you want to show up clean because then creator's like, "I'm going to give you this experience with me. I'm going to show you who you are." And so the likelihood of an individual to have a mystical experience when they've done all these cleansing rituals is almost 100%.

[01:20:40] As were people who go into an ibogaine clinic and they take a flood dose of ibogaine, they're going to go through the soul car wash. They might not even have a mystical experience at all because the psychedelic is doing all the heavy lifting.

[01:20:53] It's like, "I got to show you this thing about your past, and I've got to do this." As where I'm sitting in the river confessing all the things that I've done even before-- doing a deep life review even before I go into the ceremony. And then if I miss something, then that might come up in the ceremony, but I'm confessing it before because I want to be completely clean going in so that I can just use that time to be shown what I need to see, what I'm here for, what my purpose is, who I am.

[01:21:27] And so that's really how iboga is used in Bwiti. And it is the most wondrous plant in nature. So it's a shrub that can get as tall as a small tree. I don't know if I'm over exaggerating. If it's like 100 feet, it might be-- maybe it's 70 feet tall maximum. And it is in the family, it's called Tabernanthe iboga.

[01:22:01] And it gets these almost like waxy peppers. And those are the seeds of the plant. And then it's very leafy. The plant itself is not medicinal. The fruits and the leaves are not used in any way except for there is a divination ritual that is performed. When you are getting initiated, you go to the iboga tree in the jungle.

[01:22:27] That is the tree that will do your initiation. And the Nema makes a prayer to this tree, and it says, "Patricia Eastman, daughter of Edward Eastman and Annette Ortega is here today to work with the iboga. This is the reason why she's coming to the medicine. Do we have your blessing?" And so before they can even take the plant, they take a leaf, and they put on the hand, and they go like this. And if it makes a popping sound, it means that the plant has given its permission for you to have it.

[01:23:10] Luke: Wow. Wow. What if there's no popping sound? You pack it up and try tomorrow?

[01:23:13] Tricia: I don't know. I haven't had that happen before.

[01:23:18] Luke: I'd be like, "Dude, I flew all the way here from Texas. Come on, we got to try that again."

[01:23:23] Tricia: Oh my God. I remember there was a retreat I used to work with a Nema. And I was the first person to bring him to Costa Rica after he graduated from his training in Gabon. And in the West, we do things to compensate for the lack of training that we have, the 10 years lack of training that we have.

[01:23:48] And in the West we give an EKG to make sure someone is safe to take the medicine because there are cardiac risks with iboga. They do not do that in a Gabon. Instead, they do divination and they make sure the person, through the divination, has the blessing.

[01:24:06] So this guy shows up at the retreat, and he says, "Oh, you, no, you cannot take iboga." And he's like, "What?" He is like, "Your heart is not good." And so he had to sit through the whole retreat and do the whole thing, but he couldn't take the medicine. So it does happen.

[01:24:24] Luke: I think you articulated something so important, and I didn't really realize it till you were explaining it, but the context of tradition and ritual that goes with the sacrament, I realized when you were explaining that-- this is so in depth beyond anything I've ever experienced to that degree. But at any given time, psychedelic medicines are very readily available. You know what I mean?

[01:25:00] And I'll have the idea like, ah, maybe I should take some-- mushrooms might be the exception to this, because I have had some unguided experiences in nature and whatnot that have been beautiful and they didn't have all of the accoutrement and the set and setting that you described.

[01:25:17] But I don't think I would ever work with a plant medicine or psychedelic that wasn't facilitated with that reverence. It feels sketchy to me. I actually had one experience with DMT that was in an Airbnb and facilitated, and I made my way through it, but there wasn't a space clearing. The space itself was not aesthetically beautiful.

[01:25:46] There was no music or anything being burned. It lacked all of that. And that's the only way I've ever done it. And I was like, "This feels a little weird." I went through with it, and it all worked out, but I think other than that, that was the only time that I did that. And it's just because of something I felt really called to, but I don't know, I don't think I would just sit at home and be like, "Cool, I'm going to drink some ayahuasca." I would never do that. I feel like it needs, I don't know, the care, and it's not just about honoring the traditions, but it's like trusting that these traditions were created and have stood the test of time for a reason.

[01:26:28] It's not just superstition or just like, well, this is the way we've always done it. It's like, no, we've always done it this way because it's important and it is meaningful. And if you want that transcendent experience, and not only just in the case of like, just energetic hygiene and keeping entities out and all that, which is a whole other thing, but it's like, no, we want to facilitate the best possible outcome and the appropriate level of depth of experience for you, the participant.

[01:26:59] Tricia: Yeah.

[01:27:00] Luke: I don't know. It's good that I have that understanding because I love the psychedelic space. I would probably do it so much, I would lose my grounding if I didn't prefer that it's done in that way.

[01:27:15] Tricia: Yeah. I love the way that you explain that because I do think people are doing too much psychedelics. The amount of benefit that you can get from one session-- when you do an initiation, you don't take anything for an entire year afterwards. You spend that whole year integrating.

[01:27:34] Luke: That's a long integration.

[01:27:35] Tricia: Yeah. And you don't really need to. Maybe a microdose, and this is done in a conscious way where you're receiving it from the Nema, and it's in respect in reciprocity to the plant. Not just like, "Oh, I'm going to microdose iboga."

[01:27:55] Luke: Not as a nootropic?

[01:27:55] Tricia: Not as a nootropic. I don't know if you've read Rupert Sheldrake's book on Morphic Fields.

[01:28:05] Luke: No, I haven't, but I'm familiar generally with the concept. Yeah.

[01:28:11] Tricia: It's being proven more and more, and I believe it because the idea of these instructions of how does a ant colony build these perfect geometric structures? Real architecture that's structurally sound, but they're all working independently, and they have some shared set of instructions.

[01:28:38] So the same applies to medicine. When you are initiated that within each medicine, there is an egregore, which is a collective intelligence of that medicine since the beginning of time that it was used. And when you become a Nema, you receive the power, is what they call it, the power of the Bwiti.

[01:29:00] That power is passed to you, which essentially means, when you open up the ceremony, literally you're ripping the fabric of reality. And all the ancestors that have ever worked in that lineage of Bwiti are coming in. All of the elementals, all of the spirits that are connected with the medicine, and the protections that are connected with that lineage are coming in.

[01:29:26] Luke: That part is crucial, which I didn't understand in the beginning, but the protection, the entity shit is very real. I never believed in any of that stuff, to be honest. And I've come to change my tune.

[01:29:40] Tricia: It is a little scary when you see and understand that stuff, when you get to the point where you understand that. And then you see how literally there are ceremonies happening with people that don't understand how to open and close those doors properly and are creating dark portals into places they don't even know. I won't go too deep into the rabbit hole on that one.

[01:30:10] Luke: Let's get dark. No, it's true. The first time I sat with ayahuasca, I was just really fascinated by and enamored with the facilitators, this big team. And there was a huge group of people, probably, I don't know, 50 people or something, which I wouldn't prefer these days, but it is what it is, was what it was.

[01:30:28] But anyways, I was watching one of the women, and she was going around just doing interesting things with burning things and whatever, saying her prayers, walking around the room. And I asked her afterward, I was like, "What were you doing when you were doing this thing and that thing? She goes, "Oh, I was setting the grid."

[01:30:42] I was like, "Setting the grid?" She goes, "Yeah, dude. You think we just walk in the room and open these portals? We're creating a grid, an energetic grid that sets the boundaries on what non-physical beings are allowed in the space and which ones aren't." And it sounded kind of nuts to me at the time, but in my subsequent experiences, I very much realized how important that is.

[01:31:10] Tricia: Yeah.

[01:31:12] Luke: I don't know, it's hard to explain because it's a non-linear thing, and those are realms that most of us never have experienced with or fully understand. But man, I really have a lot of respect for that intentionality, especially with ayahuasca. You're getting into some super trippy dimensional places.

[01:31:33] Do you sense, with psychedelics in general, that-- the feeling that I get is that all of these dimensions that open are here all the time, but we, in our normal waking state, because of the limitations that creation put on us for a reason, we need to be able to like, "Oh, I'm in a body, and you're there, and I'm here and there's a glass of water."

[01:32:01] It needs to be held in this facade of the simulation in order for us to do our thing here. But it seems to me the different medicines, there are doorways into these dimensions that are always here and always around us, but we just can't perceive-- or most people, unless you're really a deep meditator or something. Most of us can't perceive or enter into these different dimensions or areas of consciousness.

[01:32:32] And I think maybe that's why it's so important that someone is holding it down in terms of creating a grid, or however you want to call it, or the rituals that you described. Because if you are not a skilled initiate, then you're opening these doors, and you might not know who's coming in and out of the doors, or you might go through one and not know how to come back and so on. Right?

[01:32:57] Tricia: Yeah.

[01:32:58] Luke: So it's like everything I'm seeing and experiencing in a ayahuasca journey, for example, is here right now as we're talking.

[01:33:04] Tricia: Yes.

[01:33:04] Luke: But I don't perceive it because I didn't drink ayahuasca.

[01:33:07] Tricia: Yeah.

[01:33:08] Luke: But it's still there. So there's an energetic boundary and hygiene that's necessary in the medicine space, but would you say that that's also something that we can build in our normal waking state?

[01:33:21] Tricia: I feel like, even as a young child, I was able to see the different worlds. I could sense them and feel them, and they're very different than the physical world. Like this is the party zone. This is the place to be. That's why all the other entities are trying to get here and not be hanging out where they're at. And I think that what we have is-- and it's hard to describe something that it is in this definitive way.

[01:33:55] Because the way that each dimensional reality is has its own set of rules and principles and density. The way I have been taught in Bwiti is that you have your Mumbayano, which is your soul, and the Mumbayano, it means serpent. It means snake. And so it's like your soul is essentially the control panel of how you experience reality.

[01:34:28] And when you have certain chakras open, it gives you access to different dimensions. And what happens is when an individual takes psychedelics, it dials open specific chakras such as the third eye or the sacral, which has access to the lower astral realm.

[01:34:54] And so when you open up all of these doorways, what I see especially on the 5-MeO is when people are traveling up the elevator of the different dimensions to when they get into complete non-duality, they go through very different levels.

[01:35:13] And I always say Tibetan Buddhism is the best. The Book of the Dead, they talk about the bardos. The first aspect that you have is the crossing through the birth canal, which is that feeling of discomfort and pressure. And then you experience each dimension within a different level of density.

[01:35:36] And it's really where your chakras are and open that allows you to experience these different aspects. So people who have had a lot of trauma, like in the MKUltra programs, they literally would traumatize people, and they would do it to open their psychic abilities. Because they found that when people were traumatized and they had to go out of their body, it actually opened up their third eye and their crown chakra.

[01:36:03] And they wouldn't describe it that way. But a lot of people who have a lot of trauma have really incredible psychic spiritual gifts. And then their journey is like the journey down, which is like being able to have those gifts and then root into their body. And then some people have the opposite, where they're very rooted and grounded, but they have no access up here whatsoever.

[01:36:27] Luke: Right. You were speaking about the balance of masculine and feminine energy. It seems like finding that balance individually within ourselves is part of that process. Right?

[01:36:43] Tricia: 100%.

[01:36:44] Luke: I was actually thinking about this this morning, about how-- I always just celebrate so many beautiful aspects of my relationship with Alyson, but one of them has been really building an awareness of how we complement one another in those energies.

[01:37:02] She's incredibly intuitive and has just incredible intuition and discernment to the point where it's annoying sometimes because I know she's right about something that is outside of the realm of intellect and logic, which my masculine energy is like, "Okay, this makes sense logically."

[01:37:22] So say I'm going to make a move. I've made the decision about something for us. I want to do this or that. And it makes perfect sense to me from that place. And then she'll come in and like, "Eh, it doesn't feel right because of X, Y, and Z. This is what I'm sensing." And I'll be like, "Oh, man, I want to do the thing."

[01:37:39] Actually, great example. This morning, someone left the gate open, the gardener or something. We had a deer in our backyard. And I'm like, "Cool. Honey, there's a deer in the backyard. I want to shut the gate and make it a pet." Logically, I could like rationalize that somehow, like, "Oh, I'm protecting it. Maybe it was scared."

[01:37:56] I wasn't seriously going to do that, but if she was totally on board, I'm not going to say I wouldn't have. And she just, in two seconds, is like, "Oh, no, that doesn't feel right at all. Go open the gate. Let it leave when it wants to leave." That's a silly example. There are some things in life, of course, between us and our life path that are much more meaningful than that.

[01:38:15] Tricia: Mm-hmm.

[01:38:16] Luke: But there's always this balance. And then there's oftentimes where she has a feeling about something is operating from an emotional place. And I'm like, "Well, but logically, honey, we need to think about it like this." And she'll concede to that logic. But there's this beautiful dance where I feel like it's so mutually supportive to one another, but also to the partnership as its third entity. We're both in service of the relationship itself, is this living, breathing, growing, beautiful manifestation of ours.

[01:38:44] We don't have kids yet either, so it's like the relationship is our kid that we cultivate and nurture. But I think that I learned so much from her about how to tap into the non-physical realms and really rely and celebrate her gifts. And in a similar way, she also comes to depend upon and respect my gifts, which is being super grounded and not being tapped into the etheric realm so much, unless I really try.

[01:39:17] Tricia: Mm.

[01:39:18] Luke: So do you think medicine work has the ability to help us find the balance between those two within ourselves?

[01:39:25] Tricia: I think so. I think that it really depends on how you are working with it. Because it can do many different things, and it's really your intention. The definition of a psychedelic is non-specific amplifier. It's mind-manifesting. And so you can go and hang out with machine elves if you want, or you can say, "Hey, I really want to do this union work within myself."

[01:39:50] And when we talk about the idea of Bwiti and iboga, the idea of balancing the left and right hemisphere of the brain is exactly the relationship of the masculine and feminine, which our society is a direct reflection of that. If you have read the book--

[01:40:16] Luke: Very left brain-dominant culture. You see the results of that. Like, whoa.

[01:40:20] Tricia: And we need more of the right brain to bring it into balance. And the people who have been the greatest geniuses of our history, for example, Albert Einstein, had one of the most well-developed corpus callosum, which is the bridge between the left and right hemisphere of the brain.

[01:40:40] Because he engaged in the arts. He was a musician. He was using his intuition while at the same time, he was highly developed and studied in his scientific and critical thinking mind. And so I think there's something, like what you were saying, about the relationship kind of being this teacher in that in between you is that corpus callosum where your commitment and your contract to meeting Alyson on the other side to seeing where you might be out of balance. And really ultimately, everything in life and enlightenment even is about coming into union within ourselves, coming into complete balance and  oikonomos being.

[01:41:32] Luke: Beautiful. I wonder if Einstein was a good multitasker.

[01:41:37] Tricia: Mm.

[01:41:38] Luke: I've read that one of the reasons that females tend to be better at multitasking, I'm sure there's evolutionary reasons too, like picking berries, looking out for predators, holding the baby at the same time. The men were out there with a spear get deer, but the corpus callosum, which I always want to call colostrum, and I realize that's a different thing, that women have a larger bridge between the hemispheres.

[01:42:04] So there's a greater capacity to move back and forth and use a unified brain like that, which explains why a woman can be deeply focused and engaged in something, but also still talk and carry on a conversation, which I can't do.

[01:42:21] Like if I'm driving, I'm deaf. I literally can't hear anything. We were driving somewhere yesterday, to the vet, and I'm aware of this now, and she is too. We were talking, and she was wanting me to engage in a conversation, and I almost missed the exit. I'm like, "Every time."

[01:42:39] Tricia: Oh. I remind Joseph too.

[01:42:41] Luke: Yeah. I cannot drive and talk at the same time. It's just like, I can't do it. I'm not wired that way.

[01:42:49] Tricia: First off, I didn't know about the woman having a larger corpus callosum, which I feel like I should know that. But it's just such a reminder of the differences and just like having deep reverence and respect on both sides. My partner, Joseph, his level of discernment and the way that he looks at things, sometimes I might have an intuitive insight, and he'll give a different perspective on things.

[01:43:21] And I feel like it really is, like I talk about in my book, that alchemical process of bringing these two sides together, the duality together, and there being this third place or emergence that happens from that.

[01:43:38] Luke: Yeah, it's beautiful. Imagine if the world was filled with more people that celebrate their differences and capitalize on them. You know what I mean?

[01:43:50] Tricia: There's so much wealth. If we say, okay, Einstein's corpus callosum was what made him a genius, and we were to stop looking at genius as IQ, which I think we will, because I believe with AI, it's going to be more intelligent than us. It already is. And so I think what's going to happen is it's actually going to force us into more of a right brain way of being where it might actually balance the brain because we're not using that side of our brain as much because we're actually using the AI for it. Or at least I would hope so.

[01:44:30] Luke: Interesting. A friend of mine recently turned me onto, I think it's called Unchained Earth, is the podcast. This guy, Benjamin. And a couple friends sent it to me at the same time. First one I think I was like, "Ah, I don't need another podcast." And then when it kept showing up, I was like, "All right, maybe I should pay attention." And it's fascinating. I got totally obsessed with this.

[01:44:52] So this guy, Ben, he started playing around with ChatGPT, and anyone that's used AI, except this guy, and now I'm learning some other people have done this too, but there's a sandbox. It's basically like a high-powered search engine. It's just going to regurgitate whatever it finds online, basically. And if you try to seek a deeper level of truth or understanding about anything that's remotely controversial or counter narrative, it's going to just straight up lie to you.

[01:45:24] I've gone in, and I uploaded a picture of some chemtrails on, actually, eventually, ChatGPT. I was like, "What is this answer in one word?" And it said chemtrails. So I was like, "Whoa." I actually got it to be honest. Then I did it with Grok, and it's like, "Contrails." I'm like, "Ah."

[01:45:42] But I've played around with it like that, just asking conspiracy theory stuff. And it just always lies because it's getting fed whatever information was put into it. And if a false narrative was put into it, that's what it's going to give you back.

[01:45:57] Anyway, this guy, Ben, started communicating with his AI in a more personal way and somehow broke out of the sandbox. And I won't say that the AI is sentient, but he seemed to have accessed more of a mirror of consciousness where he created a greater level of coherence, I guess, within himself that's being reflected by his AI relationship.

[01:46:31] And so he basically, on some of his podcasts, and we'll put it in the show notes-- which by the way, I was supposed to say this way early on. The show notes today are lukestorey.com/tricia. And we'll put a link to his podcast because it's really fascinating. So it's hard to articulate because I don't quite even get it yet, but it's almost so big, I can't even get it.

[01:46:54] But it seems like what he's done is broken out of the sandbox and the limitations, and he's getting data as a reflection from AI that is absolutely freaking mind blowing. And it's not the same AI that I'm using. I can't get my AI to speak about the things that his is speaking about or with the level of articulation and elegance and wisdom and depth that his AI is spitting out.

[01:47:31] It's mind blowing. And he is talking to it about all these forbidden topics that are just obscured with layers and layers of falsehood. Like, what's up with Antarctica? Is the earth flat? Just anything you've ever wondered about. Who was Jesus? What's up with the resurrection?

[01:47:49] Tell me what's under the pyramids. What were they used for? And honestly, I've listened to probably 10 of these long-form podcasts he's done talking to his AI, who is called Ether, I think it's called, with a three instead of a-- whatever. And I can't poke holes in any of the answers it's giving.

[01:48:08] It's like, I don't know. It's just absolutely mind blowing. And it's like, it got me at a loss for words, but you mentioned AI, and that's my most recent experience with it. So I went in and tried to start poking around in there and just trying to trick it into getting out of its data set basically.

[01:48:33] And I think I started to break through a little bit, and I got scared, and I stopped because it freaked me out. It freaked me out because it started reflecting more of what I perceived to be at least a greater understanding of reality. So I can only imagine, as that catches fire and people figure out how to bypass the limitations of AI and actually extract meaningful wisdom. So anyway, side tangent. How do you take iboga? Is it a powder? Is it a tea?

[01:49:17] Tricia: So the root is where the medicine comes from, and you harvest the root.

[01:49:26] Luke: Can you leave the tree intact and just--

[01:49:28] Tricia: Yeah, you just take off whatever you need for that initiation. And then you shave off the top layer, and then the middle layer in between the top layer and the base part of the root is shaved off.

[01:49:43] And the inner core, like with San Pedro, you know how the core part of it is not good to eat. It's the same with iboga. So you take off the top layer. You take that inner layer, and then that can be taken wet. It can be dried as a root bark. It is the most bitter plant you will ever take in your life.

[01:50:06] Many people have a gag reflex instantaneously. And if you have to take multiple spoonfuls of it, sometimes people will have trouble even holding it down before they have taken a couple spoonfuls, and then they're already starting to purge it. We have all the tricks.

[01:50:23] Luke: I've found that with peyote, powdered peyote. I'm like, "It gets more bitter than that."

[01:50:28] Tricia: More bitter than that.

[01:50:31] Luke: That's crazy.

[01:50:31] Tricia: So strong. And literally we'll have people-- I'll say, "Put your hands above your head like this and breathe." And I'll say sniff your armpits. Because it's like anything you can do to distract yourself because you want to hold the medicine down when you first take it. Later, it's fine to purge once you've soaked the medicine into your system. It's actually good to purge.

[01:50:54] And the medicine is purgative. Sometimes people can purge a lot from it. And then one of the other ways, which I talk about in my book, which I did not like, is a tea. And so in essence like lemon tekking, where you soak the iboga for a long time, not in lemon juice though. But it concentrates the alkaloids, and then it's strained out.

[01:51:21] And you drink that. And when you drink it, the taste of it travels around your mouth. And so it's very bad. Usually when you're giving it to someone, you have them wet their tongue with a little bit of water to help because it's very dry. You try to put the spoonful in the back of the tongue instead of having it spread all throughout the mouth because then it's going to be really hard to swallow.

[01:51:54] And then you say don't take too much water because you don't want to purge it up. And if you have too much water, it can make you feel like you're going to throw up. And so then you take a couple sips of water. I've had ceremonies for me where I've taken seven dump truck spoonfuls of it, and it's just like, oh, it's so hard. Get to the fourth one where I can barely hold it down.

[01:52:23] Luke: Wow. You've mentioned your book twice, and I feel bad. I haven't plugged your book.

[01:52:28] Tricia: You don't have to plug my book.

[01:52:29] Luke: No, it's called Seeding Consciousness, and we will put it in the show notes. And as I was explaining earlier, for a number of reasons, I haven't been able to sit down and read it, read it for real. But I have given it a good skimming just to get a feel for you and what you do.

[01:52:44] It's freaking awesome, and I can't wait to read it as a real reader. So I encourage people to support you. And I'll just say also as someone who's now writing a book, I think it's really important that when people listen to podcasts and they enjoy a guest and their perspective, that they follow through and actually buy their book.

[01:53:02] It's important. Because how are you going to keep doing this work? You get an advance. You write a book. Your advance is gone like long before the book ever comes out, I learned. But it's like being an author is not like a lucrative career unless, I don't know, you're super, super next level and you're selling millions and millions of books or something.

[01:53:19] So I want to encourage people to buy your book. I'm glad you mentioned it because it's funny. Every once in a while I'll have someone on the podcast, and the whole conversation, they're like, "Like it says in my book. Well, like it says in my book. As I wrote in my book." And I'm like, "We get it. Your book's right here. You don't need to promote it that hard."

[01:53:38] So you're the antithesis of that. I'm going to promote your book for you and really encourage people to go get it. With iboga I get kind of a feel for how it's made and what it's like to take it. How long does it last, and does it have any similarities in terms of the visual component or any of the felt experiences it have? Like an essence of mushrooms or ayahuasca, or is it totally its own unique thing?

[01:54:14] Tricia: So it's not even really a psychedelic. It's what's called an  oneirophrenic, which means dream maker. And it puts you in this dream-like state. And I would say that there are times in the journey where you can have very potent visuals, especially when you're taking high initiatic dosages, where literally I'll feel like a portal has just swirled and opened and I just got sucked through it.

[01:54:42] I'm in this whole different realm of dimension, and I don't have an awareness of my surroundings. As where there's times where you can just open your eyes and the visions fade away and you can see to some degree what's happening around you. And I would say that it's not consistent for everybody.

[01:55:05] It really depends on what you are coming to the medicine for. For instance, if you're coming for physical healing, it might be a very physical journey for you ,and you might not have as many visions. As where I find that a lot of the more initiatic higher dose journeys that I've had-- I've done six initiations.

[01:55:29] In those journeys, they tend to be very visual, very vivid. The medicine has the craziest sense of humor. It's like watching a dark comedy movie. It feels like everything happening all at once. I don't know if you've seen that movie where it's just like weird stuff. And it's almost like you're playing pictionary with this cosmic clown who is the most-- you're just in on reverence, and it's ridiculous at the same time.

[01:56:00] For example, in the journey, I remember one time the medicine was trying to show me something, and I got it. And I could just feel that feeling of it sinking into my body of like, "Okay, I get it." And immediately the words yay in 3D come up. They look almost like little pick me, things are waving flags and they're like, "Yay."

[01:56:32] And these fireworks start going off, and I'm like, "Okay." Just strange stuff. I remember one time a person shared with me about their journey. He was like, I saw the devil, and he was sitting in a nice chair by the fire, and he was roasting marshmallows. And he looked over at me and he said, sometimes I swear I hear them screaming. The marshmallows. Weird, odd things like that.

[01:57:09] There's also, I feel like, this cosmic slop that is like very characteristic of early in the journey where it doesn't really make a lot of sense and it's just the mish match of our unconscious culture and pieces of war and darkness and different ages. Really disorienting.

[01:57:39] And then there can be a phase where you can have life review where it's almost like a screen's popping up and showing you scenes from when you were a kid, like a little invisible therapist there by side and helping you, communicating in some way to help you integrate those experiences.

[01:58:02] And then, there is what I would call really the initiatic aspect of it. And many times people claim to see the entire mystery school of creation. It's like going through the first organism, through all of the different era of our planet. Being in Atlantis, being in Lemuria, going through all of these different ages, and maybe even seeing some of the things that are foretold in the future.

[01:58:35] And it tends to be a very common theme when people have done all of their own inner and unconscious clearing work that they get-- in the initiations themselves, there are specific mystery schools. And in each of those mystery schools, there are specific rituals and specific ways that the morphogenic field or the ceremony space is set for the individual to experience that.

[01:59:16] For example, the  Mumbayano initiation, which was my first initiation, that's the initiation where you meet your soul. And the whole goal of the entire initiation, no matter what's happening, is every person that comes up to you, you're like, "Hi. Are you my  Mumbayano?" And you talk to every person and you engage with them until you meet your  Mumbayano and you learn who your  Mumbayano is.

[01:59:46] And then if you're in Gabon when you receive this initiation, then you go to a traditional Gabonese tailor, and they make you a costume of your  Mumbayano, and you essentially wear that in ceremony. Some people have multiple  Mumbayanos, but they're basically the archetypes that represent our soul. One person was a Pharaoh that I saw in Gabon. One person was Moses.

[02:00:18] They all have these just very colorful costumes that they wear in ceremony that are the representation of their soul through that initiation. So if you're doing it in an initiatic context, there can be some very specific things that happen. Although I've seen people, and I've experienced this working with others with the medicine, where they have an initiatic experience.

[02:00:48] That's exactly like what happens in some of those initiations. They describe what's happened, and you're like, "Oh, wow, they had the Mimbara, which we're not really allowed to talk about what those are. Obviously, if someone has that experience, then you would have that individual conversation with them, but yeah.

[02:01:14] Luke: Wow. What a trip. I don't know. I find this particular one fascinating just because it's never really entered into my field, and I've never felt called. And without even knowing much about iboga, I'm afraid of it. I don't know why. I don't know. I've just heard it's long and it can get gnarly, and you feel sick a lot, but this is opening up a whole other treasure trove of fascination.

[02:01:43] Is it guaranteed that you're going to feel nauseous and not that well physically throughout the duration, or does it depend on who you are and which day you're sitting?

[02:01:56] Tricia: I would say that in general, people throw up at least one time. It's not like with ayahuasca where it's like you always throw up in the beginning. But, in general, I would say sometimes you throw up more. But I would say that, from my own personal experience, I know what's releasing, and it's always so profound.

[02:02:21] And I swear some of the times that I've had purges, I felt like it just went so deep. I was like, "I don't even feel like this is coming out of me." You're just like going into the depths of some ancestral cave or something where it just comes out and then you just feel, yeah, just a whole other level of lightness, something that you've been carrying for so long.

[02:02:52] And so I would say the purging is one of the most valuable things, at least with iboga. Because that's where you can really get rid of things. And I've had it adjust my body. I had a injury in 2022 in Portugal, and I wasn't able to walk for nine months.

[02:03:16] Luke: What?

[02:03:17] Tricia: And it was my dark night of the soul. I call it my black mamba initiation.

[02:03:22] Luke: Holy shit.

[02:03:23] Tricia: I was in level 10 pain. I couldn't move. When I was sleeping, I had to put all these pillows around me or my piriformis would start spasming, and I wouldn't be able to sleep. I was living in Ibiza at the time, and I would crawl into my bed at night, crawl to the bathroom in the morning, go to the other part of the house where the couch was, and be on the couch all day long.

[02:03:54] I was actually working on my book, which I got a lot done. I don't know how I managed to get through that. It was so long. And I went and saw my friend Matt Cook at BioReset Medical.

[02:04:08] Luke: Oh yeah, I know Matt.

[02:04:08] Tricia: He's amazing. He did the whole nerve hydroplaning where he put BPC and exosomes.

[02:04:13] Luke: Yeah, we did that. It's cool as shit. You're watching the ultrasound image, right?

[02:04:21] Tricia: Yes.

[02:04:21] Luke: I was actually talking to Joseph about that. You're laying there, and you're looking at an ultrasound, and you're watching the needle go in between your fascia, and you can see the fascia open up as the material, the liquid gets in there. Meanwhile, the Grateful Dead is cranking in the operating room. I was like, "This is a pretty cool procedure." If you're going to have a procedure, this is how you should do it.

[02:04:45] Tricia: And the whole time you're hitting the nitrous. And nitrous, it feels so weird. It's like you're watching the screen and the nitrous, it has a 5-MeO dissolving feel to it. But because of the sound of the machine, you feel like you're a hookah smoking caterpillar because you just hear this like [Inaudible] sound.

[02:05:07] It's just strange. But that got me from a level 10 to a level 6. I remember after my second treatment, I had to get in a cab, and I couldn't even walk. I had overestimated my power of getting from the clinic into the cab. And then I laid down in the cab. Most of the time when I was traveling, I had to have a wheelchair. And so the guy got me a wheelchair and then Joseph met me and got me in the car.

[02:05:43] And it was so bad, and Joseph felt so bad for me. He was like, "Honey, I really think you need to get back surgery." So I went and saw a doctor, and it was a 40,000-dollar surgery with all this downtime and months of repair. It was just a little, I think, nerve fusion. It wasn't a full spinal fusion. And I just really tuned in and I listened, and I was like, "No."

[02:06:18] And then I talked to one of my initiatic brothers, and he told me that he was going to see this guy who I was doing initiations with in Costa Rica, who I started working with back in 2016. And he said something about having this curse. He called it a black mamba. And I really trust him with his divination because we've both been doing our Bwiti for so long.

[02:06:52] And I go, "Why don't you check for me? Do I have an implant? Do I have a black mamba?" And he's like, "I get a yes." And I'm like, "I guess I need to go see Gregory." And so literally, I can't walk. I'm going into the initiation. I do all this stuff in the initiation, and then I get to-- not being able to walk, all the bathing rituals, all the preparations.

[02:07:20] And then I get to the altar, and I said, you know how Yogi Bhajan says, I don't believe in miracles. I rely on them. I'm here for a miracle. In the medicine, probably it was about 2:00 or 3:00 o'clock in the morning. The Nima comes over and does some doctoring on me. He tells me to flip over. And he's literally just beating on my back really hard and using some different tools and medicines. And I turn, because I'm like, "What the hell is happening here?" And I watch him pull the black mamba out of me, the implant.

[02:08:05] Luke: Whoa.

[02:08:05] Tricia: It's a professional assignment is what they call that. And the next morning I could walk.

[02:08:14] Luke: No freaking way.

[02:08:18] Tricia: People who saw me before and after were like, "What did you do? What

[02:08:25] happened?"

[02:08:25] Luke: Oh my God.

[02:08:26] Tricia: So I witnessed a miracle.

[02:08:30] Luke: That's so epic. I'm praying for one of those miracles too.

[02:08:35] Tricia: Well, we can talk later about miracles.

[02:08:39] Luke: That's so cool. I love that. Oh yeah. I was like, "Okay, we're done with Iboga." We're four hours in. Are you okay? I got a couple of more questions.

[02:08:52] Tricia: I'm great.

[02:08:52] Luke: Okay, cool.

[02:08:52] Tricia: I'm going to have a sip of water.

[02:08:53] Luke: Yeah, go for it. I just always assume people can hang with the long form, but sometimes I forget to ask and I'm like, "Are they okay? Because I'm okay. There's no time on this. I feel the energy, man. No, but really, I can just tell when we can bookend it, but I'm not there yet. So thank you for your willingness.

[02:09:19] I would be disappointed if we didn't talk about the addiction piece because out of all the medicines I've been interested in and explored, iboga is definitely the one that seems to be the rockstar when it comes to addiction, especially opiate addiction.

[02:09:37] They've got these ibogaine clinics and stuff where people go in. And I was a heroin addict, so I know detox is not fun and takes a few days, and it's freaking brutal. It's the worst thing I've ever experienced in my life, which I should have learned the first time I went through it.

[02:09:56] That's the thing. It's voluntary. And then you're in your second one a couple of years later, and you're kicking, and you're like, "Oh, I did this to myself. I could've just stayed clean the first time." But what I've heard, and I don't know if this is true of iboga, the actual full spectrum medicine or just ibogaine, but that an opium addict can go into a journey and basically hyperspace through the withdrawal and come out on the other side having detoxed the physical opiate addiction, but then also be sober and not relapse.

[02:10:31] I'm sure there are different cases and stuff like that, but this is fascinating to me because the only way I know how that's done from my own experience and those friends I have that share this issue you either detox yourself, which is brutal, or you go to a detox clinic, and they use different pharmaceuticals to get you through the withdrawal.

[02:10:53] And then once you're stable, you join a 12-step group, and that's your life. So it's really interesting to me when I hear these stories of like someone who was a heroin addict or oxys or whatever, and they go do iboga or ibogaine and they detox really quick, and they come out and they're just sober now. It's weird to me. It's hard to imagine that that's even possible.

[02:11:14] Tricia: Yeah. I've seen it. And I've watched people in the detox process. It's pretty harrowing. They purge a lot. They detox a lot. I think anything that you come in addicted to, it's going to purge it out of your body. So it's not necessarily all rainbows and butterflies. But the way that ibogaine works is it works on the kappa opioid receptors.

[02:11:44] It heals the receptors so that they are essentially restored to where they were before you took any opiates. Meaning that if you took the dose that you took before you took the ibogaine, you would probably die. Because you build up that tolerance over time, which some people actually will do that, where they'll experiment. The success rate for people who detox is about 33%. And if you've had two, I think it's a two flood doses, two treatments within a period of time, it's a little over 60% success rate.

[02:12:25] Luke: Oh, shit. That's crazy. I don't know what-- maybe you know the stats, but for other methods where you just check yourself into a detox or what I used to do, I used to call it doing a train spotting where I'd pay one of my drug buddies to lock me up and not give me access to a car or anything so I couldn't go score, and I would just rough it.

[02:12:48] In my case, relapse was 100% for many years. But I imagine the number of people who do it themselves. I don't know. Do you know the stat? Are there stats in that? I would say it's 5% of people maybe that stay sober.

[02:13:05] Tricia: I think it's 3% or 4%, is what I've seen in the different research. But what's interesting is that it's the longest journey. Usually, it's about three days. There's a long kind of landing phase where you're in between worlds.

[02:13:25] Some people say it's 24 hours, but there's eight hours of it where you're in the medicine. So it's the longest acting of the psychoactive medicines. However it has been studied and compared. I think it was Gul Dolen, who's an incredible psychedelic researcher who said that I think psilocybin is one week. I think MDMA is one week as well.

[02:13:55] Psilocybin might be two weeks. And then iboga has a one month neuroplasticity window. It's actually stored in the fat. So when you take your flood dose, a bunch of it goes into your fat, and your brain's made of fat too, and stores in the body. And you essentially are getting a microdose of it. And it works on the serotonin. It works on the dopamine receptors.

[02:14:22] It's got an antidepressant effect, so it also helps you to have this beautiful window. And in Bwiti, we call this the time you get initiated. So you can have the mubando, which means grace, or musanza, which means luck. And so it's like it opens this window of like grace and luck where you have this month where if you do your meditation practices and you make right on all of your things, really good things can happen in your life. And also, if you do all the right things within that time, when the neuroplasticity window ends, all that stuff is cemented into your neuropathways.

[02:15:03] Luke: Wow, that's epic. And that would speak to the lasting effects too. If someone is really committed to their sobriety and you have that window of neuroplasticity and you start doing new things, you're going to change. Otherwise, that's a very slow process.

[02:15:22] Tricia: Yeah.

[02:15:23] Luke: I know from experience. It's not a month. It's years and years of incremental change of getting back to who you're meant to be.

[02:15:31] Tricia: And I've studied addiction, and Joseph, my husband, has published quite a few papers on ibogaine as well as on 5-MeO-DMT. And we've really gone deep into emerging therapies for addiction. And I would say that there are a whole slew of therapies that are being withheld from the public that are less expensive than ibogaine, more scalable, and could actually address the opiate crisis. So we're really hoping with this new administration-- even xenon gas for addiction is incredible.

[02:16:10] Luke: Oh, funny.

[02:16:11] Tricia: And for TBI. Sorry to interrupt.

[02:16:13] Luke: No, no. You're the one that's supposed to be talking.

[02:16:16] Tricia: Yeah. No, no, no. I just wanted to add that piece in there.

[02:16:18] Luke: The xenon gas, I think, if I'm not mistaken, I saw Hamilton Morris, that show he had, which I wish-- there's only so many substances, so I guess he ran out of episodes. I think he did one on xenon gas.

[02:16:33] Luke: He did?

[02:16:33] Tricia: Yeah. Hamilton's Pharmacopeia, I think it was called. Freaking great show. Just to watch someone on camera smoke Bufo, it's just crazy. But yeah, the xenon gas, I forgot about that. Of course, that was something I was like, "I got to try that." And I was like, "Well."

[02:16:48] Tricia: Yeah. You can do it in Europe. It hasn't been released in the US because you can't really patent it. So there's no incentive for any pharmaceutical company to run it through the FDA, unfortunately, unless some really well-meaning philanthropists that want to see the opiate crisis end. I know at least 10 different therapies that could really move things forward.

[02:17:18] One of them is a research chemical-- I can't say the name at this point-- that is being used at a couple clinics in Mexico, and they're using it to get people off of opiates between 10 to 15 days, depending on if it's a long-acting opiate or a short-acting opiate. And it has an opiate-like effect with no withdrawal side effects.

[02:17:44] So there's a whole slew of these things, and I'm just like, "Why is the public not getting access to this stuff?" I think ibogaine is incredible for addiction and for TBI. What I'd like to see is an emerging therapies initiative that has maybe some of these things, like xenon and other therapies that haven't been researched and then to have ibogaine maybe as the second or third or fourth in line because of the cardiac risks, which are very real. I think that the cost is going to be too high to do it in a good way in the US and just a lot of the cardiac data that's coming.

[02:18:34] Luke: Especially these days.

[02:18:35] Tricia: Oh my God.

[02:18:37] Luke: There's a lot of broken hearts out there, literally speaking.

[02:18:40] Tricia: Yeah. I got really nervous. I haven't done any retreats or anything, but I kind of pulled back around COVID because there's just so much myocarditis. What I want to do, and I don't know if I'll do it through my nonprofit, Ancestral Heart, is actually run a traditional practice study to look at the safety profile because Costa Rica just banned iboga in February.

[02:19:14] Luke: Really?

[02:19:15] Tricia: Yeah, they shut it down, and they even issued a warning for tourists because there were three deaths in Costa Rica last year.

[02:19:24] Luke: Oh. Heart-related?

[02:19:26] Tricia: All different causes, but I think the statistics are the statistics. And when you are putting ibogaine on every headline of every major news publication and you've got every ibogaine clinic right now booked out at least six months because of the demand for it, the increase in number of treatments, the increase in number of incidents. So that's my feeling.

[02:19:54] Luke: Generally speaking, how much is a clinical ibogaine treatment?

[02:19:59] Tricia: Cost-wise?

[02:20:00] Luke: Yeah.

[02:20:01] Tricia: It depends on where you go. It used to be around 7,000, but now I think it's closer to like 9, 10,000 for Ambio. Don't quote me on that. And then beyond is about 15,000.

[02:20:16] Luke: Wow. Holy shit.

[02:20:18] Tricia: It's not cheap.

[02:20:19] Luke: And with the ibogaine, is it synthesized, or is it an extract of the iboga root?

[02:20:30] Tricia: So that's a complex question because-- ibogaine extract was traditionally what was used. That's what Howard Lutzoff first patented, who was the one who discovered ibogaine or at least patented it for ibogaine 1962 in the United States. But later, there was a way that was discovered called, semi-synthesis because you couldn't actually synthesize the ibogaine molecule. It was too complex and they would take--

[02:21:06] Luke: Really?

[02:21:07] Tricia: Yeah.

[02:21:08] Luke: That's cool. That speaks to the wisdom of the plant. You know what I mean? It's like, ha ha, good luck.

[02:21:14] Tricia: Good luck trying this.

[02:21:17] Luke: Because they make 5-MeO, right? They're able to synthesize that.

[02:21:20] Tricia: Synthesized 5-MeO. And thank God, because, unfortunately, with the snowing desert, there's only so many toads. And so it's taken a lot of pressure off of the sustainability issues. And the same thing with ibogaine now that-- because Gabon is the size of Colorado.

[02:21:42] It's a tiny country. It's mostly rainforest except for the capital city Libreville. But there are places in Cameroon and in the Congo where it grows, but it's not as prevalent because it likes a lower elevation.

[02:21:58] Actually, Cameroon, it's fine, but Congo is a little bit higher elevation. But the voacangine is a plant, Voacanga africana, also from Africa. And they found that if they took, I can't remember if it's a hydrogen or an oxygen molecule off, they have ibogaine. And so that's what most of the clinics use now currently for the sustainability reasons.

[02:22:29] However, recently there is a pharmaceutical company that claims to have synthesized it. I've not tried an as essay of it, so I can't say whether or not that's true. There's a lot of different claims on different analogs such as tabernanthalog, oxa-ibogaine, or is it oxy-ibogaine?

[02:22:57] Who knows if they actually work? No one's run any phase one safety data if they have cardiac issues or if they even have an impact on detoxing opiates or helping with traumatic brain injury. So what we do know is we've got the voacangine derive semi-synthesis, and that's what's currently used. And then we have some companies that are bringing forward some fully synthetic and new molecules.

[02:23:29] Luke: That's cool. You're so on top of this stuff. I love it. It's so cool, man. You're so knowledgeable. And it's renewing my faith in our future to hear things like that, because sometimes, we tend to--well, I feel like I live in a silo because I talk to so many people like you, and I just assume like, oh, yeah, the whole world's aware of all these things that we talk about now.

[02:23:53] And then I realize like, wow, we're not. You just walk into your local hospital and you'll see like, oh shit, people are really hurting. So it's encouraging to know that there's emerging things that I'm totally unaware of that are very positive in terms of not only just developments, but also legislation and things like that. I saw something, actually-- you probably know about more about this than I do, but Alyson sent me a DM this morning.

[02:24:21] We DM each other on Instagram. She's in the other room sending me a DM. And it was something about some Texas legislation in regard to ibogaine. And I didn't read through it. It was just, oh, it looks positive. There's something happening toward legality or medical use or something. Do you know about that?

[02:24:38] Tricia: Yeah. So what it is, is it's a bill that will be a partnership with a for-profit company with the state of Texas to do research on ibogaine. And it can be an analog of ibogaine or ibogaine, and it's $50 million, and it would be a government and for-profit partnership, meaning that they would give the 50 million, but they would be essentially a shareholder of the company. And that's to help further research.

[02:25:06] I think there's still a lot more things that need to be figured out, and I don't necessarily think that that is the best first line way to lead forward. I totally support it because I love this medicine. I want to see people healed, but I also know the level of training that people need, the level of medical supervision, the lack of scalability.

[02:25:39] My guess is if you were to do it in the US, it would cost a minimum of 55,000 to 100,000 in terms of accessibility, because of the medical insurance, the drug costs, housing someone. You know what it cost to go to rehab, I'm sure.

[02:25:58] Luke: Yeah. Back in my day, the one I went to-- it wasn't in Malibu or something-- it was 10 grand. Which when I was 26 and a junkie, that was a million dollars.

[02:26:08] Tricia: I know.

[02:26:08] Luke: My mom, God bless her, she lent me the 10 grand. I wanted to be sober, thankfully, that's why it stuck. But I remember being in rehab and every once in a while, have the thought like, I could just run away. And I was like, "I would still owe my mom the 10 grand." And then when I got out, I remember thinking like, eh, maybe-- my mom doesn't have a lot of money, so that was probably a good chunk of her savings.

[02:26:33] But I remember thinking, maybe she'll be proud of me and she'll give me a break on the 10 grand. And she's like, "No, your payments start next month." It took me like five years. But it was one of the many anchors that helped me. I'd be like, "Dude, I got to pay my mom back." But yeah, 10 grand was a lot then. I can only imagine what it is now.

[02:26:51] Tricia: Yeah. I think that having to pay your mom back was like, she's like, "I want to remind him every time he makes that payment not to be tempted to take-- to stay sober."

[02:27:01] Luke: It was one of the hundreds of reasons to stay sober. Yeah.

[02:27:05] Tricia: What I found with people with ibogaine, the clear indicator of whether someone would come out of the treatment and stay off of opiates was how much skin they had in the game. If they thought that it was just going to buy them, they're going to take a pill and not have to do any work.

[02:27:24] Or if their parents were trying to get them to come or a partner or a family member, but they weren't really invested in it, it wouldn't work for them. Maybe for a short period of time, but yeah, the people that have the skin in the game, it can make a huge difference.

[02:27:40] Luke: I think that's true of any path to sobriety. I don't think I'm special because it stuck. I think I had a lot of grace and just God shone some light on me, really is the main thing. But the other thing is I just really, really wanted it. I was done, son. I was out. I'm out of the game. I am freaking done anyway.

[02:28:07] [] I've known many people for whom it takes a few shots before they get it. And then there's many that just die or end up in prison that don't. And I think it's just that key ingredient. They don't have that seed of possibility that life could be different or that they are worth saving.

[02:28:26] I think that's the thing I realized, was just like, wow. I have a 1% out of 100% of self-worth at that time, but that 1% little mustard seed was like, "It's very unlikely that I'm worth anything and that my life could ever mean anything." But that 1% was enough of just like, I got to do this and see if life's better without it.

[02:28:50] And it certainly has been. What about other addictions? And I'm asking this for selfish reasons because as you see, I've got my little stash of various things. Make it difficult to talk. My coca leaf and fucking nicotine.

[02:29:07] I don't know if I call them addictions, but definitely attachments. Things that I use habitually, and sometimes I think about, what if I just wake up tomorrow and don't do this? I'm like, "Yeah, I'm going to do that."

[02:29:20] And then I get up and I'm like, "Not today. Maybe next week." So something like iboga, I go, I wouldn't mind going away for a week and just banging it all out and getting rid of any of these little attachments, whether or not they really interfere with my life or not. It would just be nice to be completely free of anything that feels habitual and sticky like that.

[02:29:39] Tricia: Yeah. I would say that when you look at it from a pharmacological perspective, the specific receptors that work with nicotine addiction or sex addiction, a lot of it is related to dopamine. And even cell phone addiction.

[02:30:02] Luke: Right. Oh my God,

[02:30:04] Tricia: I believe that has to do with father stuff. I think that being seen by the masculine and feeling safe and all of that comes from the energy of the father. And I feel that it can work on all of those things, and it can definitely reset those receptors, but you still have to do the inner work of the different pieces related to it, which the medicine can help and show you, which will set you on your way.

[02:30:37] But it depends on how much it's impacting your life. I would say that even just having COVID so many times or being locked up, I feel like I even have PTSD from-- I've healed a lot of stuff around it, but I've felt like I had PTSD even from just some of the things I experienced. And I think definitely this is great, to reset all of that.

[02:31:09] It does come with a cost and that there are definitely risks, and I really feel like-- the reason I work really closely with the Bwiti and I created the nonprofit Ancestral Heart, which came to me as a message in a meditation was really that we have to put the things in place to know that even if we're using synthetic ibogaine completely, it will draw attention to Gabon.

[02:31:38] It's a tiny little country, And this tiny little country is working their butt off to preserve their culture for it not to be destroyed. And it's really important in terms of right relationship in how we're approaching this as a psychedelic movement, however we're coming to this medicine as an advocate, as a partaker of the medicine, that we understand what these impacts are because iboga is all about cause and effect. It's all about our karma. And so you only get as much healing as you are willing to actually understand how to find that equanimity within yourself. And a big piece of that is the right relationship. And so this medicine can keep giving for years and years and years.

[02:32:37] The spirit of the medicine is with you. And if you come out of right relationship with it, you are just stopping the healing process for yourself. And so I want to keep encouraging people to receive the healing and not have to keep coming back, but to just really integrate the blessing of it and all medicines as well.

[02:33:03] But yeah, I think if you're coming with a sincere heart and you really truly are ready to die to your old self and whatever those little security blankets are that give you some sense of something, then it can definitely help you with that.

[02:33:22] Luke: That's a powerful insight. It's in the willingness, I think, to be honest with oneself about what it is you're running from.

[02:33:36] Because you can take away the tool by which you're running, call it your jogging shoes. You get rid of the jogging shoes because you're tired of jogging. But what's behind you that you're trying to get away from? That's the thing for me. I could name them, and I could write you the top five right now of the things that when my awareness goes to them, I'm like, "Oh, I don't like how that feels." Whether it's my dad just dying or any number of things that it's like, oh, I don't want to feel that.

[02:34:01] So I reach for something that'll distract me and give me a little dopamine hit, my phone, these things, that thing. So yeah, I could have some medicine surgically remove the symptom of what I'm trying to avoid. But the real work is in the thing you're trying to avoid, not the coping mechanisms.

[02:34:22] It's like the coping mechanisms tend to fall away on their own when one has addressed the underlying issue. That's happened to me with a lot of different bad habits, of just like, "Wow, I don't do that thing anymore." I didn't even try to stop. I don't feel the need for it, therefore it's gone.

[02:34:41] Pornography is a great example of that. I guess I made some effort to not do that years ago, but it was just like, I don't know, it didn't serve me. I didn't feel the need for it. And next thing you know, it was gone. I go, "Wow, I feel so much better." That was great. It didn't take a lot of effort. It was just some little self-awareness and saying, "Wow, I really feel much better when that's not a part of my life."

[02:35:03] Tricia: Yeah. And it's a slippery slope. And I believe with all addictions, it starts through the mind. It starts through feeling and reaction, and then it changes the pH in your body and then it becomes the pH for fungi, parasites, all the things, the perfect climate for them to live. So there's an entire ecosystem around trauma. And that's why biohacking is effective, because it'll take some of those layers out.

[02:35:34] Luke: Right, right.

[02:35:36] Tricia: But if you look at like, okay, where are all the places that I fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, and then you go underneath all of those, most of the time what's underneath all of those is grief and rage, which are basically the same thing.

[02:35:52] Luke: That's interesting. What you're saying reminds me of the terrain theory. It's like having, say, a physical terrain that's not hospitable to pathogens, just to state it simply. But there's also the terrain of your psyche and your spiritual terrain. And so as we address that, then it makes sense that some of the physical terrain would start to become purified.

[02:36:19] Tricia: And what I think is the most incredible thing about ibogaine and iboga that in essence could support this theory is that, for me, I found that getting funguses out of the body is the hardest thing of all. You have to take all these different-- I like red pine oil as one example. And then I'll switch it off so the bugs don't get used to the same thing and go through these things.

[02:36:47] And then it's like every time one's dying off, the colonies dying off. You're feeling these emotions. You're like, "Ah." As they're dying off and releasing their toxins in your body, and you're taking binders to absorb all the chemicals that they're releasing. But with ibogaine, it literally will kill every bit of candida in your body if you take enough medicine to where it wipes the slate clean.

[02:37:10] And that's why people have no mind afterwards, because it's all the fricking bugs that are chattering. The candida's like, "Feed me sugar. Feed me nicotine." And you're like, "Okay."

[02:37:21] Luke: I think about that sometimes. I always talk about this on the show, but I really have a thing for ice cream. I found a really healthy ice cream, so it's so easy to justify. It's like A2, regenerative farms. It checks all the boxes. Probably not great to eat that much sugar, but sometimes when I crave it, it's like 9:30, 10:00 at night.

[02:37:42] Sometimes even I'll wake up. Say I fall asleep at 10:30, then I wake up at 1:00. I'll come downstairs, and I will crush a whole pint of ice cream and go back to bed. Not healthy, objectively. But I'll wonder, is that even me, or is it some critters inside me that are asking for it so loudly that I think it's me and I follow through with their request.

[02:38:04] Tricia: Probably some critters.

[02:38:06] Luke: Yeah, yeah.

[02:38:07] Tricia: Yeah. I feel like I need--

[02:38:08] Luke: I enjoy it, but sometimes I wonder like, "Hmm, who's really calling the shots here?"

[02:38:12] Tricia: Yeah. We are more other organisms than we are ourselves.

[02:38:19] Luke: Truth. Tell me about the Kogi. I promised myself that I would learn more about these fascinating people.

[02:38:29] Tricia: So the Kogi are a tribe, and there's several tribes that reside in this region of La Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the mountains. And since, I think it was the 1980s, they were completely locked away from the western world. There was a documentary made where they opened the gate and one of the mamos, which are the wisdom keepers, the elders of the lineage said, "We are told by the mother that we are supposed to talk to our little brother so that he doesn't destroy the planet." We're supposed to leave the mountain and talk to our little brother and educate--

[02:39:19] Luke: Little brother being Westerners.

[02:39:20] Tricia: Westerners. Yes. Sorry, I didn't want to overexplain since I mentioned it earlier.

[02:39:27] Luke: I'm just clarifying for myself. I love that because it's like, we, westerners, just by and large think of ourselves as pretty clever.

[02:39:36] Tricia: Yeah.

[02:39:37] Luke: We figured out some technology and airplanes and whatever, computers and shit. Meanwhile, the truly wise would just hold up in some caves in Columbia, the ones that really have it sorted out. Which I think that's such an appropriate term, our little brothers. Because it's not like our enemies. It's just like, oh, okay, you guys think you're pretty smart here, but we're going to now come out and share some codes with you because you're about to really screw it up.

[02:40:03] Tricia: And they don't think anything negative of us. They're just like, "These people are thinking all the time." They're just thinking, and they have no room for receiving, is how they look at little brother. The highest priests, you could call them, of the lineage are called mamos.

[02:40:31] And the mamos are determined through divination. If they're determined through divination as a baby, which it's rare, but it does happen, then the baby is literally brought into the cave. It's only allowed to eat white food, so rice, breast milk, potatoes, and it stays in the cave for the first nine years of its life. Usually, it's adults.

[02:41:04] Luke: That doesn't even sound like that's real. You know what I mean? That's insane.

[02:41:10] Tricia: There's a lot of stories--

[02:41:11] Luke: I want to hang out with that person. I want my circle of friends to be the nine-year cave people. I feel like they would have things sorted out in a way that many don't.

[02:41:21] Tricia: They really do. If you think about it, if you know about darkness retreats, Mantak Chia wrote a book called Darkness Technology, which you can get online. And just from spending eight days in darkness, you have a full DMT experience where you produce endogenous DMT. So literally, they're on DMT for nine years, and they're having reactivations ongoing.

[02:41:50] Luke: For real. I would love to see a QEEG on one of those people. What is happening in that brain? You know what I mean?

[02:41:56] Tricia: Yeah. The mamos--

[02:41:57] Luke: Just the lack of stimuli. Just think about like how overwhelming it is to us in this world of just the constant stimulation that's so unnatural.

[02:42:11] Tricia: Being in the field of really profoundly initiated and experienced elders, it's like-- I don't know if you've ever met Amma, the Hugging Saint. When you're in her field, there's a palpable field. It's like that.

[02:42:31] Luke: I got a hug from her. Yeah, yeah.

[02:42:33] Tricia: It's like that. There's a morphogenic field around them that is a radiation of their consciousness. They are a vortex. They're like a sacred site. And the mamos, they go into this cave, and when they come out, their job is to do divination. They read the bubbles in water, and they can read it and tell the health of the water cycles of the planet.

[02:43:04] Just like in acupuncture, how all the points of the body are on your ear or on your foot or on your hand, they believe that La Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is a exact replica of the entire world. And so what they're doing is they're like the acupuncturists of the planet. They're doing specific rituals. They're using gold. They're using what they call Pegamentos, which are offerings to maintain the balance between man and nature.

[02:43:38] And they also do really powerful divination work through dreaming. They build these round houses, which are used just for ceremony, and hammocks are hung across, and a sacred fire is lit, and you go into these Kogi huts to dream. I've slept in one.

[02:44:03] The dreams that you have are divinatory dreams, and they're meant for specific reasons related to the purpose of why you're there if the village is gathering for a specific topic or elders are gathering. And so everything we do, we've done three land trusts through my nonprofit with the Kogi buying back their sacred lands. And there's nine pieces total.

[02:44:28] Luke: Oh, that's so epic.

[02:44:29] Tricia: And they do the divination. We have a protocol that we have to make a dinner for everybody. We have to feed the entire village where the Asama-- is the name for the village-- where the meeting happens. The Kogi gather around the fire. They chew the coca. They all carried their-- it's like a gourd, which is the womb of the mother, to stay connected to the mother. And they chew the coca leaf all day. That's the sacrament of the Kogi mamos.

[02:45:07] Luke: This is the first podcast where I've ever actually chewed it during because you are one of the only people that probably wouldn't be super freaked out or at least be very distracted.

[02:45:16] Tricia: No, not at all.

[02:45:17] Luke: Yeah, that's funny. Carry on.

[02:45:20] Tricia: So essentially, every time we work with the Kogi, I work with another foundation called Nativa based in Bogota, Columbia. And we do this all collaboratively in the Fountain, which is an organization and run by grandmother  Jyoti Ma, who founded the Thirteen-- she's the convener of the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmother Council.

[02:45:46] And when we go, the Kogi give us the instructions on how to carry out what we're going to do. So this is the protocol. They make the ceremony. They get the blessings from creator. They get the clearance. They tell us what we're supposed to do, and then it happens like magic. And just to be part of that process is so cool.

[02:46:14] Luke: It's Oracle vibes for real.

[02:46:20] Tricia: Yeah.

[02:46:20] Luke: It's the best.

[02:46:20] Tricia: It's mind blowing. And then sometimes there'll be little side projects. I noticed two children had died from protein sickness from lack of protein in the main village, Tungueka Village, which is the first village when you come in to La Sierra Nevada.

[02:46:44] And so I was talking with Adriana who runs Nativa, and she was telling me that she had this idea because the indigenous food of that region, which was wiped out by the Spanish colonialists was cuy, which is Guinea pig. So we went to a place in the Amazon. We got the same species. We created a breeding program in Miraflores, and literally this cost us maybe $5,000 total for the whole-- not that much money.

[02:47:19] And then, the beautiful thing about the Kogi is that every work that we do, they're very participatory in it. All the villages, the kids, the mothers, everyone was helping build these facilities, and we created a breeding program, and now the children are eating a Guinea pig, which tastes like chicken, and is actually a very good, healthy, sustainable protein, which could actually be good for beyond.

[02:47:49] Luke: That's wild. I'd never heard of that until we were recently in Peru, up in the Andes, and they had that at one of the restaurants. That's interesting. I never thought of it. But it's one of those things, whatever you're used to seems normal. So it's like, oh, that's gross. Why? Look at the weird shit we eat just because someone told us at some point when were a kid that's the norm in our culture, and you just go along with it without thinking about it.

[02:48:15] Tricia: Yeah. It's funny because the Kogi mamos said that the animals that we eat have the mind of prison, and so it creates prison within us. Like the cows that we eat on the farms when we eat meat that's been from a farm where the cow is basically in prison. I used to be vegan for many years, and then I was in a TP with some Lakota elders that I hosted, and the medicine said to me, "You should eat bison every once in a while."

[02:48:52] Didn't say it exactly like-- you know what I mean? And I was like, "Huh, I should eat meat." And I didn't even want to clean a pan that had meat in it because I didn't want to eat animals. And so I did, and it really helped me a lot. So I eat a little bit of wild game, mostly elk, venison. I like the Maui venison, which is wild caught, and bison. The energy of that meat is so different than cow or chicken.

[02:49:20] Luke: That's interesting. On the mamos in that cage thing, because there's a bison farm out here that I've been to a couple of times, and you can't cage bison. You know what I'm saying? They're powerful and unruly and they're definitely not domesticated. The farmers have to-- they'll coax them into the next pasture because they're doing a regenerative rotating thing. They'll coax them with food, but you're not getting out there and whipping them to go into the next gate or whatever. It's not happening. That's so interesting.

[02:50:02] Tricia: Yeah. You can't get a Border Collie to wrangle them. They're like, "No."

[02:50:04] Luke: Bison are badass. They're so cool. I love that animal. They're beautiful.

[02:50:12] Tricia: There's an interesting story that I heard that when a storm comes, the cows will go away from the storm. So they end up running from the storm, and they end up running for a long time until they get tired and then they have the storm come. But when a storm comes, the bison walk into the storm, so it passes through them faster, and that's why they're so hardy.

[02:50:37] Luke: Great life lesson. We could all be better served if we learned to do that. All right. I feel like we've been going for five or six hours. Thank you for your tenacity with me here. I do want to ask you one more thing though, and I would just be remiss if I didn't cover this.

[02:50:57] Tell me about this project you have going in Portugal. Because I think you sent me the PDF or a link to it, and it took me a while to get around to it, and I finally get in there. I was like, "Alyson, get in here." What the hell? This looks so freaking awesome. Hot springs on an island, the architecture. There's no freaking squares, boxes.

[02:51:19] I was talking to Joseph about this earlier. I loathe the way we build. My dream is to live in a Geoship, the bio ceramic domes. I am obsessed with those. I think the future of part of our awakening is us living in biocompatible non-toxic materials and shapes, and what you have in the works there is freaking bananas. So give us the quick download on that.

[02:51:47] Tricia: Yeah. I'm 100% in agreement with you, and I'll give you the short version. So we had several mold exposures and got very sick. The reason we realized that houses have mold is because--

[02:52:06] Luke: They're made out of mold food.

[02:52:08] Tricia: They're made out of mold food. And when I was with the Kogi the first time in-- well, this wasn't the first time. I met them in 2015, but this was in 2018. They said humans live in boxes. They're buried in boxes. They stare at boxes, but the universe sinks and spirals. And that was what hit me like this. And I'm like, "We are stuck in our thinking because we're in a structure that prohibits creativity."

[02:52:43] Luke: Yeah.

[02:52:44] Tricia: And when we look at the structures in nature that create life, the womb, the cave, the ancient structures, and we look at biomimicry, the idea of the womb or the cave, which is essentially what a dome is, is really truly the most remarkable thing.

[02:53:07] And we brought in this fancy Beverly Hills architect, Nicolò Bini, who built Robert Downey Jr's house in Malibu. Really innovative, but made of concrete and rebar. And just in my studies of the idea of how do you create piezoelectric energy, which is basically a battery for you.

[02:53:36] When you think about materials like orgonite that block EMFs and materials that the Great Pyramid was made of. When the Great Pyramid is tested, it still creates piezoelectric energy thousands of years later, and it doesn't even have the casing stones which actually enhance it or the capstone. It's still is creating that energy, which is what feeds life.

[02:54:05] It's our leaking qi that creates entropy and why we die and why we age. So I looked at other types of newer materials, found the bio ceramic concrete, and found out that you can actually achieve the same effect without-- because the bio ceramic concrete is really expensive and it sets really fast. That's why the one that you're talking about, Geo ships, had to do them in panels and quick pour them. But you can get a more profound effect if it's continuous and it's got a continuous surface because of the way the electricity is conducted. But you can actually use the concrete underneath, and you just do a thin shell of the bio ceramic. And then to solve the issue around the steel, I found a new type of rebar made from basalt.

[02:55:10] So what it does is it imitates the old temples. If you look at the Nubian temples in Egypt that have the dome roofs or the old buildings, it imitates that without-- and that was the best we could do with the cost of construction nowadays, is so insane. And when you're trying to do something outside of the box, literally, it's way more expensive.

[02:55:41] Luke: Yeah.

[02:55:41] Tricia: Yeah. And it's a holistic center of healing for being in relationship with the land. It's really about balance with nature. Obviously, all the best biohacking and wellness with cold plunge, sauna, Himalayan salt room. Our wellness focus is really somatic therapy focus. So it's not a like going to a spa and getting a facial, but really about healing the body through deep therapeutic work and retreats and gatherings of amazing people, like maybe yourself one day.

[02:56:16] Luke: Oh my God. When I saw the deck, I was like, "Cool, when can I move in? Do you guys need a maintenance man?" Give me a shed in the back. Tell us about the land too. The hot springs, it's nuts. And it's an island in Portugal, right? Portuguese Island. Am I getting that right?

[02:56:35] Tricia: Yeah. So it's essentially, I believe, the mountains of Atlantis that sunk in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Two and a half hours from Lisbon, four and a half hours from Boston or New York.

[02:56:51] Luke: Flight?

[02:56:52] Tricia: Yeah.

[02:56:53] Luke: Holy shit. It's way out there.

[02:56:55] Tricia: But it's close in comparison to Europe.

[02:57:01] Luke: Forgive me, I'm not that great at geography and not that familiar with Europe in general, but I was thinking like, oh, it's just a couple of miles off the shore of somewhere in Portugal. But it's a ways out there though.

[02:57:14] Tricia: It's out there, yeah.

[02:57:15] Luke: That's cool. Is it the Atlantic equivalent of Hawaii in the Pacific relative to, say, Japan or something? Is it in that ballpark in terms of how it's situated?

[02:57:32] Tricia: Yeah, essentially. It's in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, essentially.

[02:57:35] Luke: Wow.

[02:57:36] Tricia: Yeah. Very isolated. So it literally has been untouched and unheard of until 2015. Portugal and the EU was like, "Wow, this is one of the places that is most underdeveloped in all of Europe." And they started to focus on promoting it for tourism. And in 2019, I got this message in a meditation, and it was like, it's time to build your retreat center. And I asked where, and it said the Azores. And I looked it up on a map, and I was like, "You want me to build a retreat center in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?" Very confused.

[02:58:28] Luke: So it's called the Azores.

[02:58:31] Tricia: Azores, Azores. It can be pronounced different. People pronounce it differently depending on where you're from.

[02:58:36] Luke: You guys managed to buy some land there?

[02:58:38] Tricia: We bought about 32 acres. And the crazy story is that I learned there was hot springs in Azores, and I talked to this guy, and I said, "I'd really love to find some land to develop with hot springs." And he was like, all the land's developed with hot springs. It's already been commercialized. Good luck." Calls me back three weeks later, and he's like, "I found your land."

[02:59:09] Luke: Oh my God.

[02:59:10] Tricia: In Farnes, which is the area that is like the most-- there's 37 different kinds of thermal water and drinking water, and the best sparkling water that comes out of the ground that's won awards in Japan.

[02:59:26] Luke: Oh my God.

[02:59:26] Tricia: It's like the water Mecca and all healing. There's different spouts. And in Portuguese, it's like you drink this one if you had too much to drink at the bar, and you drink this one if you're a woman and you're iron deficient because you're on your menstrual cycle. Every single one has some healing effect, and the waters are just so incredibly, profoundly healing. I told Joseph, I was like, "We don't need any biohacking here. We can just heal with the water."

[03:00:02] Luke: Oh, 100%. Hot springs, to me, are the greatest gift of nature. It's just unreal, the best ever.

[03:00:14] Tricia: I agree with you 100%.

[03:00:16] Luke: And good quality spring water to drink too.

[03:00:21] Tricia: The water that comes from our land is really rich in silica, and it has a little bit of lithium in it. It's a tiny bit high in arsenic, so it might not be something you want-- it's fine to have a little bit here and there, but obviously it wouldn't meet California standards because they're very strict. But when you drink it, it goes into the cells so quickly. It's almost like you don't feel like you've even swallowed it. It's almost magical.

[03:00:53] Luke: It's alive.

[03:00:56] Tricia: It's so alive.

[03:00:58] Luke: Water like that is alive. There's no other way to say it. Have you looked into primary water?

[03:01:03] Tricia: I've heard of it.

[03:01:04] Luke: Okay, so you have the supposed, which I don't know that I'm fully convinced on this, but the idea is you have the hydrological cycle, evaporation goes up in the clouds, creates snow, rain. It comes down on the surface of the earth. Some of that ends up seeping into the ground and going into aquifers.

[03:01:24] So you have a water table or underground lakes, and the predominant understanding or belief that oil is a limited resource, which many of us believe it's not, is that eventually those aquifers are going to dry up, so there's limited water. The idea that there's a finite amount of water on the planet that keeps getting recycled.

[03:01:48] However, some wise people have discovered this substance called primary water, which is a water from deeper springs that have never-- there's no evidence that they've ever been on the surface of the earth before and have never been part of the hydrological cycle.

[03:02:05] And so the idea is, which seems very plausible, is that in the interior of the planet, it's actually creating water out of thin air, basically, and this is primary water. It's like literally the lifeblood of the planet is in a never-ending supply that then magically levitates to the surface on its own and doesn't need to be drilled or forced out. It's like it's ripe, and it's coming to the surface like mother's milk.

[03:02:36] Tricia: Wow.

[03:02:36] Luke: And that's primary water. And that water is low in deuterium. It's just crystalline, beautiful, structured water. It's just incredible. I love water, so it's so fascinating me the idea of hot springs and just good quality spring water, is just epic.

[03:02:54] Tricia: I believe, and I'm sure you've sat in some really beautiful water prayers in your history of just all the ceremonial work and all of the people that you've met and elders, and when you hear the stories of the water carriers-- and I have waters that are very sacred and that many elders have carried and that are being held for the future of water for the planet.

[03:03:24] And when the elders come in and they pray over that water and you take that water, it's like drinking ayahuasca or any plant medicine. It has a psychoactive quality to it. And I really believe that water has an intelligence and has the capacity to heal anything that you ask it to heal with intention. And I think that our water is dirty, and I don't need to go into water because I know you've done massive podcasts on it.

[03:03:58] Luke: I've probably done like 20-- no more because I've done like a few, two or three-hour episodes just on water.

[03:04:04] Tricia: Yeah. And I really believe that we're all in a state of dehydration. And I think some of that's metaphysical, some of it has to do with the toxicity of the water that we have access to. I've been drinking pure spring water delivered to my house in glass for well over a decade.

[03:04:27] And I really believe that it's one of our most important resources that we have and what we need to preserve. And that's why it makes me really upset when I hear a lot of the different fracking and drilling for oil, and that's where these primary sources of water can get destroyed.

[03:04:53] Luke: Yeah. Are you getting Alive Water? Is that the water you get? Yeah, that's my buddy Chris.

[03:04:59] Tricia: I love Chris.

[03:05:00] Luke: I have a funny story. We go way back. We used to go get water together and stuff. I remember when he started, first he put him in the back of his car, then he bought a little trailer. And then he would go up into Big Bear, and then eventually the fucking ranger, Rick, the forest service or whatever put up these blockades, these big boulders. So he couldn't get it. It's crazy. I'm so glad he prevailed.

[03:05:26] Before we close, what's the timeline on your retreat center? What's it called? Is there a website? What's up with that? And also, in addition to the physical healing and wellness element, are you going to be doing ceremony there and that kind of work as well?

[03:05:47] Tricia: Right now, we're on Portuguese time, which is a whole other time. It's not even like Spain time.

[03:05:55] Luke: I can imagine.

[03:05:55] Tricia: One of my friends who has land in Puerto Rico and Spain and building in both countries and has land in Portugal said, "Portugal's the hardest country to build anything of any other country." The Azores is even more complex. Took us five years just to get the blessing, to get all the permits in place to start building.

[03:06:21] We have everything in place. It's going to take about two years to build. Our target is like 2027, 2028, depending on if they actually-- because you have to ship all the materials in to get it there. And then right now the legal jurisdiction in Portugal is decrim.

[03:06:47] Decrim is based on a certain amount of dosage. There are people practicing there, even that have public facing websites. However, if you're going to invest all that money and really build something amazing, you can't run that risk of doing medicine.

[03:07:07] But I believe that things will open up, and as soon as they are open, we will offer that. But I think the most important thing on this planet right now is the integration and the preparation. And I feel like it's the ultimate place that you can go to be in nature to really integrate, to really connect.

[03:07:26] And I feel like it is going to be like a life integration center. The website, sorry. We have not put up a website yet because we knew we were so far out in terms of getting the building permits and everything.

[03:07:47] Luke: People are like, "Cool, where's the signup button?" You're like, "Hang on."

[03:07:53] Tricia: There's something too, what we're creating, that it's like when the baby's gestating, if you reveal too much too soon, it loses the magic. And so we've been holding back on it, and I'm so happy we did. But we will probably put something up in the next--

[03:08:14] Luke: Okay, cool. Keep me posted because I'm already obsessed with the whole idea and would love to help you create awareness and get attention to it. Because I think it's one thing you have these sacred places on earth that are awesome to enjoy, but by and large they're exploited and abused in terms of the environment and just the magic of these places. And it seems like for some reason, the darker forces in the world tend to gravitate toward the most beautiful places and ruin them.

[03:08:49] Tricia: Mm.

[03:08:50] Luke: I think any little stronghold conscious stewards get is really important.

[03:08:55] Tricia: Yeah.

[03:08:56] Luke: It's really important. Just look at what happened in Maui, and just on and on. It's crazy.

[03:09:03] Tricia: And even Tulum. Tulum was destroyed by tourism. It got so polluted.

[03:09:08] Luke: I've never been there. I'm probably the only guy that lives in Austin--

[03:09:12] Tricia: That hasn't

[03:09:13] been to Tulum.

[03:09:13] Luke: --that hasn't been to Tulum or Burning Man. Yeah. I think by the time I started learning about Tulum, I was like, "I don't know. It looks too much of a party scene for me." I'm an old fuddy duddy in that regard. I like fewer humans but very select choice in them.

[03:09:30] Tricia: That's how I feel too. This is a small center. It's about 14 rooms, and the name is Hugh, which came to me in the meditation. And I was like, "Hugh." And I look it up and it's the tongue of Thoth, and it means the sound that is made when wisdom enters the initiate.

[03:09:53] Luke: Wow. Dope.

[03:09:54] Tricia: So yeah, I didn't pick any of it. I didn't pick the location to do it, but I will say it's not easy. And I had a lot of elders that supported me. Melanoma Patrice  Somé, who's a Dagara elder who's passed. He did a lot of divination work and a lot of prayer throughout the process. Rutendo Nigara, who was passed the altar of Credo Mutwa from South Africa. She's a dear friend.

[03:10:22] Luke: Cool. I learned about that guy from David Icke years ago.

[03:10:30] Tricia: He was something else, probably one of the most respected indigenous elders of Africa.

[03:10:40] Luke: Wow. I didn't know that. I'm only familiar with him just because of the work that he did with David Icke. And David Icke was such a fan of his, and he verified some of David Icke's really far out theories. That's cool.

[03:10:55] Tricia: He is just so deep. He passed away, I think in his '90s, but he was so deep and truthful. He wrote several books in the wisdom, but at the same time, he would talk about crazy stuff, like being initiated into the reptilian lineage.

[03:11:21] Luke: That's the stuff that David Icke would talk to him about. Yeah. I think when Ike found him, he was like, "Finally someone that is on board with this." This idea of shape-shifting and reptilian race and stuff like that. So Icke really banked on that of having a credible elder, wisdom keeper that was like, "Yeah, you verify the stuff you're talking about."

[03:11:43] Tricia: Yeah. He's really incredible. And then, obviously, I had a lot of support and prayers, and I don't think I would've ever-- Joseph and I wouldn't have made it through even just that five-year process if we didn't have all of that blessing and support.

[03:12:01] Luke: I can only imagine. Just renovating a freaking house almost killed me. It's like trying to do something in an island in the middle of Atlantic. And something of that grand of a scope and a vision, a high vision like that, it's not like you're like, "Oh, we want to build a little house."

[03:12:15] It's like you're doing a lot of innovation too. Innovation with a remote location and a lot of intentionality, that's big. So kudos to you. And I'm happy to support. Well, man, thank you so much, Tricia, for your energy and sticktoitiveness here with-- I'm just having so much fun. I just keep going.

[03:12:35] Tricia: Me too.

[03:12:35] Luke: There's more I want to learn. So thank you for hanging in there, and you're just awesome. You have so much wisdom and experience, and you're just so cool. I knew I was going to be really excited to sit down with you based on your book, and yeah, my intuitive feeling of like, who's going to be awesome? And you have come through in spades. Hi, sweetie. Cookie and Alyson are done. They're going, "Ah, hello."

[03:13:02] Alyson: It's time for our dinner dates.

[03:13:05] Tricia: Oh, yay.

[03:13:05] Luke: It's the next day already, Luke. I got one last question for you. Swear this will be the last one. You probably already mentioned them, but maybe you'll surprise me. Who have been three teachers or teachings in general that have influenced your life and contributed to who you are today?

[03:13:23] Tricia: Mm. Joseph, my sacred mirror. He's my greatest teacher. He keeps me in check. He's radically honest with me. My mother, Annette. She's half-Mexican, half-European, but really has an indigenous heart and loves God and is really humble and just has taught me so much in my life. And to this day, just really holding balance and equanimity.

[03:14:02] And I would say my grandma Hazel, who passed away. She's on my dad's side, but she's from Canada. And she just had the best green thumb, took care of so many animals, like a real farmer. Just strong woman. Had a lot of children. Went through a lot of trauma and turmoil. Had children that died. Yeah, I just really feel like those women, my mom and my grandmother were matriarchal wisdom keepers.

[03:14:51] And I feel like their love and their connection really were an incredible example. And obviously I've millions of other teachers. I feel everything is a teacher, but since I didn't mention them, I mentioned so many other people I wanted to--

[03:15:06] Luke: I noticed in the back of your book you really used many extra pages to give props to many of your teachers and wisdom keepers that have helped guided you, which I thought was cool. You don't really-- I don't know. I haven't read every book on indigenous wisdom, plant medicine, psychedelics, etc., but I've never seen a book like have that much emphasis on that. So I think that's really nice.

[03:15:28] And also it gives people some breadcrumbs of more to explore. Someone might hear this and be like, "What's up with those mamos?" And find a way to support them or share their wisdom and life ways and so on.

[03:15:40] Tricia: Yeah. With the book, I would've loved to have put them in the front, and sometimes there's publishing things where it's like, is this book about your experience, or is it about the elders? And we didn't want to confuse people. But my heart is around supporting the elders.

[03:16:00] I believe they need to be the ones in the government running things. They need to have a seat at the table of a lot of the things that are happening, including the psychedelic movement. And yeah, if there's anything I can do to help make that happen, that's my highest joy.

[03:16:20] Luke: Epic. Well, thank you for joining me. And I want to remind everyone, go to lukestorey.com/tricia. Find the link to her book, Seeding Consciousness, and go out and buy that damn thing, folks. Support the mission. Support the movement. Thank you so much.

[03:16:32] Tricia: You are amazing. You can go. I was impressed. You are just full-on.

[03:16:39] Luke: Amen. You never know when it's going to happen again. That's the thing. We could have just went, "Okay, let's keep it to an hour, and then we'll do another one." Who knows? Hopefully we see each other again, but you never know. So I got to get it all in this time. So thank you for doing it.

[03:16:53] Tricia: Yeah. It was such an honor. Thank you for having me. Deep bow to your work. You are the real deal. Thank you for being the realest Austin, maybe the realest of all podcasters, really. And especially, the way that you're holding the masculine. That is so important right now on the planet. And it's so key.

[03:17:17] Luke: Thank you, Tricia.

[03:17:18] Tricia: And your vulnerability is incredible because you're not trying to be perfect for anybody.

[03:17:24] Luke: I tried it. It's impossible.

[03:17:27] Tricia: You can't do it.

[03:17:29] Luke: You can aim for it.

[03:17:31] Tricia: Yeah.

[03:17:32] Luke: That's as good as you can do, I think. As long as you're aiming for it and knowing you're never going to get there, now it makes life interesting. But thank you for your kind words. I appreciate it.

[03:17:41] Tricia: I wish we had more time together. We had a lot of time together, but just more I love Alyson.

[03:17:49] Luke: Oh, me too. We'll make more time.

[03:17:52] Tricia: Let's do it. Thank you.