In this episode of AyahuascaPodcast.com host Sam Believ of LaWayra Ayahuasca retreat interviews Scott Gray. Scott is a veteran who battles PTSD and depression and got great relief from Ayahuasca after his visit to LaWayra 6 months ago.

LaWayra.com

Transcript

Sam Believ: You’re listening to aya podcast.com.

Hi guys, and welcome to ayahuasca podcast.com. Today we’re joined by Scott. Scott, welcome to the podcast. Tell a little bit about yourself. Where are you from, Scott, where are you coming in from?

From Nova Scotia, Canada.

Sam Believ: Scott was a guest at LA Wire Retreat when was it, six months ago-ish?

Yeah.

Sam Believ: Okay. And so Scott reached out to me a few weeks ago asking for the logo of LA Wire to send it to him. And I said, why? He said he wants to make it to two, the logo for those of you who are watching the video, it’s right there on my t-shirt.

And I said why? He said that he got he’s pretty happy with the results he got here, so he wants to put it as a memory. Just so you know, guys. So we changed logo about a year ago. So far I think we have more than 10 people already tattooed on their bodies, which is a great makes me very proud.

Means the logo we chose was was pretty, just so you know, the logo has been made by number one, Latvia and logo designer. For those that don’t know, I come from Latvia. So if you ever go to Riga in the restaurants you see around, you’ll see that the logos they’ve been made by the same guy. Scott, why no let’s start from the beginning.

When you came to Lara, you came to, to seek healing from what? And how did you end up at at Lara?

So I’ve dealt with PTSD from being a vet in the military for many years. And I’ve tried. So many different medications and therapies and nothing gave me the relief that I needed.

So after a couple years of doing research with less traditional medicines I came to do a lot of research on ayahuasca and DMT and medicinal mushrooms. And I did a couple macro doses of mushrooms and. The enlightenment I got from it. And the healing in the moment was nothing I’ve ever experienced from any SSRI or SNRI.

But it was not lasting. So essentially the more research I did on DMT in Ayahuasca it just led me to, I guess looking for different resorts and stuff down south and I came across yours and everything about it from the re reviews to the price, it was it was right out my alley and exactly what I was looking for I hit quite a bad low.

About two months before I came to the retreat, and that’s what kind of pushed me over the edge to, to take the gamble, buy the plane tickets, book my place at the retreat, and and make it happen. And it has been life changing.

Sam Believ: So before we talk about results how was the process as your ceremonies?

Progress, like what was the what were you seeing, what were you feeling? And when were you when were you able to say oh yeah, I feel that something happened. Was there one moment or was it just a gradual shift?

A gradual shift over time? As when I was there, I didn’t really have any crazy experiences with the medicine.

I went my first. Two ceremonies and I didn’t have any experience at all. It started to hit me in a negative way thinking, this isn’t working. This was a waste of money. By the third ceremony, I had a little bit of an experience but again, it wasn’t anything life changing. And then the fourth day ceremony that we had on the Saturday it was a great experience, but again, it was nothing.

Crazy. I didn’t, I never had any visions the entire time I was there. I didn’t go very deep or so I thought, but as everybody says, it’s not gonna give you what you think you need. It’s gonna give you what you actually need. Everybody goes there. It’s hard not to have any expectations at all, but of course, everybody’s there for healing, so you’re gonna have some sort of an expectation of what you wanna receive out of the experience.

But while I was there, I was almost depressed leaving because I didn’t feel like I experienced what I needed to. But the sense of community and the compassion and the love from complete strangers, that in itself was a life-changing experience. But then once I came back home and I. I really took everything I learned from my experience at Laira.

And as soon as I came back home, my wife and my kids and my parents noticed a complete shift in my mentality. And then over time it was really hard for me to notice that right away, but that’s why it took me a while to reach out to you because I’m very in tune with my emotion and my feelings.

As the months progressed and I was like, I don’t feel as depressed as I was. I’m not in that rot in that darkness. And the more I focused on how more light was in my life and how less angry and less judgmental I am that’s when I really started to notice that. There was something about that medicine that completely shifted my thought train and that negative emotion.

Sam Believ: Yeah. That, I’m glad you it up because. I don’t think enough words are spoken about this subject online because when people talk about ayahuasca, they expect this big explosion of visions, which, which comes, occasionally you experience that, but it’s completely not what what is needed in most of the cases.

And at the retreat, I’m sure you remember when you’re here. We always talk about, patience, guys, you need to be patient. Get release your expectations. The medicine will give you what you need, not what you want. And it’s I can say it over and over again. Sometimes it feels like I’m talking to the wall because people, they cannot understand that.

What I mean by that is exactly what I mean by that, that the experiences is not as you expect them to be. And especially if you’ve done mushrooms before, LSD, you expect just that. And ayahuasca is not mushrooms. In LSD it’s much more than that. So you might get less visions. You might get, it might be completely bodily experienced sometimes, but nevertheless the shift and the change that happens is profound.

As you experience in yourself, something has been shifted, something has been removed, and we’re not capable enough, as, basic human beings, we are to even notice what’s happening in. This is why a lot of time it feels to people that they’re not having an experience because once again, it’s not meeting their expectations.

But when the retreat is over and then what really matters is how you feel afterwards, and it changes. This is, it means it was a productive experience. So I’m glad you experienced that and I’m glad you can talk openly about it because a lot of people that. They, their ego gets attached and then they’re like, yeah, I didn’t feel anything.

And you tell everyone you didn’t feel anything. So when you get better, you prefer to I’ll just keep it to myself so they don’t think, they don’t go and tell me like I told you style thing. But yeah, all that matters really is not the experience itself in the end of the day is what you feel afterwards.

’cause it’s medicine, when you come to the doctor and it gives you a pill, you don’t care about how you’re gonna feel. What’s the experience of taking a pill is gonna be like, this is irrelevant. You want the relief afterwards and as, as long as the medicine can provide that, that they, there can be really no complaints.

So thank you for mentioning that. So you said you are a veteran, right?

Right.

Sam Believ: Yeah. We do notice that a lot of veterans come through our doors and I i’m for some reason really interested in like creating a veteran program. I’m sure I mentioned to you something about it, but we’re far from that.

But still, I think it’s a very vulnerable part of a population because they’re generally, the veterans tend to be. Against the spirituality side of things. So what did you do personally, or maybe how your journey was to being able to like, accept that? And because generally it’s kinda looked down I guess in, in the veteran circles, if I’m not understanding it wrongly.

Honestly, after I released and I spiraled downhill I really didn’t, I’m very open towards different avenues of healing, and where conventional medication wasn’t working. And honestly, I wanted to come off the conventional medication because. Honestly, it’s the withdrawals you get from medication.

How healthy can that be, right? It’s no different than meth or, hard drugs. Your body reacts so negatively when you miss your medication for a day or two. That in my eyes, I was like, how can this be healthy for my brain or my body? So that’s when I started. Looking at more psychedelic healing and mushrooms, like I said.

And the healing that I received from one macro dose of mushrooms the feeling that I got was I hadn’t felt that since I was a kid. So with that. I knew there was more to it, and that’s what kind of led me down the rabbit hole to find other psychedelics. And I’m, I must have watched a hundred videos of different people’s experiences with DMT and Ayahuasca.

Originally DMT the methyl tryptamine found me locally. And that was when the pandemic kind of started to hit. So I didn’t have the opportunity to go anywhere to experience ayahuasca. So really I was only able to experience DMT, which was the only thing that I had, and it completely opened my mind to a completely different realm in the mind’s eye, so to speak.

That’s where the spirituality, like you mentioned, came from knowing that there is more to life than what we see in our day to day. And yeah, that’s where the spirituality and me came from. DMT and the psychedelics themselves gave me that shift. And really I don’t really give a shit what other people think about me or what my beliefs are.

As long as they work for me and they make my life and the people around me better, that’s all that really matters to me.

Sam Believ: Yeah, that’s a good that’s a good way to look at it. But now, you went through this journey yourself and working with different plant medicines and.

Finding your relief from your symptoms. Would you recommend other veterans, for example, with similar issues to, to look look for psychedelics or look for plant medicines to, to experience the relief?

Absolutely. Like I said, with conventional pill pushing doctors absolutely it does work for some people, but.

I have been off my medication for quite a long time now and I’ve never felt better and I believe it’s all due to ayahuasca. I used to go for ketamine infusion therapy as well, and I got relief from that. But again, it was only short term. Nothing really gave me that mental shift that I received from Ayahuasca.

So I think, it wasn’t just due to the medicine, it was due to yourself and the facilitators and the whole sense of community at Lara. It’s nothing I’ve ever experienced before, even in the military. There’s a lot of community in the military in some aspects, but I’ve never experienced the compassion and the love for a complete stranger that I experienced when I was down at your retreat.

That in itself was eye-opening. And from what I gather, watching your podcasts and different pictures and images and chats of people that have experienced the same thing down there, it’s, it wasn’t just a one-off from my retreat. It just seems to be, whether it’s the people that the retreat draws in or whether it’s the work that you guys and the plant medicine is doing there it’s.

All combined and it’s awe inspiring. It’s it’s a different world and it’s, everything about it is healing.

Sam Believ: Thank you, Scott. Yeah, we we do our best to create the culture of that mutual support and group healing. And I would say 99% of times we’re successful in that. Sometimes they’re.

Some groups are different than others and there is a big spectrum, but I would say most of the times we’re able to get people to that state and to that level of compassion. So of course, w nothing is possible without people themselves and obviously without ayahuasca. ’cause as we slowly kinda direct group in a certain direction. Medicine also helps. And in the end, it results in this sort of beautiful phenomena you’ve experienced yourself which is something when you see it happen. You just want the world to be that way. You want everyone to just care for everyone and that just can’t help but put an idea in your head like, how wonderful would it be to wake up one day and have everyone hadas yesterday?

That would be a pretty, yeah. Pretty awesome reality to, to be alive in. But not sure if it’s gonna happen in our lifetimes, but slowly but surely, we gonna try and get there. But so yeah, Scott where’s the lava two going? Going on? Which part?

I haven’t figured that out yet, but it’s gonna be your logo and it’s gonna be the actual molecule of DMT.

But I haven’t figured out exactly where it’s gonna go. I’m still designing it right now.

Sam Believ: Nice. Once you do it, send me the photo. I’ll I’ll share it on Instagram. Absolutely. Always. It makes me happy. There’s a lot of different versions of the virus. My, my wife also has has it on her shoulder, so I don’t have any tattoo two, but if I get one, maybe it would good.

The you and a half. Yeah. Maybe eventually. Not when I feel ready, but yeah. Scott, i’m happy to have stories like this, people coming over and, a lot of times people reach out to me and they say, I feel better and I get relief from this and that. And sometimes it’s physical ailments, sometimes it’s mental, and it just makes me happy.

The work we’re doing is very difficult, as you can probably see in my tired eyes. It’s not easy, but that’s definitely one of those things that, that keeps us going. So thank you for coming on. Hopefully somebody who is listening to that may be a veteran or somebody with PTSD or depression gets motivated to, to come out to low wire drink ayahuasca and take a leap and and get the, get relief as well.

Any parting words? Scott, anything you wanna tell to people? Or maybe if other veterans wanna find you and ask for advice, you wanna share where they can find you?

First of all, I’d like to say that the anxiety that I experienced going down there to do this on a whim in the middle of the jungle by myself, took a lot.

It was, the first three days, I don’t even think I ate anything while I was there. I was terrified. But if I could go back in time, I’d probably slap myself and just tell myself that you’re in good hands and there’s nothing to be afraid of. The medicine’s gonna show you what it needs to show you and even if it’s not.

Giving you visions to literally show you something, you’re gonna experience something down the road that’s hopefully life changing. I hope to come down again and do a longer stint. It would be nice to have a couple of days prior to the ceremonies to relax and get the shakes out.

And then a couple of days afterwards, before the long travel home I think that would make a big change in the experience itself to give yourself that extra time. Because it’s fast and furious when you’re there and you’re doing, three ceremonies day after day. It’s a lot mentally and physically.

But yeah, that extra few days I think would make a big difference. And now that you have those the other shanties or the huts set up I think that’s ideal. Yeah. I love them. Yeah, I absolutely love them. Yeah. I think that’s an excellent idea.

Sam Believ: Okay, Scott, thank you for thank you for coming over.

And yeah, you said you watched a lot of videos of people describing their experience. Now you’re in one of those videos. Hopefully somebody’s gonna watch it and then they will be in a video and the, one day wake up and the whole world will have access to this. Beautiful tool for healing of ayahuasca or other plant medicines.

And hopefully by then we’ll have a happier, healthier existence as a society. Thank you for that. Thank you for bravery as well. Not everyone is is willing to share about it. It’s still a forbidden topic by many, but as you said, you don’t care what people think. Same to I, Scott, so thank you.

Thanks Sam.

Sam Believ: It. Guys you’ve been listening to Ayahuasca podcast.com. Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have a veteran friend that might need some relief from any mental health issues, send this episode to him and, so yeah. Thank you guys for listening. See you in the next episode.