In this episode Sam Believ interviews Robert about his success story of quitting Marihuana after attending an Ayahuasca retreat.

We talk about root causes of weed addiction and more.

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Transcript

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

Hi guys, and welcome to ayahuasca podcast.com. As always, here with you, the host, Sam. We are reporting from the hammock room here at Laira, the retreat that I founded and operate. And today we’re joined by Robert, AKA Bob. Bob has come to our retreat about seven months ago, correct? Yes, sir. And now he’s back and he’s reported that he completely quit smoking weed.

And we wanna talk about the subject today to understand how Ayahuasca help him do it, what steps he had to take and, and most importantly, why is he back? Bob, welcome to Ayahuasca podcast. It’s nice to meet you. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what brought you to Ayahuasca.

Robert: Thanks, Sam.

I appreciate that. It’s been a roundabout way a, my ex was looking into ayahuasca and wanted me to do ayahuasca with her, and I kinda refused because I wasn’t comfortable about how it may affect her ’cause she’s bipolar. And and plus all my partying days were behind me, so something I wasn’t very receptive to.

And then we broke up suddenly after nine years. And so I decided to just start looking into it to see what interested her so much and trying to understand what was going on. And, one thing led to another and somehow, some way you guys popped up on my Facebook or someplace. It’s really random.

And I did the research for probably six months saying, ah, man, I’m 57 years old. Am I gonna actually consider doing something like this? Does it makes sense? And which gave me a fair bit of anxiety. And then once I made the decision all the anxiety went away and off we went.

Sam Believ: Bob, when you came to LA Wire for the first time, did you already have an intention to quit quit using marijuana or was it something that came out?

Robert: I did. I did. It’s something I’ve wanted to quit for quite some time because I knew it kinda interfered with my life and my business and my productivity in general. But it’s it’s one thing to quit and still wanting it. It’s a completely different thing to quit and not want it. And and the start of that was the preparation to, clean out the system.

So I had a purpose to quit for 30 days, which was pretty challenging, but I had a reason to do it, to prepare for the sessions. And then and then I came here and then, ever since leaving here, I’ve had zero desire for marijuana anymore.

Sam Believ: So before we talk about the part of you quitting weed do you know why you were smoking weed?

Do you, have you been able to identify the.

Robert: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s hiding from trauma, family trauma, medicating, self-medicating, and just hiding from life in general or the issues that kinda were inside of me which is a very common thing, whether it’s alcohol, marijuana, or other substances, people oftentimes will use these things to, to hide from.

Internal situations that maybe are adver adversely affecting their life. And I’m a firm believer in my business as well as my life to address the source of the issue instead of trying to treat the symptom.

Sam Believ: Yeah. This is unfortunately really true. We, as we as human beings, can get addicted to literally anything.

Robert: Indeed.

Sam Believ: Some people get addicted to work. Some people get addicted to alcohol porn. You name it. And we can get addicted to it, but people rarely ask themselves, we blame the substances or the behaviors, but we rarely ask why is a certain person prone to addiction and another is not. Then a lot of times it comes from, as you said, running away from pain.

Yep. So if, let’s say you feel bad and then you get belly full of food and the pain goes away, you wanna do it again and, soon you notice you became a addicted to food and now it’s a problem. And then a problem or addiction generally fuels this self-fulfilling cycle where. Let’s say you drink for a night to run away from pain.

Next day you feel even worse. You miss the job. Now you’re unemployed, you drink even more. And it unfortunately spirals down out of control. And I’m sure your addiction well was under control. And I know you’re very high performing individual and, but it’s still great that you are able to catch it, identify it, and then heal it.

Because a lot of time for people it’s, it’s accepting that there is a problem indeed, which is the first step because a lot of times you ask somebody, why do you smoke? Oh because I enjoy it. Or in I like the taste, or I like how it makes me feel. And it might be true to a certain extent, but there is always this emotional context that that really.

Makes those things propagate. You came over and you participate in how

Robert: many ceremonies did two ceremonies and they were. It’s pretty good. I addressed some inner child issues as well that kind of went with the reasons with my my substance abuse I believe as well. They’re all intertwined a little bit, but to touch on what you’re talking about, it starts with accountability knowing you have an issue.

And then the second is wanting to correct that issue because if you can’t own it, and if you don’t want it. It’s really impossible to fix it.

Sam Believ: Yeah. So you do two ceremonies. Was there a specific moment in your journeys that maybe, had something to do about the addiction? Was there a specific moment that you can attribute to the release?

So you’re talking about that it’s one thing wanting something and not doing it, and it’s a totally another thing of just not wanting to do it. Do you remember a moment where you realize that you no longer wanna smoke weed?

Robert: It’s

interesting

because I always didn’t want to smoke weed, but I didn’t have the resolve or the.

Fortitude to stop the habit because it’s not only an addiction, but there’s a an action of habit at the same time. And so I think the preparation helped me out quite a bit because it showed that I could do it. Ever since I’ve never been, I can’t remember being so productive in my business, I still wonder how I was able to.

I managed to run my business being in the shape that I was. ‘Cause now I look in, in hindsight it’s my life is kinda like night and day right now.

You, but I can’t really put a finger on any specific moment that turned things other than, the experience with Ayahuasca. Some of the things that helped me resolve.

The inner child issues, some of the self-love issues, I think, which comes with addiction. There’s some self-love aspects with that, which come with a lot of family trauma. And so I think there’s a lot of things that are parts of the whole, if that makes sense.

Sam Believ: I’m very happy for you, Bob, and I’m really happy you got this incredible result and Me too, and that we were able to be a part of it.

Knowing that you had such a great transformation and you feel so much better now, why are you back? Seven months later.

Robert: Good question. I ask myself the same thing. But I want to continue the path, to continue the inner work. Work on some things like acceptance, which is pretty challenging.

I’ve always been a. Survivor type who has always had to influence things or protect myself. And so I’m used to being confrontational or standing up for myself, which sometimes serves me and sometimes does not. So acceptance continuing in that path of self-love continue to try to heal the.

The insides of me that continue that can benefit from that. And and in my experience, if something works the first time, it’s good to probably do it a second time to see if we can get more benefit.

Sam Believ: It’s interesting the way I describe it, but it nicely lines up to, nicely connect, connects to our vision at Laira because at Laira our motto is connect.

Heal. Grow. So you come here, you connect with yourself, connect with the medicine, connect with the nature, you heal, and then inevitably you want to grow. Yeah. So I guess you came to this stage now where you wanna take things a little deeper and go a little further. And how old did you say you were?

I’m

Robert: 57.

Sam Believ: 57. Yeah. For those listening or watching through this, age is not, not a limit to Ayahuasca. The oldest patient we had was 73. Okay. Had great results, was able to shake off treatment and resistant depression. Meaning that antidepressants wasn’t helping and Ayahuasca managed to help.

Yeah, don’t be shy and don’t be afraid to come here to LoRa Bob. You we’re at the second day of the retreat now actually third day, I believe. Yeah. And so you had the, your first ceremony of the second retreat. Yesterday, how was it and how do you feel?

Robert: It was a crazy experience, but I have to give a disclaimer that I’m 18 on the inside, but physically I’m 57 out

Sam Believ: out.

Sorry. Technical issues.

Robert: Adrian, continue. Continue speaking ball. So garbage you last night was was actually super intense. I had, we had a lot of deep visions. Visuals help me. And bring him upstairs because I really a lot of profound aspects of no fear which is very helpful to me.

The thing I’ve noticed is fear not having fear is important. Not having expectations was important. And one of the things to address about growth. Is, another word for growth is change. And and to get into change and growth factors, we have to get into generally uncomfortable areas.

And that’s something that really, ayahuasca can do because you really don’t know what to expect and you don’t know. And there’s a little, a lot of people have some inner fear, but one thing I’ve learned that’s. I’ve had three experiences now and they’ve all been very wonderful as to not have expectations not be attached to it, where you can actually be an observer or what we call rational gaze and view things coming in and out rather than to control them and just surf the wave or, surfing under Los Avita. So that’s surf the waves of life. So that’s but yeah, last night was very intense at times. A very beautiful just a lot of crazy matrix type images and a lot of other aspects to it. So it was pretty fascinating actually.

Sam Believ: Thank you, Bob.

Robert: What do you think about La Wire, Bob?

I think it’s wonderful. I as a business owner I try to watch kinda what the intention is for a business, especially in a, what I’ll call a health oriented type business. ’cause when you’re trusting your health and other people’s hands I like to look at people who. Mission oriented with money as a secondary, as a business because without money you can’t function.

But there are other operators who focus on money and mission is a very distant second. And I like LA Wire because there’s a lot of heart in it. There’s a lot of really good group dynamic with the word circles where there’s a lot of. Exchange from different people, different countries. I think my first experience was 12 countries, ages 21 to 57.

One of my best friends is a 21-year-old Australian guy now who traveled with me in Mexico a little bit. And the same dynamic is here, is that a lot of different countries, a lot of different backgrounds, and so you get a lot of. Meshing and what I’ll call cross pollination of ideas and thought processes.

Sam Believ: Yeah, it’s really beautiful the groups of people we get here and it’s always finding how every group seems to have its own. Personality, its own being, indeed, this group and your last group and it’s perfect in its own way. Yeah. It’s different, but it’s always perfect.

Robert: It’s important not to compare. I came in here not wanting to compare to the last group, even though I have some very good friends from that group and stay in touch with maybe five or six people outta 20. But it was important for me not to compare the groups and stay outta that expectation situation, and also just be open to a new or a different experience.

Sam Believ: Yeah. As I like to say, guys, best way to make friends as an adult is to go to an NA retreat. It’s true. It’s true. Thank you, Bob. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing. And I hope this little episode will help somebody maybe that’s struggling with addiction, be it marijuana or any other substance.

That you can, ayahuasca can help, it can help you get out of that state. Take away your pain. Show you the way out. And as some of the other episodes here in a podcast where I interviewed Damon who quit drinking alcohol. And he also described that it’s not that he forces himself not to drink now, it’s just that he doesn’t want to drink anymore.

And it’s a big difference. Really hard to huge paradigm swim against current. But if you address that root trauma, even if you don’t fix it completely, but you take away that pain. Things really align and things get easier. Bob, any parting comments?

Robert: I just I think it’s important to be brave and, wanting to move forward in fixing yourself. It’s a big step, but I think it’s a very fruitful step. And it’s done. I’ve seen it do many different things for different people and in different manifestations in different ways. So I would just say if you’re watching this podcast, there’s a reason you’re watching it.

There’s something you’re looking for. And from my personal experience I think this is probably one of the better things you could do for yourself.

Sam Believ: Thank you, Bob. So guys, listen to Bob, come over to Lara and experience it yourself. And it was pleasure hosting you, Bob. Yeah, and guys, I’ll see you again soon on ayahuasca podcast.com.

And if you are interested in visiting Lara, go to lara.com. L-A-W-A-Y-R a.com. Or go to ayahuasca in columbia.com and that’s Columbia with COLO, not COLU. And I’m looking forward to host you guys and never know. Maybe someday you’ll be a guest on the podcast with the success story. Indeed. Thank you.

Thank you, Bob.